<p>The latter half of this thread should really be under a different topic, as you have all almost completely diverged from the title of the thread (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it has raised many, although almost too many, good points).</p>
<p>I agree with almost everyone who's posted, at least as far as a few things go, but since a lot of things went through my mind while reading this thread, I'm going to try to address some things I found to be pretty significant. </p>
<p>I definitely agree with Illmatic and you others when it comes to the fallacy of rankings. I myself am trying very hard (nowadays) to transfer into Columbia. However, the name has nothing to do with it. As I've told those who proposed that perhaps all I'm looking for is a name, "If I was looking for a name, I would be going for Harvard, or Yale, or Dartmouth, or Oxford (or MIT, despite my admittedly terrible math skills), who hasn't heard of those schools?). Those schools appeal to me only a small bit more than the college I'm at now does. A lot of people around here don't know when I'm talking about when I say I want to go to Columbia. It seems as if, in fact, the most useful property of US News rankings is material for bickering about on College Confidential. So rankings are extremely insignificant, and should not even really be discussed when it comes to where one wishes to transfer to.</p>
<p>Secondly, if a professor knows how to articulate some other person's famous book with the same effectiveness as the author of the book would, then it's just as well. I wholeheartedly agree with the "at top schools, you'll have good professors and bad ones" thing. I know for sure that ratemyprofessor.com is true in this respect, and most other "professor rating" sites are pretty much the same way, I figure. Out of whimsical boredom I decided to see how the professors rate at Columbia on ratemyprofessor.com, and, actually contrary to what I would have thought at the time, there were plenty of badly-reviewed professors. Sure, there will be differences in the teachers and the academics at a college such as a Columbia compared to the University of Kentucky, but nspeds really argues that point way too far.</p>
<p>As for the main topic at hand, I agree with Diogenes that the grade achieved in a class depends on teacher almost as much as it depends on the student. Teachers teach classes because books don't usually do good enough jobs explaining the material and are probably almost always written expecting to be used in conjunction with the aid of one who is a veritable expert on the material and can convey it well to his or her students. If the teacher acts like a prick and does not teach the material well enough, especially if that teacher also acts as inexperienced and inconveniencing as Diogenes' apparently did, then it's more the teacher's fault that the student did not learn the material well enough to achieve an A in the class. The "Life's tough, get over it" that Nikki seems to believe in does not really fit into this picture, nor the employment picture. If one's superior is truly not giving that person a fair shot at something, then that is a travesty and that superior should be reprimanded fittingly, and the employee should without a doubt get another chance. Of course, that doesn't often happen, but there is no reason why a person should not rally for another chance or some other sort of reparation, if you will. </p>
<p>You get multiple chances everywhere you are, almost all the time. Doctors and presidents are often expected to perform extremely difficult and fatal tasks and therefore don't really fit into the whole prospect of second chances. That's like saying double-agents and pyrotechnicians don't get second chances. If you're writing a novel, for example (a potentially lucrative career which is relatively common in the "real world"), you can easily tear up part of what was supposed to be your final draft, and completely change the ending of your story. Construction workers can rebuild part of a building that they built to be too unstable. If you're working as a chemical engineer and accidentally fuse flouride with selenium when you meant to fuse it with rubidium, as long as nothing explodes or otherwises turns out catastrophically, you can try again, as long as time and money permit. If you work as a vet and you're trying to cure some sort of sickness that this one cute little dog that was brought into your office has, and the first medicine you prescribed didn't do the job well enough, you can very easily alter the dosage or prescribe some different medication, assuming the mediciation is safe for the dog. </p>
<p>I still don't think having one B really matters, if you still show that you're an awesome student and the type of person the school you're applying to would actually want.</p>
<p>So there's my rant.</p>