It sounds like you want the type of learning one finds at a LAC.
Get all the pre reqs to a philosophy major done - although it sounds like you’re really interested in biopsych , Neuroscience, Medical ethics, Science and society, etc. If you can, take prereq classes in those subjects at the cc level. Get all A’s. Then, apply to Reed, Lewis and Clark, Pitzer, Occidental, etc as well as East Coast colleges and Jesuit universities. (check out the professors’area of research before you make your final list.)
Philosophy of science is an important field at the graduate level. Since graduate schools consider you’re better off doing grad school at a different school than undergraduate in order to get exposure to as many perspectives as possible, youbdont need to attend a large research university if you want to attend a PhD program, but you do need research experience so check out the professors’fields and email them during the semester preceding your application.)
If you are trying to get into grad school and you aren’t in the humanities honors program at UCI…I would have to agree that you are better off at a LAC.
I’ve been in the college of humanities for a year now entering my senior year and it’s just a bunch of classes unless you are in the Honor’s program. If your grades suffered while at UCI you wouldn’t qualify (I consider suffering less than a 3.0 overall GPA).
The universities aren’t known for their humanities…you are an anteater so you should know the quality of the science buildings versus the humanities department. Humanities has no money and they are just barely getting by and you think that this will make you happier…going for free sure who cares but paying for it sucks.
Being an independent student myself I just worry about the other costs of attendance outside for tuition and fees, but I know it’s hard to maintain a job (or sometimes two like I use too) AND go to school…that was my life when I was in school the first time around. With my skill sets from working before coming back, If I had to pay for what I was “learning” here now i’d be annoyed too
You know, this raises a good point. One of UCI’s biggest mistakes is assuming that only students in an honors program want to take their education seriously.
The difference between UCI and very successful private colleges, at least one key difference anyway, is that these private schools treat all of their students equally, with the assumption that they are all there because they chose to pursue a prestigious education, rather than an average one. UCI even mentions in their admissions stragtegic plan, as it wer, that the CHP is designed to attract competitive students from other instituions. But in actuality, I think it has the exact opposite effect.
UCI would be so much more successful if it ran the entire university like their honors programs. It’s important for students to feel proud and successful in college, it’s what builds school spirit and encourages ambition and risk taking. It’s one of the reasons Stanford churns out so many entrepreneurs – they promote a culture that teaches students that they can accomplish anything. They inspire their students.
This is probably the first thing that has to change at UCI for the university to begin to become a better, more desirable college, like Chancellor Gillman wants it to be with his Shine Brighter campaign. I think he knows this too because he brought up the issues of weeder courses and an inadequate level of commitment to teaching undergraduates in a recent recorded discussion with the Dean of Harvey Mudd College that was sent to the UCI community via mass email.
I get the feeling UCI might be on the brink of change, and this would be a very good thing. But it’s downright bizarre that it’s still an issue in 2016.
You’re missing the point: running the Honors program is expensive and targets specific students because there’s not enough money for all of them to get this level of attention; so, theoney has to be spent on those whom the University knows will appreciate it. Others get good lectures at lower cost compared to private.
(And if you think that two-tiered system is bad, check out ASU Barrett learning and living conditions vs. Regular ASU.)
If you want a private style education, you must attend a private institution.
You could also advocate for the state to go back to pre- 2008 per student funding.
UCI will never have the feel of a private as long as you have stadium styled 200+ people lectures. The humanities honors program is a small group of people and it’s additional classes ON TOP OF the ones that everyone else has to take. Hence why they get the extra notation, the stipend money, etc.
I could have done the honors program but I didn’t want to stay another year; plus I’m only here for formalities i have a career already, I didn’t need the degree I wanted it.
You struggled in the weeder courses do you not know how much work it takes to actually be successful? Like out in the world just you successful? That’s the biggest thing these colleges really lack, giving you younger students real world perspectives. Who cares if you did research or not when you don’t even have marketable skills to generate money to pay rent and bills?
Stability means showing people you can do the work and then once the work is done you say I want to do this too…you can’t half as* do the work they give, get bad grades (compared to the top) and then say it’s their fault and if they had of only…that’s a BS mentality to have and you need to get rid of it, or the real world is going to really suck for you.
Unless you are a trust fund baby whose parents don’t mind throwing away money until you find your “happiness” you are in for a rude awakening. You can put it on UCI, the chancellor, the other students, even Santa Claus but at the end of the day people want people that can produce quality results, if you can’t do that you are a liability not an asset.
I appreciate the life advice UCIfilm, but I fundamentally disagree with you. I do not find it necessary to have to go through life feeling like you must constantly thrash just to keep your head above water.
The purpose of education is to learn the material needed to do a job, or work as an academic, efficiently and successfully. Maybe your worldview is jaded being an older student, and presumably someone who has had a rough time entering the workforce.
Furthermore, I’ve worked menial jobs since age 16, and found that without necessary education I wasn’t able to do important things because I simply didn’t know how to do them, because I didn’t know, for example, linear algebra, and so I couldn’t write important gui’s for software that might go on to make life more convenient.
I didn’t know analysis of real variables, so I didn’t know how classical mechanics worked, or how electricity and magnetism function, so I couldn’t help design electric vehicles, and more importantly, electric planes, that the planet desperately needs to reverse climate change.
I don’t know organic chemistry, so I can’t help carbon based solar panels progress, which are more efficient than silicon, and have a smaller footprint.
I don’t know number theory, so I can’t help improve the data encryption and cyber security of my personal files.
ETC. Nearly every subject is important. Philosophy teaches clear logical reasoning and rational thought, as well as curiosity about the world, and how to question what others take for granted or ignore altogether; and a solid introduction to ethics and law. English teaches self expression; the ability to communicate and to not fear pushback for expressing ones opinions, and most importantly of all, how to give reasons to support such opinions.
Foreign language changes vantage points, and the way we see the world.
Now tell me, if the college I attend doesn’t help me learn these things – which, the last time I checked is the purpose of education – how is anything meaningful going to get done in the world? If I just had to bs my way through classes by memorizing factoids without understanding, how would this help me contribute to society? Are you OK with an education like that?
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It’s a waste of time to take a purposeless, or worse, harmful, job just to pay a bill – I done that for the last five years! It’s a complete waste of time! (But of course, everyone needs to eat, so everyone does what they have too. But college is not a place that should in any way resemble this situation; in my words, at least). Challenging courses are excellent, especially when there is an appropriate support system in place for students, but courses that are not complicated, but become trivially difficult because of a lack of resources and compromises in education are not.
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I guess this is a good time to interject that I do plan on learning as much of what I feel is important as possible, and I will deliberately choose smaller classes in the future, and I will try to get into honors classes, if by no other way than an add code from an instructor (most likely upper division math classes, and hopefully a good chunk of graduate classes). And the fact that during my year off I won’t idly sit around, I’m taking linear algebra and real analysis online through the Harvard Extension school, and will likely take complex analysis and abstract algebra through the Berkeley Summer Session next summer, along with the only two remaining lower-div philosophy requirements at a CC.
And you know what, I’m getting much more personal support through Harvard Extension than I ever got at UCI! Our professor reaches out to students to ask them for their input on class design, grading, assignments and sets up two discussion sections per week, along with extra lecture “preview” videos, and helpful “section notes” set up by TA’s, along scanned annotated professor lecture notes each week! And the real kicker, the professor intentionally avoids power points to ensure that the class is interactive and engaging! That’s how education is done properly.
You are partially right…what you aren’t is lucky.
If you were lucky you wouldn’t have chosen the wrong paths to lead you into this chatroom today because you would be doing something more meaningful than complaining about the state of education.
What I am is an artist…a successful one actually. I have a child who is 10 years away from being in college and I wanted to set a clear example of expectations but I can’t do that without doing it first.
What you don’t realize is college is not a place to sit around and spend your entire life. If you were the one meant to be learning all of that, that’s what you would be doing right now. Everyone is not meant to lead unfortunately.
Nobody can effect quality change alone, and you have said I and talked about yourself so much that I’m surprised you care about community. Why didn’t you form groups with others as passionate as you are. Maybe you might be more meant to be a manager of a group of people that want to do what you ranted about in the above section.
I hate to break it to you but there are people in this world better than you and people in this world worse than you. You aren’t going to be able to learn all of the things you are talking about competently enough to get paid by anyone to do it because there will be people that specialize in each area only and they will blow your credentials out of the water.
Focus on what you can change…like your attitude. College sucks financially, but I’m glad I came back because when I send my son off in about a decade I won’t be like some other parents that think he should be able to do it on his own, but that’s not the subject of this thread.
UCI is a great school, it just probably wasn’t for you. I know great people that have come from the UCs, and my name is about to be added to that list because I stopped what I was going to come back to school, i didn’t come back to school to get a start.
Also it’s good that you are taking Harvard extension classes. Even at graduation the chancellor said this year that you never stop learning. You will learn beyond receiving that little piece of paper you hang on your wall. A degree isn’t necessary to be successful.
When you take online classes you have to do discussion boards because they are mandated to show some type of proof of attendance for accreditation. So what you are seeing as a lively discussion with interaction is no different than if you formed a study group on campus with people as passionate as you and after class grabbing a Starbucks at one of the many on campus and talking about the very ideas that you have.
The sciences need universities because they need the equipment and the funding and the guidance and the graduate schools to get to where they need to go.
I’m an artist I hated school…I went first in my teens like everyone else, I got bored, moved across the county to another college, got bored there too and dropped out. Built a career, co raised a child and now I came back to finish and then I already have stuff lined up once I get my time back from this.
(sorry if im opening a dead thread)
“From the bureaucracy of the UROP to the ridiculous de-centralized “schools” that make it near impossible to double major in two different fields, to the discouragement to explore fields outside one’s major.”
this sounds too familiar. i visited ucsb recently and the counselor flat out said that other counselors dont want transfers to double major because they want them in and out in 2 years. they said it’s because it’ll take 3 years for them to transfer and that adds stress to the counselors to get them the classes they need to graduate. it was a very disappointing thing to be said given i want to double major in a hard science and a social science.
yet all of the video advertisements and online content make it seem as if they really support research and interdisciplinary stuff. but i guess that only applies to first year students, i guess they dont care about transfers all that much.
i was considering uci but im disappointed to hear that it’s a very complacent environment. id love to hear other people’s perspectives on this (which i will, after i continue to read this thread since im only on the first page, lol)
though if there’s one thing i learned, it’s that you cant blame others for shortcomings. if YOU want to do something, YOU have to go out and get it. you cant afford to act entitled. in the real world, you think employers are just going to be perfect and offer you the perfect job, without you lifting a finger just because you paid 30k a year for a degree? you still have to go out there and send cold calls and resumes and do the search. schools are only ever preparing you for that reality. you have to go after and create opportunities, they dont just appear out of thin air.