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<p>Best people to talk to are professors. They’ve been there, and they’re the people that will be sitting on the other side of the table when you’ve sent in your applications for grad school.</p>
<p>@Kudryavka- That would be lovely. USC was not my first choice. But it all comes down to money. I could afford USC and I couldn’t afford other schools. My parents are only paying $1500 a year towards my education (including tuition/housing/meals/etc).</p>
<p>That being said, I understand the premises of general education requirements. I agree that it’s good to be well rounded, but why on earth do I have to take 60-70 hours of general education courses that, for the most part, I studied in high school already. College students aren’t not well-rounded in the first place. You have to study 4 years of English, 3-4 years of history, 3-4 years of math, 3-4 years of science, and usually 2-3 years of foreign language just to graduate from high school and/or get into college in the first place. It’s not like you would graduate college without general education classes and not know how to write or think critically. It’d also be pretty difficult to be completely unaware of the world around you.</p>
<p>I’m not saying schools should get rid of general education requirements, I’m just saying maybe there shouldn’t be two years worth.</p>
<p>just cos you study it in HS doesn’t mean you have a really good understanding of it, lord knows a lot of the schools in this country are ****. maybe if secondary school education improved, we wouldn’t have so many gen ed requirements in college.</p>
<p>@IthacaKid</p>
<p>Perhaps not, but the possibility of failing worries us a lot -_- Unneeded stress kind of. </p>
<p>I guess you could argue it’s a source of motivation too :P</p>
<p>Gen ed classes are good because they give each major a chance to gloat over the others as they take the gen ed classes together.</p>
<p>-Buildings with multiple names, only one of which will be on any given map, sign, or email announcement.</p>
<p>-Art departments in general.</p>
<p>-Lack of electrical sockets in places convenient to classrooms.</p>
<p>-Is there some reason why no one has said “crazy high tuition”?</p>
<p>^The ship has already sailed on the tuition problem. Everyone’s just gotten used to twenty years of debt to go to anything other than a community college unless you get FA or scholarships. It’s amazing how adaptable we are, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Kundryavka: I disagree that the ship has sailed. People will only keep paying more and more for college as long as it’s worth it. Do you think that a generation that grew up with $20,000 a year tuition for their English degree only to wind up working part-time at Target will be willing to send their own kids to college for anything less than a degree like accounting, chemistry, engineering, or medicine, etc? IOW, I think that within my life time the US college bubble will burst due to a lack of students, and things will more closely resemble how they used to be: only people with jobs like engineering or agricultural science who really need to go to college will go to college, and liberal arts degree will remain the domain of the upper classes, while ordinary people will just join the workforce and work their way up (or something not unlike that). If I’m right, then the key to all of this would be the lack of students, which I think is almost a guarantee. My generation is learning this lesson the hard way: DO NOT GO TO COLLEGE JUST TO “HAVE A DEGREE” because that won’t help you, it is not a magic ticket to a comfortable life. This was always worth keeping in mind but back when you could pay for college entirely on a summer job it wasn’t as important. These days college is too expensive for people to ignore this lesson.</p>
<p>YonderMountain you reminded me of something I was thinking about: why can’t college buildings have their names in big letters at the top of the building so you can look up and go “ah, <em>there’s</em> the Smith building.” Or better yet, big signs like they have at McDonald’s or Kroger. I know why they don’t do it, cuz it would ruin the college’s precious aesthetic, and all colleges desperately want to look all Ivy-League-y and not like some (gasp) for-profit Devry or Phoenix or whatnot. But darnit, when you’re on a campus that is a city-within-a-city, having the names of buildings <em>on</em> the buildings so you can see them from a distance rather than having to get up close to see the sign would be darn handy. Even if you’ve been on the campus for a while, it can be so huge that you really only know a dozen buildings or so.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s just my campus.</p>
<p>You can commute to UMD and end up with about $32,000 of debt, and that’s if you get no scholarships or FA. If your family is poor, you get free tuition at Harvard.</p>
<p>@TomServo: At my college most of the buildings do have their names on them, it’s just that the name on the building isn’t necessarily the same as the name on the map, or the name in the online course information, or the name commonly used by the students.</p>
<p>@RioBravo: If you are any two of poor, smart and hard-working you can go to many state colleges totally free. But the tuition is still insanely high, it’s just that other richer people are paying it for you.</p>
<p>thank god for the generous nature of good humans?</p>
<p>e: I still don’t see how $32,000 for four years of tuition is insanely high. That’s how much my private high school cost per year.</p>
<p>And the fact that your high school cost almost as much for one student as the average American household’s entire income is not insane how?</p>
<p>It’s completely freakin’ insane and I will never understand why my parents sent me there.</p>
<p>e: I did not even like it there. Both parties would have been better off if I had gone to my district’s public HS.</p>
<p>I enjoy courses that grade entirely based on tests/essays.</p>
<p>The number of credits not matching up to the actual class hours and workload of a class.</p>
<p>Like right now I’m putting more time into projects and quizzes for a one credit class than all of my 3 and 4 credit classes combined. And we meet just as often as the 3 credit classes. And my other one credit class actually meets 4 hours a week, more than any of my other classes. </p>
<p>I mean, it’s not that big of a deal, but what’s the point of planning a schedule with so many credit hours if the hours are just assigned arbitrarily by the university based on the title of the class?</p>
<p>I hate the pressure that’s put upon you to choose a major.</p>
<p>I’ll join in with the “few exams” complaints. I really hate when I work my ass off on the homework/reading in some classes, yet my entire grade hinges on whether or not I do well on three exams. I once had a math professor whose exams had nothing to do with the class OR the homework - they were all complicated proofs and derivations (the likes of which we’d never seen before) designed to “stretch our minds.” I got a hundred on every homework and spent hours doing it, and 75% of our grade hinged on these bizarre exams that were barely curved.</p>
<p>i hate visiting professors in their depressing offices… at my ivy they seem so miserable… also hate mice… and the constant nonsense that your advisor puts you through </p>
<p>not all is bad though but college really has taught me just how bad academic life is</p>
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<p>+1 I agree completely.</p>
<p>The notion that you’re somehow supposed to know exactly what you want to do with your life as soon as you turn 18.</p>
<p>Some might know, but others will need more time.</p>
<p>The fact that I can’t register for the classes I want w/o some advisor helping me. Am I back in high school? I don’t need your help.</p>
<p>Campus food prices. Seriously.</p>