<p>Hi, anybody know something about The College of New Jersey? It is said to be a budget near-ivy! If I am just a bare above-average student and am lucky enough to get admission, will it be too hard to stay in there until graduation for its chemistry major?</p>
<p>Let me put it my two cents worth by sharing personal some anecdotes with you.</p>
<p>My kid will be going to Grove City College and she has had several friends who went there ahead of her.</p>
<p>From all sources I heard, if you want to get a good grade you better darn make sure you work your butt off because there ain't no grade inflation.</p>
<p>Several anecdotes :</p>
<p>1) I spoke to a Chinese restaurant owner near that school and he told me that his son wanted to study medicine and enrolled pre-med at Grove City (100% of their graduates go on to medical school). It was so difficult to get a good grade ( and your chances of going to med school diminishes if your grades are not good) that he transfered to the University of Pittsburgh in his second year and is now getting B+ and A's.</p>
<p>2) I spoke to an International Business graduate at Grove City 3 years ago who enrolled at NYU's Stern School for her MBA (company paid for the tuition). She tells me that a lot of the MBA courses were a breeze because they already covered the material in undergrad.</p>
<p>3) One friend's kid (who wanted to major in Electrical Engineering) got so frustrated after his second year because his GPA was B that he transfered to Stony Brook after that. Needless to say, his GPA is now much higher than before ( this is his senior year ).</p>
<p>ckfvera.. i wouldnt call TCNJ a near-ivy but it is a wonderful school that doesnt get alot of credit. my brother graduated there, cousin goes there and so does my best friend so yeah i can help you out iwth some info.</p>
<p>my brother was a bio major/chem minor and is now in med school. he said orgo was the HARDEST class hes ever taken in his life. TCNJ is known for being quite rigorous in the sciences so youll definetly have your work cut out for you. if youve only taken basic HS chemistry youre in for a big shock. IMO, my brothers really intelligent and never applied himself before college but he studied 10+ hours for his classes as an upperclassmen. he said some his classmates in the bio department (pretty small department so he knew most of them after 4 years) turned down ivies and equal schools to come ot TCNJ cause of the cost and such.</p>
<p>any other questions feel free to PM me</p>
<p>DSC wrote: "I would guess Army and Navy would be pretty tough."</p>
<p>Amen to that. It seems like someone always has the correct answer to a question, in this instance the service academies Army and Navy and everyone else just skips over the comment like it has no merit. These two schools are the 2 hardest public schools to get into in the nation (12% admission rate, tough SAT, medical and physical standards), and they are no means easy to stay in. A lot of people choose to leave, but the academic board kicks a lot of people out... Army's graduation rate is about 82%, Navy's is 85%. But yes, the service academies are the correct answer to a lot of these questions... and everyone just ignores the comments others say about them. Do some research on them... they make a lot of other schools mentioned on here seem like junior varsity.</p>
<p>Thank you DSC.</p>
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These two schools are the 2 hardest public schools to get into in the nation
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<p>Isn't that more because you need to get a recommendation from a Congressman?</p>
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and everyone just ignores the comments others say about them.
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<p>I think it's because the overwhelming majority of students on CC don't want to go to a service academy, so bringing them into a discussion adds little to what students are looking for. It's like bringing Deep Springs into threads.</p>
<p>Of course, that's just my observation.</p>
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Isn't that more because you need to get a recommendation from a Congressman?
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<p>I think it's more of the physical and medical standards, in addition to the academic standards that make it tough. Yes, the admission process is much more rigorous for these schools, but it's there for a purpose. You have to be extremely well rounded and mature, physically, mentally, and emotionally, to make it. </p>
<p>I have great respect for these institutions and the cadets that go there.</p>
<p>A college with a lower graduation rate than another might have </p>
<p>a) harder courses, which is surely true of Caltech and is being assumed about several other colleges mentioned in this thread, </p>
<p>or </p>
<p>b) similarly hard or even easier courses, but less capable students. </p>
<p>It's important to figure out why one college or another has students who don't complete their degrees before assuming that every college with a low graduation rate is harder for YOU than some college with a higher graduation rate. A high graduation rate is possible at a college with super-capable students, even with super-challenging courses, if the overall atmosphere there supports students and keeps them energized as they take on the challenges at that college.</p>
<p>Hi, Beanieboo,</p>
<p>Thanks for yr info.</p>
<p>I am a Chinese student from Hong Kong, currently studying with the IB Diploma (year 13). I am not a very bright student, I got only 460 in SAT CR but 750 in Maths (may be typical for Asian students), 98 in TOEFL ibt (equal to 550 for computer-based). I am interested in Chemistry. </p>
<p>My SAT scores are certainly below TCNJ's mid-range, but will there be any concession for international students? Do you think I can survive in TCNJ (if just so luckily acceptaed)? Are most students in TCNJ near-Ivy eligible and are very smart from most aspects? Do you think international students will be happy in TCNJ as TCNJ is not internationalized? Where do most international students come from? Any from China or Hong Kong?</p>
<p>please kindly give me some more advice.</p>
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I got only 460 in SAT CR but 750 in Maths (may be typical for Asian students)
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<p>Asian students generally score high for Maths, yes, but their Critical Reading definitely isn't typically that low... look at the Asian chance threads! 800s, 790s, 780s galore.</p>
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Are most students in TCNJ near-Ivy eligible and are very smart from most aspects?
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<p>Just realistically speaking... if you're hoping you have a chance at an Ivy with 460... you don't. You're going to have to raise it. A lot. Since you are international they may look leniently on a 600 or so, but your competition is 700+ers.</p>
<p>People usually can stay. They choose to leave. Usually a combination of costs, unhappiness about grades, disillusion with the academics, and disillusion with the social life causes people to withdraw from a school. They do a cost/benefit analysis and the school does not pass.</p>
<p>I second Reed.</p>
<p>6 Year Graduation Rate: 70%</p>
<p>Reed</a> College 2007-08 Common Data Set SecB says:</p>
<p>Six-year graduation rate for 2001 cohort (question B10 divided by question B6): 75%</p>
<p>you get a wide range of students at TCNJ because it is a state school. some kids were let in on special programs and come from not so great areas of NJ.. one of my brothers friends took 6 years to graduate becasue he had to take stats and calc 2/3 times each.</p>
<p>id say maybe 30% of the kids there couldve been competitive for an ivy. my brother did get waitlisted to penn and my best friend always had perfect grades in hs. my brother always says kids at TCNJ are too much of losers for him (he pledged a frat, saying he loves to party is an extreme understatement). but then my best freind says it seems like shes the hardest working one in her dorm and everyone jsut loves to be ridiculous all the time. but i think thats just cause shes a freshman and people havnt had to buckle down yet.</p>
<p>i think if youre admitted at TCNJ, you will be able to survive. my best friend is a math major so she only has to take 2 english calsses (i figure thats your weak point). im not sure about the international scene there, but there is an asian clique and alot of asians, if thats the kind of thing you were looking for.</p>
<p>i would suggest taking the SATs again to try to get your CR score up. if you got it up 100 points i think you would be in much better shape. if you tell me more about what kind of person you are i ccan try to tell you if you would "fit" with TCNJ. its definetly not a party school though if thats waht youre looking for. i think that anyone whos a moderate partier or below would be very happy there for their 4 years.</p>
<p>Are there still colleges that deliberately "weed out" students who can't cut it? That used to be the story (true of false, I don't know) at places like Virginia Tech--almost anybody could get in, but a lot of people supposedly washed out. ("Look to your left and to your right--in a year, only one of you will be here.")
There's a big difference, in my mind, between how many people choose to leave by transferring, etc., and how many who have to leave because of academic problems.</p>
<p>On Reed, a fine school, one needs to factor in the typology of those who matriculate. Not your traditional 4 and gone. </p>
<p>Answering this calls for definition.</p>
<p>To be honest, no college is really hard to stay in. Most people who choose to leave a school or take time off or not complete their degree do at least in part for non-academic reasons. </p>
<p>Think about it this way. Suppose you're choosing between Ivy U and State U. Ivy U has a 99% graduation rate but State only has a 50% rate (this isn't far from typical). Are you really gonna say that your chances of graduating from State U are worse than from Ivy U or that you'll do worse at State U than Ivy U? 50% is the chance of graduation for a random matriculant at State U, but it is certainly not the chance of graduation for you, were you to in fact go to State U. In that regard, 6 year graduation rates are a terrible indicator for "difficulty of staying in."</p>
<p>I feel that this type of comparison is in general a bit irrelevant. In my experience, the people who fail classes either did not have a solid background for the particular class, were way outmatched intellectually, or just did not do the work. More often than not, it is that last one, just not doing the work, that causes people to fail. It's easy to say that certain colleges tend to fail people - but it's just as valid to say that people at certain colleges fail themselves. </p>
<p>Engineering schools may tend to restrict the number of high grades given out, but in general I don't think that most schools mandate that a certain percentage of the class fails (since it's just utterly stupid for any institution to do such a thing, merely from a business perspective). So you can't really argue that it's difficult to stay in at even places like Cornell and MIT. Everyone there is capable of staying in the college and graduating (otherwise they would not have accepted these students) but perhaps not in the most challenging field, like pure math. And if that's the case for a certain student, that student should switch to something that they are good at, and if it need be Sociology, so be it. They certainly have that option, so it isn't as if it is actually difficult for them to stay in college. If they choose to consistently fail in a major that they simply cannot handle (and to fail, you need to be really bad, even in something like physics or math, as profs are generally nice enough to give a student who tries a gentleman's C), then they cannot blame it on the college for making that bad decision for them. They only have themselves to blame. Of course, the college should try to keep this from happening, but it's failure to do so as well as another school does not mean that it's inherently difficult to "stay in."</p>
<p>And for anyone who thinks that a college like Harvard is easy because of grade inflation, you are terribly mistaken. Your average podunck U student would not stand a chance at getting decent grades there without an inordinate amount of work, if at all. It is, however, true that colleges like Harvard will pretty much always let you come back and finish your degree, so perhaps in that sense, they're a bit more flexible. But sorry guys, the hardest thing about Harvard isn't getting in.</p>
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But sorry guys, the hardest thing about Harvard isn't getting in.
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<p>The difficulty of admission to Harvard (about 1 in 12, probably gonna be 1 in 13 within the next few years) far outstrips its rigor, even if you consider Harvard "very rigorous."</p>
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But sorry guys, the hardest thing about Harvard isn't getting in.
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<p>Confirmed:</p>
<p>"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I didn't know his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.</p>
<p>--Harvard Professor Yoshi Tsurumi on George W. Bush</p>
<p>Yeah, but how many people have 'good friends' like Bush' father did? Maybe one, two?</p>
<p>Hopefully only one!</p>