<p>Concerning the Penn housing there are a couple of issues. First is that housing is not guaranteed all four years. When I attended Columbia quite a few years ago housing was not guaranteed either but they gradually increased the housing available to where today you are guaranteed housing all four years which I think has contributed to Columbia's increased number of apps along with other factors. I think that Penn needs to move toward 100% guaranteed housing. I think there has been some discussion about building a new dormitory in the next few years. To Penn's credit, all the residential buildings on campus have sprinkler systems which makes me very happy. </p>
<p>Penn introduced their residential college system about six years ago but it has really just come into its own the last 2-3 years apparently. There are quite a few residential programs and the school invested a lot of $ in these residential house programs. One cool program is the College House Music program where you can get partially subsidized music lessons right in your college house and there are also concerts in the houses associated with this program.</p>
<p>My D also wants the quad mostly because it fits her impression of what a college residential house should look like. I don't think she cares too much about room size other than she would like to have a roommate freshman year. I think that Hill will be her second choice. I don't think she wants the highrises as a freshman. The highrises have all been renovated but just don't seem very "collegiate". I imagine that they would be fine for grad students.</p>
<p>S lived in Hill first year. I pushed for it because I liked the cafeteria in the same building. (That turned out to be good.) And post office, and small store. And I thought it was nice that Hill had pianos. They weren't so good, though -- not cared for, and not pleasant to play. I still think it was good place for him, because it was almost all freshmen, and easy to meet people. The house is organized to have built-in social activities, too. His room was extremely tiny - the smallest two-person rooms on campus.</p>
<p>He lived in a highrise second and third years, and I think they were his favorite experiences. I was appalled at the condition -- broken furniture, tattered curtains, black bathtub, kitchen that seemed a fire hazard. Didn't bother him, though. (They are renovating them, somewhat.)</p>
<p>He lived off campus senior year, by choice, although I think if he could do it over again, he would have stayed on campus. The other thing he learned after freshmen year is that the on-campus dining is expensive, and it is easy enough to get good meals around campus without the dining plan. Once he got to the highrise, where he had his own kitchen, he cut way back on school meals. (We made him keep a handful, for emergencies.)</p>
<p>It seems that there are enough people who want to move off campus by senior year that the on-campus housing availability doesn't become much of a problem.</p>
<p>Fascinating post, Binx, which I read with interest because my son may be heading into economics at another Ivy. It didn't seem as if your son had trouble approaching profs for recommendations, just that they discouraged him based on their estimate of his chances. I wonder whether the lack of encouragement your son got about applying to grad school had to do with his interest more on the policy side while econ PhD programs seem to emphasize math. I've read that they will take a physics or math major over an econ major, and especially over an econ major who has not taken a lot of math courses, because they want strong evidence of quantitative skills. Maybe he might ultimately be interested in a program in public policy, instead.
I've also heard that econ PhD programs are very competitive because they get a lot of students from abroad, many who already have done a Masters and also worked.</p>
<p>The news about his job offers is great to hear. All in all, it sounds as if he had a wonderful experience at Penn.</p>
<p>
[quote]
has always wanted to work immediately after graduation, but we wanted him to apply to grad schools as well, to cover all bases. He ended up not applying to grad schools because he couldn't get teacher recommendations. He talked to the professors he thought knew him best, and they discouraged him. I think this is one of those areas where the school perhaps weights its grad-school acceptance rate by not letting students apply who aren't sure bets. They all seemed to advise him to work for a couple years first. (Then, those successes/failures don't show up on school statistics.)
(Lesson to take from this: If you know you want grad school right away, make sure you get into research, and develop a close relationship with a couple professors! And keep your grades way up!)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>From someone who was <em>just about</em> to apply for grad school in political science (at top-10s) let me explain something:</p>
<p>Most professors are not discouraging "less qualified" students from going straight to grad school. They're discouraging ALL students from going straight to grad school.</p>
<p>Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), the new guard believes strongly in having work experience before applying for grad school. Why? Well, first of all, someone with work experience brings a lot to the classroom that a wet-behind-the-ears recent undergrad just cannot fathom. Secondly, work experience tells you without a doubt what you want to do with your degree. The one admonition I heard more than anything (ad nauseum, really) was, "Don't go to grad school just to go to grad school." </p>
<p>So, to the OP, I can only say this: The professors had your son's best interests in mind, even if you don't imagine that they did. Although you may seem some conspiracy of statistical interest, remember Occam's Razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate (Plurality should not be posited without necessity).</p>
<p>Yes, UCLAri and Sac -- I do agree with both of you. This is the general information my S and the professors looked at: which schools (like Harvard, which is considered the best by S's professors) have the "professional programs" which require work experience, and which take new grads. They did agree that the programs that fit S best were the professional ones, which were not even going to look at him yet. The programs that he was eligible for (with no experience required), the professors didn't think he would get into. </p>
<p>What I meant to say, and forgive me if I said it poorly, was that it was discouraging for us at the time, because it was contrary to what we had expected. Certainly we were naive. We had no choice to "defy the experts" because we were dependent upon them for recommendations, and they weren't willing. And that some of the statistics of high grad school acceptance rates made more sense to us now that we understood how few actually were encouraged to apply (for whatever reason.) We don't view it as "a conspiracy;" just an explanation of how the statistics may not be telling the whole story.</p>
<p>S also learned that current grad students in economics at Penn are largely - or totally? - foreign. That is, they did not earn their undergraduate degrees in the US. Consistent with what you have observed, Sac.</p>
<p>Yes, his interest in policy was defining the programs he was interested in. He did not want a math-heavy program (hence the BA rather than BS), and was not looking at many straight-econ programs. He is good in math -- got a perfect score on that part of the GRE, but it isn't his favorite thing to do, and he didn't take much as an undergrad. His idea is that he may be able to take a couple math classes in the evenings now, while working, in order to increase his chances at various programs.</p>
<p>Think of it as sharing information, rather than a complaint. In his case, we believe that "all things have worked together for good...." and are happy with his experiences and results. As Audiophile posted earlier, he got what he came for.</p>
<p>Okay, good. Just as long as you aren't like my family, whose inability to understand the notion that there is merit to working before grad school is legendary.</p>
<p>"We had no choice to "defy the experts" because we were dependent upon them for recommendations, and they weren't willing. And that some of the statistics of high grad school acceptance rates made more sense to us now that we understood how few actually were encouraged to apply (for whatever reason.)"</p>
<p>Do you believe they would give him recommendations later, or were they just letting him down gently? (I know nothing about economics, but I do know that going to Ph.D. programs in the humanities following graduation is the norm, not the exception.)</p>
<p>Good question. I actually wondered myself. That's part of the reason I found it discouraging. Because these were his "best bets." The professors he felt knew him best. (He did have a TA offer to write him two! :) ) The good thing about the "apply later" scenario means employers and supervisors would be likely the ones writing recs.</p>
<p>I was worried we were going to be caught in a Catch-22 -- that the jobs were only going to be for those with advanced degrees, and the grad schools were only for those with work experience! Happily, I have been proven wrong.</p>
<p>I don't agree with you. If you simply look at the average finishing age of most PhD candidates and subtract the years in school, it seems that most are not going into humanities or social science right after graduation.</p>
<p>At UCLA, for example, the average age of first year grad students in the political science dept (a top 10) I think was around 25 or 26. That's a lot of time spent in the "real world."</p>
<p>Binx -- If your son doesn't like math, even though he's good at it,then grad school in econ might not be for him. My understanding is that the field at the PhD level has become pretty much all math. That's why I suggested he might find after working for a while that another area -- political science, public policy, even public administration or business school -- makes more sense.</p>
<p>UCLAri -- My daughter graduated from UCLA and has been working for several years, as have all of her friends. They just were not sure enough about what they wanted to do next. They are all now drifting back to grad school and it's very interesting to see that virtually none of them are going on in the fields in which they did their undergrad degrees.</p>
<p>Although many people seem to disagree with me almost dogmatically, I think it's fairly obvious that PhD students are getting older. And why not? People live longer, and that offers the opportunity to get out there and work for a while and see what there is out there that doesn't require more school.</p>
<p>Perhaps one day people will realize that you can still be a happy and successful human being without a master's degree. Then again, amongst this group of tense overachievers, I doubt it.</p>
<p>Many of us went to school in an era when men automatically went on to graduate school because they were avoiding the draft. But also, college and grad school didn't cost nearly as much, and grad school was considered something you could just "try" to see whether or not you liked it. On the other hand, these days, people are much more likely to change careers than stick to one for a lifetime. Therefore, some of the average age of grad students may reflect career changers coming back to school.</p>
<p>Yes, you can be a happy and successful human being without a master's degree. But, my daughter's discovered she's bored after two years of working and she's finally seeing the widom of my advice and planning to head back to school. :)</p>
<p>Congrats on you S.
I have a post somewhere on here asking for advice, as well.
I am 32 years old and I am going back to complete the last two years of my BA in Economics. I have been accepted to Penn, Georgetown, Hopkins, and Tulane.
My biggest question is... DOES IT matter where you go to school?
I understand that everyone will say, "It's not the school, it's the person, etc. etc." I realize that, but in deciding beween the mentioned schools, will it make any kind of difference weather I went to an IVY (Penn), or Georgetown or Tulane? My loan amounts will be night-and-day in comparison to the different types of schools. Aside from what I feel in my heart, I want to know, on a practical level, if going to an Ivy/Top school is worth the extra loans as opposed to going to a school like Tulane (which is still a great school)?
Any and all comments are welcome.</p>
<p>"Anthro is an interesting field in particular, where the average age is 39 for recent PhDs!</p>
<p>Everything I've ever been told and ever read suggests that the norm these days is actually interim experience."</p>
<p>Honestly, not something I have researched. I can tell you that had my dissertation advisor not died in the middle, the average length of time it took folks in my department (Committee on Social Thought, UChicago) to finish their Ph.Ds was 11 years. Almost all entered at between 21 and 23, which would have made them on average 32-34 when they finished.</p>
<p>My experience at my workplace (among social workers and epidemiologists and counseling professionals and health educators, almost all non-Ph.Ds) is that almost all of them went back to school for these degrees after a couple of years in the workplace, but virtually all the Ph.Ds went straight from college.</p>
<p>Interesting. I've never really seen conclusive figures one way or another. Unfortunately, these aren't figures that graduate departments seem to publish as readily as professional schools.</p>
<p>Sac -- Yes, his interest has always been public policy / political. Those are the programs he has been aiming for, but is still developing an understanding of how to get there. I am not knowledgeable at all about economics (it bores me to tears! He doesn't get his interest from me!) so I am learning as we go. He loves stuff like statistics and econometrics. (Means nothing to me.) </p>
<p>Thomas -- yes, I read your other post, but didn't answer because I just don't know enough about it. Perhaps you could check the percentage of students who were employed upon graduation this year or last year, ask how many on-campus recruiters there were in your field, what percentage of students do internships, etc, to get a better idea of what to do. We did do that to an extent when our S started at Penn. Our biggest concern was him having a job to pay off the loans, which he has accepted as his responsibility. Good luck with your decision!</p>
<p>Our S is very happy right now, and has asked for a working wardrobe as his graduation present!</p>
<p>Just read this in the acceptance thread and thought I'd bump up this very informative thread: binx's S1: Georgetown (grad school; public policy)</p>
<p>Congrats to Binxson1 & Binx! Great to hear that things worked out so well!!</p>