<p>Trust me, it IS America's # 1 party school. If you want 24/7 sex, drugs, and rock and roll, you've found your place. However, I think that the social environment would fit perfectly with your history interstst, though, and I do think it is a good fit. </p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>My stats are decent, but with the insane demand at UVA this year I don't think it would be worth it- we have like 15 kids applying from my school, mind you our senior class is only 60. Belevitt, I appreciate your in depth response and it really did help me realize that I wasn't being immature in actually considering OU. It was one of my later choices, but something about it is incredibly appealing. </p>
<p>My mom always just assumed I'd be better in a smaller environment, but through out this entire search her views have always been pushed on mine. Not intentionally, at all, she's not one of those mothers who are incredibly overbearing. She just knows that if she mentions something about her opinion on a school, it's going to stick with me. She hates that I applied to larger schools because she thinks all the classes are taught by TA's and I'll just be another face in the crowd, with no actual relationship with my teachers. I've always been an outgoing kid, and I've always had a relationship with my teachers no matter the size of the class, so I think I'd be fine at a larger university. </p>
<p>Both of you helped me see that maybe larger is better for History, given the opportunities with different courses and such. Thanks a lot.</p>
<p>Any other insight is appreciated as well.</p>
<p>I think that your mother's sentiments are shared by a large number of parents. They believe that 1) TA will be a worse course instructor than a professor and 2) Large student bodies prevent close relationships with faculty. </p>
<p>I will address the second point first. A large student body can prevent close relationships with faculty if you allow it to happen to you. It is definitely incumbent upon you to seek out time with faculty through open office hours, special projects, arranging research credits, interacting with your advisor etc. In a large university, there are more faculty to share common interests with and thus more independent study opportunities.</p>
<p>The point about TA's being inferior to faculty in teaching is naive. TAs are PhD students who take responsibility for a section or couple sections from a course in their specialty. This is often, but not always, a requirement of the graduate degree. TAs will be close to your age and not yet jaded by the system. They will have a passion for their field (as witnessed by their willingness to spend 5 to 10 years pursuing a degree that results in very little in the way of job prospects, simply so they can expand the existing knowledge surrounding an interesting topic.) TA's often have a choice about which class they want to teach. </p>
<p>A faculty member oversees all of the TA's for a course and delivers the lectures. For a faculty member, teaching undergraduate courses is the least desireable of all of their service duties. For this reason, universities will often hire adjuncts (part time people) to deliver lectures or force the not yet tenured assistant professors into it. Overall, it is treated with quite a bit of disdain, and it is said that winning a teaching award is a death knell for the careers of young professors. </p>
<p>When you get to more advanced coursework, TA's are less common. These are often taught by a rotating group of professors eg. each professor speaks about his area of expertise for one or two lectures. Or the course will be a staple that is always taught by the same individual who no longer runs his own research operations.</p>
<p>You may find that you can relate better and gain more from your experiences with a TA, particularly in the earlier courses, than with a professor. Also keep in mind that aside from the TAing requirement, PhD students don't have any formal teaching experience so it is not like a professor would have gained teaching training along the way.</p>
<p>I honestly think I'd be able to handle whatever is thrown at me pertaining to class size and all of that. It's just so hard to convince my mom that these larger schools have something to offer me that maybe the smaller ones don't. The two biggest schools I've applied to are Ohio U and Mich. State, and I legitimately had to beg for both. The rest are relatively small, no more than 5-6,000 students and are private. I tried to play the whole "oh it'll cost you less" card, but she doesn't really think that a good education should be denied just because of cost- which of course I'm extremely thankful for, but it didn't help my fight for OU or MSU.</p>
<p>Your mother certainly sounds overbearing but rest assured, she has your best interests in mind. This sounds like it will be a balancing act and potentially a source of friction between the two of you. What is your mother's college background? Did she go to a large public school and feel that it wasn't all that great? Perhaps, when you visit these schools, you could have your mother join you and sit down with the department administrator for the history department and discuss what sort of opportunities are available to their students that wouldn't be at a smaller school.</p>
<p>Yeah, my sisters right on board with her. I just got off the phone with her after being told that if I don't pick Loyola "physical punishment will be enforced". Such a loving sister. Being a sophomore at Georgetown, her best argument against OU and MSU was "Michigan, like Ohio, sucks." Oh, also "the Jesuits let you have fun while being educationed" Let us all note the wonderful word she made up. Great reflection of the Jesuit education. My mom went to Marymount in Arlington, VA, but it is filled with a family full of elitists that attended the likes of Georgetown, Harvard, Williams, Wake Forest, UPenn, and Columbia. When I find out my RD decisions we will most likely visit the schools I am most serious about, which clearly includes MSU and OU. I will keep in mind bringing that up.</p>
<p>I go to Ohio University and LOVE it. My friend is a history major and really likes it. I've heard all of our history classes are really hard. The school is really laid back, very liberal, has a great independent music scene, no one goes home on the weekends, everything is less than a 10 minute walk, the campus is beautiful and it does have great parties. However, if you aren't big on parties it's okay. I don't go out every weekend night and know many people like. They have gotten more strick because they don't want to be known as a party school. It is the 5th biggest in the country. It is not a 24/7 sex, drugs and alcohol school at all. People party on the weekends, not during the week. I think you would definitely fit in here. Greek life is not very popular here also and sports are not very popular either. It really is not as big of a party school as everyone thinks.</p>
<p>By any chance, are you FROM Ohio?</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm from Ohio.</p>
<p>Are those sentiments shared from out of staters?</p>
<p>I do know a lot of people from out of state. What I've noticed is that the farther away the happier you are. All the people I know who were about an hour away went home a lot and don't like it as much because they aren't part of the community as much. It's a great community and since most people don't go home on a regular bases there is always something to do. I live only 2 hours away but only went home once last quarter and will not be going home this quarter. Since we are on quarters we have 10 weeks which isn't too bad and then you have 6 weeks for christmas, 10 weeks, spring break and then 10 weeks. The only down side is that out of state tuition is pretty high. I have friends all over the midwest and listening to there complaints I can say that I really can't find anything I don't like about OU. That's the best part almost everyone here LOVES it and never wants to leave.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks. That definitely helps my opinion. I've found so many complaints on the other schools, so that really gives me a different perspective on OU.</p>
<p>We visited OU the summer before last. It's a beautiful campus and in a great little town. I would have been happy for my son to attend there for journalism, but he felt it was too remote.</p>
<p>No problem. I forgot to mention that OU has a lot of people who are from Cleveland and northeastern ohio. Most of them have over a 4 hour drive so they don't go home much. I'm not sure how far you are but I think the closest airport is columbus and there is a bus that goes to columbus but no one ever takes. There is also a ride board. You can't have cars anyways so your freshman year you are kinda stuck there, but most like that. Up town is about a 5-10 minute walk and has a CVS, banks, shopping and tons of food. You can get pretty much everything you need without a car. There is a bus that goes to Walmart and a 2 mile bike trail that goes there. We also get some good people to come talk. This year I got to shake JOE BIDEN'S hand, meet the governor, hear BJ novak(ryan from the office), hear Jeff Corwin from Animal Planet, the director of dark knight just came, ben folds played and a few others came. In the past I know, Arcade Fire played for our organization Students for Barack Obama, Michelle Obama came, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Will Ferrel and Bill cosby. I know it isn't a reason to choose a school, but it is cool to get to see these people. If you have any other questions feel free to ask.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot. As I continue to research OU more i definitely might PM you with some questions. I appreciate it.</p>
<p>Quinnipiac is pretty well known in NJ. If you go to Quinnipiac, it probably means you were a pretty good high school student. Quinnipiac is a SHIZZ load of money though.</p>
<p>yeah i used to live in NJ so thats how i know about it, it is realllll expensive, but it doesn't really matter about money.</p>
<p>No problem, good luck with the college search.</p>
<p>Maybe Freshman1990 can comment. If I were looking at OU for myself, I might be concerned about its geographic isolation. Akron OH is not one of the major cosmopolitan centers of the world. I realize that it is decently close to Cleaveland, but I would be worried about losing the richness of life that goes along with having a large population center to call home. Are there good sushi restaurants, indian grocery stores, farmers markets, plays, concerts etc in or around Akron?</p>
<p>I might also be concerned about climate, especially if I were coming from Virginia. </p>
<p>I would also be interested in the career placement rates that OU has. Obviously, this is most relevant to your department of interest but this would be a terrific question for the department undergrad advisor or administrative assistant.</p>
<p>I don't know a whole lot about OU and I don't know if these questions are relevant for you or relevant for OU but they are things that I thought about when I moved to Madison, WI for college.</p>
<p>OU is closest to Columbus. It's about 1 and 15 minutes. About 3 hours from cincinnati. About 4 hours from cleveland and akron. It is in southeastern ohio. The nearest malls are about 45 minutes away, one in lancaster, oh and one in parkersburg, wv. We have a farmers market, i believe there is an indian grocery store, but freshman can't have cars. Most people go to Columbus for that sort of thing. People tend to go to columbus or Huntington, wv for concerts. OU is a college town, so if that's what your looking for your in luck. If you want a city, don't go here. There is tons to do though. Spin magazine rated it as one of the best independent music scenes. We have the best rated coffee shop in Ohio. It is open from 8am to 1am and has live, original music every friday and saturday, open mic night on thursdays and a spoken word open mic night on tuesday. We have some pretty good musicians come from time to time. We have had Arcade Fire, Ben Folds and Cake. We also have music on the weekends at our coffee shop in the student center, house concerts and concerts at bars. We also have an independent movie theater and a number of plays put on by the school. It's in the middle of Appalatachian ohio but everyone loves the town which basically revolves around the college and most people prefer to stay there. Most of my friends don't go home the whole quarter. It's pretty cold here, we actually have a major ice storm right now. However, we don't get nearly as much snow as cleveland. Usually just an inch or two with a couple of bigger storms.</p>