Hi! I just wanted to let all of you know that I have committed to Middlebury!
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Great choice. I don’t think you’ll regret it.
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Nice choice, all the best (which I already stated probably a couple times)! {Edit} And UCLA is undoubtedly appreciative of your consideration.{/}
I had never heard of the term “NARP” (“Non-athletic regular people”) until driving my son back from an accepted student overnight at Middlebury. They housed him and a few other prospective freshman with a couple athletes who started right off by talking about it, in the context of defining that they were not NARP’s who they saw as lesser beings. Their living room had a permanent ping pong table for beer pong. The next day he sat in with the band, and the band kids all talked about being stigmatized as NARP’s. He almost completely lost interest after that. I happened to have a colleague whose son has recently graduated so I talked my son into having a phone call with him. The colleague said he had really liked it. And I figured my son my not have gotten a representative impression. He finished the call and said he was dead set against going. While the graduate did like Middlebury when asked about the Athlete/NARP thing he had acknowledged it’s a real part of the culture.
Since my son decided not to go my experience was limited. But there’s o question everyone he interested with was conscious of the athlete bro culture at the time.
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I’m sure this OP will really enjoy Middlebury.
Please understand…I KNOW that lots of kids at Midd are involved in sports. My point was that it’s not interscholastic sports like the Big 10 or PAC schools or the like. Yes…lots of sports. But different.
Accidental repeat of the last post.
Interesting. At my college we had NARGs (Not A Real Gentleman) which served a similar purpose in that it was used for those students who spent too much of their time studying. You were supposed to be able to get your work done with no apparent effort, so you could enjoy other pastimes instead (whether sports, debate or just drinking).
Were “gentleman C” (probably now “gentleman B” or “gentleman A-”) grades acceptable among “gentlemen” who did not spend too much of their time studying?
Indeed. There was even an unofficial “Nines Club” for the gentlemen (or ladies) who had achieved the feat of getting a third (barely better than passing) in each of their three years. I suspect it no longer exists since only a low single digit percentage of students get a third in any year, so probably way less than 1% get three thirds.
My daughter faced a similar dilemma: she found herself in a comparable if not identical situation. She was rejected by her first-choice, prestigious, ‘mid-sized’ school(s) on the EC. She faced the option of UCLA or Cal vs. a couple solid, more intimate New England LACs with great reps. and all the advantages of intimacy and easier to find mentorship. Polar opposites (in an almost literal sense). Her focus is physics. She chose Berkeley. We are out of state. I think it makes some difference (some) if your focus is STEM vs. the humanities. She’s not an introvert, but she doesn’t tend to put herself up-front, prefers to let the work speak for itself. She realized that greater opportunities lay there, relative her interest, and that she’ll need to step it up a bit to take advantage of them. Just one young-woman’s experience; not, as they say, investment advice.
Welcome, new Panther! You will enjoy your time there!!
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There’s obviously some truth to what you stated. If you look at UCB and UCLA’s admission stats, A/R and Yield for the three residential cohorts, it shows the following:
| Campus | Cohort | Residence | Applied | % of Total | Accepted | % of Total | A/R % | Enrolled | % of Total | % Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UCB | High School | CA Res | 62,191 | 55.1% | 10,452 | 64.1% | 16.8% | 4,875 | 70.3% | 46.6% |
| OOS | 29,663 | 26.3% | 4,152 | 25.5% | 14.0% | 1,160 | 16.7% | 27.9% | ||
| Int’l. | 20,981 | 18.6% | 1,691 | 10.4% | 8.1% | 896 | 12.9% | 53.0% | ||
| H.S. Total | 112,835 | 100.0% | 16,295 | 100.0% | 14.4% | 6,931 | 99.9% | 42.5% |
| Campus | Cohort | Residence | Applied | % of Total | Accepted | % of Total | A/R % | Enrolled | % of Total | % Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UCLA | High School | CA Res | 84,182 | 60.4% | 8,436 | 56.1% | 10.0% | 4,545 | 69.0% | 53.9% |
| OOS | 33,423 | 24.0% | 4,619 | 30.7% | 13.8% | 1,354 | 20.6% | 29.3% | ||
| Int’l. | 21,877 | 15.7% | 1,973 | 13.1% | 9.0% | 685 | 10.4% | 34.7% | ||
| H.S. Total | 139,482 | 100.1% | 15,028 | 99.9% | 10.8% | 6,584 | 100.0% | 43.8% |
You’ll notice that for UCB’s yield, the International cohort, 53.0%, outpaced its out-of-state’s, 27.9%, and even its in-state’s, 46.6%, with an overall yield of 42.5%. One of the reasons for its high International yield follows from it being considered one of the top-five in many world rankings, e.g., the US News, and additionally because there seems to be more of a STEM basis behind them. If two scientists can’t talk to each other because of language differences, they can still communicate with each other by jotting down mathematical and physical formulae.
UCLA just had an increase all across the board in all its yields, CA/OOS/Int’l/overall being 53.9%/29.3%/34.7%/43.8%, and it could become the first public with < 10% A/R. But it still can’t touch UCB’s International yield, nor because of it, its A/R for this cohort. I agree that UCB is perceived as being the better STEM school than UCLA so it therefore has a higher yield especially in engineering, but some of that is because the former’s E school is a lot bigger if not more selective than the latter’s. The same for Georgia Tech, Purdue, etc. But E is the quickest way for anyone anywhere to reach the top 10% in income, so full-tuition costs are not as worrisome, with end result being a benefit to UCB over UCLA.
Small liberal arts colleges like Middlebury, Pomona, Amherst, Grinnell, Williams, etc., are undoubtedly the best at the pure educational aspect as you stated, but what does an international student (or even a States-based one) who wants to study computer science really care about personalized attention?
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Our son is at Bowdoin and knows plenty of comp sci majors who “like the personalized attention”. They also like that they have lots of opportunities to take humanities classes to flush out their undergrad education. Our son is also STEM (math and physics double major) and will minor in religious studies (which isn’t really religion - more of a mix between philosophy and sociology).
Not every STEM student wants only STEM. Some want a more broad education to develop their critical thinking skills. This kind of education is highly sought after by employers. STEM majors from NESCACs do very well in grad school applications and in the job market.
Congrats to the OP!
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As the parent of a CS major at a NESCAC school, I could not agree more with this assessment. My son and his friends are all graduating this month with tech jobs that I would not have thought possible coming from an LAC. I have enjoyed watching my son develop close relationships with so many profs, some of which have had a profound impact on his future career.
Congrats to the OP! I know several Midd kids who love it there.
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I enjoyed following your thread and just wanted to say congratulations on a great choice! Thanks for updating everyone on your decision and best to you and your future!
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Sorry I didn’t see this yesterday to reply. Yes, even the largest classes are by and large back in person at UCLA (and all other UCs as far as I can tell). If a class remains online it likely has not much to do with size but more to do with an exception being granted (possibly for health/exposure of the professor, etc. – I know one of my son’s sections stayed online even when full lectures by the professor were in person because the grad student who is his section leader/TA has severe risk from a pre-existing condition). There were some exceptions granted but if a class is still online at this point it may be one of those circumstances or maybe there are classes that are going to be online regardless because there is a request for that access from students. Some summer courses are being offered online. It’s interesting in that parents have been up in arms since January about the fact that remote options were still in place, but the students themselves are generally the ones who have been asking for flexibility and accommodations to access lectures, etc. when they can’t get there in person. My son had to miss several classes last week because he was in COVID isolation and obviously couldn’t attend class. He’s lucky in that his professor is letting him take the midterm he missed a week late. But not everybody has been so lucky now that things have more or less returned to in-person instruction. Some is left to the discretion of the instructor. In any case, if you see an online class, you definitely can’t attribute it to “size” per se. Plenty of “large” lectures (which are pretty much never more than 200 or 300 at UCLA – they just don’t have large lecture hall like even I did at my Ivy for undergrad where lectures were routinely as large as 500) are in person, and on the other hand there may be a few small sections that are still online due to extenuating circumstances.
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The OP will be attending Middlebury. No reason to continue conversations about UCLA.
Congratulations again to the OP.
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Midd has J term!
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Congratulations! Yay. Go Panthers! (My son is starting this fall.)
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