You also need to bake in the kind of people you will absolutely never see in an undergraduate classroom who account for a lot of the university ranking factor driving prestige. One of the best people I had in grad school was this guy who was a prolific researcher and giant in his field. Wasn’t aware of him ever teaching an undergrad course the entire time I was there.
Yeah, I think it’s difficult to make a general statement here. The only CC class I’ve taken was a summer school class at a satellite site of a CC doing geometry in like 9th grade. The class was basic and the teacher was meh. My stepdad taught chemistry at a CC, and after completing a chem minor I probably knew more chem (or chem theory) than he did (he graduated in the 50s). He was probably a decent teacher for the chem for firemen and cops classes he taught.
There are great teachers and bad teachers for all kinds of classes, but as long as the book is good that’s where I think real learning takes place.
I took upper division math and physics and lower division engineering and computer science at UC and followed along my daughter’s C++ classes at CC. The competition was less and grades easier, but the material was on the same level imo and it was designed that way because they offered the credit for the corresponding UC classes. I did mention to my kids to expect to have to work harder at UC, but my eldest was prepared and did very well last year. (History major, but took a couple science classes as she was entertaining the idea of med school)
I also took some cc classes in summer and during some time off, including a physics class. That was a long time ago and that class was definitely at a lower level, but people there were more into actually learning (including me) and I think I learned more because I had time to go for understanding without having to worry about tests or homework which were pretty easy. It was a pretty motivated group in the class because many people were looking to transfer.
A couple times at UC I had shitty books that were only used because the professor wrote them.
From what I’ve seen being on both sides of it, I’d default to no difference and would need to see a lot of evidence for a university effect. Here’s an anecdote along these lines that’s infuriating. For quite a few years at a state flagship, our statistical methods course for non-engineering undergrads was exactly the same course taught at the nearest CC (because it was designed by the same person). Eventually, the department grifter was allowed to redesign the course. This resulted in some faculty / staff outright refusing to teach it, but also several former students informing us that the grad schools they applied to would not count it for credit, so they had to pick up the CC version in the summer after graduating. And those schools were absolutely correct not to accept it.
In fact, I think the odds are it will be worse at a big ivy as those people are heavily research focused.
I would bet intro eduction is better at cc and not until later courses and Grad school does it pay to go Ivey.
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Is he also a freak?
The Presidency of the Joes: j/k college admissions chat
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Who is building these windows in russia? Clearly no health and safety precautions in place.
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the thing for me was that resources for students were really sparse at cc and i was left to fend for myself. financial aid sometimes took 2+ months to receive, counselors were awful/unavailable, little to no tutoring unless you were willing to wait 4 hours. class availability is also a nightmare sometimes.
at the uc, you got frickin health insurance through the school and stuff, financial aid was always prompt, and they held your hand for generally everything. it was very obvious there was far more money at the uc.
some of the early classes at CC I remember being quite annoying because it was a bunch of 18/19 year olds that for whatever reason didn’t go to university, and every professor felt it was their mortal duty to try to prepare them for adulthood, but I was like 26 so it was very patronizing. stuff like mandatory attendance, cell phone rules, etc. drove me insane. At UC, the moment I was not required to attend class I stopped going and just consumed lecture notes online and showed up for tests, it was wonderful.
Cant you get online tutoring these days? Seems like for the cost of English 101 at a big-sticker university you could take the class at a cc and have money for supplemental things like tutoring if needed.
Living on your own in your early 20’s and supporting yourself with a crappy day job in the service industry while taking evening classes at a community college is one of the best educations you can receive.
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A lot of this depends on what one considers to be a “good education” in the first place. If you want to learn how to think and reason for yourself, and understand key topics, and basically just become a more functional thinker, then a small school is probably better. If you want to learn how to navigate a large soulless institution and carve out gains for yourself even though you are just a number on a spreadsheet to powerful people, then a large school is probably better. It’s not at all clear to me which of these skill sets is actually more useful as an education. I ended up basically getting both - I went to a small liberal arts school and developed independent thinking skills and learning practices, then I started my career working only at very large corporations. It took me about 5 years of corporate work to figure out how to get ahead in that environment.
yes
I don’t know, probably, I was only going by what students would complain to me about. I was a tutor and I made small amounts of money by picking up students that were tired of waiting at the tutoring center
I look back and laugh because in many ways I was much happier then, it’s really difficult but not a bad experience at all
It should be mandatory for at least year in order to earn a bachelor’s degree so college graduates have some idea what life is like for the other 65% of the country.
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Can’t speak for Yale or Princeton, but Columbia loves second or third year transfers. Their money spends as well as anyones and the university rankings aren’t brought down by their sub 4 high school GPA.
That said, as much as I love city life, I do think NYC is a terrible place to do your undergrad if you have other options. There really is not enough space at any of the schools here for creating the environment that you need at that age. I really have to lock my office everytime I leave or some student will literally walk in looking for a quiet place to study.
please teach me, I’m about to go back to startups, I’ve never hated anything as much as i hate corporate and thats including DJT
it’s nepotism crap that drives me insane. you’ll see people rocket through the org and no one even knows why til you find out he’s friends with some vp or something.
Not that my own experience is necessarily generalizable to everyone, but I benefited immensely from just getting the fuck out of my hometown. I also met some incredible people bonding over this new experience of being dropped on our own in the middle of nowhere as 17-18 year old kids, many of whom are still my friends to this day. I don’t think I would have had the same experience had I stayed at home just taking CC classes for that first year or two, and I think it would have been harder to connect to folks transferring into the big school two years after everyone else got there. Is that worth the difference in price? Idk, maybe not, but there are other factors outside of education that could favor going to a main university right away.
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