Should I apply to Georgia Tech?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Georgia Institute of Technology
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<p>schaden,</p>

<p>Glad to see more information, though you still won’t say what clubs, if any, you tried joining. Still, you say you were “so bogged down with work.” Are we talking about schoolwork or a part-time job or both?</p>

<p>There’s no doubt that some people won’t be satisfied with their time spent at Tech. After all, our first-year retention rate is not 100%; about one in every ten students doesn’t come back for his second year. You can pick and choose as many negative testimonials as you like, schaden, but you still can’t explain why Georgia Tech has the highest alumni giving rate of any public university on [this</a> list](<a href=“http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/peers/current/research_intensive/alumgiv.htm]this”>http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/peers/current/research_intensive/alumgiv.htm), which is saying something considering how many “normal” public universities there are on that list. As a highlight, our alumni giving rate is over twice that of UGA’s and almost five times that of Arizona’s, both large public universities known for beautiful female students and relaxed atmospheres. If you say that our rate is higher because our graduates have higher salaries than theirs do, you’re refuting one of your “testimonials” while avoiding the question, why did they give back? Just because you have money doesn’t mean you’re going to give any of it back, especially if Tech is as bad as you make it out to be.</p>

<p>Regarding grade deflation, I graduated two months ago. Chances are that unless you picked a small major (eg. INTA & ML, d-math, etc.), you were far from alone if you graduated with highest honors (ie. cumulative GPA >= 3.55). In fact, for many majors, even those within engineering, most students graduated with honors (ie. cumulative GPA >= 3.15), though not necessarily highest honors.</p>

<p>When it comes to grad school placement, Tech is absolutely solid. There are ten private universities in the Top 15 of [this</a> list](<a href=“http://somweb.utdallas.edu/top100Ranking/searchRanking.php?t=n]this”>http://somweb.utdallas.edu/top100Ranking/searchRanking.php?t=n). I got in to two of them and was waitlisted at another. In my field, the applicant pool numbers in the hundreds, but the entering class is in the single-digits. And you know what? I’m not alone. I know graduates who are going to med school at Chicago, Emory, and Pittsburgh; and grad school (PhD) at MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Michigan, and Berkeley. Is our school the best out there? Unless you’re talking about some areas in industrial engineering, no. Is it solid? Yes.</p>

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<p>This is false. Not only are the grades set up that at least 50% will be below a 3.0, many of the students I knew in high school with close to 4.0s and 1300-1400 SAT scores lost HOPE their first year. A 3.2 is considered very high at Tech.</p>

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<p>Again, this is not true. While there may be a few exceptions within certain graduate school departments, overall grad schools don’t give a d@mn where you got your degree and only care about your GPA. This is especially true when it comes to law and medical schools.</p>

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<p>[College</a> Alumni-Giving Rates Manipulated -](<a href=“http://philanthropy.com/blogPost/College-Alumni-Giving-Rates/12954/]College”>http://philanthropy.com/blogPost/College-Alumni-Giving-Rates/12954/)</p>

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<p>schaden,</p>

<p>No, it is not false. I graduated two months ago. I attended commencement. I read the program. Only a few majors actually required counting to determine whether “most” graduated with honors. An example within engineering that immediately comes to mind is civil engineering; most students who graduated with a B.S.C.E. in Spring 2010 did not graduate with honors. That wasn’t the case, however, for industrial engineering. I clarify that although “most” B.S.C.E.s didn’t graduate with honors, “many” still did.</p>

<p>I’m working at a summer job right now, so of course I don’t have a copy of the commencement program with me. If you think I miscounted, maybe I did. I can’t prove to you concretely without the program at hand. So let’s focus on something I can disprove: your assertion that “the grades [are] set up that at least 50% will be below a 3.0.”</p>

<p>[Real</a> Data](<a href=“http://www.irp.gatech.edu/apps/Grades/Grades_by_College.cfm?TRM=201002&mode_display=percent&id=000000]Real”>http://www.irp.gatech.edu/apps/Grades/Grades_by_College.cfm?TRM=201002&mode_display=percent&id=000000)
[Real</a> Data (cont.)](<a href=“http://www.irp.gatech.edu/apps/Grades/Grades_by_Dept.cfm?TRM=201002&mode_display=percent&id=000000]Real”>http://www.irp.gatech.edu/apps/Grades/Grades_by_Dept.cfm?TRM=201002&mode_display=percent&id=000000)</p>

<p>Last semester, there were 9628+7327=16,955 As and Bs in the College of Engineering out of a total of 26,730 grades in the college. Divide the two and you get 63.43%, meaning that 36.57% of all grades in the College of Engineering were C or lower. You were saying something about at least half of the grades will be below a B? The data doesn’t seem to confirm that.</p>

<p>Perhaps you will respond by arguing that the data aggregates all the departments within the CoE, thus it is misleading. Fine. Let’s disaggregate it into departments. Not a single department matches your assertion of “the grades [are] set up that at least 50% will be below a 3.0.” Most grades in engineering are As or Bs.</p>

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<p>Are you saying that Tech isn’t solid in its grad school placements? Or are you saying that one doesn’t need to attend a school at the level of Tech or higher to place at a good grad school? If it’s the former, I fail to see how my statement is “untrue,” given the caliber of schools recent graduates have entered: Berkeley, Chicago, Cornell, Emory, Harvard, MIT, and Michigan. If it’s the latter, well, I guess you’ll find out how right you are when you await your results.</p>

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<p>Regarding your link, schaden, Georgia Tech was not listed in the WSJ article as a school that manipulates its rate. You have no evidence that manipulation is the reason why Georgia Tech’s alumni giving rate stands at 29%. If Tech really wanted to manipulate it, it could do so like the schools listed in the article and produce manipulated results like 70%.</p>

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<p>wow…schaden, don’t you have anything else better to do that talk ***** about GT. I mean, its too bad for you if you actually went to GT and had a negative experience. But get over it.</p>

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<p>“They are all over the internet if you do some simple searches.”</p>

<p>um… how many testimonial are there compared to the actual number of students and alumni? prob. not many. </p>

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<p>I know several freshman with sub 3.0 who got internships this summer at good companies.</p>

<p>Also, getting ~3.5 isn’t as hard as these forums make it seem. As long as you try and/or have a fairly strong intellectual base. I Know a couple freshman who got 4.0’s.</p>

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<p>you were “bogged down with work and transfered”</p>

<p>If you wanted to go to an easy college that assigns no work, why did you even apply to GT?</p>

<p>And from my experience at GT, if you spend actual time studying and trying to understand the material and do your assigned work, getting “bogged down” won’t happen. Good time management also helps a lot.</p>

<p>I took 19 hours my first semester and 18 hours my second. It may sound crazy, but it is manageable. I mean I prob. won’t take that many ever again, but it didn’t “bog” me down. I joined a sports club that met most of the time 2 times a week for 2hrs, did work study (10hrs a week). Yes,it was hard, but I wouldn’t transfer just cause it was a lot of work.</p>

<p>You have to know what you are capable of.</p>

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<p>btw i think that you pretty much have no credibility from exchanges I read on this forum between you and others</p>

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<p>OT but: 19 hours first semester - DAMN! :)</p>

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<p>ok - so I’m trying to add my 2 cents to this ‘entertaining and never ending’ discussion, incl. schaden, fabrizio and his friends … :-)</p>

<p>In order for you to understand my point I need to give you a little background: I was raised in Switzerland and have a PhD from the ‘ETH’ in Zurich (Federal Institute of Technology). During my studies, about 30-40% of the students got eliminated because they failed in the tests, maybe 30% of those eliminated students repeated one year, the others REALLY left! I’ve lived in VA for the last 5 years, previously in 4 other countries … My son will start in GT this fall. </p>

<p>Not being really familiar with the ‘college-selection process’ I visited quite many Colleges with my son and always asked the tour-guide how many students would get kicked out during the 4 years to the Bachelor degree. Most of them gave me surprised looks and said ‘well, none - maybe they have to repeat a course and some might drop out - but not many’ … </p>

<p>Where’s the value of an education if it isn’t selective? This is what we liked at GT (and some other, more expensive schools)! Is competitiveness really a bad thing these days? A non-selective education will lead to ‘inflation’ - and that, I think, is what we observe in the US these days: too many people with ‘Tom, Dick & Harry’-degrees. We were looking for a ‘competitive’ education for my son that would allow him to work anywhere in the world (as my degree has allowed me to do) - and you can’t get that from a non-competitive school! </p>

<p>In my job I regularly hire in average 3 new chemists directly from College, and I have to admit the quality of applicants I get is EXTREMELY heterogeneous …! I actually DOES make a difference where you went to school! I had applicants who couldn’t answer a simple stoichiometry-question - and they call themselves chemists ?? </p>

<p>If schaden says that he got the same offers (or even better ones) after graduating in Alabama than his peers from GT, good for him! Personally, I have made quite a different experience … a BS degree in Chemistry (that’s all I can really judge, and I would not want to ‘guess’ or ‘spread rumors’) from a top-ten or top-twenty school is quite different from a tier-2 or -3 school! This doesn’t necessarily mean that the students are better or worse from a lower ranked school, but they often don’t even get the invitation for an interview … at least not in our company! </p>

<p>So, schaden didn’t like Georgia Tech; from what I can read it was simply not a very good fit. So he left and got happy somewhere else - good for him!
That schaden writes negatively about GT here in this forum is ok, too, I think, because GT is a little different from most other public universities, and it might help preventing another mis-fit.
What I don’t like about some of his posts (and some of the responses, too) is that he comes across as slightly aggressive - let’s try to keep that out of this forum, please. The other problem I have (not only with schaden, but also some of his ‘responders’) is that these ‘wars’ go on and on, almost endlessly. I am a little amused about some responses he gets, asking for details and facts … LOL - as schaden said, GT wasn’t a good fit for him, this has a lot to do with feelings … and they’re quite difficult to quantify and quote! </p>

<p>My son WANTS to get challenged and he WANTS a tough schedule, that’s why he chose GT - but, honestly, we don’t have any guarantee that he’ll like it. Either way, he’ll learn something about himself, and he’s willing to take the risk. As his dad, I like that he chose a ‘tough’ school, and I am quite sure that he’s up for the challenge, but I wouldn’t be devastated if he didn’t make it.</p>

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<p>Fair enough, but in my opinion, if schaden is really trying to present a “balanced” opposing viewpoint on this forum, then he should be more willing to describe what he did that didn’t work as opposed to screaming “I’m being marginalized!” Because if it’s really just a personal thing–he and Tech didn’t connect, end of story–then his posts aren’t that helpful. Imagine the following conversation:</p>

<p>Guy: I didn’t like Tech.
Prospective Student: Why?
Guy: I just didn’t.</p>

<p>Compare that with this one:</p>

<p>Guy: I didn’t like Tech.
Prospective Student: Why?
Guy: I tried joining three student organizations that I was interested in, but none of them ever hosted meetings. Plus, I tried going to my professors’ office hours, but they weren’t ever there. I complained to the Dean, but he ignored me.</p>

<p>Which is more helpful?</p>

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<p>Oh – I don’t disagree with your point, not at all! </p>

<p>I just think that if you’ve made your point (in this case not you personally), and your ‘partner/opponent’ ignores your argument and keeps just repeating his statement without really answering you, then there’s no point in continuing. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>I firmly believe that the people who follow this thread all ‘know’ how to judge contributions of notoriously negative people - as well as of notoriously positive people; so there’s no need to repeat & repeat & repeat … </p>

<p>In that sense, I hope that this was my last contribution in this thread … LOL</p>

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<p>Ah, gotcha.</p>