<p>Parents, in what way do you consider information about colleges/universities gleaned from friends and others who are faculty, staff or administrators at colleges your students might be considering? I ask this because on the whole what I hear is either soul killingly negative or dismissive of any other competing school. The negative comments can be very specific, but I wonder if they are more workplace disgruntlement than factors that would affect my own student. This year I actually cut a couple of schools from my list because of intensely negative reviews about one or two small colleges, and am wondering about another one or two... but in the end, I think it won't matter for S's top ranked choices. I am wondering now about the issue in general.</p>
<p>Here are some examples of what I mean, without mentioning names of schools to keep the topic generic for now.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Friend is chair of a social science department at top 30-40 university in small city. Hates the university, stays there because it is hard to find new job when both parents are professionals and you have tenure. Complains about poor scholarship of faculty, lack of support for real research in anything but hard sciences and over rating of school. I also have two friends denied tenure at least one of whom I believe was very very unfair, another of whom I believe her when she says was unfair, both of whom allege sexism and while they did not pursue because such cases are difficult to prove, their stories hold water. (My personal decision: my S1 applied, none of these applied to any department he was interested in, friends who worked there said they had heard nothing bad about those departments, in the end, son not interested in going to school where his friends' parents worked, among other reasons.)</p></li>
<li><p>Very close friend has adjuncted at quite a few schools. She looked at one school on list of possibilities our college counselor had drawn up. At the school in question she was teaching a music survey course and a music elective. She said, "you cannot consider X for S2. The students there are horrible. S2 is way beyond them academically already. They are intellectually dull (words to that effect)." In particular, they complained to the dean that she was assigning them papers in a music class, including a research paper. She said it was a standard part of her curriculum, that she had taught at other highly ranked schools when not performing. She was poorly reviewed by students because she gave them lower grades than they expected and it was unfair for them to be graded on papers in a music class (this was a humanities class about music, not a learning music class.) They specifically said no other prof had ever given them C's before in some reviews. She specifically gave C's to a couple of students with whom she had met several times about their major paper, they had agreed on subjects and how they would approach them, and then turned in papers on completely different topics without discussing with her and without meeting the topic requirements. Finally, her contract was not renewed because of her poor reviews. This experience of hers, although limited completely turned me off the school!</p></li>
<li><p>Friend of friend is physics professor at state flagship. S2 feels flagship too large for him, applies to next tier state school 1/3 size. Run into physics professor, he says physics and math department at school my son chose is worthless, he shouldn't go there.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So... who has been influenced by friends and acquaintances who are staff or faculty, and how have you dealt with it?</p>
<p>I think students and their families need to make their own judgments about colleges. To be honest, we didn’t discuss this with others in any detail until after the matriculation decision was made. </p>
<p>I am confused…at one point in your post you say YOU changed the schools on your list. At another time, you mention your son. We’re both of you looking for colleges?</p>
<p>One thing we tried to remember during the college search for our kids…the STUDENT was going to be going to college, not the parents or friends or neighbors or relatives. At the end of the day, the student had to like the school.</p>
<p>As a faculty member myself, I think you should realize that the students’ point of view is going to be very different from that of staff and faculty. I began my career in a top-ranked university in which my department had a longstanding, richly-deserved reputation as a poisonous place, especially for young women. However, the students there had an absolutely wonderful experience in and out of the classroom. I would have been happy to send my kids there.</p>
<p>Professors have been griping about the quality of their students since the beginning, IMO. When DD was looking at Princeton a few years ago, a guidebook said that the professors there felt as though it was filled with bright kids who had learned to work the system. Hmmmmm. Luckily, many students today are not all that intellectually curious. I am fifty-fifty under my roof. </p>
<p>I think that no matter where they go to school, there will be highs and lows. I would also add that our family did its own search for what it was worth. We do not know many professors except the Hopkins prof next door…and she isn’t complaining about it. I think that the most influence came from what parents of current students and alumni said about the schools DD was considering.</p>
<p>I’d take all the faculty and staff chatter with a huge grain of salt. The faculty at Harvard and Yale will tell you the admissions office lets in too many dullards and many of the rest are smart but intellectually uncurious or just downright lazy; as for their colleagues, they’re a bunch of good-for-nothing SOBs who put personal agendas ahead of serious scholarship, discriminate against women, care only about their investment portfolios, are deadwood marking time until retirement, etc., etc. At Columbia and Brown they’ll complain that their students aren’t as smart as those at Harvard (proof? If they were, they’d be at Harvard), and they’ll express horror that any respectable member of the faculty would let their kid go to an inferior “party school” like Cornell. And on down the line.</p>
<p>Are there occasional insights to be gleaned from this sort of chatter? Well, I suppose on occasion, but only if you put it in the larger context of similar faculty griping at every school, at every level.</p>
<p>We were favorably influenced to consider a school where a friend is a professor. He raved about the undergraduate advising, contrasted it to the hands-off, sink-or-swim “advising” we felt we’d had as undergraduates together. </p>
<p>Then, the year my daughter applied, he stopped serving as an advisor because it was not a paid responsibility, and he had less and less time to devote to it. He had been passionate about this role, but just couldn’t continue to do it on a volunteer basis. This helped us identify the presence of a paid, dedicated advising staff (vs faculty volunteers, uncompensated for their efforts) as a strong positive in choosing a school.</p>
<p>I’m glad to see that plug for advising, DeskPotato. My experience was actually having a graduate student in the department as an advisor after I declared a major. He was likely doing it as part of his TA stipend, but it wasn’t the best setup.</p>
<p>My husband worked as a faculty member in a large dept. at a state flagship. It was a toxic and horrible environment. Students were often viewed as impediments to the faculty’s “more important” research endeavors. To some extent this WAS reflected in the quality of instruction. I refuse to write letters of rec to this school for my students who wish to pursue graduate school because I know how poorly treated students were there. Sometimes students just don’t know anything different than what they experienced.</p>
<p>OTOH - I LOVE my school and my students. We are second tier and the students are a bit of a mixed bag, but for the most part, the faculty enjoy working there and are pleased to work with the students.</p>
<p>I have a friend who retired several years ago as an admissions officer at a top 10 LAC. Every year, she says, the GPA, SATs, etc. get higher and higher, and the school rejects more and more applicants. And every year, she says, there are more complaints from the faculty that their classes are dead, that students ask what is going to be on the final the first day of class, and precisely what the grading rubric is (and whether it is on a curve, and whether there is a restriction on the number of A’s given out. And more and more students are talking with their parents about which course to take.)</p>
<p>Know a pretty high up professor at top LAC. I was already strongly considering the school, but hearing him rave about it made me more confident in my decision to apply.</p>
<p>Thanks folks for getting this topic going. Just what I wanted, a variety of viewpoints and experiences to mull over… and of course y’all offer it more succinctly than I could!</p>
<p>Faculty can be unhappy with each other and with the administration for a host of reasons, many of which do not affect the student ("He made me teach at 8:30 a.m.! I did not get my sabbatical! I have to teach the gen ed survey this semester! I did not get that travel grant!"etc. etc.). It’s been my experience that people who characterize their departments as snake pits tend to be the snakes. Sorry.</p>
<p>I would go with the “workplace disgruntlement” theory.</p>