<p>Ranger21,</p>
<p>-Extracurriculars are not important in grad school admissions. They don’t care. They are only slightly more important in professional school admissions, and only if they are related to the school. But honestly, when you apply to med school, you could’ve done a million ECs but you can easily be beaten out by someone with a near-perfect GPA and MCATs who just did one summer at a pre-medical program. It’s not high school. They don’t care about ECs.</p>
<p>Jobs don’t care about ECs either, beyond displaying actual leadership skills (and by that I mean no one cares if you were on the freshman cheerleading team; if you did Model UN or were the president of the business club they might care) and internships that you can do over the summer. </p>
<p>Greek life is one of the least important ECs you could possibly be involved in and can be seen as a liability on some school applications, especially if you spent a lot of time with it. If you happen to get lucky and one of the people in the job you want is Greek, maybe it’ll help a smidgen, but honestly most people don’t go Greek.</p>
<p>And to be really honest about it? A year’s time in EC-land is not a whole lot of time. My senior year of college I did NO ECs. I was spending too much time writing my thesis, applying to graduate school and jobs, and trying to graduate to worry about extra-curricular activities.</p>
<p>Thinker88, in proportion to their degrees and experience professors are not paid all that well – a beginning professor makes anywhere from maybe $40,000-60,000 depending on where he or she works. Some professors get paid a lot more than that. And the majority of teaching work is being done by graduate students (who at BEST make $30,000, and that’s really high for graduate students) and adjunct professors (who make $3,000 per class - if they’re lucky). Also, at some schools, they are “soft money” which means a professor gets a small salary from the school and the rest has to be covered by research grants. Really, who gets paid the most are those administrators.</p>
<p>Anneroku, some research is indeed subsidized by the university. There are numerous amounts of research grants that come from my university – the pilot that we’re doing now is funded by the university. And the grants actually take more than 50%. My university (Columbia) takes 63% off the top of the grant, and that’s before the researcher even pays himself.</p>
<p>I agree with those who say that you should be able to finish a college degree in 3 years, if you choose. Honestly, many schools require the fluffiest general education requirements possible to make you take 120 credits. When I was in college, we had to take one class out of each of four divisional requirements – so I had to take a fine arts class. I chose acting. It was a fun class, but honestly, what the hell does a psychology major need with an acting class? I’m not using it. I also had to take two PE classes. Why do I need to take PE in college? Not gonna lie, some of the required classes I had to take were really useful and I wouldn’t have taken them were I not required (like linear algebra, making of the modern world, or biology of women) but I really could’ve done without Principles of Acting, Women in Japanese Society, Orientation to Education, a random first year language class I took, and some other classes I can think of.</p>
<p>And honestly, I probably could’ve done without Making of the Modern World, too. It was just interesting.</p>