<p>Hey I have a couple of questions about GT. I've wanted to go for a long time but now I'm a little unsure.
1. I'm not a "party animal" but I'm a very social person and I was wondering if it is really like some people say (HATERS) or is it humanly impossible to find friends and have fun?
2. I want to major in Biomedical or Chemical Engineering and I was wondering if the work load is as truly as hard as they say? Will I be constantly studying in my room for the next 4 yrs just to get an C or with a few hours a day can I be alright?
3. I'm in the marching band at my high school and wonder how the marching band is at GT? Is it fun? And can I recieve any scholarships or anything like that?
4. I'm already really excited about going to GT and looked at the dorms online. Do you think it is impossible for a Freshman to get a shared dorm with private bathrooms in Woodruff North, and is that a good place to stay. I don't mind walking to get to classes, but food and stuff like that?</p>
<p>An answer to any of my questions would be much appreciated. Thank you and GO YELLOW JACKETS!!!!</p>
<p>I live around GT so I can answer some of your questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>I have a bunch of friends at GT and have gone to some parties over there, and it is a very fun school! The workload is obviously hard, but there are definitely people who like to party!</li>
<li>While the school is notoriously known for grade deflation and heavy workloads, people I know still manage to do well and have time for other activities.</li>
</ol>
<p>Are you referring to the guy-girl ratio? I’m not sure, but I have seen Georgia Tech offer admission to some less competitive women this year and host some women in engineering programs.</p>
<p>In the last two years or so, I’ve noticed that the female percentage has climbed from around 27% to about 30%. The marching band looks and sounds good. I don’t think it’s out to win national awards as much as to have fun, but they represent the university well. I know a local student who is a serious band geek - performs in the summer with Drum Corps International groups - who left the Tech band after his freshman year because they didn’t demand the level of rigor that he was seeking. Then I went to a Tech home game last year and decided that he may have been more band-snobby than was warranted.</p>
<p>Awesome I see myself in band to have fun rather than win awards, and I was worried whether or not I could still do DCI (Corp Vets!) and still have good grades.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take much effort to find friends and have fun. If there’s something you’re interested in, chances are that you can find a lot of people who share your interest, whether it’s frisbee, political activism, video games, &c.</p>
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<p>As I understand, one of the main things in those majors is their length (132 credit hours) and the amount of time you have to spend in labs. As for grades and time spent studying, you have to ask yourself a question, “How much uncertainty am I willing to live with?” If you hate leaving a final exam not knowing what grade you might get, then you’re probably going to have to study quite a bit, though not “constantly.” If, however, you don’t care whether you get a C, B, or A, then you really don’t have to study that much at all. I adopted the former strategy, and I graduated with a 4.0. Several of my friends chose the latter, and they have Cs, Bs, and As on their transcripts, which doesn’t bother them in the slightest. To each his own.</p>
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<p>I would avoid Woodruff like the plague. I lived there my second year, and it really does combine the worst aspects of freshman dorms and apartments: you have to clean your own bathroom, but you don’t get your own private room. Moreover, Woodruff suffers from severe power stability issues. I lived in 8th St last year, and the power never went out, not even during the breaks. By contrast, it wasn’t abnormal for the power to go out multiple times in ONE NIGHT at Woodruff. You could hear the agony of people playing Halo 3 below you as their TV went off.</p>
<p>If you’re a first-year, live in a freshman experience dorm. It’s so easy to meet people that way; it’s almost impossible NOT to know who you’re living with.</p>
<p>“If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us,” said Katie Deray, a senior at the University of Georgia, who said that it is common to see six provocatively clad women hovering around one or two guys at a party or a bar.</p>
<p>Just replace the genders with the opposite ones, and that pretty much sums up Tech for you. In Fall 2009, I had back-to-back classes in the College of Management, so I took a bathroom break in between. On my way to the bathroom, I saw two guys try to pickup a good looking girl whom I had unsuccessfully tried to get a lunch date with the week before. About sixty seconds later, I came out and two guys turned into five guys. That’s pretty normal at our school, but I add that if you avoid stupid stuff like crowding around a girl when there’s four other guys alongside you, your chances are better. I suggested lunch to her on the bus when we were the only two on the bus, and while I didn’t get the date, maybe you could’ve in a similar situation.</p>
<p>As long as you grow thicker skin and are willing to hear a ton of “no” variations, keep trying and you’ll find that the Ratio isn’t that bad. Nevertheless, if you are serious about dating, I recommend buying a car and getting to know Georgia State and Emory’s campuses. I still think there’s a valid reason why most of my friends who have girlfriends found them elsewhere.</p>
<p>Yeah, but that program is still focused upon technological applications. So it wouldn’t stack up to what most people consider “liberal artsy”. Don’t majors in those fields have to take a hard science course or 2?</p>
<p>And again, 314159, despite the beliefs there is no grade deflation at Tech. There is simply less/low inflation, and the workload is difficult. There is a difference between the two.</p>
<p>I hear that one a lot from students too, even though I bet there are many on this forum that know many profs. that don’t contribute to this reputation. It may still have some truth in it. A graduate in another thread described a situation involving this issue. One of my friends cross-registered at Tech to take Met-Lab (is that right or is it Mat-lab, I don’t know anything about programming/CS, sorry, not trying to come off as dumb here though), and she did not like it for this very reason. She said that the class was really large and the prof. was inaccessible and indifferent, unlike professors here. However, our classes are small compared to Tech classes. Plus teaching styles/approaches are just different here. You need to see if you can get a full opinion from a poster here or maybe some transfer from a similar sized institution.</p>
<p>all engineering majors have to take matlab. So the lectures are obviously going to be large. once you get to high level classes, the size of lectures are gonna decrease.</p>
<p>um…prof. are inaccessible? definitely not from my personal experience. all of my prof. so far have set about 15-30min after class where they are available for questions. If you don’t get the opportunity to talk to them there, just go to office hours. I think that many people think that prof. neglect students just cause the class is really hard and assumes that the teacher must be very mean and unapproachable. I’m guessing that most people who say that haven’t actually tried talking to a prof.</p>
<p>ultimately, it depends on the prof. but the idea that all or most profs. at gt are inaccessible is untrue. </p>
<p>btw, most intro classes have recitations or labs led by a grad student. these classes have about 20-30 students in them.</p>
<p>It is a large research university, but that doesn’t mean that professors are not willing to help. Know that you have to ask them for help; they will not come to you.</p>