Tell me about Boston College? Chances?

College Search & Selection
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<p>Rebuttal to living off-campus in Newton:
My D absolutely LOVED living there and it was a wonderful experience overall. Great bonding experience with other “Newtonians”!</p>

<p>Comment about the sports empahsis at BC:
My D is NOT a sports nut. She gave away/sold twice as many tickets to football games than she attended. The only other sport that she attended was a Bean Pot hockey championship game which she thought was “okay”. Her boyfriend and many other friends love attending sports events (as would I if I was a student there!) but she also has friends in this same group who don’t attend that many sports events.</p>

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<p>BC is a nice school. It would not hurt to give it a look. Great campus (a lot of walking up stairs, though!) I can’t say much about campus life since I have been commuting there ever since my freshman year, but it’s a large enough school that you might be able to find your niche. Academics are solid, and if you are into management, the quality of the on-campus recruiters is quite nice, too. </p>

<p>It’s a good school, but by no means a great one. Tufts isn’t a bad choice either - though it’s smaller and is more of a liberal arts school.</p>

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<p>I wasn’t even saying one was better than the other, I was saying they aren’t the same.</p>

<p>BC isn’t by any means better than Tufts. For it’s part, Tufts is a great balance–it is well regarded in both International Relations as well as other liberal arts stuff and it’s well regarded in pre-med, pre-vet, and pre-dental.</p>

<p>But it also has an engineering school, which BC doesn’t. And it’s computer science program is also pretty good.</p>

<p>Tufts has easier access to the city (the green line takes foreverrr where BC is located). </p>

<p>And Tufts kids are smarter–higher SAT scores that are at the level of ivies, the average kid is in the top 5% of their class, and the acceptance rate is a lower (though that’s a function of people who apply, yet even though more people apply to BC than Tufts, Tufts acceptance rate is still lower). That speaks more to selectivity. Plus, they have an out-of-the-box thinking/creative component to them (as reflected in the school’s essay prompts).</p>

<p>Tufts also has an incredible alumni base–CEO’s of fortune 100 companies, famous writers, academics, hollywood producers, and diplomats/politicians.</p>

<p>It’s not surprising then that top firms recruit at Tufts: Microsoft, Google, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Fidelity, Wellington, DE Shaw, NGO’s, Think Tanks, the CIA, and much more. And these are for some impressive positions: investment banking, research associate, traders, software engineers, whatever.</p>

<p>The students at Tufts are known to be happy. The student teacher ratio, 1:9. And even the newspaper is getting some attention.</p>

<p>The school also boast great clubs. The undergraduate a cappella group actually does some of the background singing in Glee (and they got 2nd on NBC’s the sing-off), and the school’s undergraduate investment club has been featured in businessweek.</p>

<p>BC is a great school, but don’t just act like Tufts isn’t without merit. Both schools appeal to completely different groups of people.</p>

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<p>“BC is a great school, but don’t just act like Tufts isn’t without merit.”</p>

<p>Um, buzzers, don’t you mean …IS without merit?</p>

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<p>Like some of the previous posters have said I think Tufts is a more selective school and its reputation attracts more cutting edge companies & grad opportunities than maybe BC. Tufts’ problem is that it is not that well known across the country but here in the Boston area Tufts is considered much more of a reach school than Boston College or Boston University.</p>

<p>I know two kids who recently graduated from the Tufts engineering program, both have a sort of quiet pride that one sees in Tufts graduates. Tufts is not a “rah-rah” sports environment like BC, it is more a quiet serious school.</p>

<p>One of Tufts other problems is that it is very close to and on the same subway line as MIT and Harvard so college touring parents and kids go see MIT first thing in the morning, Harvard at noon and the go two T stops further and visit Tufts. While Tufts still presents itself well it is at a disadvantage in that situation. If Tufts were somewhere else I think it would stand out as the dominant school in its area.</p>

<p>Many kids at BC also applied to the Harvard/MIT-type schools but only a small percentage of them really believe they should be accepted. Tufts, on the other hand, has more kids who could survive/thrive at Harvard or MIT (and know it) but just didn’t get their name “pulled from those admission fishbowls”. Accordingly I think there may be unfortunately sometimes a slight inferiority feeling among Tufts freshman until they see the beauty and value of their new school.</p>

<p>There is less of that at BC as for most of those kids who set their sights on Boston College, that is where they wanted to be accepted. That’s what my daughter did, she didn’t want to apply to any of the schools that her crazy brother was accepted to (14 of them – crazy, huh?) and simply applied “early” to just Boston College.</p>

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<p>One Down,</p>

<p>I’m sorry to hear you have a rather negative view of BC. I’m sure you wouldn’t betray that in your daughter’s presence… (you must be so proud of your son!)</p>

<p>If you equate having a ““rah rah” sports environment…” to less “serious” academics then consider places like Stanford, Notre Dame and Duke. Do you suppose they may be at least as good as Tufts is academically? To imply that BC’s academics are substantially inferior to Tufts’, due to BC’s high profile varsity sports is really a disservice to the very fine departments found in its various schools.</p>

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<p>Well I didn’t exactly say…</p>

<p>“To imply that BC’s academics are substantially inferior to Tufts’, due to BC’s high profile varsity sports is really a disservice to the very fine departments found in its various schools.”</p>

<p>Actually I don’t think I said anything along the lines of BC’s academics being inferior to Tufts or that its sports taints its academics, what I tried to say was that the student bodies at BC and Tufts are different and the perception of two schools in the Boston area, where there are lots of grads from both schools, is materially different.</p>

<p>Actually, I do discuss this topic openly with my daughter, she’s a sports nut, likes BC from that angle and she is a good student (3.7GPA in a difficult science major) but she was the first to bring up “Gee, many of the kids here don’t seem as serious as I expected”. Granted, she is unconsciously comparing them to Harvard kids where her brother just graduated – which is not really fair because Harvard kids are weird and definitely different. </p>

<p>Overall, my daughter’s doing OK, working hard and will graduate in 2014 but getting back to the original post’s topic "Tell me about BC"……… because I am a BC alum, my daughter goes there, and I have the additional perspective of having an older kid who also just finished college I felt that I could be open and honest about what I think of BC – it’s a good school, not a great school, folks need to assess BC’s school culture and student behavior versus their own, looks at alternatives and then decide.</p>

<p>One tangent……………when I just mentioned “culture & behavior” pay attention to what the schools talk about. Maybe partially due to its sports culture you hear a lot about drinking at BC. The amount of time BC administrators talked about alcohol at the accepted students weekend and then freshmen orientation was staggering. My daughter tells me that students younger than seniors are discouraged (almost harassed) by the BC police from walking around BC’s “Mods” and other senior housing areas because the school is trying to suppress underage drinking which I guess the administration views as a problem. Comparing that to my son’s college I can honestly say that in his four years we as parents never heard one word about alcohol. Did kids drink there? Sure they did, but it didn’t seem to be as large a part of the culture. </p>

<p>One thing I’ve learned from participating in two college searches is that the process is stressful, the information on which decisions are based is dangerously thin and subjective, and there is a perception that the college choice stakes are astronomically high and therefore everyone takes it all a little too seriously.</p>

<p>My overall advice is to try to relax a little more (not easy to do), acknowledge that your ultimate decision on where to go to school is going to be no more than 75% correct, all schools are both good and bad at the same time, and (best of all) it really doesn’t matter that much because 20 years after you graduate it really won’t matter much where you went to college.</p>

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<p>BC is not very easy to get into.</p>

<p>My friend’s son got into Washington University and Michigan, but got rejected at BC.</p>

<p>That being said, I would think that any college would find your research papers impressive.</p>

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<p>One Down,</p>

<p>Sure, when you compare Boston College to Harvard there are bound to be some glaring differences – isn’t that true of 99.9 of colleges versus Harvard?</p>

<p>I happen to live in another Ivy town and drinking there is rampant . The president of that college has a full plate in controlling it. </p>

<p>So, first you try to correlate sports to a (somehow) inferior quality of a college, then you bring up drinking as the culprit. What next?</p>

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<p>Wow LEANID, …I didn’t mean to start a flame war. I’m not out to bash Boston College from every angle. And I’m not trying to compare it to Harvard as I mentioned Harvard only in relation to how much the respective administrations talk about alcohol to their parent groups – I didn’t make any other comparisons, please don’t imply that I did.</p>

<p>Boston College – it’s a good school, not a great school. There are other nearby schools (that aren’t Ivy league) with better academic profiles (objective), and campus culture (very subjective) that the original creator of this post inquiring about BC should consider.
Not to pry but I looked up some of your previous posts, you went to BC at the same time I did (late 70’s)– right? Maybe we even knew each other (Hillsides A34 & D26). I graduated from the School of Management in 1980 majoring in accounting and computer science. I’d guess that you were in the school of Arts & Sciences, which admittedly contains the more difficult majors. I didn’t have to work particularly hard when I was there – sort of the same reputation of the kids currently in the Carroll School of Management. I liked the place when I was there but it felt more like a continuation of high school than a life changing college experience. My daughter doesn’t say it quite the same way but I see hints of it.</p>

<p>Oh well, I’ll be at BC tonight watching the Boston Pops perform at a BC fund raiser and tomorrow I’ll be back there for the Wake Forest football game wearing my BC sweatshirt. GO BC!</p>

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<p>OneDown makes some good points. BC is a good school. Anyone who thinks otherwise is silly.</p>

<p>That being said, I feel that the “envy” thing Tufts kids have doesn’t exist for the majority of students. I feel whatever envy exists is the same for kids at other universities including ivy leagues. I know plenty of kids who turned down ivy league schools for Tufts and I am sure BC is no different.</p>

<p>Now a days I feel there has been a substantial shift in attitudes towards colleges. What I mean is that a lot of schools are becoming increasingly competitive that students are selecting on more of what feels comfortable to them.</p>

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<p>OneDown:</p>

<p>You have a very diplomatic way of conveying a message! Not sure I’d be able to be quite so nice in my responses.</p>

<p>We did not look at BC when we looked at colleges for my S1. However, like Buzzers just said, he is one of those kids with Ivy stats that applied and was accepted to Tufts ED. In fact, that was the only Boston school we looked at! (Oh, wait a minute, he looked at Brandeis, but dismissed it pretty early on)</p>

<p>I know nothing about BC, so will not comment. However, we have found Tufts to be extremely organized and friendly in the whole application process and are looking to be part of their community in the coming years.</p>

<p>There was no envy whatsoever on the part of my S. He looked at a good number of top schools and decided that Tufts fit what he was looking for far and above any other school and that’s why he applied ED. We took our time, visiting one school per day, sitting in classes, talking to professors, college students, eating in the cafeterias, looking at dorm rooms and inside buildings, etc.</p>

<p>The OP has to look and get a feel for what college he sees himself at.</p>

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<p>I don’t have anything to add here, but is it true that BC tends to reject applicants due to their religious backgrounds (; Islam, Baha’i… etc) and prioritize Christians and Jews?</p>

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<p>OP: I just read over your post again and saw that you are a female. I apologize for calling you a “him”! :)</p>

<p>Do you live on Bainbridge Island? That is the only island I know of in the Puget Sound…</p>

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<p>Let me say this. BC, despite its Catholic underpinnings, has been a secular university like most of the ones listed on US News towards the latter half of the twentieth century. There is a fair degree of subjectivity involved when it comes to selecting applicants to extend offers to, but I don’t think religious affiliation is not considered at all.</p>

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<p>BC would never reject an applicant or favor one applicant over another based on religious affiliation (neither would schools like Notre Dame or Georgetown). Are there a lot of Catholics at these institutions? Sure, but I think that speaks more to people’s personal preferences. You will find a good chunk of individuals who aren’t Catholic at these institutions. Even non-secular institutions can have a sizable jewish, catholic, and islamic population (specially in the northeast for the two former groups).</p>

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<p>I doubt that Boston College discriminates against other religions. One of my daughter’s high school friends who is also at BC is Jewish (part of the 2% Jewish population at BC). I doubt her religion affected her admission and she is comfortable on campus but not all kids of other faiths would be comfortable with the visibly catholic roots and messages of BC - each needs judge for themselves. In the 70’s when I was at BC my roommate was Jewish and he thought it was kinda cool to be different.</p>

<p>The bigger issue is not whether an Episcopalian, Baptist, Jew or Muslim can be accepted at BC (admission-wise and socially) it is the observation that BC is very homogeneous - white, upper middle class Catholic, with lots of kids who went to Catholic primary and high school. That is the foundation of the school’s culture. Nothing wrong with that and it is probably the same at Notre Dame and Georgetown but when a student/parent is searching for the “right college” be careful not to become infatuated with a school just because it feels like “what you’re used to”.
We’re an upper middle class, white toast suburban family whose kids went to mediocre public schools; my daughter goes to BC my son went to a college with most people being very different from him. His dinner conversations were much more interesting and mind expanding.</p>

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<p>Excuse, me, One Down, I can’t help but be curious as to when your disenchantement with BC happened. Was it while you were an undergrad there or was it in later life that you realized BC just wasn’t a very interesting place…?</p>

<p>You also omit to mention that a considerable number of students there come from non-Catholic private day and boarding schools, as well as from many public high schools. So, let’s not confine BC’s image too much, shall we? It rather skews things unfairly. In recent years I have noticed a sizable representation of Hispanic students there, and a growing number of African-Americans.</p>

<p>Even when I was there (early 70’s) I found a not small community of intellectually-minded peers (one housemate of mine was eventually awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant) and, I am happy to report, a cadre of students who had lived much of their young lives abroad, as I had.</p>

<p>Much as you are trying to portray an up-to-date picture of BC, it comes off as distinctly 1950ish.</p>

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<p>I realize the OP is long gone but no one picked up on this point. If she has too many college credits, she will not be considered a freshman applicant but rather a transfer. She will be in a different applicant pool.</p>

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<p>Not necessarily Sue. Colleges understand that many high schools now have a huge dual enrollment program – it is particularly large in Florida and Texas for example. (Florida even markets its DE program as a financial advantage to families.) Since smaller high schools don’t have the resources to offer AP/IB courses, top students have no choice but to attend a local juco for advanced history and math, for example. As a result, they graduate with many college units. However, colleges are award of this situation and will treat such an 18-year old student as an entering Frosh, assuming that they plan to stay four years.</p>