Some visit first to see if there is a social fit before evaluating the academic fit. Others wait until they are accepted and then compare the academic pros and cons of schools. Everyone has to start somewhere and some start with the visit while others start with online research. I wouldn’t hold it against someone who was in town and visited a school early in the process and hadn’t thoroughly researched their department or area of study before touring.
I think this is important.
Professors come and go and, as a result, courses offered will change.
“Professors come and go and, as a result, courses offered will change.”
That comment went to an entire overhaul in the academic department, in its pre-reqs and sequencing. My particular statement was made due to this information coming to me not through the university or its web pages but from a current student.The student was privy to some of the discussions and outcomes regarding policy changes which the university had undertaken just before the close of one academic year, but before the official implementation of those changes in the next academic year.
@ucbalumnus : On the link above from hmc, it is this type of information which my most…uh…focused child would have wanted to know beforehand. I can really appreciate that a university publishes this information. Great thread.
“C. Writing Requirement
So that students can build on the writing skills addressed in HSA 10, at least one HSA course taken in addition to HSA 10 must involve significant writing. Both departmental courses and HSA courses offered at the other Claremont Colleges (or outside of Claremont) can satisfy this requirement. The department’s website contains a list of the departmental courses with significant writing, as well as an approval form (PDF). Opens in new tab that can be used to satisfy the writing requirement with a non-departmental HSA course. In general, a course satisfies this requirement if it assigns at least 5,000 words of formal, graded writing, excluding exams, short response papers, email or online discussion contributions, and in-class writing.”
One faculty member’s arrival or departure could be more of an issue with small departments, or less common subareas.
However, course offerings and curricula can be changed for other reasons. Better run departments will provide smooth transitions for existing students (e.g. allowing students to graduate fulfilling the old requirements and/or providing appropriate transition courses), but worse run departments may fail at this, resulting in students involuntarily being unable to graduate on time (e.g. SDSU EE department: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/2074999-my-school-made-horrible-changes-p1.html ).
@Waiting2exhale in my personal experience, we thoroughly evaluated a program before committing. Over the past two years, the program expanded and changed course names and descriptions. Some of the upper division courses are no longer offered because a long term professor left. The university has brought in new professors with slightly different specialties and added new courses with different descriptions.
It is kind of like a football recruit attending a school because of a particular coach. Then the coach gets fired or offered a position at another school and the football player is on a team with a coach that he may or may not want to play for.
We did. DS19 initially indicated an interest in pursuing a degree in Physics. I set up a spreadsheet and mapped out all the requirements at the various schools he was considering as well as any extra opportunities each school offered (co-op, study abroad, minors etc.). It helped inform some of the questions we asked when we attended university fairs and campus tours and led to him narrowing his school choices to 4. After doing all the research and school tours he ended up adding 2 additional programs to his list which are pretty unique. Initially he was looking for a school that would be fairly flexible with regards to allowing electives as he has varied interests. That won’t be possible with these 2 programs in particular but he liked them so much that he was willing to make that sacrifice. They are both highly selective (though he will most likely get an offer to at least 1) so he did use the other criteria in determining his back up options.
We didn’t worry about any of that much. We took a different approach. We checked with folks doing the jobs my kids thought they wanted and asked for recommendations. When a school was mentioned more than once we looked at it for other fit reasons - things like finances, location, and vibe.
Oldest went to a school where the folks who wrote a book about his job were professors. He later changed his major to something he liked better and is now employed in a field he is really good at.
Middle wanted med school, so was just able to pick a major and school that he simply enjoyed. He looked deeper at the research being done and other aspects of fit. He’s in med school now, so no problem. He’d have been fine if he had needed a Plan B too.
Youngest wanted a major that can be difficult to find a job in, so getting advice of those literally there and doing it was crucial. He then changed his major… so much for the in depth investigation! He’s since graduated and doing fine too.
I still recommend our method of locating good schools to students, especially since most don’t really know how to understand specifics of courses, etc. It works well. If those doing the hiring or admitting like X school, it’s worth looking at for fit.
We did look at the academic details as major criteria in making a list of schools for application. In addition to the online information, our high school senior also got a lot of “insiders’ info” from siblings and their high school friends, which was very helpful. However, in January (after the application deadline) my child’s first-choice school redesigned its websites and we were kind of shocked to find that the CS department made unappealing policy changes by capping the courses a CS major can take and putting most courses on lottery. We also learned that the changes started in fall 2018 but no info could be found about them on the school websites at that time. The policy changes seemed to be decided during summer but outsiders had no idea. We suspect that the capping and lottery of CS courses may reduce the yield of potential CS majors at the school.
I suspect that the level that these are looked at depends a lot on if the child has chosen a major, how competitive that major is, how common or niche the field of study is, how firm he/she feels about that major, if he/she knows the job desired post-grad. I have read that 30% of first time college students change their major within three years.
As is probably evident, I have a son who falls toward the undecided side of the spectrum…he’s chosen an area he thinks he likes as a major and has explored some possible broad job options, but I’m fully counting on him to explore and find his passion as he goes. So for us, it’s less about program academics.
Seems like one possible way to handle an increase in demand for CS. Other options that colleges have when faced with increasing student demand for a major that exceeds departmental capacity:
Restrict entry to the major, by making it competitive admission (beyond admission to the school), or effectively by bottlenecking enrollment in the entry-level courses.
Increase class sizes. May not be desired at a LAC.
Increase department size. Often a relatively slow process, and requires a multi-decade commitment to the increased size if done with tenured faculty (versus adjuncts), and not as easy to do in a subject like CS where the college has to compete with non-academic employers for those with PhDs.
Of course, none (other than increasing department size) are all that desirable to the student.
For an undecided student, it may be a more difficult problem, in that checking if every possible major is of good quality at the school, and not excessively competitive to get into at the school, may be desirable. There have been postings by students who want to transfer because they decided that they want to major in something that their current school is weak in (e.g. a Sarah Lawrence College student who decided that s/he wanted to major in computer science), or it is too competitive to get into (undeclared students at many schools who want to study computer science may have to transfer to other schools because the computer science major at their current school is too competitive to get into).
I didn’t because mine is very independent and he didn’t like the idea of parents, tutors, SAT prep centers or college consultants driving his journey. In his opinion, if a student can’t manage things by himself, he should take a gap year as he isn’t ready for college.
I did recommend schools with comprehensive programs, plenty of course offerings and ease for changing majors or doubling them. I’m not a controlling OCD and avoid butting in much as he is mature enough to make decent choices and learn/grow from his mistakes. Education is a discovery and doesn’t need to be an exact science.
As a parent, I did none of them. My D’s looked at schools that had their major and made sure that they would have their teaching certification when they finished.
We didn’t look at college curricula in such a granular way (in term of credit hours, courses, and subspecialties). For my older one, who attended UChicago, we were focused on whether there was a “common core” to the undergraduate curriculum, intellectual experiences that all students would share. All colleges have major fields, and most major fields have prereqs, so this wasn’t a decisive issue in choosing among colleges. But as a Reedie I really liked the idea of a “general education” core, even a few classes that all students must take – whether they end up majoring in literature, chemistry, political science, economics, mathematics, music, or whatever. That helps to generate a sense of common fate, a common language of discourse, and an intellectual community among students who may end up in very different majors.
For my daughter, who attended art school, there was definite a set of foundation courses that all students take, along with electives; after the foundation year, a focus on major fields, yet also a variety of courses and requirements in non-art disciplines. While she was attending RISD it was exposure to elective courses at Brown that gave my daughter a perspective on ecological design that shaped her choice of majors at RISD as well as her career.
In sum, we weren’t focused primarily on the details of the curriculum for majors and minors. We were focused on foundational curricula and on the sense of intellectual community that students with very different academic interests might share.
For a kid like @TS0104 's, (because mine was in a similar camp), schools with distribution requirements were a plus as were ones that didn’t require a major choice until spring sophomore year. They clearly supported the “dabbling” approach to exploring academic interests. And in my mind, DS would be able to explore things he hadn’t been exposed to in high school before picking a path. While an open curriculum could have served that purpose, I liked the intentional approach. But that was up to him in the end.
My high school offers some summer math courses for Seniors. Each course is 6, three hour sessions. One is an Intro to Statistics, the other is Intro to Calc. The courses are free, and have no tests, quizzes,homework or grades. The idea is simply to expose them to some of the material before they take the actual course in college.
So after I introduced the courses to my Seniors, we went online to the sites of the colleges they’re pretty sure they’ll be attending, and looked up the course requirements for the majors they’ll be choosing to decide which seminar would be more appropriate for each individual.
Most of the kids had no idea that they could do that, or just how easy it was to find on most of the school websites.