@Postmodern Exactly, so end thread lol
@jjohnross I always completely forget that Drew University is in NJ, lol! But yes, most NJ unis don’t have good-looking campuses or above-average academics/social lives to where you’d be proud to attend. On the academic side, you only have Princeton (where 95% of the world’s population doesn’t have a prayer), Rutgers (good academically but really lacks the typical state flagship feel along with all the other issues mentioned), TCNJ (also good academically but overrated and is where fun kinda goes to die), Stevens (good school and area though it is STEM-focused) and Rowan (decent school but socially seems average and isn’t in a great area). That’s the top 5, everyone else is average and below. Academically lacking, socially stagnant, and very overpriced.
@zobroward that’s why I came from nine hours away. Very refreshing and rewarding.
@ucbalumnus that is very true - many California state/public schools are so selective and many students are very proud to attend and sport their accomplishments with a t-shirt.
Some of the shirts that I see are for those which are only moderately selective (e.g. SFSU, SJSU).
“No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.” - Yogi Berra
RU has about twice as many National Academy members as NCSU. It’s philosophy dept is one of the top 3 in the US. World rankings have it well above NCSU at 48 v 72-98 among US schools. At worst it is a peer.
The campus issue is real but really another question outside academics.
@barrons but is philosophy a valuable major, though?? Lots of studies say it isn’t. NC State is better than Rutgers in actually valuable majors, such as engineering, computer science, etc.
At best, it is a peer.
Value of major is a subjective qualification. For instance:
https://www.buffalo.edu/content/dam/cas/philosophy/phi15-16/phi-LSAT.pdf
Philosophy is a very valuable major, especially to get into med school, law school, pretty much any grad school.
The issue with Rutgers isn’t academics. It’s everything else that’s part of the American college experience: the buses, the commuting, the fact some campus architects were clearly inspired by East Harlem Tower Blocks (not recently, fortunately - the new Honors College quad is gorgeous - but there are really ugly stretches), the landscaping, the athletic prowess or lack thereof (and this would not matter to me but it’s important to many students who choose a large university - to those for whom it isn’t, there’s TCNJ…)
As Postmodern said upthread: just looking at the numbers, it’s impossible to draw conclusions. I think it’d be a superb exercise for IB Math Studies or perhaps even AP Stats.
Graduate school ranking
CS - Rutgers #34, NCS-#48
Math - Rutgers #23, NCS-#52
Engineering - Rutgers #52, NCS #27
HS Seniors who plan to work after college should take into account that Rutgers-NB is located in the huge metropolitan area with tremendous economic opportunities. Manhattan banks, insurance companies, and Silicon Alley are one hour away on the train. Back offices of most banks are in NJ, as well as major pharma, telecoms and insurance companies, international airport, and seaport. When you start looking for internships and jobs (this search takes place during the school year) this proximity will become critical. Rutgers September career fair is large and you will be interviewed by Rutgers graduates.
A bucolic campus in the middle of nowhere is nice but pay attention to what really matters.
By the way, Rutgers won the first ever college football match (6-4 against Princeton).
My daughter went to school 2000 miles from home. A boy from Kindergarten was in her dorm, a girl from Kindergarten is in her sorority. How far do you want her to go to avoid contact with anyone from her previous 18 years? Other daughter went to school about 2 hours from home, and knew two kids from her high school. One dropped out after about a month (so good thing we didn’t base a decision on him), the other she knew from her sport and that girl plays on the same team. Which girl was supposed to NOT take the scholarship to this school so that she’d be starting fresh with no one from the past?
My nephew attends his flagship about 40 miles from home, with at least 200 kids he went to high school with, knew from sports teams, knew from youth activities (girls! he went to a boys’ high school). Loves it. He did do the ‘blind assign’ roommate thing and that didn’t really work out that well. There are also 26,800 other students at the school he didn’t know when he started, so plenty of opportunity to meet new friends. He seems to have the same level of maturity as my kids. He makes new friends, he finds jobs, he deals with banks and professors and buying groceries and making airline reservations (for vacations, not for traveling to school), just like a kid who goes 2000 miles away.
I have hired Rutgers kids for years and I agree with Tanbiko. I had a recent very tough opening and we ended up with a young Rutgers grad with a math BS even though the hiring manager originally wanted at least a Master’s in statistics. The Rutgers math department is sufficiently strong that this kid had covered much of what is usually covered in a Master’s program. AND had fabulous communication skills – not a statistician who would sit in a corner and be unable to lead a small team, direct a discussion, manage a project, etc.
I have a tough time with the whole “nobody goes to Rutgers” or “the football is better at a university XYZ.” I’ve been hiring for over 30 years and have never had a hiring manager specify that being an avid sports spectator is a qualification for the job. I’ve never launched a hiring strategy for a class of new grads-- in a variety of industries-- where we’ve said, “let’s find the kids who like nice weather and want to be near the beach”.
Employers are pragmatic. We like rigorous academics. Kids who choose “less rigor” over more- when it means paying for someone else’s directional U vs. their own state flagship are absolutely free to make that decision. But the world of work doesn’t care about the beach and about the sports teams. Once in a blue moon a kid will get lucky and the person interviewing will be a member of the same fraternity- wow, so nice to have a two minute conversation about Alpha Alpha Alpha. But at the end of the day, big companies want young employees who have challenged themselves, worked hard, learned something of substance (and philosophy is considered one of the most difficult and challenging majors btw- stupid people can’t make it through a philosophy degree) and can communicate and synthesize what they’ve learned.
^ I’d “like” this 10 times if I could.
If a kid is a Rutgers philosophy major who pulls off a high GPA, he/she’s pretty much by definition smart with strong analytical thinking skills.
Why not compare Rutgers to Maryland. A lot of students go to the U of Maryland, or to the smaller public schools (Towson, UMBC, Salisbury) and you don’t hear all the complaining about having to go to a state school, close to home, where it will be ‘just like high school.’ The top students are competing to get into UM-CP. There are also the privates in Maryland where the students want to attend. Not everyone can go to Hopkins, but they also like Loyola, Goucher, Washington College. Why are these so different than Drew, Seton Hall, Stevens? I don’t think they are, and I don’t think everyone in NJ hates NJ schools as they seem to fill up every year.
My daughter’s boyfriend is from NJ (goes to school in Florida) and when people ask if they are getting married, her answer is “I’m not living in NJ. Ever.” He plans to move back to NJ as he likes it. I’ll have to ask him if he considered Rutgers but I don’t think he did as he played d2 football at the Florida school.
@twoinanddone, heh, you’ll find plenty of threads on CC where MD kids think UMCP isn’t good or for them for this or that reason.
Agree. We have family in Maryland. My niece ran her parents ragged with visiting / applying to places like Stanford because she just thought she was above Maryland. She was denied there , accepted to some other privates like Washington U but the money and honors college at Maryland won out. With their second kid, they concentrated on Maryland publics! Both kids at UMCP and seem to be happy there.
They don’t fill up due to demand. They fill up because of population density. None of the NJ privates you mentioned are comparable to the MD privates. In fact, the first two are very, very average in almost every metric in addition to being massively overpriced.
This was a pretty condescending comment. Just because a school is a non-flagship state U that happens to be near the beach, doesn’t mean it’s less rigorous by any stretch of the imagination. 18 year olds who make the decision to attend any school do so with the academics in mind first and foremost. No one here ever said that being near a beach or having better sports teams was going to help them with finding a job. But going to a school they enjoy, by the transitive property of helping them do better in school, definitely does.
Really not a fan of this seemingly pervading notion that every NJ kid should have to attend Rutgers, and be proud of it too. People choose the school that academically fits their strengths and weaknesses the best. People also choose colleges sometimes additionally based on their HS experience. Some people had an absolutely wretched HS career and want nothing to do with those people or that part of their lives ever again. Sometimes people just want to get out of their comfort zone and explore a new state. Some people think their state flagship is overrated and don’t want anything to do with staying in their home state after having already been there for 18 years. For some people, this can be their only chance to really branch out; if they don’t leave now, circumstances may prevent them from ever doing so.
Re Rutgers vs UMD, UMD’s average SAT scores are about 50 points higher than Rutgers in both CR and in Math (50 point higher in each). However, NJ as a state has a higher SAT average than Maryland (about 50 points higher combined for CR+W+M). From this we can conclude that Rutgers has a much harder time keeping high achieving NJ students in state compared to UMD with Maryland students.
“if they don’t leave now”
“We gotta get out while we’re young, cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”
I think Bruce still loves New Jersey though!
The only circumstance which would prevent a college grad from moving out of state seems to me would be if your oncologist needed you close by to continue treatment. The idea that a kid from NJ can’t get a job out of state if he or she graduates from Rutgers or Rowan is absurd in the extreme.
I’m not being condescending- I’m reacting to the idea that HS kids from NJ who leave the state to go to another public institution somehow have the “secret sauce” on academic achievement.
Go wherever you want and wherever your finances and parents finances allow. But own the fact that you’ve made a choice which works for you- and which is somewhat counter-intuitive if the top priority is academic rigor. Heck, I know kids who won’t attend their own state flagship and end up at places which are glorified finishing schools- great for parties and fraternity/sorority socializing, but not beacons of academic and intellectual pursuits. And that’s great. But they don’t get to bash the 20,000 or 30,000 kids who stay instate as pathetic losers just because they have other priorities for their college experience.
I hated HS and was glad to move out of state for college. But if finances had been an issue, I doubt my parents would have supported a decision to attend a non-flagship public U in another part of the country instead of U Mass. Travel costs alone would have been the finger on the scale.