<p>I usually <em>hate</em> these threads but have been thrown for a serious loop. </p>
<p>Here is the gig - I got waitlisted from my top choice (Harvard) and now have to choose between:</p>
<ol>
<li> Boston University = full merit scholarship through Trustee’s Scholarship</li>
<li>Tufts = $0 aid </li>
<li>American University = a $20,000/yr scholarship and admission to the Global Scholars program, which is an IR degree in 3 years and a Master’s after the 4th year</li>
</ol>
<p>I can pay for undergrad and graduate school if I choose BU or American. However, if I were to choose Tufts, I would graduate with zero money with my bachelor’s and if I do grad school after Tufts, I would end up in roughly $120,000 of debt.</p>
<p>I am an International Relations major, perhaps a minor in Turkish. I’m wondering if anyone has any input on these three schools financially, academically, socially or otherwise.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance guys.</p>
<p>IMO you should go to BU. You have a full scholarship and would graduate debt free, saving money for graduate school. Tufts in an awesome school, but I don’t think that it is worth turning down a full scholarship to BU.</p>
<p>I am a trustee scholar and I also had to choose between BU and Tufts.
I chose to go to BU, even though Tufts is a better school academically, because a very prestigious full tuition scholarship was just too good to pass up.</p>
<p>As for American, I didn’t apply there, but my brother chose BU over American as an IR major and I think that BU is a better school.</p>
<p>I know a lot of IR majors at BU who are very happy with the program, so I think that if you choose the Trustee Scholarship, you will probably enjoy the program as well.
We also have an international affairs association which you should join if you want do IR.</p>
<p>Congratulations on receiving the trustee scholarship and good luck making your college decisions :)</p>
<p>I would say BU for all the reasons that have already been stated. Tufts is an amazing school (congratulations) but you have a full ride to BU and being debt free when you graduate is really important/awesome.</p>
<p>If you’re confident you can do well (seeing as you got waitlisted for harvard you probably will), i would go with tufts. but if you want an easier time in college and be debt free then BU. but honestly, go where your heart tells you. look at yourself in 10-15 years, then decide.</p>
<p>i just want to point out that BU is NOT going to be much easier than tufts
BU is serious about grade deflation…
in fact my friend at brown university is having an easier time than I am at BU
this is actually making BU rise in prestige…however…don’t think that because BU is ranked low it will be easy to achieve a high GPA</p>
<p>I agree with Lemonio that BU is not much easier just because it’s not as prestigious…
But I haven’t seen grade deflation necessarily… I’m not sure what grade deflation is, even though I’m a BU student, but it sounds like the teachers are just bringing grades down. But I don’t see that happening. Classes are hard but teachers don’t bring grades down. For example I think if I actually took the time to study and do my work I could get an A … I just don’t.</p>
<p>I don’t know. Lemonio What do you think? How do you see grade deflation? Clear things up for me?</p>
<p>If you are a trustee scholar, it is true that if you put in a large amount of effort you won’t have a problem getting A’s</p>
<p>xhomefryy…there is indeed a lot of grade deflation…this is a BU policy…it means that the professors need to grade across the scale</p>
<p>what it means is that the average for many classes is very low and the range is very large, especially in science classes</p>
<p>so for instance on an exam for some classes the average might be a 60 and there might be a large amount of people who failed and got D’s</p>
<p>also, A’s are sometimes given out for “exceptional” work
in my philosophy class about 2 out of 50 people get A’s on their essays, myself not included, because the teaching fellow said that to get an A it needs to be something that she couldn’t have written better herself</p>
<p>Thank you all for your input!</p>
<p>xhomefryy and Lemonio - what are your majors? Perhaps the discrepancy in opinions about BU grading is because you are in different departments. </p>
<p>Lemonio - you mentioned that your grading is being done by a “teaching fellow”. Is that like a TA? If so, how many of your classes are being taught by TAs instead of professors?</p>
<p>Have either of you heard anything about the University Honors Program?</p>
<p>@jaimeleschevaux : I’m in com but basically 1 out of 4 of my classes per semester are com while the other 3 are liberal arts in cas.</p>
<p>About 1 or 2 of my classes each semester have had a TA grade things.</p>
<p>i’m in CAS and actually currently undeclared, but possibly going to declare an IR/Econ double major
while grade deflation isn’t that serious for my classes, except maybe philosophy, most of the people i know are in engineering and those classes have serious grade deflation because they are meant to weed out those unprepared for the engineering program
otherwise you shouldn’t really worry about grade deflation</p>
<p>i was just trying to explain that the belief that you can do no work at BU and get an A just because its not a highly ranked school is false
Despite the very awesome first scene from the social network movie
However, it is by no means impossible to get all A’s. As long as you put in a decent amount of effort in all your classes you should be totally fine.
Grade deflation isn’t a big deal. I just don’t like when people say that BU is going to be easy because academically there is very little difference between BU and other big schools</p>
<p>a teaching fellow is a graduate student who acts as a TA. they lead discussion sections and typically grade papers. All the classes are taught by professors; however, in a big introductory class there are going to be a lot of people so the TF’s typically do some of the grading
they are actually pretty good to have if you want help in any of the courses…and sometimes they’re even better than the professor </p>
<p>as you go into higher level classes you will quickly reach smaller class sizes where the professor does everything himself</p>
<p>Yep…i’m in the honors program. Its a new thing they started this year
You can feel free to ask me any questions or pm me.</p>