<p>I got invited for an interview at macaulay hunter I was wondering if anyone else got it and how did it go for them? And is an interview a good sign? Just wanna know your opinions 
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<p>I haven’t heard anything about an interview which makes me a little nervous. I did pick Baruch as my 1st choice, so maybe Hunter just does something different. </p>
@Darthelmet‌ I see that you applied to Baruch Macaulay program last year were you accepted without getting asked for an interview?
@icollege2k15 Yes that is the case. However I would recommend seriously researching Macaulay/Baruch before accepting if you get in. I decided that I wanted to transfer out by the middle of my first semester. A lot of their advertising is at best a massive stretch of the truth and despite doing well in all my classes I’ve had a miserable, isolating, frustrating experience so far. My advisor is basically useless and has only hindered rather than helped me. The required Macaulay events were an absolute waste of time because of how poorly planned they were. Despite having “priority registration” your schedule still gets affected by the limited space in the required Macaulay classes AND if your school has policies that restrict who has priority for certain courses, that overrides the Macaulay priority, so if you want the class you have to wait weeks after the entire school registered just to see if your schedule works. There are very few honors courses and the only two I’ve been in so far have been jokes. The rest of the normal courses vary widely in quality, but are generally hindered by a significant number of bad students. The “Information Technology Fellows” (ITFs) who were advertised as tech experts who are there to help with laptop issues are actually just grad students in fields completely unrelated to technology who only show up once or twice in the entire semester to show us basic, stupid things like how to use wordpress or prezzi… The students are so spread out that I basically never see anyone outside of classes and I know basically no Macaulay students from other campuses. As far as degree recognition goes, I don’t know how good or bad it is generally, but my Dad works for a financial firm in the city in a position where the he has to help with some of the recruiting. His company didn’t even know about Macaulay until he told them about it and even then, the recruitment event they set up with Macaulay was only to recruit for hard to fill tech positions. When he asked why, they told him that they get enough applicants from the Ivy League schools for other business related jobs that they don’t need any more from Macaulay.
Then there were some outright lies they told in their advertising: We were supposed to get Macbook Pros, but starting in our year they changed over to the cheaper, less powerful Macbook Air, which many students complain, rightfully so, isn’t powerful enough to do anything more than basic functions. (The argument could be made that they are “free,” but they aren’t really free considering I could have gone to another public university and bought myself a better laptop all for less than it is costing me to live in NYC.) Also, they don’t even always pay full tuition: I have a friend from a fairly low income family. He told me that Macaulay uses money you get from any government grants first before paying out tuition, which means he gets less for other needs like housing. He’s living like an hour and a half away from school because it was much cheaper than living in Baruch’s terrible dorms.
The list goes on for ways Macaulay/Baruch has disappointed me enough to make me leave it. There are some great parts about Macaulay that I’m going to miss for sure: They host some optional events that were rather interesting and a lot of the people at the Macaulay building itself were very nice, but those just aren’t good enough to salvage this sinking ship.
It may or may not be the right option for you, but do some REAL research before you make any decisions. I was lured in by their really clever marketing and the promise of “free” and now I’m paying for it. Find out as much info you can, from students, and not just students who have volunteered to go to Macaulay events to tell you how great it is.