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<p>This should really be that the parents have so much at steak. :-)</p>
<p>A pound of hamburger is a quantifiable thing. Getting good value during the college experience is subject to interpretation. As we’ve seen from the different POVs of the OP and other posters. </p>
<p>“at steak” haha…I love it.</p>
<p>blossom, if money issues are such a problem, then why do state schools have lower graduation rates than private schools? And, don’t private schools try to make themselves affordable? Almost nobody pays sticker price at a private. You are right, I don’t know many kids who dropped out…I never saw them again.</p>
<p>Many of you are hung up on the extracurricular issue. I have known quite a few students with bad grades who were very involved with extracurriculars. Athletes, a female student who was editor of the student magazine, an African-American student who was very involved in the student organization for minorities. It is not just dropping out, it is mostly just struggling academically. Many athletes are there mainly for their sport.</p>
<p>And, how about all the rude and distracting behavior of students during class and the absenteeism? Aren’t parents mostly paying for those lectures more than any other service provided by the college? I would guess that the average attendance at college classes is about two-thirds to three-fourths of the students each class. Attendance is better at more selective schools. Many students waste their parent’s money terribly.</p>
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<p>Several reasons:</p>
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<li>State schools have more non-traditional and part-time students who may take much longer than the usual time to graduate due to attending part time (or “full time” but only 12 instead of 15-16 credits per semester) while working.</li>
<li>State schools tend to have less financially well-off students, who are more likely to run out of money (particularly in states where state schools’ in-state prices are high and financial aid is poor, such as PA and IL), so they may not be able to finish, or may have to take semesters off to work to earn more money for school.</li>
<li>State schools are, on average, less selective than private non-profit schools, and incoming student abilities tend to correlate well to graduation rates.</li>
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<p>collegehelp, sorry, but this shows you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Plenty of people pay full sticker at privates. Very few private schools offer enough need-based aid to make them affordable to the majority of students. </p>
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<p>This is typical of your posts. You guess, estimate, think, whatever. Very little of what you post is substantiated by any sort of data. </p>
<p>I remember so many of the things I did at school and I feel they were part of my education. Seeing Billy Joel play for $4 when he really was just the Piano Man. F Lee Bailey just after the Patty Hurst trial (and slamming some stupid student from the audience who basically called him old and said he hadn’t done a trial in years). Working concerts and seeing Mick Jagger and Boston backstage. Football games, trivia bowl, $1 movies on campus, taking a class just for fun.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine thinking these things weren’t part of the college experience.</p>
<p>“Almost nobody pays sticker price at a private. You are right, I don’t know many kids who dropped out…I never saw them again”</p>
<p>There are plenty of people paying sticker price at privates. And it doesn’t sound like you knew much of anybody, frankly. </p>
<p>Actually, 82.5% of all students at 4-year private colleges receive some gift aid according to the US Dept of Education.</p>
<p>slithytove, you don’t heve to watch the weather report to find out if it is raining. You can look out the window and get better information. You can easily know about class attendance by seeing how many students are present on exam days and comparing with other class days. I have eyes. I can see. You should try it.</p>
<p>Private colleges do make themselves affordable but different families have different priorities. Many families don’t plan for college expenses.</p>
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<p>Some do. But many others do not. There are some well known examples like New York University.</p>
<p>“Actually, 82.5% of all students at 4-year private colleges receive some gift aid according to the US Dept of Education.”</p>
<p>The existence of gift aid doesn’t therefore mean that students don’t have financial issues /troubles that necessitate taking time off to work / save for a year, or causing them to drop out. It’s not like money from heaven magically appears. I swear, you live in your own little world sometimes. </p>
<p>“slithytove, you don’t heve to watch the weather report to find out if it is raining. You can look out the window and get better information. You can easily know about class attendance by seeing how many students are present on exam days and comparing with other class days. I have eyes. I can see. You should try it.”</p>
<p>You’ll die when you read this, collegehelp – when I was in college, I calculated how much each class cost my parents, and I was sooo very grateful for the opportunity to go to a good school that I never missed a single class until spring of my senior year when I needed to be out due to some minor surgery. I was very pious about the whole thing. </p>
<p>But you know? If I had to do it over again, I might have skipped a few classes and hung out on the lakefront on a nice sunny day, or gone downtown. And I <em>know</em> if I had to do it over again, I’d go to more parties, sports events, and theatre / music events. Life is not just preparation-for-the-next-stage. </p>
<p>OK, I’ve tried to stay out of this thread but I have to wholeheartedly agree with PizzaGirl. I missed ONE day of calls in 4 years of college - a day I had to appear in court because of my parent’s divorce proceedings. I was on a full-tuition scholarship and knew full well if I slacked off, I’d be out - with no parental resources to help me out. I was in numerous study groups to make sure I did well in all my classes (which included operating system theory, real analysis, computer logic, abstract algebra - real fluff stuff) as well as working off-campus.</p>
<p>That said, I found myself telling D that attending the opening day game of the MLB season was a valid reason to miss a class.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl and Indigomontoya, I have no problem with “stopping to smell the roses” in college (or any other time of life) as long as grades don’t suffer. I commend you both for conscientious adherence to your studies. I bestow upon each of you the Collegehelp Seal of Approval. College is actually a good time to forego leisure activities. Study hard for 4 years, get a good job or get into a good grad school, then gradually lighten up and enjoy the fruit of your labor for the next 60 or 70 years. If 4 years of college is painful, so be it. It is a lot less painful than having a low-paying job you hate for 50 years…or not having any job at all.</p>
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<p>Missing classes that you pay for in order to pay to watch a bunch of multi-millionaire 1%ers play ball sounds like a great tradeoff.</p>
<p>I didn’t read all eleven pages of this wankery, but here’s what my dad told me: if you weren’t in college, I’d expect you to get a job and clock 40 hours a week. So treat it like a job, show up for “work,” and make sure you’re doing school work from 9 to 5. That still leaves plenty of time for other things and will keep you from, as Twain described it, letting school interfere with your education. </p>
<p>It was pretty good advice then, and I gave it to my kid last August. There are stretches of the academic calendar that require “overtime,” but sustained steady work in the classroom should leave enough time for other interesting, worthwhile, and – dare I say – educational things. </p>
<p>As best I can tell, most kids who really struggle in college either (1) just don’t have the aptitude or study habits to make it, (2) spend too many hours working a real job to spend enough time doing college right, or (3) drink or drug themselves out of school. Cause #1 is a probably a trade off for America’s relatively open access university system, and it bugs me less than, say, the way college admissions worked prior to the GI Bill. Cause #2 is a hell of a lot more common than people in the CC bubble appreciate, and it’ll get worse every year tuition keeps going up at double the CPI. Cause #3 is probably also more common than we realize, and I hope not to learn more about it at a familial level. </p>
<p>Wow, so much time spent with college help because he just doesn’t get it. The thread is about getting the most out of college, not statistics about who does what- they are not relevant to this topic. “Self discipline”- every college student has it to survive since there are no parents and teachers holding your hand to make sure you do things. Doing your job/career is not the only thing in life, or for many the most important part of life- lucky are those few who get to spend their days being paid to do what they most enjoy. Mediocracy- no matter how high/low you place the bar the majority will be mediocre- in the middle. Fact of life. Most people approach life with middling intensity- school, work and everything else. That’s part of being the average human being.</p>
<p>“Nose to the grindstone” et al. My top ten Chemistry department’s Physical Chemistry lab had whimsical glass figurines in those black boxes for various lab experiments- cute dog in one. The glassblowers obviously did more than just the required, it was worth looking at the insides for the fun of it. Whoops- FUN in P Chem lab???</p>
<p>Better to have some B’s because you took courses outside your comfort zone, major, best ability fields than to have top grades but no adventures. I have found, by experience and reading about them, that the top professors in colleges and those in workplaces tend to have varied interests. They certainly encourage more than just the academics. If it were only about the book knowledge it wouldn’t matter where one went to school- one could attend any college and get the same knowledge.</p>
<p>Let’s hear from others with any more ideas about how to max out the college experience. I will add that living on campus freshman year, near campus/away from home is ideal. Some CAN’T take full advantage of the experience for various reasons, including financial. I was lucky I didn’t have to commute. Wish I didn’t need to work my last year. Otimal experiences, not realities.</p>
<p>College Navigator data summary <a href=“Fast Facts: Financial aid (31)”>Fast Facts: Financial aid (31); says that about 80% of students at private four year nonprofit schools receive some institutional grant aid, but a quick spot check of a variety of schools with names familiar to folks here on CC shows that many top schools–among some of the most generous with financial aid–are giving gift aid to between 40-60% of their students. That means that 40-60% of students at schools like Harvard and Caltech and Swarthmore are paying full freight. At my children’s schools, both private nonprofit four year institutions, 60-70% of families are paying full freight. </p>
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<p>I’ve been both a professor and a student, and I wouldn’t ever consider extrapolating from my experiences to make sweeping generalizations about class attendance. Individual anecdotes aren’t data. </p>
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<p>No time in life is a good time to forgo leisure activities; that sounds like a recipe for burnout, anxiety, and depression. It is, indeed, possible to study hard and participate in fun and leisure time activities. In fact, college is a really good time to learn how to balance having fun and taking care of your physical and mental health and your work responsibilities. Four years of college should definitely not be painful.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think this is why my undergrads are so stressed out today. They feel like they have to completely eschew anything fun in order to achieve. Then the poor loves have a nervous breakdown in their junior year, and have to pull back. They’re always surprised to learn that I (the Ivy League PhD student with an NSF and publications) was a bit of a party animal in college!</p>
<p>It’s all about balance.</p>
<p>I haven’t read all 11 pages of this thread, but to me what counts as “taking advantage of the full college experience” will vary depending on the student. I agree that a lot of the early things put forward assume that the student is a traditional-aged student living on campus at a highly-selective residential college that attracts big name, high profile events/people like Yo Yo Ma and the Dalai Lama. But for the majority of college students, that’s not the case. In fact, that only describes a very small fraction of college students these days.</p>
<p>This is unrelated to college, but my sister just got out of the hospital after two days due to several stress-related heath problems. All of her stress is being caused by things out of her control, but no one should be under the mistaken impression that stress is anything but harmful. The idea that these college kids should do nothing but slog away for grades alone so they can slog away at a high-pressure job until they drop is terrible. My sister is lucky-she will be ok. But who wants to look back and realized they missed out on so much of LIFE for grades? </p>
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<p>Didn’t realize Ivy league has singing as a sport and put singers on academic probation making them ineligible to play. :D</p>
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<p>I’ve known of several college classmates who ended up on suspensions or being advised to take a hiatus because they’ve overextended themselves on the academic front & couldn’t say no to being an activist for another political cause. </p>
<p>However, this type of student fits more the profile of someone who more an overachieving perfectionist who tries to do too much without accounting for one’s own scheduling or physical limits. </p>
<p>We’re not talking students who major in partying and alcohol at the complete expense of academics. </p>
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<p>Even though I probably tried living close to CH’s ideal during my undergrad years, I still had time to do ECs and some leisure stuff even with my maxed out semester workload and working part-time during the year. </p>
<p>Hey, if I’m going to be at college, I may as well take part in and interact with my classmates and participate/observe activities and people on and off-campus. </p>
<p>That and the prevailing mentality among my public HS magnet classmates that if you have to spend the vast majority/all your time studying, you’re doing it wrong and/or aren’t very bright to begin with. </p>
<p>Among the highlights included going to Cleveland a few times with classmates, roadtrips to other colleges during some fall/spring breaks to visit friends, attending various musical concerts, a performance of Paul Robeson given by Avery Brooks who attended my college for a period, Second City performance, and more. </p>