<p>To me, it seems like you should go to Hunter. I can relate to your problem personally because I am currently in the process of transferring from Reed to a state university.</p>
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<li><p>Debt has the potential to ruin your quality of life after undergrad. I think that’s the most important point. If you wanna know more about how student loans can really mess up your life, there are better authorities writing on the web.</p></li>
<li><p>This community has a dominant culture of concern for name and prestige (that’s why these people above feel that they can say, with confidence, the worth of a Reed or Bard degree). The truth is, like you said, Reed has a lot of cache among graduate programs. If you graduated from Reed, it would be easy for you to get good recs for grad school because of the thesis and conference classes. (You would also be super prepared for grad school work, although you would probably be too burnt out to wanna go immediately.) Compared to other schools, from Ivy League to state universities, it is <em>easier</em> at Reed to get good recs. You don’t even have to work towards relationships w/ profs. Of course, if you put effort into relationships with profs, it’s possible at any school.</p></li>
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<p>Like you’ve also seen, Reed GPAs are really low. It’s really hard to show someone that you were doing incredibly difficult work and writing grad-level papers and succeeding at it when all you have to show for it is a bunch of B+'s (my experience). A professor at Reed told me (s)he was penalized for giving out multiple A-grades in sections. So what you have to show for your weekend all-nighters in Hauser is a <strong><em>ty GPA and a little insert that says “we don’t inflate grades.” </em></strong>**, I would say that they actively deflate grades. Professors risk losing a chance at tenure if they give As. Of course, my experience is based in the liberal arts, so if you were to graduate from Reed with a Psychology degree it would be a better transcript (this is not an arbitrary example). I actually have the Reed average GPA after 2 years of classes, and it would definitely get better in my final two years if I were to stay at Reed. Only at Reed would having the average GPA mean you are a nervous wreck about transferring to a regular old state university (my situation). </p>
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<li><p>As for rigor, you may go back to Reed and be challenged, but I am leaving because I did not feel like I was being challenged. The professors at Reed are some of the best in the country, and they are extremely intelligent, well-read people. However, because almost every class at Reed is a conference course, you are spending more time listening to your peers than to the professor–or, you are talking yourself. The best part of Reed are the readings assigned and the thesis. Personally I was not going to sit through more boring conferences, listening to kids talk out of their asses while the most educated person in the room sat quietly (the prof)…all that, just to write a thesis. If I wanna do that, I’ll pursue a Masters or PhD. Then my paper will be published, and not just end up in the thesis tower.</p></li>
<li><p>“Reed [has] the often irritating homogenous and pretentious student bod[y].” Yeah, that is not going to change. Reed is full of entitled white kids. There are normal people there, but they are not the majority. If you already feel this way, then I would strongly suggest transferring. Reed only stays a glittery intellectual dreamscape if you continue to be ignorant to, or ignore, the fact that no one is willing to step outside their entitled, privileged world view. Not to mention, going back to rigor, the fact that people still manage to slide by at Reed, never doing readings, turning all their papers in late and well below the page requirements. Really takes away from the feeling that you’re in a special thinking person’s paradise (especially if you’re not getting the grades that match your work). Oh, and you can always go to Renn Fayre as a guest. I plan to.</p></li>
<li><p>One more thing: I have a LOT of friends who are recent grads from Reed (last two years). At least out of these two groups of grads, most people don’t go to graduate school right away out of Reed. Too burnt out. The ones who get sweet jobs out of Reed are those who had already networked enough through internships (hard to do except in the summer with the workload), or those who had connections because they come from wealthy powerful backgrounds (lots of those at Reed). All of the smartest Reed grad friends of mine work in food service right now. Probably not a coincidence. They’ll go on to do well in grad school, no doubt, but it certainly doesn’t feel right to go from thesising to food service. A lot of grads are living in hip places on their parents’ dime, doing unpaid internships. I could write a whole nother post on that ****.</p></li>
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<p>Just so you don’t think this is *******<em>, although it is all *just my opinion and personal experience</em>, I am a would-be junior taking a semester off to transfer from Reed. I never had any academic or behavioral problems at Reed and was considered an excellent student by my profs there. I was really involved in a lot of stuff at Reed and have a lot more opinions on it. PM me if you want.</p>
<p>Edited to add: I really do hope that helps. Obviously I think very strongly that you should go to Hunter. But maybe you can budget in another semester or year at Reed to make sure. A lot of people I really respect graduated from Reed…they were able to recognize these same problems about it but still enjoy 4 years there. I also apologize for the starred words, forgot about the filter, ha.</p>