<p>“Yes, there are students that say, hey, why should I spend 60k at a private school when I can spend 25 k at a SUNY school and they go to a suny school, but I would think that is not the norm.”
-it must be NE thing, It is very common here, in Midwest, but again, I am most familiar with the pre-med crowd and kids from very rigorous private HS filled with physician’s and lawyer’s families, who have just done paying their own student loans and would like to do everything possible to avoid the same situation for thier kids. I do not belong to this type of family, But as D. went to such a HS, I talked to few parents who did and I know where kids attended and they are currently all at Med. Schools as far as know loan free. Again, as situation may be different for accounting, you need to investigate and decide. However, I do not see any point no matter where one attend to have a such low goal as 3.0. Why? Why not to have a goal of 4.0? Just do your best in every single class. 4.0 may not happen, but at least, one can tell that everything possible was done. Frankly, the UG is an UG, it is not a Grad. School, so 4.0 is attainable with the best effort for very many. However, most do not try their best, there is no question about it. I also agrre that any gaming of the system will backfire at some point of time. The only thing that is sure bet is a hard work.</p>
<p>@euve69: I think that is a misconception that rankings and rigor line up perfectly. Also, it’s not as if all schools ranked below JHU are the same.</p>
<p>Is sciences at JHU harder rigor-wise than sciences at UMich, for instance? I think you will be able to find few if any people knowledgeable about both schools who would say that.</p>
<p>Euve- whether or not you want an admissions person deciding whether a 2.75 GPA is “good enough” for accounting it’s sort of irrelevant. Every college sets its own academic standards for various departments and degrees. In many instances there are outside accrediting and licensing organizations which provide the gate-keeping so the university doesn’t have to. But if year after year, nurses (for example) who have a 2.75 in their nursing classes are unable to pass their boards and actually work in hospitals with actual patients, most universities get on board and decide that if you have a 2.75 GPA at some point you can’t stay in that major. It serves nobody any good to continually graduate kids who are unable to find jobs in their field. Nobody.</p>
<p>Can you find a for-profit college which will take your money at let you study whatever you want with no standards? of course. But if a university has statistics going back 20 years which show that accounting majors with less than a 3.0 can’t pass the CPA exam even after multiple attempts, seems to me that they are doing everyone a favor (employers, students and parents) by setting this seemingly arbitrary bar.</p>
<p>Do you want someone setting up your IV who had a 2.75 GPA as a nursing student? Do you want someone signing off on financial statements for a large corporation who couldn’t make B’s in accounting? Well guess what- employers don’t either.</p>
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<p>That’s true. You don’t really even need to be an accountant at all to do simple tax returns. In my experience, the real bread and butter for tax accountants – as in, people who do it for a living – is in tax planning not just filling out the forms. If you need to fill out forms, you can take a class with H & R Block or whoever. I wouldn’t even necessarily recommend college if all you want to do is tax returns on the side.</p>
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<p>Sure, you can probably find a grad school that will take you with a 2.0. My point was that it doesn’t make sense to me to take that risk. Anything below a 3.0 means that instead of having a decent shot at many competitive programs, you will instead have to hunt for a program that will take you. It’s definitely a fatal bullet or anything but it’s not really the standard anyone should set for themselves.</p>
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<p>Well, I think there is definitely room for middling accounting majors out there. One thing that euve said that I agreed with is that you can find a job in an accounting field even if you don’t have a CPA. A CPA obviously is needed for public accounting and it’s a plus in every field, but theoretically you can get a job without one as an accountant.</p>
<p>That being said, I agree completely that it doesn’t make sense to graduate people who can’t find jobs. Other professions have done that to their detriment, over-emphasizing graduation rates over job placement rates or even general aptitude and all it did was hurt the graduates who now have newly minted degrees that they can’t use because there are 20,000 grads each year and only 4000 jobs. I think it makes sense to set a minimum standard of aptitude at the college level. Whether 3.0 is the best number is debatable as far as I know, but even if you find a college that says 2.75 is OK I still would want to have much more than that just because I’m risk-averse and it’s important to really grasp undergrad accounting if you’re going to be working in the field.</p>
<p>To me there’s a difference between counseling a college junior majoring in accounting who has a 2.75 GPA and still wants to work as an accountant, vs. counseling a HS kid who probably has little concept about what accountants really do (besides fill in tax forms for which you emphatically do not need to study accounting) who is worried about maintaining a 3.0 GPA.</p>
<p>Just to note that Geneseo is at least as hard as Bing.
OP’s son could apply to Bing and Geneseo, Albany and Buffalo, and Baruch.
Plattsburgh certainly isn’t in the same tier.
However, strong students at Plattsburgh have other problems - in their non-accounting classes, too many underprepared students who are slower learners lead strong students to relax, take poor study habits, etc, instead of pushing themselves.
(not all and Plattsburgh also serves veterans who are disciplined and driven).</p>
<p>Its funny. Just an aside, I went to Oneonta back in the early 80’s and back then Geneseo was an average college just like Oneonta, Oswego, Cortlandt etc. What happened over the last 30 years?? They transplanted all of the Harvard Professors and Yale professors to Geneseo? Seriously? Do not get me wrong, but what is the REAL difference now between Geneseo and Plattsburgh or Oswego etc?? How did Geneseo leap to such great heights while all of the other colleges crept up only a bit and are all about the same give or take but Geneseo is regarded like Harvard. I do not buy it, sorry.</p>
<p>Geneseo became the state’s honors college (in a model followed, more or less well, by many other states), so its recruitment changed. It’s now got among the highest average scores (based on the most recent chart I was provided, outside of EOP: 3.8, 28 ACT, rouhgly 20% in the 1400 range CR+M at Geneseo/ 3.6 and 28 at Bing, 30% above 700M but 15%above 700CR). About 60% students who start as freshmen graduate in 4 years, which is very good for public universities.
SUNY Oswego: Only about 40% graduate in 4 years. 3.5 GPA. Only 1% scores 700 or more on either CR or M, 20% below 500. Average ACT 24.
SUNY Plattsbutgh: Only about 40% graduate in 4 years. 3.2 GPA. Only 1% scores 700 or more on either CR or M, 25-30% below 500 on either section. Average ACT 23. </p>
<p>Yes, but what changed exactly?? I hear that some, not all, of the professors are the same from the early 80’s? so how is the education greater? Did the professors have labotomies and become brilliant all of a sudden?? I am not being sarcastic believe me. </p>
<p>I realize that any institution can say, ok only gpa’s of 3.5 and up and sat’s of 1300 and up and make it more selective. My point is this: Did the education change?? It is a SUNY so they get the same funding as all of the other SUNY’S. I am not knocking Geneseo, I just cannot believe that you get a better education there (on the whole) than Oswego, New Paltz etc. It is harder to get in, yes, but the education is really no different.</p>
<p>Most colleges have truly excellent professors. At Geneseo they’re also hired for their willingness to work with undergraduates, which affects the undergraduate experience, but overall there aren’t “not brilliant” professors anymore because of the dearth of jobs in higher education. So, there’s no difference in faculty quality between Bing, Geneseo, Plattsburgh, and Oswego.
However, what most affects education isn’t the professors, but the quality of students. Professors have to adapt to the typical student. The number of pages you can expect an undergraduate to read and be able to discuss will be different depending on the college, and the assignements will reflect that. The fact some students don’t understand very well what they read (and 20% of them, if they have scores below 500, can’t read at the level a college requires, both at Oswego and Plattsburgh) also alters the discussion experience, which may focus more on facts than on broader themes, meaning, or deep analysis. Add to this the fact that if students read reluctantly because it’s not easy for them, they’re much more likely not to have done the reading. Students may have a weaker background or may be less academically inclined, some may be going to college for the “experience” more than for learning. Strong students stand out just for having done the reading and having things to say - which impacts how they’re stretched intellectually, how much they learn, how much they grow, and may lead to bad study habits.
(it’s fine to be at a school where one is in the top 20%, or in a strong school where one is in the top 10%. It’s much, much, harder to be such an outlier that one is above 99% students academically).
What would you say if you learned that at some colleges some students don’t even show up for their final?
So, yes, the education changed a lot - the depth and breadth of the classes, the quality of the class discussions, the expectations, the requirements, even the type of kids they attracted. New Paltz is better than Oswego which is better than Plattsburgh, BTW (3.6, 25ACT, 3% 700+, 15-18% below 500). None of these schools is super selective. Most admit at least 40% applicants. So the big difference is how prepared for college-level work, and how willing they are to do college-level work.</p>
<p>The faculty and curriculum don’t have to change for a school to experience an upwards tick just by virtue of a better student body. Imagine a chemistry professor teaching Freshman chem. Class A is comprised of kids with weak math skills who may understand the concepts but can’t do a problem set or a lab because they have deficiencies in their math prep. Class B is the same professor, same textbook, but they’ve got math SAT’s 100-150 points higher. They understand the concepts; they can do the calculations for a lab because they don’t have to be told which number goes on the top and which number goes on the bottom in order to measure a percentage, etc.</p>
<p>So which class is going to have a more rigorous experience, i.e. learn more chemistry. The ones who get the watered down “this is chemistry-lite” class, because they came in with weak math skills, or the ones who can actually do college level chem?</p>
<p>And so on and so forth throughout the curriculum. This is one of the reasons why the move to open admissions by the CUNY system back in the day was met with such an outcry. Same faculty. same books, curriculum. All of a sudden, kids were showing up in class who were reading at a 9th grade level who hadn’t passed trig. Doesn’t take long for a college’s academic rigor to take a nose dive as the professors try to teach college level courses to a class needing remediation.</p>
<p>Ok, you just taught me alot, however, I have a question, albeit a stupid one possibly. Why then cant all of the suny schools such as plattsburgh, or oswego, cortland etc just do what geneseo did?? Just make the standards alot higher so they now have the same student body as a Geneseo or a Binghamton?? If the professors are the same, and the textbooks basically the same at the SUNY colleges, why not just model yourself after the TOP TIER SUNYS?? I would think that Plattsburgh and Oswego etc would love to go up the ranks. If Geneseo did it, why not the rest of the SUNY’S??</p>
<p>All the SUNY’s have different histories and missions. Geneseo has tried to model itself as a LAC and by offering a somewhat unique curriculum, seems to have attracted a higher-performing student body.</p>
<p>Because it’s a State-wide mission. The school didn’t decide this on its own - each school has its own mission within the SUNY system, which is why there’s no “flagship” and why students can get a decent education at any of the SUNYs, even if they’ll be surrounded by more or less prepared (or driven) peers. </p>
<p>Thanks, but what is the unique curriculum that Geneso offers that the other Suny colleges do not? I understand the different missions etc, but I would think that all of the SUNY colleges would like to have the same standing if you will as Geneseo, so why not just raise the standards for admission to Geneseo standards? Eventually, you will have the same basic student body attending correct?</p>
<p>It is important to know if prestige of the UG is of any value for the future career or not.
And it is very very important for a student to be at the place where they feel at home, feel comfortable in surroundings and student body.
Then, they must actually like the program for their chosen major/future.
Then, there is a question about importance of financial side.
Then, how important is location (close from home vs. near home, urban vs in a middle of nowhere, pretty campus or applicatn does not care)
One can assign the points to all criteria. the most important criteria would get more points. Add them up for each UG under consideration and you have your decision on a silver platter.
Pretty straight forward process. However, some may look for special aspects that are unusual for general decision making. Well, the points may be assign to this special consideration. And if it is your top criteria than it gets the most points.
After they choose, it is entirely up to them. No profs or best friends or SO’s can do it for them. Hard work will pay off, slacking will derail, also pretty straight forward process with predictable results.</p>
<p>I agree. What good is it if someone gets into Harvard, but cannot take the pressure etc?? It is great to impress Mom and Dad, and Uncle Joe and your neighbors, but will they be there for you if you are hiding under your bed in the fetal position because you are having a nervous breakdown?? I agree, go to the best school you can where you think you will excel and feel comfortable.</p>
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That’s where the mission comes in. The principle is that all students who are college-ready should have a public college where they can go. Some colleges specialize in remedial education (the CCs), some colleges specialize in students around the middle 50% and are paced for that group, some colleges want to offer an appropriate education for most colleges offer special, highly-sought-after programs, some colleges will be perfect for students in the 1750-1800 SAT range, etc.
It’s the same as for high school: you can’t put 100% kids in all-AP… even honors. You need regular, general, remedial, and ESL classes.
Colleges have different missions and New York State mandates a “public service” mission for the SUNYs as a whole - to serve the students of the State of New York.
In addition, the State can only support a small number of colleges that recruit among the top 20% students - by definition, if you raise qualifications to top 20% everywhere, you’ll have 80% students with no college, and lots of colleges without students.</p>
<p>I agree. If every university was like Harvard, you would have millions of students out on the street. I am fascinated by this because I was curious to as why Geneseo was the CHOSEN one sort to speak. Nothing against Geneseo, but why were they chosen to be able to raise the standards to such great lenghts? I do not see any special curriculum that they offer that other SUNY’S do not. In fact, there are other SUNY’S that have better programs than Geneseo in some areas, and visa versa.</p>
<p>Also you are on spot with High School only having AP Courses. However, that is a bit different in only the fact that the reputation of the school does not suffer, whereas Brockport, for example, really cannot raise their reputation even if they wanted to if they are just catering to the middle 50%.</p>
<p>I just cannot believe that Plattsburgh is content being ranked near the bottom of the SUNY list. Isn’t that a bit embarassing for them? I understand that someone has to be number 1 and someone has to be number 10 but if what you are saying is true regarding mandates, Geneseo will always be number 1 because the other colleges cannot really up the standards to a great degree. </p>
<p>I guess it is just the competitive nature in me. If I were the Dean of Plattsburgh, I would pissed that I cannot raise my standards due to a NYS mandate, but Geneseo was able to do that when they were not really offering anything special.</p>
<p>I think they decided on Geneseo because it had a contained campus, nice architecture compared to others, not enough students so needed to attract some, wouldn’t diminish Bing’s and Stony Brook’s attractivity, and correct size campus/facilities for what they had in mind.
Plattsburgh did get something out of the deal: a great program in communications, with state-of-the-art facilities.
Also, it’s not like someone on high said “Geneseo gets this, and all of you guys shut up”. There were protracted discussions. There was a need, Geneseo was chosen to fill it, but every campus something out of the deal. As for the public service mission, I think it’s really remarkable that SUNY is trying to keep that up, keeping a quality college education, at appropriate levels depending on student preparation, both accessible and affordable for New York State students. Not all states are so responsible toward educating their state’s population.</p>