<p>Alright, I'm a little tired of hearing the debate about LSP and whether it's good or not, if it's a waste or not, etc.</p>
<p>Let's talk about it in here because for a future LSPer, it's easier for him/her to research about the program here so he/she can decide to attend or not. This is what I've gathered from extensive research-</p>
<p>Pros:</p>
<p>-Guaranteed spot in school of choice (CAS, Stern, etc)
-Smaller classes; more interactive atmosphere
-No one from other schools really makes fun of you for attending LSP - no social limitations
-People who go through LSP can tend to have a higher GPA than regular CAS students --> a perk when applying to grad school?
-LSP requirements are a lot like the MAP requirements that CAS students have to take. So essentially, as someone said, LSP and CAS students start off at parallel roads then meet at a midpoint and go through NYU together
-Being part of LSP doesn't show up on your transcript or resume. Just where you graduated from- which is NYU in the end.
-Some LSP students really enjoyed the experience and others did not like it. It's really up to the person and it is like what bimachris said: "A lot of people who went through LSP recommend it. I mean, the stigma's only as big of a deal as you make it."</p>
<p>Cons</p>
<p>-Claimed to be NYU's way of making money by giving 'second-rate' students a chance at their school
-If you're just going to earn your Associates degree in this 2 year program, you're better off going to a SUNY or another school then transferring to NYU or another school
-Tuition is way to expensive for this program. It's not worth it if you can go to another and cheaper school for 2 years
-*Double majoring is more difficult; likewise, some majors like International Relations are much more difficult if you're in LSP because some LSP courses don't pertain to your major, take away money and time, and can make you stay for a 5th year.
-LSP is like an extension of high school because your core classes are chosen out for you by year and electives are limited (you can take CAS electives in sophomore year)</p>
<ul>
<li>= I'm going to double check this with a LSP rep later so I'll let everyone know whether this is true or not. Personally I hope it isn't</li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>Add more to the list! Or tell us about what you heard and/or experiences!</p>
<p>It does not say that you are in LSP but the names of the courses remain there. </p>
<p>Really, it's all up to the individual. Personally I knew most people who got LSP'd from my high school decided to go to universities like BU and Rutgers and are enjoying it there, with merit aid I might add. But obviously alot of people do think it's worth it because I've met a ton of LSP people, and the reactions are mixed. While most are grateful of going to NYU I've met some who felt the courses were not worth the $50,000 pricetag, but they do say the smaller class sizes are good for working closely with faculty. It depends on what you want to spend on an education like LSP, because at NYU (regardless of school) you will find people who will have money to throw around. </p>
<p>If I got LSP'd I would not even think about going. If I really wanted to go to NYU that badly I would enroll at a school that gave me the most aid, and transfer into NYU the year after. I know many people who got LSP'd and made it into Rutgers' honors program.</p>
<p>You have to remember that NYU is a highly selective school; getting LSP'ed itself is an honor. BU has a 70% acceptance rate and I'm not sure about Rutgers, but if your friends compare NYU to that level- then that is a mistake on their part. It's tough to get merit aid at NYU because there are many high achieving students in there. The disparity between those who do awesomely and those who do not is not as great in NYU as is in other universities.</p>
<p>And like you said, NYU doesn't diffrentiate in degree or in any major way if you are LSP'ed or get directly in. In fact, like I said before, LSP can be an advantage because of the higher GPA you can get compared to in CAS. I'll never forget it, but bimachris was right- it's only a big deal if you make it.</p>
<p>For NYU, I believe smaller classes are just what you need to succeed. I know LSP is like a second-chance thing, but in a tough school like this, it might just be the boost you need in college. Especially when applying to grad school.</p>
<p>Since grad schools don't know if you were LSP'd or not, I'd rather have a 3.8 GPA with 2 years of LSP and 2 years of CAS and apply than 3.6 GPA with CAS all round. It just simply seems more rational. Though this is not to say LSP is better than getting in CAS directly.</p>
<p>pro: get most of your liberal arts classes done in 2 years when say cas kids just have them mixed in throughout the years? then you get to focus more on your major?</p>
<p>i want to clarify some things.
-Guaranteed spot in school of choice (CAS, Stern, etc). this is false. you are promised a spot to the school in which you originally applied to. on another note, Stern and Tisch no longer accept students from LSP. they closed their program.
and people do make fun of LSP students. on average, they have the lowest gpa and SAT scores.</p>
<p>also, LSP does show on ur transcript, and u get a higher gpa cause courses are easier. employers see that you have taken LSP classes and may or may not use it against you.</p>
<p>Alright, look this claim that employers see the LSP classes and debunk you for it is stupid. In LSP you take set classes for the first year and then after that you get to choose your classes. Basically you take 2.5 semesters worth of required classes and then after that you can take any class you want in CAS for the remaining 5.5 semesters of your college career. I really doubt an employer or a graduate institution is going to look at your freshmen year (when kids in CAS are taking required GE courses as well such as “writing the essay”) and say well even though they have essentially 3 years of CAS courses that validate their major I am going to reject them based on GE courses they took as freshmen that satisfy the MAP requirements for CAS, which they graduated from. All summed up LSP is a great program that funnels directly into CAS. It forces you to take GE classes so as soon as you get into CAS you can start your major and not have to worry about any nagging requirements. The classes are usually small (X<30) and the professors are on the whole good. The classes aren’t super easy (really depends on the prof just like in CAS) and you do have to maintain a 3.0, which is doable. It does not have a community college feel at all, you are a member of NYU and are working just as hard as anyone else there. In addition to the person above I never once heard someone being made fun of for being in LSP and LSP students had an all time high in stats this year. I personally graduated high school with a 3.825 cumulative GPA and a 1950 SAT so if you want to make fun of me for being in LSP or being inferior go ahead and do it because i probably have stats close to anyone in CAS and I probably have a better college GPA than they do.</p>
<p>Employers will not see your classes, but graduate schools (except law schools) definitely will. Graduate schools have a comprehensive and substantive working knowledge of how undergraduate institutions are set up, so they will be able to tell that you spent your first two years (not 2.5 semesters, since LSP has a 44-credit minimum (at least) before you start getting into the LSP “electives”) in LSP. Whether or not they hold that against you is, of course, up to them, but if there is a significant drop in your grades between LSP and CAS courses, I assure you that will not look good.</p>
<p>There’s so much crap posted on this thread, I don’t know where to begin.
Wrong, you can study your major right away, and you can take CAS classes right away.
Hah do you think emplyer’s give a rats ass what program you were in, or what your college was ranked, unless it’s an Ivy? They don’t know or care what LSP is, what MAP courses are, or anything. They want someone who’s competent and can get the job done. On your resume you’ll put your college, GPA, and major, and they’ll look briefly at your transcript to confirm you went to college. No one cares about your college crap/GPA after your first job. They care about internships, work experience, skills, etc
Wrong again.
LSP students can finish in 3 semesters. A 44 credit minimum before you take LSP electives makes no sense – after 44 credits, you’d be done with the program, remember? You can take LSP electives right away 1st semester, but I don’t recommend it, they’re a waste of life. Get your requirements out of the way or take CAS classes.
I know lots of people going from LSP to Tisch, and they’re only in the program for 1 year. And no, I believe the honor of lowest grades/SAT goes to Tisch or SCPS, not that Steinhardt and Gallatin aren’t far behind. And if you’re still talking about SAT scores after 11th grade, you need to get out more :)</p>
<p>No, there are 44 credits worth of classes that must be taken in LSP, and an additional 20+ that can be taken either in LSP or in one of the other schools. That is what I meant by “electives”–classes that needn’t necessarily be taken in LSP. So, at best, you have at least three semesters worth of LSP-only classes–not the 2.5 that someone else was claiming. Amazingly, you and I were actually in agreement.</p>
<p>I should also note that the curriculum is changing for fall 2009.</p>
<p>And, by the way, employers may not know about the specifics of each undergraduate institutions curricular programs–as I already stated–but they do care about how well your college is ranked, along with a plethora of other factors, such as how prestigious the department is in which you got your major, alumni connections, regional connections, etc. Otherwise, there would be no point to going to NYU when you can just go to your local state school for free.</p>
<p>NYU_times - thanks for clarifying, I read your comment to mean someone must take 44 credits before choosing electives! </p>
<p>sure, NYU grads have advantages State U grads don’t get. But i’ve noticed this obsession over rankings on CC, that those in the top 20 have a big advantage over the top 40, who are superior to those merely in top 100, etc. people act as though the USNWR is their bible To think employers will be turned off because you took Cultural Foundations instead of ConWest is ridiculous. Employers will see you went to NYU, what your major was, your GPA, your work experience, internships and other skills. Yet so many HS students are worried taking LSP classes instead of MAP will tarnish their reputation somehow. The requirements are so similar (1 Global Cultures class, 1 Science, 1 Math, Foreign language to Intermediate Level, Writing the Essay (Writing I and II), Cultural/Social Foundations instead of ConWest and other seminars). Employers won’t give a hoot if you had slightly different requirements. It’s all the same on a diploma.</p>
<p>Oh, yes, the obsession with rankings is entirely misguided. I think that what a lot of people don’t realize is that the rankings are pretty much arbitrary and easily manipulated; the whole grade inflation fiasco that happened at the Ivies a couple years back was done in part to keep those schools’ rankings up. USNWR’s emphasis on average GPA and SAT score of the incoming class and overall acceptance rate also means that schools have become strategic in which students they admit, hence why schools that earlier may have been definite safeties now reject students they think won’t attend anyway. It’s a sick system, particularly since USNWR is a third-rate publication that never sells much of any issue except the college issue. And don’t even get me started on the Princeton Review, which doesn’t include NYU in many of their rankings because the school doesn’t respond to the questionnaires (and, let’s be real here, doesn’t buy their spot).</p>
<p>Rankings do matter in getting a general picture of where a school stands. For instance, I know that NYU will probably give me a better education than, say, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. But compared to other similar schools, like BU, BC, Tufts, all of which I turned down? There’s really no way to be sure, and employers won’t really care as long as you come from some certain level of schools (the tiers, I suppose). Beyond that, though, there’s a lot to be said for the fact that even the highest-ranked schools don’t have across-the-board stellar departments. For instance, I would have preferred Johns Hopkins for IR than Yale, even though Yale is right up there (#2?) while Johns Hopkins is several spots “behind.” Employers, particularly those in highly specialized fields, will probably be aware of such nuances, but, no, whether someone took the LSP or CAS equivalent of MAP won’t really matter.</p>
<p>It’s different for graduate schools, of course, but not everyone wants to get an advanced degree.</p>
<p>the other thing that you have wrong NYU times two is that grad schools look at your major GPA…so who cares where you get your GE done…and yes LSP is only 2.5 semester…you obviously don’t know what your talking about…you take Cultural Foundations I and II, Social I and II, Writing I and II, a science, and Culture class…that is freshmen year…sophomore year you take 2 required classes, which are topics in society and topics in culture…so in all you are taking 1.5 years or 2.5 semester of LSP classes after that you take classes from CAS…you are still “in” LSP but you are taking all 5.5 semesters of CAS classes that transfer directly into CAS…they even say that CAS classes taken while in LSP still count towards your major and towards your over all CAS GPA…this whole argument is stupid because a grad school is not going to look down on you for doing GE at a community college so why would they look down on you for LSP? I mean NYU is ranked #1 in philosophy and if i do my GE in LSP and then graduate with full credits from NYU philosophy for a BA I really doubt some grad school is going to look at my transcript and say no to me. Rather they will probably look at my MAJOR GPA and say hey he went to NYU which is ranked #1 and he did well ok done…Law schools only care about over all GPA and Grads on care about major GPA so GE doesn’t even count…</p>
<p>You’re joking, right? You think that grad schools don’t look at your entire transcript? Even if they do focus on the GPA in your major, they will still look at your overall transcript to see what sorts of other classes you took. If it’s very obvious that your overall GPA is only as high as it is because you were taking classes that were easier than other students’ who graduated from your school–which may very well be the way a certain grad school looks upon LSP classes–that WILL factor in. Otherwise, what are they going to go off of? Solely the eight or ten classes out of a possible 32+? Ridiculous. </p>
<p>As for LSP, these are the requirements for fall 2009 to get an A.A.:
Writing I and II (8 credits/two classes)
Cultural Foundations I, II, and III (12 credits/three classes)
Social Foundations I, II, and III (12 credits/three classes)
Science/Math (12 credits/three classes)
Global Cultures (4 credits/one class)</p>
<p>I’m not counting the additional credits one must take, including the Social Science/Expressive Culture MAP requirement that one can major out of. So, it’s actually 48 credits (12 classes), which takes three semesters to complete. And I never said that courses taken in LSP won’t count towards your major GPA once you transfer to CAS, so I’m not even going to address that point.</p>
<p>A lot depends on the type of Grad school - Most LSP requirements are Humanities so if you’re aiming for a Math/Science PhD, I doubt they’ll care too much about Writing, Cultural Foundations and so on.</p>
<p>I wasn’t aware the requirements had changed. An AA is not required to transfer into your original school. I had to do Social Foundations I/II, Cultural Foundations I/II, Writing I/II, 1 Global Cultures (No Science since I’m a Science major), Topics seminars. I hated most of these and would definitely NOT do LSP with even more requirements, it’s ridiculous. And why have they cut the Topics in Mod Culture/Society seminars? Those are awesome, you have like 40 seminars to choose from, and these poor kids don’t even get that!</p>
<p>LSP is great if you love the Humanities (esp Art, Philosophy), are Undecided, and enjoy not being able to pick your classes. I took CAS classes in my major right away, but Class of 2013 will have more crap to put up with.</p>
<p>Hey, this is slightly off topic, but with those added classes for the 2009/2010 schoolyear, I guess incoming LSP freshman won’t be having much room in their schedules for electives their first two years? Please correct me if I’m mistaken.</p>
<p>Edit: Alix, just read your post above. :-/ I’m undecided, but I still want to take foreign languages and explore some opportunities at NYU. So are you pretty much bound to 4 classes per semester?</p>
To think employers will be turned off because you took Cultural Foundations instead of ConWest is ridiculous. Employers will see you went to NYU, what your major was, your GPA, your work experience, internships and other skills. Yet so many HS students are worried taking LSP classes instead of MAP will tarnish their reputation somehow. The requirements are so similar (1 Global Cultures class, 1 Science, 1 Math, Foreign language to Intermediate Level, Writing the Essay (Writing I and II), Cultural/Social Foundations instead of ConWest and other seminars). Employers won’t give a hoot if you had slightly different requirements. It’s all the same on a diploma.</p>