No one should think UT Austin as a safety unless you graduated at the top 7% of your class in TX.
As an international student, am I supposed to determined what I wanna major in first or whether I plan to develop in the US or China?
Also, I need to make a confession that I choose my schools based on the USNews college ranking which most Chinese students tend to do. Since I can’t figure out what I wanna do, rankings for majors won’t be too helpful.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
This is the link to the ranking that I am talking about.
Whether you can even work in the US after college is not something that you should be thinking about. Realistically, there are only very limited ways you will get permission to work in the US, which is pretty much legal immigration. Your most realistic option is to return to China after college.
@NoVADad99 I know it’s pretty tough. That’s why I said it might be a match. It’s quite possible that I will be rejected by UTA and I won’t be too surprised.
Any more suggestions for my new itinerary?
Yeah, we sort of suspected as much.
OP, just wanted to say that it’s great you are doing this research … think how far you’ve come from your original list, which had no safeties:
Here’s a question - would you still want to attend college in the US if you knew for certain that you’d return to China afterwards (because you couldn’t get a visa to work here)?
This entire thread suggests that you might be happier using your time traveling around the US with your parents to see the sights, instead of searching for a school that strikes your fancy (the streetlight effect). It’s kind of hard for us posters to tell you what schools to visit when you don’t know what you’d want, but rather “where you could get in.”
If you really are searching for a place to spend 4 years, you need to start focusing on what you’d like to study.
@GnocchiB Thank you! I am going to attend college that’s for sure. And for the question, I don’t think that it’s impossible to get the work visa after college or grad school. I have some Chinese friends who are working in the States for several years after they graduated from their universities here. It’s evidently true that getting hired as an international student is increasingly difficult simply because we are the last group of people that companies consider. Nonetheless, if we do have the capability like my friends, it can happen.
Add Duke to that list, please!
I don’t think it’s quite fair to characterize the OP’s search as "streetlight effect ". The northeast corridor of the United States is unlike any other part of the country in terms of the number and variety of absolutely superb private colleges and universities that are packed, cheek by jowl, next to each other. They’ll get a good sample even on a weekend trip.
Re #88, yes, but when relying on convenience of planning, it can lead to a visit of, for instance, Trinity over say Wesleyan or Connecticut College in a circumstance in which one of the latter two may be more appropriate for a given student. Or Trinity (maybe a good fit for another student) could be left off similarly arbitrarily on a southern Connecticut itinerary. So my point up thread was that the itinerary should follow the colleges, the colleges should not follow the itinerary. Otherwise, a student may end up attending a school under a streetlight, when their ideal college could have been found somewhere beyond this ephemeral glow.
It’s not clear from what they have posted so far, that the OP is really looking for an “ideal” fit at this point. I think they are just looking for templates. To someone visiting from China, would there really be that big a difference - superficially - between any of the NESCAC colleges?
http://philosophy-religion.org/soulmates/chapter_six_a_files/image022.jpg
http://www.conncoll.edu/camelweb/images/slideshow/344/zlg2.jpg
Yeah to be honest I’m just trying to get a simple feeling of what I think of each college campus and its atmosphere. My parents can form their opinions and we will have the chance to kinda discuss. Also campus visit might help me to eliminate some schools that I originally like because of stats and rankings. Some people told me it’s a good decision because I don’t want to spend 4 years in an environment or campus that I don’t really enjoy.
For example, when we went to California in February, my dad told me his thoughts about different colleges. In his opinion, schools like UCB, UCLA, and USC have atmospheres that feel like an university campus, whereas Pomona and CMC is kinda too quiet and not that passionate. To me Pomona looks more like a high school but I like it.
@jackwang0703 If you use the rankings for LACs be sure to remove the service academies and be aware of all the ties.
NJ: Princeton(kinda wanna check it out since its on the way from NYC to Philadelphia).
Bethlehem, PA: Lafayette and Lehigh(these are two more pragmatic choices, but i think i could either only choose to pass here or Princeton between NYC and Philadelphia. Otherwise it would be too complicated and inconvenient)
Which way do you guys think we should go?
Plus, would it be convenient to visit one of Vassar, Trinity, or Wesleyan? Or I should just eliminate all of them.
Thanks so much!
Anybody please? My parents and I need to make the decision soon to purchase flight tickets. I really appreciate it.
Princeton is a compete crapshoot; plenty of time to visit after you get admitted. OTOH, you may actually wind up attending a school like Lafayette or Lehigh. I’d go with pragmatic.
Pomona is such an atypical example of what an LAC is like (6,000 students from 6 different programs criss-crossing the campus), I would say try and visit a regular, stand-alone, East Coast LAC for comparison. Trinity is the most convenient stop on the way to Boston. If you like the physical and geographic aspects of Trinity, you will probably like Wesleyan and Vassar even better.
@circuitrider Thanks. It does make more sense to go with Lafayette and Lehigh, and they are also fairly close. But are they easy to get to from either New York or Philadelphia?
Pomona only has 1630 students. Are you talking about the Claremont Consortium which includes Pomona, CMC, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps? Is that why it’s atypical?
I already have Swarthmore, Haverford, and Holy Cross on my list. Do they exemplify regular LACs?
Yes Lehigh and Lafayette are easy to get to from either NY or Philly, a little closer to Philly. The two are close together as well.
Swarthmore, Haverford and Holy Cross will give you a good idea of what a northeastern LAC is like. Obviously Holy Cross is Catholic so it’s good you are seeing it.
Where are you flying into?
Why don’t you show your complete itinerary.