Many on this thread (or their kids) seem to be attending an LAC or LAC-bound. LACs are supposedly attractive to those students who are undecided. For majors where specialization is important, LACs may not be the most suitable, unless the student is going to pursue a more advanced degree elsewhere. The courses offered tend to be more generic, even in a specialty. There’s nothing wrong to be trained as a generalist. The only problem is when there’re too many generalists.
Even if a particular major is offered, the full set of requirements and more advanced options aren’t the same among the colleges. Many colleges only satisfy the most basic requirements for a degree in that major.
It shouldn’t be beyond the capabilities of the student and/or his/her parents to read the college’s catalog (or its online equivalent) from cover to cover (including the general requirement, major-specific requirements for all possible majors the student may be interested in, all the courses for those majors and their prerequisites) before committing to the college. When the student is already on campus and relies solely on his/her advisor, it’s sometimes too late.
The student could use forums like CC for this purpose (or consult some specialist privately).
Those students probably only care about the prestige factor, or some ranking. They’re more likely to regret their choices either at college decision time or later in college.
I can’t imagine college kids still being online in the fall. D is at a state school. She is there because of price, major, and location as I imagine the same for most of the students there. We have expensive, but lousy internet. Constantly disconnecting, and D was in the middle of an exam at one point.
Luckily, D has a scholarship equal to full tuition, so no payments for us in the fall, but she positively hates online classes. And the constant disconnecting is making her very frustrated. So even in the school could get better prepared by the fall, I hope they don’t go that route; our internet will still be the same frustration.
She is also a a rising junior, all gen eds are done and she is entering the difficult years of her major as well. She just had Data Structures and Algorithms online and did a lot of online searching for a better understanding as she felt she wasn’t getting it from the online portion. She recently had a final and it wasn’t timed. She spent 5 hours on it. Waiting on the grades as this was suppose to be a GPA boosting semester.
I hope they come up with a plan for attendance because this virus is going to be around for a very long time.
For students who are studying liberal arts, the opposite can be the case: a liberal arts college can offer more specialized courses in liberal arts than a bigger university. My son is a history major. At his little liberal arts college, the history courses are specific and detailed: The Roman Army and the Frontiers of Empire, The Black Death, Sports in East Asia. Students dig into primary sources and learn to do real historical analysis. This is perfect for him.
A lot of bigger schools at the level he would have been accepted at do not offer this rigor in history. Instead, they have survey courses that require students to memorize historical facts, but do not require detailed writing and analysis. I accept that top schools have great courses in a lot of areas, but most students can’t go to top schools.
Yes, you could argue that students and parents should be evaluating academics to the level of A3 or at least A2, but, from what I see on these forums, A1 or A0 (or using some prestige-related factors as a proxy of A2 or A3) appears to be the most common, and often not as high priority as the “experience” or sometimes prestige.
In other words, what you think students and parents could and should be doing to compare colleges is not apparently what those on these forums actually are doing.
I think an example would be when a student chooses School X because it has greater name recognition/is more selective than School Y, even though School Y is stronger in the particular academic area that the student plans to major in.
Trivial examples would be where the student’s academic interests are not offered or are limited at the prestigious college (e.g. University of Chicago for students interested in most types of engineering).
Some may be suspicious of rapid ranking climbers that have “upgraded” their students, but may not necessarily have “upgraded” their courses and curricula to appropriately challenge the stronger students that they are now getting.
Yes but some students/families focus only on the school’s overall US News and World Report ranking. Remember we are talking about what students do, not what they should do.
For many students, any practical difference in class size matters mostly if the class is one where interactive class sessions are desirable. So “large” in this context could mean any size that limits interactivity. In this case, 100 may be “large”, but is practically not much different from 1,000.
@socaldad2002 , your reasons for Duke is precisely the kind of thing I’m talking about! The research with the faculty is absolutely amazing. And Duke Engage is much broader than what you mentioned; as an alum I reviewed a bunch of proposals in a competition for start up funding. Duke does an excellent job at trying to engage its current students with alums, parents and the community to enable their students to interact with a broad range of people and get a true feel for what kinds of opportunities and careers are available after graduating. During the last recession Duke also established research fellowships for some of their students who couldn’t get a job. That was such a service to their graduates to give them something interesting and worthwhile to put on their resumes while they continued to look for a job. IMO these kinds of programs make a difference in our kids lives, and during this pandemic it’s important to continue to provide these opportunities and beef them up by focusing on finding even more opportunities that can be provided virtually.
Oh, and you can also do Flunch & Grunch virtually too. Well, kind of.
I just polled my current and recent college students on class size. D, who graduated from an LAC a year ago. Her classes were all 30 or less. She said anything under 30 is good, 30-70 is ok and anything over 70 is just (too) big. I think she would have hated remote learning.
S, who is a freshman music major at a large state university with a very large school of music says his class have ranged in size from one (private lessons on his instruments) to 200 (just one or two courses so far) but most are under 30, even as a freshman. He has said the 200 person class works fine as a large class and translated well to the online format when that happened. He plans to take the next course in the sequence online over the summer to work ahead.
I think it’s the big classes that most easily work well in an online format. They are already designed for less interaction between students and professor. Even with that said, observing my son over this year, he greatly benefitted from studying the common coursework in those big classes (and the small ones) with his friends, sitting in a room in the library together doing homework, working through new concepts. Chatting over lunch. It was much harder when the course went online and everyone scattered to different places and time zones. Group chats and all the things kids do to communicate these days helped, but it wasn’t the same.
@CTCape Your post brought a smile to my face. THIS is a pragmatic, real world perspective and approach. You should be proud of your son, and I’m positive UMass will be better for having him as part of their incoming class. Congratulations on a job well done instilling a measure of resilience and grit in him that will serve you son well going forward.
D17 Attends a LAC. Her profs were given a week to adapt to online teaching and have done a great job, though there are concerns about accessibility for some students. Her BFF is very similar to her but chose to go to one of the UCs in an honors college in the same major, so it has been interesting to compare their experiences.
She says that her friends who attend UCs don’t see much of a change because anyway some of their classes tended to be pre-recorded (with an option to attend).
If anything, her profs and classmates have bonded over this issue and become closer, but we’re talking about small classes here. One of her stem classes has only 7 students!
There are a lot of hands-on projects, so some projects simply had to be canceled. There is now an even greater emphasis on written work. Again, in comparison to her UC peers, even pre-Covid, she says she has several long papers due per semester, versus maybe one or two in the UCs. The tests are harder than ever as they are open book but done on honor. UC students are remotely proctored.
During this period of online teaching, I can see the advantages of attending a college where an emphasis is placed on teaching quality, small class sizes, and connections between students and faculty. However, we are certainly paying for it so the expectations are quite high, as they should be!
So I’m an incoming freshman at Vanderbilt. I posted here last week about the heavy desire to be on campus in the fall. First, let me say that I agree with 100% of what you write. My parents have had very similar conversations with me. We thought about gap year, realized that it would be most likely a completely wasted year of my life due to the lack of available fruitful options, and decided I’m going to enroll no matter what.
That said, it’s tough for me to accept. I don’t believe I’m being “entitled” like so many are probably going to believe, rolling their eyes at my youthful ignorance of the world right now. I’ve looked forward to the college experience for years, I worked hard to be successful and get into my dream school, and now I may have that very experience ripped away from me for a short or long period of time. I’m mourning that possibility. I don’t feel ashamed by it, and I don’t feel ashamed by the heavy hope that I’m able to step on campus in August.
I know I’ll be ok. I’m recalibrating daily, setting my expectations as low as I can in order to be prepared. I envy your son and his ability to process reality a bit quicker. My friends are likely to be home as well, and I’m sure I’ll be able to have a social life with the same people I’ve had one with for my first 18 years. Life will be fine, I’ll probably adjust to online learning like people adjust to most things in life, etc.
But it sucks. My parents have been great in allowing me to be upset. They don’t put a positive spin on things that don’t have a positive spin. I love that. If school is online in the fall, there is no positive. It will be a standard of learning that is clearly many notches below an in-person experience, not to mention the lack of social life college brings. Schools can and will spin it differently, likely to justify the cost and their need to remain solvent. Students like myself will enroll and bit their tongues because the experience of college- from the 30k feet view- is clearly secondary to the knowledge acquired and the preparation for real life.
I’m sure I’ll have a terrible boss or two in life, receive the short end of the stick in luck, etc. Life is life, and it doesn’t take 18 years for many of us to figure that out. But let’s address this all head on. College in fall 2020, if not fully in person, is not going to be a positive experience for anyone. Thems the breaks, but it’s ok for us to be sad about that.
That said…this is purgatory. Once we know what the plan is, I think acceptance will follow (as well as a world of hurt financially for every school if in fact online is the decisio).
@ny2020ny yes it does stink, and you have every right to feel as you do.
It also stinks for my young adult/recent grad kids, who are not having the experience they thought they would at this point in time. They are making the best of it and I am proud of them. This will only make them stronger and more independent for when they embark on their next endeavor.
It stinks for me. I don’t know when I will see my parents again, or my kids. I don’t know how much longer we will be working from home. Yes…I am very thankful to have a job that is safe, but I am also putting in 12 hour days after already working for 30+ years. Working from home is tough and exhausting. There are no boundaries. Again…I am very fortunate and I count my blessings.
When I think of NYC it saddens me. Everything about the city that we love…the people, the restaurants, culture, Broadway, etc…is gone. Completely gone. Lives have been lost, people are out of work. Yes…it will eventually come back, but it will be different.
It saddens me to hear my daughter tell me that her zip code has relatively few cases of covid, while the zip code a few minutes away is packed with cases…and with people who don’t have the luxury of working from home. The inequities and horror stories make me very upset.
Of course it’s ok to be sad, to grieve the experience that you thought you would have. That is perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of.
And yes this is purgatory. With leadership (let’s hope) .and a plan…will come some optimism.
You don’t sound entitled at all. You sound human. I wish you the best.