<p>Good post, JHS.</p>
<p>The biggest complaint I hear about public universities is the size of freshman year classes in math/science. For example at UW, size of Intro Biology class is 523 and General Chem is 572!</p>
<p>We have many fantastic public universities in California so we don’t see much of the “anti-public school” mentality. Most kids turn their nose up at the local publics because they are eager to leave their hometown. The kids we’ve known were happy to apply to publics… well, accept the kids from one particular private high school that costs 50 grand a year to attend. Those kids tend to dismiss public universities as did their parents and counselors. They can also afford to dismiss the publics.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about those kids. They are focusing on the wrong things. Be happy that you won’t have to continue going to school with them lol.</p>
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<p>CS has been increasing in popularity lately. <a href=“https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/AUT2013/cse.html[/url]”>https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/AUT2013/cse.html</a> indicates lectures of 341 and 564 (total 905) in UW’s introductory CS course. UW is not the only school experiencing increased CS enrollment; Berkeley has over 1,000 and Stanford over 700 in their introductory CS courses.</p>
<p>Schools the size of WWU sound better & better!</p>
<p>If your search criteria include small class sizes, no D1 sports, no Greek system, no classes taught by grad students? You are SOL at just about every public university I can think of. In fact, I think St. Mary’s in MD is the only public small college that would qualify, and for OOS applicants, it doesn’t make any more financial sense to go there than it would to attend a private school. </p>
<p>Not everyone wants to be at a giant school or a noted engineering program.</p>
<p>Wwu doesn’t have frats, grad students teaching classes or football and does have lots of research & internship opportunities for undergrads and profs who are tops in their field , class sizes are also reasonable.
[Western’s</a> George “Pinky” Nelson Elected to Washington State Academy of Sciences](<a href=“http://news.wwu.edu/go/doc/1538/1508455/]Western’s”>http://news.wwu.edu/go/doc/1538/1508455/)</p>
<p>Plus it’s in one of the most beautiful parts of the country.</p>
<p>Humboldt State barely has Greek life (~1.5% of students join), DII sports, and no grads teaching classes. However it boasts an abysmal 14% 4 year grad rate, and most of the students it attracts aren’t particularly intelligent and/or motivated.</p>
<p>“But there’s something mysterious about the NE, where the concentration of good private schools seems to have warped people’s preferences.”</p>
<p>Um, no. I don’t think there’s anything warped about a talented kid from New Hampshire preferring Dartmouth or Williams or Amherst to U New Hampshire, and there’s nothing warped about a kid from Rhode Island preferring a whole host of privates which are within an easy drive (Rhode Island is a very small place) vs. URI.</p>
<p>It’s easy to claim that the Northeast is populated by a bunch of prestige-wh%^&'s but it’s too easy to forget that in general, the states are very small; if you are at the top of your HS in Cranston RI or Nashua NH the claim that you aren’t going to be with, interact with, dorm with, your less motivated HS classmates at the State U is just not true. And objectively speaking, it would be hard to claim that UNH is a more academically stringent environment than… well, I won’t go parroting the list of private U’s within a few hours drive since it will drive all of you guys batty.</p>
<p>Yes, you can cherry pick programs at the public U’s in the northeast that are highly competitive with private U’s in the region. Yes, a talented kid who cannot afford a private and can’t get enough aid to attend can carve out a perfectly fine academic program at a public. But it is really delusional to think that U Maine and U Michigan are “the same” just because they are both big public U’s which get cold in the winter and start with the letter M.</p>
<p>So you can cut back the Northeast bashing on this topic.</p>
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<p>I agree with this. What makes it stranger is state schools in the NE often dismissed such as UMass or UVM are similarly ranked as many of the state schools held in high regard in other regions of the country. Certainly not in the league of UVA, Berkeley, UNC, etc … but certainly in the hunt with tons of other state schools held in higher regards in their state.</p>
<p>But to give some perspective of one reason this happens. With about an hour of our house (basically on the Boston border) our kids can consider … Harvard, MIT, BC, BU, Tufts, Northeastern, Holy Cross, Brown, Providence College, Brandeis, Bentley, Olin, and Babson … and I haven’t even started the list of reasonable regional colleges. (The lion’s share of these schools are within 10 miles of our home).</p>
<p>As a Mass resident I would like UMass to improve and I think it will over time but I do think the situation will likely almost be more private school focused due to the options available.</p>
<p>^Thank you, blossom. I agree completely.</p>
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<p>In UMass’ case, it’s not only because it’s public, but also it’s prevalent reputation as a hard partying school during the parents’ day and many years afterwards. </p>
<p>While it had great academics in certain areas like engineering or US history, the hard partying and heavy drinking atmosphere was such many Massachusetts students who had other college options, especially elite ones often chose to exercise them partially to “avoid the Zoo”. </p>
<p>After all, UMass didn’t get the nickname “Zoo Mass” among Massachusetts residents and older alums for nothing.</p>
<p>To be fair, the Boston area private schools also have a number of colleges which had/still have similar reputations packaged in a fancier packaging such as BU and BC. This reputation was such that those private colleges were actually among many classmates’ parents’ “Do not apply list” back when I was in HS in NYC.</p>
<p>There are other instate issues for NE students. One is the insular nature of small states. Michigan is what … fifteen times larger than CT. Instate student are never very far from home … or the people they attended HS with. And a lot of students don’t care for the rural nature of UConn … though I see Storrs finally has a McDonalds. Sports are big, but the football stadium is 25 miles from campus. A student can get a very good academic education at UConn. But if that’s not the student’s sole criterion …</p>
<p>“Humboldt State barely has Greek life (~1.5% of students join), DII sports, and no grads teaching classes. However it boasts an abysmal 14% 4 year grad rate, and most of the students it attracts aren’t particularly intelligent and/or motivated.”
What a horrible, and baseless, thing to say! My neice, one of the sweetest and strongest women I know, is a graduate of Humboldt State. So is the creator of “SpongeBob Squarepants”, who could probably buy the whole university and give it a D1 surfing team if he wanted. And my colleague, an English professor and published author, and I could go on and on…</p>
<p>I would just like to note that you shouldn’t confuse a moron with an ignoramus.</p>
<p>I don’t think a kid who evaluates the academic offerings and environment of his or her own state U and decides that a private U MIGHT be closer to what he or she is looking for is an ignoramus or a moron.</p>
<p>I live in the Northeast. There are dozens of private U’s that I would not have paid for my own kids to attend, given that there are cheaper public options in the region with stronger academics and better reputations. </p>
<p>Why is it that the crowd here that just loves Colleges that Change Lives (because a special snowflake deserves the rarified environment of an LAC to meet his or her need for seminars, small class sizes, etc.) loves to bash the kid from New Hampshire who might not be gung-ho about UNH? What is it with folks and your “I’m only an elitist when it serves my own purposes”.</p>
<p>One other factor, well known to marketers, management consultants, and psychotherapists, deserves consideration: When a company charges less than others for its product, people assume that the product is lower quality, regardless of any actual quality data. So people look at their in-state public option, and it’s meaningfully cheaper than Harvard or Stanford, and they assume that means it’s second-rate.</p>
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I don’t either, but we’re talking about kids who sneered at U. Michigan because it’s a public university. It’s either stupid or ignorant, but since this was at a meeting of the NHS, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and go with ignorant.</p>
<p>I just got some devastating news. My kid only scored in the bottom half of the top 1%. There goes his shot at Dartmouth. It’s UNH for him.</p>
<p>We looked at my D’s in-state option (UCLA) which was meaningfully cheaper than her private option (USC, which offered her no scholarships) and not for one moment assumed UCLA was second-rate because it was cheaper. And contrary to popular belief on this site, upper-middle class kids with excellent stats and ECs (like my D) are not automatically given lovely scholarships to elite private schools. I drive a Prius, and not for one moment do I believe it is second-rate compared to my Chinese student’s Maserati (I am not kidding- one of my students drives a Maserati! I just had to throw that in). And trust me, he is going to crash that Maserati. </p>
<p>My D is now working at a major Silicon Valley tech firm along with graduates of BU, Cornell, and Harvard who are earning the same salary as her. At orientation, HR told them their top salesperson was a grad from Chico State (which probably hads no D1 sports or Greek life). Bottom line, what you do with your degree is more important than where you got it, with very few exceptions.</p>
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<p>Indeed. There are some private colleges in the NYC area I wouldn’t recommend parents pay for…especially full-pay considering the quality of cheaper & better quality state/local public options.</p>