Transfer from Top 20 Southern School to one in the Boston Area: Help please

Parents Forum
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<p>“I am beginning to wonder from your posts whether my daughter should just take the semester off and apply for January at BU.” - I was thinking about that too. </p>

<p>Most colleges have bigger lectures freshman year. So perhaps Emory situation will get better. You could check into that. A lot will depend on whether the Emory majors could work. </p>

<p>Many students love BU, but know that the “campus” does not really have a “campus-y” feel. It’s all a matter of fit. I had been thinking Tufts, but not sure what majors they offer.</p>

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<p>I think that the Majors issue is kind of a big deal, especially in school such as Emory, USC, and BU. My other daughter at Brown has felt no pressure to find a major and has had the luxury of just studying to grow her mind. It is the school culture, and believe it or not, the school is easier than Emory and USC because of its flexibility and interesting/diverse course offerings. Also, the Professors do not spend so much doling out stupid M/C tests and exams all the time.</p>

<p>You have all been so helpful to me and have helped me to better think through what might be a better match. When I think about BU, I think about the courses and the variety of majors, but also I think about the ease of finding meaningful internships and connections in the city. I also value that all of the schools in the area provide a larger campus.</p>

<p>I am also thinking now, though, about the value of just a liberal arts community that doesn’t emphasize professional colleges. </p>

<p>Thank you all so very much and please keep your suggestions coming: they are so incredibly helpful!!!</p>

<p>PS. Sally Rubenstone-- I see where your Clark suggestion fits in. If only it were located in the Fenway!!!</p>

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<p>I do think that your daughter should go back to Emory and give it a shot for one more semester. Many classes get smaller after freshman year and there’s much less rigid/by the book lecturing.</p>

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<p>peacefulmom and bookworm - you’d be surprised how much huge class sizes and multiple choice tests graded with scantrons rule the day at “top 20” schools that charge mega-bucks - Northwestern is another one.
These schools totally lie their ***es off about “average class size” - I think that they must take each and every student who does independent study or thesis research and count them as a “class size” of one, even though the rules for the Common Data Set state that they are not supposed to do this.</p>

<p>Classes are plenty big sophomore year at these places as well - Psych, the sciences, math, econ, history, sociology, etc, etc, etc.</p>

<p>It’s WAY too much work for profs to design their own exams, or for TAs to grade them - so the profs just use multiple choice questions given to them in “test banks” issued by the textbook publishers.</p>

<p>on edit-- lots of schools these days go on and on in their marketing materials about how wonderful and personal their advising systems are - I suspect that in a fair number of cases that is a joke as well (like it was back in the old days). In terms of RAs - how many know of schools where the RAs are <em>sophomores</em> for goodness sake? Back in our day a fair number of ours were grad students, rest were srs or some jrs - never sophomores.</p>

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<p>My S also attended Emory after graduating from a private school near Boston. He wanted to be a business major and was also disappointed with Emory for different reasons. He thought that the course rigor at the business school and the quality of the student peers were not as good as he had expected despite their #3 undergraduate ranking in Businessweek. The other aggravating thing for him was that many people (especially in the Northeast) never heard of Emory and recruiting for business majors were mostly from accounting firms and not much from large investment banks (MS, GS etc…) as implied in their career center web site. Anyways, he too was disappointed with Emory and has decided to transfer to another school that will challenge him and provide him with better career opportunities.</p>

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<p>Unlike BU, Emory and many other schools, Brown has no distribution requirements or core curriculum.</p>

<p>This gives students much more latitude in terms of course selection.</p>

<p>Schools like Brown don’t offer preprofessional majors like communications and business, and schools that do have communications and business programs are most likely too structured to appeal to those who want to satisfy a less specific intellectual curiosity.</p>

<p>I think you have a bit of a conundrum because if your daughter truly wants to sample disciplines which do not fall under the liberal arts umbrella, she probably needs to do it before her junior year, because most schools will indeed require her to declare a major by her junior year and in most cases she will need at least two years of courses to complete her major.</p>

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<p>peacefulmom – I sympathize with you and your D. I also don’t think being close to home is a step back in any way. Lots of kids here in the Chicago area stay around because it’s a big vital city with many opportunities. Why look elsewhere?
I do think there is an inherent contradiction here though that will make it hard for your D to find exactly what she is looking for. Schools that offer undergraduate majors in things like communications and business are almost of necessity going to be more pre-professional with students following a set track of courses. The kind of learning experiences that she seems to crave will be more readily available at smaller LACs that most likely will not offer the courses she is looking for. As with anything, she will have to weigh the pros and cons.<br>
Good luck!</p>

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<p>fendrock – we crossposted with almost the same thought!!</p>

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<p>Another thought - maybe summer internships would be sufficient to help her explore some of her interests?</p>

<p>And University of Rochester might be worth investigating (although I know Rochester is not as appealing as Boston…). They offer a program that enables “students to study, tuition free, for an additional semester or year in areas outside their formal majors.”</p>

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<p>Peacefulmom – what were your D’s original choices when she chose Emory? Can you recreate her mindset then when she was researching schools? Maybe there’s one in there that she liked (even if it isn’t in the Boston area) that she forgot about and maybe it will reassert its original appeal?</p>

<p>I don’t know Communications well enough to offer any suggestions, but perhaps she could widen her net to include CT or NY schools. She doesn’t have to become a Yankees fan or anything. :)</p>

<p>My D is going off to Emory in a few months so I read your post with a little trepidation, but I think what every kid realizes – every school has its good points and bad points. And all these schools do a really good job of playing up the good points and downplaying the bad points. And depending on who you are as a person and student, the bad points might bother you more than the good points appeal to you. </p>

<p>Good luck to both you and your D.</p>

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<p>I find this thread fascinating…and very helpful for kids looking at “fit” not rankings…</p>

<p>to hear that top 20 schools use multiple choice tests from texbook test banks is just ridiculous…and why rankings mean absolutely nothing in terms of quality of teaching/education…</p>

<p>to the OP: it sounds like Emory is not an “academic fit” for your daughter at this point…there is nothing wrong with coming back to Boston if the fit is there…and please, forget about rankings this time when looking at schools that would be appropriate…</p>

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<p>Peacefulmom, I wish you and your daughter all the best; I find your concerns compelling and valuable for HS parents. I see no harm in trying to transfer to BU (or Tufts) after the deadline.</p>

<p>I love Boston and respect your reasons for her coming home. You need a backup plan, however, so I hope you consider NYU and, “out of the box” Bryn Mawr, which allows students to also take courses at Haverford, Swarthmore and Penn, while being a very short commuter train ride to Philly, which has many of the attributes of Boston. </p>

<p>I also would not write off all LACS, as some offer communications, etc (and lower odds of getting a prominent spot on the newspaper and magazine)–and I suspect very few feature large classes and multiple choice exams.</p>

<p>Finally, as the kids I know who considered Emory always also looked at BU, Tulane and Miami, I would carefully check out BU to be sure it is a better fit for her.</p>

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<p>jmblo: I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. While your son may have been dissapointed, you should note that the course rigor in BBA programs, even at top schools is traditionally pretty low compared to other departments (yes, including Social Sciences and humanities). If you go to Businessweek rankings, you’ll notice that a part of the ranking was the “rigor”. Notre Dame is ranked number 1 with 14.5 hours of work outside of class (as determined by surveys), and Wharton only has about 16.3, Emory 15.7. These are all in the top 5 BBA programs. Keep in mind that Emory has classes 4 days of the week (I assume Wharton may have 5), so Wharton should be significantly higher. But yeah, your son set too high expectations for the workload and being challenged. Also, I don’t know about your son’s expectations for his peers (what defines a “quality peer”, one with a high SAT score and GPA? Not in my eyes. One that actually wants to learn in and of out the classroom is what I consider quality. Willingness to discuss and implement any knowledge gained inside of the classroom in the world is considered quality IMHO) , but they certainly are not going to be more intellectual (intellectualism in a BBA program? Seriously?!!). Emory, like other top 20s and research universities is a pre-professional factory. Most students hardly care about creativity and learning in such an environment, they care about an A, especially in the B-School. Not to mention, despite all of the griping in the B-School regarding the grading distribution, the curve is actually very softcore (as most). Those students are probably still getting more A grades than many other portions of the college of arts and sciences. Basically, most people generally view the B-School rigor as a joke despite its ranking (which simply indicates that its workload is higher than many other schools. Again, the bar is set pretty low). I’ve found a lot more driven, creative, and intellectual students outside of the B-School. Some have implemented various projects of sorts. For example the girl that started up the Greenbean Cart, which I think is a relief considering Starbuck’s prices. Also, I witnessed one of my hallmates start up some sort of internet consulting company as a freshman. Don’t know if he eventually went to the B-School, but it’s possible. Another on my hall had a heavy hand implementing openstudy, which is an internet website that encourages studying certain subjects w/peers at different institutions. Like most schools, these aren’t the majority of the students here, but they certainly exist in reasonable numbers (as “go-getters” w/no strings attached do exist here, even if most just want to boost their resumes) As a science major, I definitely knew the B-School rigor was an epic joke (I would laugh when a friend would tell me about how his 97 on an exam was curved to an A- simply because I realized that such an occurrence reflects how easy the exams/coursework is), and after looking at the Businessweek rankings and how it’s done/determined, hardly none of the BBA programs are very special in terms of providing a rigorous education, they simply create good job prospects (especially Wharton). No one should go into a BBA program expecting legit rigor/intellectual challenge. You’re better off going off and finding the moderate-hard graders in the social sciences and humanities (and maybe English) or the sciences if you want such a thing.</p>

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<p>You know the Boston schools, I’m sure given your background. In addition to BU and Tufts mentioned above, Emerson excels in communications (I think). Doesn’t Simmons has a business school and communications program? I’ve never heard that Brandeis was rigid and know very good people on the faculty there. I don’t know enough about Emory to contrast with Boston schools. </p>

<p>I’m not sure exactly who is in the Top 20, but in my Top 20, very few of the schools have pre-professional programs like business (or communications, marketing, PR, etc.). That is the conundrum that fendrock observes: Schools that offer pre-professional programs like business (and maybe communications) tend to be more like state schools with more prescribed programs, while schools with lots of flexibility to explore tend to be liberal arts oriented. This is, I think, the tough choice for your daughter. Is it also true that she needs to be in a city as that places additional constraints on finding a place (Brandeis and Wellesley are comparably isolated. although Wellesley is connected to the town of Wellesley more than Brandeis is connected to the larger town of Waltham, and Tufts requires a bit of work to get in to Boston)</p>

<p>With the possible exception of Wharton, undergraduate business programs tend not to be the most challenging. My nephew was an econ major at McGill and was very disappointed when he took courses in the in Commerce School (Canada’s version of business school). His perception was that the kids were weaker and the subjects were watered down. [He went on to Oxford and now works in one of the elite investment banks.] His observations are consistent with my perceptions as a former business school professor and as a founder of a couple of firms who has done a reasonable bit of hiring.</p>

<p>I’d suggest two options: 1) a gap year in which your daughter explores some of her interests out of a university context; or 2) one more semester at Emory. I have seen a gap year be extremely beneficial in terms of figuring out tradeoffs. She can do so without using up her four years of “eligibility.” And, she can have greater odds transferring in if she applies in the standard way. I’d also have her spend some time talking to people (professors and students) at the various schools to see if the school seems to match her interests (recognizing that her interests will shift depending upon the environment she is in).</p>

<p>A friend’s son left Penn after a year – big classes, unimpressed with lots of grade-grubbing pre-professional kids (many from Wharton but also pre-law and pre-med). He did very well in his freshman year, but took last year off working in a lab at MIT in the field related to his interests. He decided to transfer to a smaller school (he was thinking originally about Amherst but ultimately decided to attend Wesleyan, I think, in the fall).</p>

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<p>Shawbridge: Read my post above. Wharton, unfortunately is not as rigorous as I or you would like to think or hope that it is given its prestige. It and Emory are of about the same rigor. Also, some public schools w/BBAs apparently are a tad more rigorous (higher amt. of time spent on coursework outside of class). It has the Harvard effect. It was the first (or one of) to do it really well, but is really no longer that challenging to its students unfortunately. Again, BBAs are really not that rigorous. Some just have better reputations (perhaps they were more rigorous in the past, like most schools, particularly private schools), and thus produce much better job prospects. Also, I could tell you that while Emory is very pre-professional, I wouldn’t say it’s like a state school with distiguished programs. Despite the grade inflation, I find that course content outside of say, the B-School, is significantly more rigorous than most state schools, especially the science courses. The social science courses also tend to cover material in greater depth/larger scope (for example, UGA may start an American gov. class w/the founding fathers, whereas Emory would start w/Plato and various philosophers). Overall, the teaching and approach to it is a bit different. I think Emory is far removed from it was a primarily liberal arts school, but it still seems much better off than many state schools despite the pre-professionalism. I think the whole school is struggling to maintain as a whole, but many professors are holding their ground in terms of keeping such qualities alive. Unlike me, it is unfortunate that peacefulmom’s daughter saw the portion of Emory that indicates the “struggle” aspect of the school. That psychology course debacle (I think I know who that prof. is and she has a reputation as being a bad teacher) is not really representative and is indeed embarrassing. As a science major, I can really say that the quality of the teaching and the expectations were superior in my intro. science and organic chem. course to what she experienced. Not to mention, class sizes for intro sciences here are significantly smaller than similar sized peers. They generally range from 50-100 whereas at most (yes other top privates), they range from 125-220. We also get a lot of experimentation when it comes to pedagogy which is kind of rare in intro. courses (like the case-based intro. bio sections and group learning in a smaller 45 person gen. chem course). Basically, the school is “trying” not to regress into a state school w/distinctive programs.</p>

<p>Oh, and for the record, I agree about the Emory reputation issue that jmblo. As the newer top 20 school, we really struggle with it, perhaps moreso than we should, especially the B-School which has a high rank. It ought to be better known to employers and educators (regardless of it and its peers lack of rigor). I wish I knew how to improve or make suggestions on how to improve the school’s reputation, but a lot of the burden lies on marketing and other students getting the word out there, where the latter is a completely different beast as we have to get students that wanted to be here in the first place, and perhaps saw some good in us, other than simply viewing us as a top 20 that is inferior to its peers. Yes, many incoming students, believe, w/o having done any research (and without the care to back up their statements), look at the rankings and automatically, assume that Emory is dramatically different, and thus inferior to all of its peers. My research says otherwise (it says that it essentially exactly like most of them in ways that matter), however, if you ask them why, they’ll say something about another school’s “country club” qualities and hardly nothing about the quality and nature of the education. This just goes to show you the priorities of students in a pre-professional factory, getting As, having fun, and going on to med. school. Quality education and learning is much less important especially if it threatens their GPA and ability to “have fun”. As I tried to explain to Peaceful Mom in a PM, Emory was probably better, in context of education and rigor, before it joined its current research university peers. Essentially, it was better before it got somewhat popular as a nice “safety school”. I think that, if we are going to be a safety school, we should be a damned good one, with some uniqueness to offer instead of basically being like exactly like our peers, but with easier admissions. For example, the GER overhaul in 2007 here did not help the uniqueness and certainly went far to kind of erode the purpose of calling ourselves liberal arts focused. If anything, we joined our peers, some of whom had or were also considering similar overhauls of some core curriculum in order to incorporate “flexibility” or “freedom”, in making the school easier for all the whining pre-profs. and more humdrum top private institution and “country club universities”. The place was probably better/more interesting in someways before it gained some popularity, which caused us to turn to more of a business model. We just wanna keep our consumers happy, not educate them property. “Give them As and 2 olympic-sized pools, or give them death” where death could be a legit education, define it how you want. I don’t see why we can’t have the 2 olympic-sized pools, a great education, and instead earn our As lol.</p>

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<p>Rodney-- I think that fit was a real challenge for my daughter. When her guidance counselor asked her what she wanted, she responded, " How do I know, I am only seventeen." She didn’t choose Emory because of its rankings but because of its physical beauty and the general feel she had when she was on campus. I must say that for the most part she really likes the kids, joined a sorority and liked the campus feel. Those were the pluses. The negatives were the whole class scheduling issues and the rigidity of requirements. Also, the school lacks an intellectual liberal arts feel. For whatever it is worth, she feels that those with the greatest feelings about the school are the science/pre-med majors and the B-school students. It is her experience that the B-school kids are generally born and not made. The typical profile is a student that is very able in math and can cruise through because of the quantitative requirements. In order for a non B-school student to take a class, they must apply separately to do so and must take the class for a grade and not pass/fail. It is almost like Emory needs to create separate classes in Business for NON business majors. I think that Emory is not far from achieving a better experience for its liberal arts majors, but they need to create a liberal arts identity WHICH is not so segregated by departments. Also, they would benefit from having “real” advisors for students not already committed to programs. Additionally, I think that they should allow student to take many of the core requirements pass/fail, which would encourage students to experiment more. She has seen that many of the kids will take classes that are easier to boost their GPA. She has always chosen to go for the challenge, but it is hard when you take Biology with premed students and you are simply fulfilling a requirement. </p>

<p>What I have learned from all of you is that she should push back on Emory and try to formulate the kind of education that she wants. She will need to get syllabi from Professors and really seek out those that are in it for the teaching. Hopefully if she stays, she can seek out advice from the few Professors that she enjoyed.</p>

<p>I still do not think that she would like a small liberal arts school, but I may just suggest that we go back and look at a few of them this summer.</p>

<p>Thanks again to all of you for your help! You are amazing!!!</p>

<p>PS. The original college search was miserable and Emory was the only school she liked. She ended up applying and was admitted early decision. I think that, like many kids, she was burned out from studying so hard in high school.</p>

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<p>I just want to speak up and say that non-liberal arts courses can be intellectually challenging, but tend to do so by presenting real world problems.</p>

<p>For example, my daughter is majoring in marketing communications. For a mass media course, they studied the political cartoons of World War II to see how media influenced public views of world events.</p>

<p>The study of communications or business can lead to the development of critical thinking and writing skills every bit as much as the study of traditional liberal arts subjects such as English or History.</p>

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<p>fendrock, you might want to read this:</p>

<p>[Views:</a> Do Majors Matter? - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/16/connor_essay_on_why_majors_matter_in_how_much_college_students_learn]Views:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/16/connor_essay_on_why_majors_matter_in_how_much_college_students_learn)</p>

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<p>edit:
In my last post, I meant to just say, lacks a liberal arts feel.</p>

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<p>fendrock: I’m sorry about that. I think I was making a generalization when describing the B-School. I notice that what you say is true and effective. I’ve seen it in my science courses (an emphasis on real-life applications and issues. Many professors integrate this into their pedagogy and testing style). I however, have heard, that for some reason, the B-School doesn’t have as much experimentation in pedagogy that introduces this aspect. Other parts of the college try I guess. </p>

<p>Peacefulmom: Emory has always struggled with advisement, especially for freshmen. We have overhauled the Freshman advising system maybe twice now (once since I’ve been here). What is embarrassing is that it was worse when I was a freshman (the FAME system set the bar really low). Also, the school just recently got a pre-health advising committee after we began getting attention called to our low pre-med med. school admit rate compared to peers. However, I think it only does, but so good, as these advisors are certainly not telling students: “Stop taking easy science courses, it’ll hurt you in the long run” as stats. on the issue indicate that almost half of Emory students are failing to get the 30+ MCAT, yet have high GPAs. Of course these students are by and large denied admission. Taking more challenging courses/professors and doing as well as possible proves to be a better strategy, however, student culture will not buckle to the statistics. They rather just feel better about themselves having a self-inflated GPA until they get their relatively crappy MCAT score and reality hits them. They of course then go on to blame Emory’s inferiority even though it was their inability to make the logical decision of say, choosing Spell over Escobar for bio, or Weinschenk over Liotta for Organic chemistry, decisions that would have helped them become better prepared for the MCAT and med. school (the idea of prep. is far from their minds. They only want to get in, thinking that prep. outside of a specific MCAT prep. course and of course application prep, AKA resume whoring among other things) is irrelevant, or not pondering the question at all.</p>

<p>Also, this will sound strange, but I’m betting your daughter would have loved Oxford. Students here look down upon it, but their approach to education is indeed liberal arts focused (honestly, Emory should look at what Oxford’s campus is doing, and consider implementing it on some sort of larger scale at main campus to reinvigorate the interest in the liberal arts approach here to some degree) and it reflects in the students who are generally much more quirky and intellectual despite lower SAT scores. Many main campus students don’t like their “quirkiness” and call them “weird” when I personally think much of us on main campus can use some weirdness. Anyway, they have a much more interesting curriculum, and the teaching is much more consistently good at the introductory and sophomore level. They are doing some interesting things over there that don’t differentially affect the student body. Everybody gets to experience the good aspects. The only issue is its location.</p>