<p>Discussion of colleges today is too saturated with status considerations. This is particularly true in Massachusetts, an old state with some very high status institutions (Harvard, etc.). </p>
<p>You don't come to UMass Amherst for the status thrill. You come for the education and opportunities. Hence, it's about what you can do with the vast resources offered at this large university. It's an excellent place if you want space to breathe in and to define yourself free of heavy traditions.</p>
<p>I think this is why we have some unhappy students: They are not making the most of it and can't count on the institution's name to make up for the time they have wasted. But most of the students I interact with are highly self-motivated and energized by their studies here.</p>
<p>My son is going to be visiting UMass next month. The only reason we are even looking into it is the possibility that it gives merit aid and has the Honors College.</p>
<p>I would welcome any other information anyone has here since I have heard so many things about UMass that concern me-but we are going to check it out ourselves anyway.</p>
<p>Why does it have such a shaky reputation if it doesn’t deserve it?</p>
<p>My S is a freshman and is having a very positive experience. He’s in a housing program (RAP) with other engineering students. He is enjoying his classes and labs and has made many new friends.</p>
<p>My take is that at UMASS, you get the experience you want out of it. There is a contingent that is going for parties, and that was probably a larger part of the scene in years past.</p>
<p>The more selective admissions criteria is making it more difficult to get in; I can see that leading to a better atmosphere. Reputations that have developed over the years take time to change.</p>
<p>That said, my S, who is smart and had high SAT scores, did not have the GPA to get merit at the more selective private schools. Since we would be a nearly full pay family at a selective private, this was really the only option for S to get into a decent program that we could afford.</p>
<p>And the school met his criteria anyway, he was looking for a large diverse school. He also wanted urban, but the place is so large it has a city like atmosphere.</p>
<p>That’s the kind of information we are looking for.</p>
<p>My son wants to be challenged and be with kids like him.</p>
<p>He is a social kid as well but has no use for the partying scene that is so strongly associated with URI-our home state school. UMass sadly suffers the same type of reputation.</p>
<p>We will be visiting in a few weeks to find out more. He does have the stats to get merit aid at a lot of schools but UMass does seem to have a lot of strong points.</p>
<em>Every school</em>, large or small, public or private, has a large and vibrant party scene. Why some schools get a party reputation and some don’t, who knows.</p>
<p>And at every school, your kid can make a choice whether to participate or not, and there will be plenty of kids who don’t.</p>
<p>My S chose UMass over a bunch of other high end engineering schools for a variety of reasons having to do with fit and cost. He does not drink or get high, and had no trouble getting a group of friends that are of like mind. He is having a great time there.</p>
<p>As for reputation, it suffers in MA because it is the poor step-child to all the high-end privates that are in this state - Harvard, BC, MIT, Tufts, Amherst, Williams, Wellesley, etc etc etc. The people that write hack jobs like what was in the Globe a few weeks ago, and the politicians who fund the school, look down on UMass because it is a public school. I’ve been told more than once that UMass’s rep outside the state is for higher than within, and there are rankings to support this - for example, this study ([Top</a> Universities in North America 2010-2011](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/north-america.html]Top”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/north-america.html)) ranks UMass as 4th in the state behind only Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, and has UMass as 14th or so in the nation among public schools.</p>
<p>One word of advice for when you visit - try to look beyond the regular tour. IMO UMass does a pretty bad job promoting the school on the tour (at least the tour we took). Way too many kids, saw way too little of the campus. It wasn’t until we went for Accepted Student Day that my S really felt UMass was the place for him, they did a much better job.</p>
<p>I wonder if we should take the regular tour-he may get turned off by it. He has already toured several schools who did a very nice job with their tours.</p>
<p>We’ll see-we have booked a tour for 11/2- a Tuesday-which is election day here in RI with no school-hope Massachusetts isn’t out that day too or it could be a mob scene.</p>
<p>I took S & a friend out of school one day to take the tour on a weekday last fall. It wasn’t crowded and we had a decent tour.</p>
<p>By the time Accepted Students Day rolled around we were kind of toured out - we strayed off the programmed course and poked around the campus on our own.</p>
UMass doesn’t have off that day, but plenty of high school students in various states have off that day, so be aware that you might have a larger than normal tour group.</p>
<p>^^^ High schools in MA do not have that day off (at least my kids’ school doesn’t), so I don’t think too many in-state kids will be there that day.</p>
<p>some people were talking about the honors college there. is it available for any major and if so do you have to apply separately to there or are you automatically considered?</p>
<p>The honors college serves students of all majors, including the business and other professional majors (nursing, engineering, etc.).</p>
<p>Students are invited in based on their high school grades and SAT scores. You don’t apply to the honors college as a high school student–the admissions office at UMass simply selects from the applicant pool to UMass. However, some high school students are applying to UMass because the honors college is there and they hope/expect to be admitted.</p>
<p>Students who are not invited in still have an opportunity to join, if they perform well as UMass students. The procedures for this are now changing so I will not try to summarize here. But the good news is that the new system will be even more flexible and receptive to the students we call “the late bloomers” (students who were not stars in high school but do very well in college) than in the past.</p>
<p>I am now teaching an honors class. The quality of students and tone of class discussion is first rate, much better than at the Ivy League university (Columbia) I attended myself in the early 1980s. </p>
<p>The class is called Ideas that Changed the World and is a freshman seminar on major texts that have changed how people think or how things are done. Rachel Carson, Gandhi, etc.</p>
<p>That is one of my biggest issues as a parent guiding my S through this process. Helping to find a place for him where he will be challenged and be with kids-as he says-“Like him”. One of the things he is so excited about looking at colleges is the chance to finally be stretched to his limits-whatever they may be. He is very much the big fish in the little pond in our school-and he may well discover he can also be a big fish in a big pond-but unless we help him find the place where he can do that it may never happen for him-at least not academically.</p>
<p>Trying to find that at a school that we can also afford is a real challenge for us-as I am sure it is for many parents in our particular situation.</p>
<p>The real challenge for schools that are trying to improve either their reputation is how to get the students they want to attend their school-because a lot of what makes colleges great isn’t in the buildings or even the faculty-although those are very important. What makes a college great is also the students. </p>
<p>The challenge I think for schools like UMass is how do you attract the kids of students that can take you to the next level?</p>
<p>I like the previous post. The UMass honors college has 3500 students.
Average SATs for the incoming students are about 1340 (math plus verbal).
Average high school GPA is 4.0, or 4.2 when weighted for AP classes and other factors.</p>
<p>The attraction is the small classes plus all the resources of a large research university that a liberal arts college can’t always offer–a faculty on the cutting edge of research in 5 disciplnes.</p>
<p>Also special programs like community service learning and design your own major designmymajor.com attract highly self-motivated students.</p>
<p>Applications to UMass are soaring but apart from the honors college and nursing (an extremely competitive program), it is still a realistic opportunity for many applicants who are not as gifted as the student described in the previous post but wish to attend a fine university.</p>
The recession, and colleges’ complete inability to get their costs under control, will do it for them.</p>
<p>Even as little as 5 or 6 years ago, we could have afforded to send my S to any of the top-end privates he got in to. It would have been tight - some (manageable) amount of loans would have been necessary, some belt-tightening on our part - but it could have happened. But an extra 5 or 6 years of 5% per year increases pushed all of those schools from around $40K into the low- or mid-$50’s, and we would have had to borrow most of the increase. It became more debt than I wanted to take on at this stage of my life, and I didn’t want my kid to start off the close to 6 figures in loans.</p>
<p>The recession, and the relentless cost increases, has made many of those people who can afford $50K+ start examining the value proposition. And a quality in-state public at 1/3 the price of a private starts looking very attractive.</p>
<p>In another 5 years, 10 at most, unless something changes, the only people at most privates outside of Harvard and a few others will be the truly wealthy and the poor. Most privates don’t have the endowment to enable vast portions of the middle and middle-upper class to attend.</p>
<p>This will push more and more kids (and more and more smarter kids) to start seriously looking at UMass Amherst. Already in the last five years the GPA and SAT numbers have increased to the point where (IMO) UMass Amherst is no longer a safety school once you get outside the top 10% or so of a high school class (maybe 20% at the towns at the top of the high school pile).</p>
<p>Will UMass ever start stealing engineering kids from MIT? Probably doesn’t happen too often today, but in 5 years when MIT is $70K/year, things may change.</p>
<p>Went to the UMass Amherst Open House yesterday with my son and was very impressed, both by the numbers of people who were in attendence and the quality of the presentation. The information booths around the perimeter of the Mullins Center were mobbed, but one could still get the information desired with a bit of a wait. The welcoming ceremony with speeches by the admissions director, Chancellor and a student was very informative in a general way. Of course they all talked about how great UMass is but they made many valid points. We all then went to the various colleges (my S is interested in engineering) for a tour of the facilities for that college and a presentation by the faculty and administration for particular departments (we went to the mechanical and industrial engineering presentation). The tours were conducted by students and there were three students in the department presentation. Common themes among the students were along the lines of “I never thought of applying to UMass until my guidance counselor recommended it, but I’m so glad I did”, “I applied to UMass as my safety and originally didn’t want to go here, but now I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else”, or “I originally wanted to get out of state, went somewhere else for two years, didn’t like it and transferred back to UMass, and it’s the best decision I ever made”. Granted, I’m sure these students were hand-picked, but everyone was enthusiastic and had good things to say about UMass. My S is seriously thinking about making it his first choice. His grades and scores are not Ivy material but he could certainly get into schools like BU and Syracuse. UMass seems comparable to schools like those and provides an undeniable value.</p>
FWIW, every person I’ve met that went to UMass (and this is certainly in the dozens by now, since I live in MA), pretty much universally the first thing they say is “I loved it there.”</p>