CGS Clarifications from A Graduate

Colleges and Universities A-Z Boston University
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<p>I am the parent of a student who is graduating in 2 weeks from CGS/COM. I monitor this board periodically as a way to “give back” for all the wisdom we received from College Confidential. There are many, many threads on CGS here, but there are a few key items that we weren’t told initially.

  1. People who “dis” CGS are almost never CGS students, and often not BU students.<br>
  2. Of the people who attended CGS with DD, they are all graduating on time, or (like DD) early. None had difficulty getting their major requirements met.<br>
  3. The only exception to #2 is Sargent College, which has more classes that must be taken sequentially. If Sargent is your target, you may need to plan very carefully to graduate on time. If your main interest is math or science, know that that coursework will be primarily outside of CGS.<br>
  4. While at CGS, you take classes outside of CGS in your major as well as your CGS classes. DD began with the intro class in her intended major the first semester, and realized it was a bad fit. She took enough classes outside of CGS in the rest of her fresh and sophomore year to know that COM was a great fit before she transferredat the beginning of Junior Year.<br>
  5. BU has a little known rule that after you complete your first semester in any college, you can overload without charge as long as you maintain a specific GPA. DD overloaded a class or two each semester. By doing this, she took many interesting classes outside her major, became fluent in French, and graduated a semester early. This saved her/our family a full semester of tuition, which is worth 25K. Since she shares the cost, it was a difference between taking out loans, and ending up debt free. A very big deal.
  6. CGS was not her first choice, but retrospectively, she said it was by far her BEST choice. The reading and writing demands were very helpful in prepping her for upper division classes, and the small class discussion and capstone project were very beneficial as well. Classes outside of CGS tend to have more multiple choice tests and lecture style classes, where at CGS you are in a small group with a full professor asking your opinion. It is a fantastic opportunity.<br>
  7. Knowing what I know now, I think that CGS was a much better cost to benefit value than taking general curriculum courses outside of CGS.<br>
  8. Students in CGS do tend to come in with lower test scores and/or grades if you look at the pure statistics. The difference does not affect the demands of the curriculum. Is the student in your class who got a 2200 on the SATs a better student than the one that got 1950? Can you tell the difference in class? Yeah - thought not.<br>
  9. When i went to the Open House years ago, what I noticed was that many CGS students had something unusual in their background. One student had had cancer, which affected the difficulty level of his coursework. Another had a checkered school history as his parents had moved a lot. Another had ADHD. Yes, there were students that were not superstars, but there were just as many in COM. </p>

<p>Hope this is helpful!</p>

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<p>Ditto… And I have said it before, already I can see my shy reserved daughter who felt she would not hack it a big city school write college level essays that have blown me away…and she is coming out of her shell in droves…</p>