Where did you go to COLLEGE??

Virginia Tech. Loved it.

What did you major in? *Sorry I'm so nosy.

NC State. Flunked out!

I majored in sleep science.

According to my DAD, I've been going to the School of Hard Knocks all my life.

Studio Art.

I'm also a born and raised NCSU Wolfpack fan.

I studied fried chicken at the school of hard knocks!

Vassar College loved it a lot!

texas a&m
university of kentucky
now rice university

Georgia Tech; because I'm decent at math & couldn't think of anywhere else to go; yeah it's pretty cool so far; yeah if you like geeks.

i bet im the only aggie on ilx!

Hobart and William Smith Colleges for two years then transfered to NYU. Both were ok. Academically I prefered HWS but for nearly everything else I prefered NYU.

Um, preferred. Obv neither taught me how to spell.

Mississippi State. Four wasted years, one wasted degree.

carnegie mellon, nearly three full years, majored in classical voice/music theater. turned on, tuned in, dropped out...

nyu - enjoyed it ok, maybe a bit too much if you know what i'm saying

RMIT, for a 2 year diploma in professional writing and editing. I loved it to bits and would pay to do it again. It wasn't really like uni though, it was a specific dedicated course.

better 4 years wasted than 4 wasted years, amirite

University of Queensland (wanky) and University of Southern Cross (ghetto).

(well, wanky for an aus uni).

One year at St. Mary's College in Southbend, Indiana (sister school of Notre Dame) - beautiful campuses, but I hated the experience and transferred out.

Transferred to St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Liked the academics. It's a dry campus, though, and kind of monocultural. I liked a lot of things about it, but if I had to go back and do it over again, I probably would have made a different choice.

Currently BACK in college at College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN, doing the post-baccalaureate nursing program. I really like the profs and the other students, but the administration leaves a lot to be desired. Also, it is kind of a dead seeming campus during evenings (possibly because it is a women's college... possibly a lot of the students are having fun at one of the other campuses in St. Paul).

Carleton College, U of MN

I plan on staying here, at the University of Missouri (next year). :/

I hope I don't have to go to college, but it seems pretty imminent.

Most people plan on leaving town. The one bright side to all of this; I'm going to make lots of $$$ from all these college essay requests. Capitalism, yes?

startedhttp://utk.edu/images/ut-wordmark.gif
finishedhttps://www.excelsior.edu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/EC_IMAGES/NAVIGATION/EXCELSIOR_LOGO_TOP.GIF
masterizedhttp://www.gwu.edu/images/main_hat.gif

http://www.disp.duke.edu/images/shield.gif http://img.search.com/thumb/1/1d/Mcgill-logo.png/125px-Mcgill-logo.png

http://www.sportslogos.net/images/College/NCAAn-r/Rutg_2596.gif

When I was there it was kind of a depressing place for everyone. Now it's an exciting place for assholes who only care about football.

The nice part of it looks like this:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/0/0d/Old_Queens_Rutgers.jpg

But much more of it looks like this:
http://www.gradprofiles.com/images/rutgers-food-science-pic.jpg

(the food science building!)

In my second year at DePaul University. For the most part, I dig it. There's that whole "monocultural" thing going on here, as well, despite the school constantly playing up how diverse it is (then again, it seems most universities/colleges think having four percent of each minority is "very diverse"). Met some good people, taken some good classes. Looking forward to the rest of my stay.

mizzou for sure tape store?

I went to Michigan Technological University. I shouldn't have gone there at all, much less right out of high school in the town I grew up in. I had no idea what I wanted to do, shouldn't have stayed in that town, etc. My undergrad career was a long, abortive, fucked up mess. Being stuck at an heavily male, isolated, engineering school was a bad thing all around.

Oh well. It's too late now, but sadly it's still probably the biggest regret in my life.

some places in canada

General Motors Institute, right after they let women and minorities in. Purdue for awhile. Arizona State for a little bit. And Washington State for a smidge.

taste Studies @ Kfc . edu

University of Sheffield and Politecnico di Torino; I'm just about to start at LSE but only by distance.

Don't let Hurting 2 fool you; Ru+g3rs is amazing (Eisbar also went there), and the Food Science Building is, like, nothing more than a bus stop (5 campuses spread over 2 towns = an entire dedicated 8-route bus system). It's got some 35,000 students and there's allllways something going on, and some of the buildings look reaaaaally pretty (and then other buildings are on Livingston).

This is the only photo of my campus i could find: http://www.scu.edu.au/students/prospective/gfx/locations/Tweed762.jpg

v small, sorry. If you can't really tell, it's just some try-hardish, ugly, "modern" thing.
The uni offers a business/surfing degree. I remember hearing the whole course is getting audited. This doesn't surprise me, coz all I remember of those guys is them fucking about in the library and then going to the beach. The main teacher guy (I don't think he was a prof or nuthin) was the biggest moron I've ever seen.

Psychology / RUG (Belgium). Dropped out cause I wasn't Florence N nor disciplined enough to study.

Psychology&Romance Cultures And Languages/French @ RUG (Netherlands).

Edinburgh University, St. Andrews University and Strathclyde University

Undergrad at Oxford, started PhD at Macquarie (Sydney) and am now finishing it back at Oxford.

I R MORON, U GUYZ OH SO CLEVAH.

So Aja, where are YOU going?

Sarah Lawrence College.

UWA - failed arts degree - fucking detested the place
Curtin, BSc (hons) - loved it
UWA again - LLB (hons) fucking loved it

University of Sussex and Georgetown.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/corporate/guidelines/identity/downloads/img/crestcol.gif

University of Warwick, Italian with Film Studies

Williams. There's a spot that looks ridiculously like the first picture Hurting posted, I only realized it was different the third time I looked when I realized the building off to the right didn't belong there. But yeah, I liked it a lot.

Italian? Sounds like cheating to me...

This from the guy that did American studies and now pretends it was a history degree.

4th year. Media and communications/LLB. Melbourne Uni. It's ok.

Hertfordshire. It had it's moments.

It would be interesting to see how the course I did is being taught today. When I started it there was no broadband, no USB sticks or DVD burning, no wireless networking, no cheap hard drives with capacity in double figures, no 'web apps'/Web 2.0 concept, no Flash, no World Of Warcraft, not so much dynamic range compression in music (we covered all these subjects)...despite all this it needn't be all that different, just a lot easier to get things done. They've probably toned down all the cyberpunk culture references too.

First: McGill University
Then: King's College London
Now (but not for long!): University College London

With Crimson in triumph flashing
'Mid the strains of victory,
Poor Eli's hopes we are dashing
Into blue obscurity.
Resistless our team sweeps goalward
With the fury of the blast;
We'll fight for the name of Harvard
'Til the last white line is passed.

http://www.mcgill.ca/files/news/harvard.jpg

btw her hoodie reads: "Harvard: America's McGill" ROFL

PhD here :

http://www.answers.com/topic/strand4-jpg

where I had a couple of tutorials with this fellow :

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/KCLBinary/1:20402

Univeristy of Sheffield, journalism.

Forgot that I'm in college again now! Just started MA program at Suffolk University in Boston. It's fine so far but I've only been a student there for a week so I might not be the best judge.

since Rice is often called "the Harvard of the South" there is a joke on campus to refer to that other school as the "the Rice of the North"---har har har. (i do not condone this)

Try again - PhD here :

http://static.flickr.com/54/135333177_5e3419dda6_o.jpg

University of Texas, Plan II Honors/English.

Taking classes again and will probably get a masters here as well. Too lazy to move from Austin.

Forgot that I'm in college again now!

haha! Must be going smoothly then, ENNB. ;)

Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education (now, after a very, very long struggle "University of Gloucestershire") BA (no hons, due to badness in third year, pass degree only) in Performance Art and Education Studies (neither of which are offered any more). do i get a prize?

also a year at Birkbeck two years ago (hey, it was undergrad level study, it counts ;))

First degree here :

http://www.chem.rdg.ac.uk/images/aerial_1.gif

http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~swr01ms/images/barpic_school.jpg

I kind of want to enroll here: http://www.sankeyrodeo.com/html/clownsch.html

(srsly)

My high school guidance counselor's office actually had a poster for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College which Wiki has just told me closed in 1997! Boo!

Kalamazoo College in Michigan, majored in English. I had no idea whether I wanted to go to a big or a small school (my second choice was UNC-Chapel Hill!), and I'm really, really glad I went for the latter.

http://www.duffgardens.net/content/sounds/img/homie.gif

(left to right: Dan, Krusty (I think))

Sarah Lawrence

Don't let Hurting 2 fool you; Ru+g3rs is amazing (Eisbar also went there), and the Food Science Building is, like, nothing more than a bus stop (5 campuses spread over 2 towns = an entire dedicated 8-route bus system). It's got some 35,000 students and there's allllways something going on, and some of the buildings look reaaaaally pretty (and then other buildings are on Livingston).

-- Stevie D, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 06:52 (6 hours ago) Link

I couldn't find a picture of Brower Commons or the river dorms.

But yeah, I know, it's really not a bad place to be.

anyway, one day it's going to look like this, apparently:

http://www.archpaper.com/images/news/2007_01_Rutgers_DeinerPark1.jpg

I had a lovely room with a fireplace in it in German Haus at Wesleyan U. (Middletown):http://www.wesleyan.edu/reslife/lo/graf/optimized/german.jpg

Sarah Lawrence, 81

I'm really, really glad I went for the latter.

Not to say that Chapel Hill is a bad school by any means, just that a small liberal arts school was a much better fit for me, I reckon.

Haha, Mark C--did you used to go to Offbeat?

Michigan State University
Michigan Technological University

I went to Livingston, only because I'd been waitlisted at the other RU schools and wanted to be sure I could get in. My mom worked there at the time, which meant my tuition was 100 percent covered - don't think they're still offering that amazing deal. I didn't have the money to go anywhere else, and my grades weren't really up to scholarship level. It was my only real choice and, I think, not a bad one.

The thing about Ru+g3rs was that it was enormous and somewhat impersonal. You could get lost there if you didn't make affirmative steps to find your niche. In that sense it's almost the mirror image of, say, Evergreen: both require you to be self-directed and disciplined, but for entirely different reasons.

The entire campus north of the Raritan is fairly ugly and soulless, but it's easy enough to take classes on the nicer campuses - unless you're an engineering major, in which case you're going to be living and dying at Busch.

Now I'm taking law classes at Saint Louis University. I like it, though as an evening student I don't have a real take on campus life.

Didn't Brower Commons burn down?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I used to run Offbeat (95-96 chapter, in any case) :) Did I know you?

Way before my time...started in 2000.

It's still just about going though I believe.

4 years at Oberlin College, the first 2 in the Conservatory of Music, the last two, not, followed by 2 months at Raritan Valley Community College to get my final 3 credits.

Kalamazoo sounds like such a cool place. The people I know from there are great too. I liked my college, but kind of wish I'd known about in high school, I would've definitely considered going there.

john carroll university, a jesuit run school

major- econ
minor- int'l relations

http://www.noiafoundation.com/images/vision.jpg

So Beth, what was Rahm Emanuel like?

There are a lot of SL people here! My boyfriend from HS went there so I spent a lot of time there in 1995-1996. I liked it a lot.

I think when I was there it was the golden age of future meh TV actresses and jet trash. Always, the jet trash. I think jet trash parents sit there thinking 'SLC or Brown? Who will take this lovely brat with matching science wing?'

I've never heard the term jet trash!

It's the frozen stuff that gets dropped from the toilets, isn't it?

Rahm was a really good guy. I liked him a lot, and his success makes me glad.

Isn't it weird how many of the really brilliant people that you knew in college and assumed were headed for stardom just fade away and are totally ungoogleable?

Terrible sentence, but you know what I mean.

The people I know from there are great too.

I was going to ask who you know from there but then realized you're like 7 years younger than I am.

I couldn't find a picture of Brower Commons or the river dorms.

Our four dining halls:

http://maps.rutgers.edu/images/buildings/3085.gif
and
http://maps.rutgers.edu/images/buildings/4146.jpg
http://maps.rutgers.edu/images/buildings/8333.jpg

(Cooper's closed now)

also
http://maps.rutgers.edu/images/buildings/3880.jpg

Hated most of the courses and the institution itself but loved the experience of just being in the city of Berkeley.

I went because it was supposedly the dream public university for Asians (I was going to write "ambitious" but that's redundant, innit?). I had this great impression of it ever since I went to visit my brother there in the early 80s. Hippies sunbathed nude behind Clark Kerr. Telegraph was jumping with many colorful people.

I was utterly crushed to find out the campus was very conservative with the largest student group being the Republicans. There were some interesting courses, but it was mostly a grind with the aim of proving to you that you are not a unique snowflake. If I had children, I would never send them here for undergraduate education.
http://www.asaprograms.com/media/flash_berkeley.jpg
Come on now, where are my fellow alums? Spencer Chow? I think you're among the guilty.

vassar is/was so purty

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/pricey_schools/image/06.jpg

http://www.uwmarx.com/portfolio/vassar_college/images/vassardinbuilding287x226.jpg

i felt like i was in a fitzgerald novel

I work at my University now and love being on campus everyday. Those four years were truly the best in my life so far.

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:GQLvYnUyqh8qTM:http://kenlew.com/collections/ru.png

So sing aloud to alma mater,
And keep the scarlet in the van,
for has she not stood since the time of the Flood
On the banks of the Old Raritan

here:

http://www.oxy.edu/images/Managed/Homepage/fullsize/200701_johnsonhall.jpg

I went to Boston University, which featured, when I went there, an actually evil man in John Silber as president and the only president of a major university without a phd, some other dick named John.

It also featured bautiful bay state road and good sandwiches from the BU pub.

oops. I meant to say Silber was chancellor.

http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=84823&rendTypeId=4

It's been so long since last we met,
Lie down forever, lie down;
Or have you any money to bet,
Lie down forever, lie down.

There goes old... Georgetown,
Straight for a... touchdown,
See how they... gain ground,
Lie down forever, lie down,
Lie down forever, lie down.

Rah! Rah! Rah!
Hurrah for Georgetown,
Cheer for victory today.
'Ere the sun has sunk to rest,
In the cradle of the West,
In the clouds will proudly float
The Blue and Gray.

We've heard those loyal fellows up at Yale
Brag and boast about their Boola-Boola.
We've heard the Navy yell,
We've listened to Cornell;
We've heard the sons of Harvard tell
How Crimson lines could hold them.
Choo Choo, Rah Rah, dear old Holy Cross;
The proud old Princeton tiger
Is never at a loss.
But the yell of all the yells,
The yell that wins the day,
Is the "HOYA, HOYA SAXA!"
For the dear old Blue and Gray

oops. I meant to say Silber was chancellor.

-- mizzell, Wednesday, September 12, 2007 4:18 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I worked at a BU office on Bay State Road during that time!

http://www.faithmouse.com/cartoon562.jpg

my gf went to Vassar. We stopped by after a trip to Mass Moca last year. Vassar was pretty...Poughkeepsie, not so much.

ya... and you went to oberlin? my cuz went there, to the conservatory, loved it. great program i hear.

when did your girl go to vassar?

vassar is incredibly beautiful, if you take the time to explore all the woods and trails and creeks. crazy.

HOYA SAXA!
HOYA SAXA!
HOYA SAXA!

You're fired

Hated most of the courses and the institution itself but loved the experience of just being in the city of Berkeley.

I went because it was supposedly the dream public university for Asians (I was going to write "ambitious" but that's redundant, innit?). I had this great impression of it ever since I went to visit my brother there in the early 80s. Hippies sunbathed nude behind Clark Kerr. Telegraph was jumping with many colorful people.

I was utterly crushed to find out the campus was very conservative with the largest student group being the Republicans. There were some interesting courses, but it was mostly a grind with the aim of proving to you that you are not a unique snowflake. If I had children, I would never send them here for undergraduate education.

Er, I had the exact opposite experience. Loved the courses and the school (once I got out of the 300 person intro classes and into graduate seminars), but found the town to often be really annoying.

To say that Berkeley is full of Republicans just makes me say "WTF?". The campus and the town remain a center of activism and if the largest group is Republicans, then it's because they stick together in the face of social justice/radical/GLBT/crunchy/enviro who each have many many subgroups etc.

did anyone else get an invitation to go to DEEP SPRINGS COLLEGE?

Deep Springs is an all-male liberal arts college located on a cattle-ranch and alfalfa farm in California’s High Desert. Electrical pioneer L.L. Nunn founded the school in 1917 on the three pillars of academics, labor, and self-governance in order to help young men prepare themselves for lives of service to humanity. The school's 26 students, along with its staff and faculty, form a close community engaged in this intense project.

Deep Springs operates on the belief that manual labor and political deliberation are integral parts of a comprehensive liberal arts education.

Each student attends for two years and receives a full scholarship valued at over $50,000 per year. Afterwards, most complete their degrees at the world's most prestigious four year institutions.

I wanted to go there!

columbia

That's very frightening, Curtis! Like a liberal arts chain-gang. Think of the workchants you'd have to do.

Yep. There was a good New Yorker article about it last year.

that omits the anecdote about male-bonding achieved through riding down dunes on burlap sacks while naked.

Per that article, Dan, you'd have been only the third African American in the school's history. (Or first, since I dunno when the two so far attended.)

I think I would last about 3 minutes at Deep Springs College.

lol gay

curtis that's 2 minutes and 50 seconds longer than i would last

ya... and you went to oberlin? my cuz went there, to the conservatory, loved it. great program i hear.

when did your girl go to vassar?

The conservatory I think is considered one of the top 3 or so undergraduate music programs. I got into the TIMARA program, which stands for Technology In Music And Related Arts. I then realized I'd never be able to make all the theory requirements and started to really dislike certain aspects of the program, and discovered video art so I switched to the college. Funny thing is that I had terrible grades and there's no way the college would've let me in, but I got into the very exclusive conservatory because I wrote an essay about Stockhausen and recorded a crappy tape the week of my audition, then tranferred into the college, which for con students only required 2 college professors signatures.

Anyway, my gf graduated vassar in like 2003.

ha, neat... sounds like an interesting experience there.

2003! i was 2005, we musta overlapped. and i just met a new coworker who graduated 2003. u should let me know her name maybe i was at a party at her Terrace House or something :-)

http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/la/orleans/postcards/loyola.jpg

i so wanted to go to deep springs

omg deep springs is scary. bard

Nick, for a second I thought that was Ned on the left (and Louis Jaggerz) on the right in that picture you posted.

If I had known about Deep Springs I totally would have applied. Fucking guidance counselor, less than worthless...

i would have applied solely for the burlap sacks activity

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:WGLIC-QH7heZeM:http://www.cti.manchester.ac.uk/images/1824Colour.jpg
University of Manchester, Modern Languages (Italian and French Joint Hons). I really hate their new branding.

Fucking guidance counselor, less than worthless...

But Dan, he got someone into NMU who had a 4 on their ACT! He bragged about that us in class once.

Assuming we're talking about the same dude here. He may have soon after I graduated.

I got a brochure from Deep Springs in the mail. I was under the impression every 17-year-old guy in the country got one, too.

http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/images/cius_0005_0003_0_img0482.jpg

They kinda look like cell bars, don't they?

Don't say I didn't warn you, T. Store.

penn state. it was ok. it was pretty.

http://aginfo.psu.edu/PSA/sf2000/images/campuselms.jpghttp://www.engr.psu.edu/ce/enve/kappe_labs/pics/sackett2.jpg

and for better or worse

http://naproom.mu.nu/pics/beaver-stadium-lg.jpg

I made it to the second to last elimination at Deep Springs. (I remember it being a Natl Merit related thing, but I can't be sure of that.)

That could explain it.

yeah, I'm NM

wow that's neat john

Woah dude, I didn't even know you applied!!!! (I only ended up applying to two schools, lol.)

(Cooper's closed now)

;_;

and, that pic of bowel commons brings back BAD memories ... of BAD food.

that penn state stadium looks awesome, as does the campus.

i actually loved the food at my school... fries, sandwiches, pizza, pastas, quesadillas, mashed, cereals, pies, cookies... it was like a little boy's dreamplace

I went to Barnard College because I wanted to go NYC and I didn't get into Columbia and the other schools seeemed too scary to me (this was before the mainstreaming of NYU).

http://www.inetours.com/New_York/Images/Morningside/Barnard_4021.jpg

I loved it, academically especially. Socially, it left a bit to be desired. I would definitely recommend it, but it's not for everyone.

lol i also applied to deep springs

instead i went to dartmouth

I've been to Deep Springs, visited a friend there for a few days. To get there by bus, you get dropped off at a whorehouse and someone from the college comes by in a truck to pick you up. There are many bonding rituals.

College for me was a misguided semester at Binghamton University, finished up at Skidmore College. Masters (1 MA and one MS) at The University of Texas at Austin. I'd recommend all three but to very different kinds of people. Nearly went to Boston U for undergrad and grad, both times was convinced that it wasn't in my best interest. Also got into Evergreen College, and had a full ride offer from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

Totally should have went with Alaska.

Barnard girls >>>> Columbia kids

Boston University. I went because they threw a pile of money at me (which my local state school didn't do). I like it because athletics and greek life are almost nonexistent (although you can play sports if you want), so there's more of a feeling of there being something for everyone. Also we've finally started repealing a lot of Silber's uber-conservative regulations! I also like that we don't really actually have a campus. And we have like 8000 degree programs. I really like my department (International Relations); I don't know a lot about any of the other ones, but we allegedly have really good business and biomedical engineering programs. The big downside is the school is HUGE, so there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape and freshman classes are always big (upper level courses tend to only be about 20 people).

The other downside to it being huge is that all 40,000 or whatever of you seem to ride the train at the same time and make my commute hellish! Although that's probably more my fault for living on the B-line. I should know better! ;-)

yeah I loved when they were all "hey if we make outbound not-free students will stop riding the T." RONG. After a month or so when freshman realize walking two blocks won't actually kill them it will die down. :)

Southern Oregon State College, Ashland, Oregon. One term.
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. Two terms.
Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. Five terms.
The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. Completed BA degree.

I was a misfit everywhere but TESC.

<i>I was utterly crushed to find out the campus was very conservative with the largest student group being the Republicans. There were some interesting courses, but it was mostly a grind with the aim of proving to you that you are not a unique snowflake. If I had children, I would never send them here for undergraduate education. </i>

I'm a Berkeley semi-alum (I'm spending my last year in Paris at Sciences Po), semi-lurker.

It's completely playing into the Republicans' hands to say that BCR is the biggest group on campus. They can call themselves that because they count everyone who signs up at their booth as a member. But if you actually walk down Sproul every day, you begin to realize that the BCR booth is the same 5 weird looking guys having conversations with each other. Republicans are a weird alienated minority in Berkeley, both the city and the campus. Asian political apathy has watered down the average , but Berkeley is still quite left-wing.

And as far as future children go, I'd highly recommend the school as long as the kids were already somewhat mature/independent. It's a really, bad (and lonely) place for people who aren't, but it's brimming with opportunities for people who are. Berkeley's red-tape seemed bad at the time, but it was far, far more organized than my current French college.

oops, haven't used formatting for a while

To say that Berkeley is full of Republicans just makes me say "WTF?". The campus and the town remain a center of activism and if the largest group is Republicans, then it's because they stick together in the face of social justice/radical/GLBT/crunchy/enviro who each have many many subgroups etc.

Okay, the campus Republicans may have only been the largest group compared to the numerous splintered more progressive groups, but I was still very disappointed at how politically apathetic and even reactionary many students were/are(?). So many just seemed to want to get through school and do nothing else.

I really had high expectations for Cal, and I guess that's why I was so tremendously disappointed. But after teaching at a step-child of the UC system, I became more grateful for the opportunities and stimulating experiences I did have at Cal -- at least I didn't have Holocaust deniers in my classes there!

I still wouldn't send my children to Cal no matter how mature or independent they were...unless they were so mature and independent that they wanted to completely fund their own education and living expenses.

I'll admit I'm surious to know if Aimless crossed my timeline at Carleton or not. I made it for 8 trimesters, early 90's.

if I'd gone the whole way through it, I probably wouldn't spell "curious" wrong.

Alaska would have been an adventure, but unfortunately I talked to people who'd just been up there to visit and they thought that Fairbanks was a pit. I'd never heard of the place before and thought that the full ride offer was a little creepy, too.

If it had been Juneau, I would now be living with moose.

http://www.hamilton.edu/spirit/images/chapel_360.jpg

(I had class in the belfry)

is Carleton College in Minnesota in anyway related to Carleton College in Canada? Just wondering. :D

In ALL ways. They're connected by an underground tunnel.

thought that the full ride offer was a little creepy, too.

Oklahoma State offered me a full-ride and my response was "yeah, right." Fortunately they weren't the only ones.

haha. not connected, but we did have a closed steam-tunnel system under ours, so you never know.

I still wouldn't send my children to Cal no matter how mature or independent they were...unless they were so mature and independent that they wanted to completely fund their own education and living expenses.

Which is far easier to do at Berkeley than any other school anywhere near its reputation...$6k a year tuition.

Okay, the campus Republicans may have only been the largest group compared to the numerous splintered more progressive groups, but I was still very disappointed at how politically apathetic and even reactionary many students were/are(?). So many just seemed to want to get through school and do nothing else.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that Cal today actually has a huge low and middle class student body. There are more Pell Grant students at Berkeley than all the Ivies combined. This was not historically the case. The FSM crowd in the 60s (on average) came from a far more privileged background. Whereas today, a large % of the student body is there to jump a social class...rather than to tear down the class structure.

(which is easier to pretend to care about when you're rich)

And as far as future children go, I'd highly recommend the school as long as the kids were already somewhat mature/independent. It's a really, bad (and lonely) place for people who aren't, but it's brimming with opportunities for people who are.

I take it you are suggesting that I found Cal disappointing because I was/am immature and dependent. I won't try to argue with that.

After I did my time for four years at Cal, I took courses at the community college and CSU level and found the opportunities for learning and the quality of instruction to be overwhelmingly superior to 90% of the courses I took at Cal. All of my Latin courses were taught by full professors, not TAs, and even the chair of the department (PhD from Stanford, no less) taught the elementary series all by himself at CSU. I'd be incredulous if that were the case for any major undergraduate course at Cal. It's usually some stressed out TA with no experience teaching the course and shouldering all the work. The point of weeder courses at Cal is not to teach any real content but to discourage people from entering an impacted major. I find that very sad and wrong. Such courses teach people to be assholes and that collaboration will hurt your chances of success.

What I liked about the so-called lesser public institutions is that unlike the UCs, they were committed to teaching and student-centered learning; we know the UCs are all about research -- which is great for graduate students but not so great for undergrads. Based upon my experiences I believe Cal's reputation for superior undergraduate education is undeserved. It produced such outstanding graduates only because it had been able to select highly competitive students who would have succeeded regardless of the "education" Cal provided.

Class sizes (over 1,000 in some lecture courses, often over 300 except for two seminar courses in my major) and the lack of funding for TAs in fact did force me and my classmates to educate ourselves. I led some voluntary discussion groups because of these cuts. I didn't feel qualified to lead them, but at least having a discussion group eased the anxiety of the participants.

Undergrad: Bard College, loved it.
Grad: University of Chicago, liked it ok, but they will never get a nickel from me.

Interesting that all the stuff I heard in hs about Berkeley is true, per MM-I. Not that I would have gotten in anyway. Is it still? I need to find an excuse to live there.

Interesting that all the stuff I heard in hs about Berkeley is true, per MM-I. Not that I would have gotten in anyway. Is it still? I need to find an excuse to live there.

Class of '92 here. I have no idea if the conditions are still the same. I thought they would actually worsen over time.

I have to admit I exaggerated -- I had a couple more than just two seminar courses. I took one outside of my major; it was in French with Le0 Bers4n1. And I took an interesting course with Democratic Education (DE-CAL) called Unseen America. Still, I had to put up with two years of wretched overcrowded classes to get to the more rewarding courses whereas lucky froshers at CSU could take stimulating courses with small class sizes (under 20) from prestigous and INTERESTED scholars right away. Overall, I think I made a mistake going to Cal. But I don't regret the opportunity to live in Berkeley and meet some amazing people.

Oh, in case I didn't get around to mentioning it upthread, Carleton (MN)fucking sucks.

Undergrad: Bard College

You and Hstencil and Alex in SF, if the .xls is right.

I take it you are suggesting that I found Cal disappointing because I was/am immature and dependent. I won't try to argue with that.

Uh no? Dunno why you took it personally. Berkeley in general is just a horrible place for immature 18 year olds because there isn't a lot of hand-holding. I'll suggest that you found Cal disappointing because you weren't expecting it to be a large public research university...which it is.

With regard to the CSU/CC stuff, I took about a dozen community college courses while in High School, at one of the best community colleges in California. There were some good teachers, but always they had to teach to the class comprehension level, which was lower than at my (public) High School AP classes. The classes were big and the teachers learned the students' names about as often as they did in Berkeley.

It produced such outstanding graduates only because it had been able to select highly competitive students who would have succeeded regardless of the "education" Cal provided.

I think this is true, but not just with Berkeley. It reminds me of the study from a while ago that showed that people who got into Harvard (or wherever) but didn't go were just as successful as people who actually went.

Cal's not a perfect school by any means. Like I said - large, public research university. It's just the best of that group... Hundreds of thousands of people attend universities very much like it (only with less famous professors) and have similar experiences. They don't seem to complain as much, maybe because they were expecting less. That model might not be the ideal form of undergraduate education (and definitely wasn't meant for everybody.) But it also is a fantastic place for some people (poor smart people who are go-getters, pretty much.)

Interesting that all the stuff I heard in hs about Berkeley is true, per MM-I. Not that I would have gotten in anyway. Is it still? I need to find an excuse to live there.

If you're planning on doing graduate stuff then this whole discussion doesn't apply.

HStencil went to Bard??

What are his feelings on Steely Dan, specifically "My School" and "Barrytown?"

Steely Dan's thoughts on Bard, if I remember correctly: something like "if California slides into the ocean, that's the only way I'm ever going back to that town."

Steely Dan has always taken Bard College (not a university)/Dutchess County references and twisted them around to fit into songs. It doesn't necessarily have to have a "meaning" but I guess if you want to take it literally you can. Rikki was a real person and Barrytown is a real place and there once was a Gamma Chi (but not "way back when in '67") tho I have little doubt that the songs are actually about those things.

-- hstencil, Monday, November 24, 2003 4:02 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

El Tomboto, you went to George Washington??? How was that??

I've kind of been looking at it, but at this point I'm considering Georgetown and American University before GW.

Also:

well the story I heard from Dick Wiles (retired Economics professor and Hudson Valley Historian) was that the Annandale was a reference to a boarding school in Virginia that Walter Becker attended pre-Bard. According to him, the Wolverine was a train that went to D.C. They put the "up to Annandale" in the song to confuse people. They did that all the time with other stuff, too: Gamma Chi was a frat at Bard up to the 1930s, frats were banned long before Becker/Fagen got there.

Also, Barrytown is just south of Annandale off River Road. The late Fluxus poet/playwright/publisher Dick Higgins lived there (and was landlord to some friends of mine).

-- hstencil, Wednesday, April 9, 2003 1:34 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

yeah nabisco, that song, like many steely dan songs, isn't really about what it appears to be about.

omg deep springs is scary. bard

-- Surmounter, Wednesday, September 12, 2007 8:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

whut

so the real question--if you went to an expensive, highly touted school, do you:

a) think you got a better education than you would have at a lower-usnews-ranked school?
b) if so, do you think it was twice as good as a school half as expensive?
c) has yr school's name/rep given you otherwise unavailable opportunities?

in my case, a) probably, b) very doubtful, c) no, mainly because i'm a slack motherfucker

also i had no idea alex in sf went there. wtf.

nabisco, stencil zinged you real good there

xpost

I was a Steely Dan fan long before I knew about the Bard connection. It was funny though discovering what those songs were about the summer before I went to school there.

Annandale was pretty much a dead proposition by the time I was there in the early 90s with the cool bar and the Duchess County sheriff bust-ups long gone. I haven't been back since (although I'd love to visit because the area is drop-dead beautiful), but I understand that it has become even more gentrified over the last decade.

The only cool alumnus that showed up while I was a student was Chevy Chase. Apparently, Donald Fagen's senior thesis about Hermann Hesse is under lock and key.

To answer mookieproof's question: a) probably, b) dunno, c) not where I live now because only academics seem to know about it. Otherwise, I didn't pay much to attend with the benefit of extensive financial aid, so it cost me about the same as it would have cost to go to a state school.

lol "gentrified?" not sure a town with like five houses can be described as such.

Yes, yes, and yes

also i had no idea alex in sf went there. wtf.

Maybe I'm thinking of someone else, since whoever it was commiserated with you on some thread about having gone to Bard.

Queens College, then (or, rather, now) Portland State. And soon somewhere else, presumably.

no, no, and no </bitterdude>

Aja - what sort of college do you think you want to go to? what makes you interested in schools in DC?

I love DC!

The type of college I want...Honestly I don't know...I like Georgeorgetown, but then I also like Emerson...It's all going to be based on what I want to major in I guess and at the moment I've become unsure...I am actually thinking of possibly majoring in Philosophy of Linguistics at MIT, but MIT is so hard to get into...

OMG

Why can't I type today...or any day...GEORGETOWN

Jesus Christ...

Personally, I think that the character of the school as a whole is more important than what you want to major in. Of course, I don't think majoring is very important.

i went to college (undergrad) at the state university of new york - university center at binghamton. suny-binghamton for short, bingo for shorter. i go to grad school at the university of southern california, which has its own set of nicknames.

i liked bingo well enough when i was there, but the suny system is pretty broke and dysfunctional. the library and the radio station were very well appointed though, which was all i cared about.

i don't interact much with usc as a larger university, and that's fine with me. i've only taken grad-level classes in the policy and architecture schools, so i don't get a lot of exposure to the stereotypical dumb-blonde/spoiled-rotten socal types. it's a nice campus though! the doheny library is gorgeous.

are there particular things you love about dc?

I don't know. I just feel comfortable there. More so than I do here in SF. Also, I have more family around there.

I know, those probably don't justify me wanting to go to college there, but I seriously feel like I need to get out of CA.

lol "gentrified?" not sure a town with like five houses can be described as such.

To John Justen, who wondered if we crossed timelines at Carleton College: not even close - sorry. I was there in the mid-70s.

It sucked pretty hard when I was there, too, but as I vaguely recall mentioning here once, Paul Wellstone gave me an A+ in one of his political science classes. That was a high point in a mighty low time for me.

i dunno rhinebeck and to a lesser degree red hook and tivoli have always been weekender-type communities relatively overrun by rich city folk. bard definitely has a lot more going for it, tho, now as opposed to when we went there, if only in terms of facilities. lots of fancy new buildings and such. i was starting to worry that the student body was getting less weird but when i was there in may for a brightblack show (hanging with dan bunny!) there were definitely lots of weirdos around, including some kid who was carrying around a mop like a security blanket or something. fun times.

Red Hook and Tivoli were basically nowhere when I started (in 91) and were getting wealthy weekender-type overflow by the time I left, so I think that is a recent phenomenon. But, yeah, Rhinebeck has always been pretty tony.

I was concerned it was getting less weird also when I read in the alumni mag that there is now a Republican club. That reminds though that because it's a small school, even though you don't know everyone, you have a nickname for everyone. I wonder if that kid is "mop boy." I discovered after I left from a friend that I was known as "nord boy."

Melinda, I'm sad to hear you had a bad time at Cal. I actually took a year off and came back reinvigorated and sought out classes that really took me into a whole new place intellectually. I can't imagine studying something like continental philosophy or feminist film theory at a community college - not to denigrate them, but you don't have a Kaja Silverman or Judy Butler or TJ Clark etc etc (same goes for many other departments). The quality of the TAs was excellent (if a little rough on instruction technique). What exactly did you study? Also, I went from 91 to 97 (with the break).

mizzou for sure tape store?

Unless I find a film school that will cover my tuition...So, uh, yes.

IF I GO TO COLLEGE AT ALL

I am actually thinking of possibly majoring in Philosophy of Linguistics at MIT, but MIT is so hard to get into...

welcome to GA Tech

I don't want to live in Georgia!!

zing

Minorin' in Philosophy/Majorin' in Zing

(not really, though)

Went to Kent State. Majored in computer science. Fucking HATED it. Now for some reason I'm going back to get my master's and then my doctorate. I am an idiot. The end.

If money wasn't an object I'd love to go back and study. I love that structure.

UNCG

Do you know what that means?

Undergrad: UC Berkeley (double major in Philosophy and English)
Yet more Undergrad: Brasenose College, Oxford University (got a second B.A. in English)
Grad School: UC Berkeley (decided I needed to spend another eleven years getting a PhD)

As a lifelong addict of educational institutions, I do sometimes fantasize about getting another PhD in a different discipline. I'm like one of those weird old ladies that can't stop adopting cats or something.

i went here:

http://www.usyd.edu.au/images/content/cws/about/profile/history/Quad-550.JPG

lets just say i managed to graduate and leave it at that.

hey dudes.

there was an article in people magazine last year where they fagen actually goes back to annandale with the interviewer. i read it at the doctor's office and was shocked and appalled.

getting a second b.a. (like drew daniel did): classic or dud? i dunno if i could go through that all over again! by senior year all the freshmen seemed REALLY young.

hey dudes.

there was an article in people magazine last year where they fagen actually goes back to annandale with the interviewer. i read it at the doctor's office and was shocked and appalled.

-- bell_labs, Friday, September 14, 2007 3:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

he's been back fairly often supposedly. anyway, post link to article?

You know, the thing upthread about picking a school with the right atmosphere is really important, and not just for the reason it appears to be. Lots of schools offer similar opportunities to students -- the thing is that some have atmospheres that will guide you to take enthusiastic advantage of those opportunities, and others have an atmosphere that will drive to sit cynically in your apartment avoiding them. I don't know how exactly you can tell this when you're 17, but I suspect it has a lot to do with being a good judge of your own character.

I went to Northwestern for undergrad, which was generally great. But at that time it felt somewhat large and socially apathetic, and for a while I tended to just hang out quietly with the people I liked -- it wasn't until my last year and a half, once I'd applied into a specialized major, that I felt very engaged or excited with my studies. I'm happy with how everything worked out -- I think I picked up valuable stuff even in my hanging-out-quietly phase -- but I have to admit that I went off to college a lot more energetic than I left it, and picked up some slackery habits during the first few years that I'm still shaking off.

(Northwestern seems very different now, and I don't blame it anyway: for people who were motivated and engaged and non-cynical when they got there, it was opportunities galore. And maybe I'd have been more engaged and opportunity-seizing at a different school, but I might also have missed out on the valuable stuff I got on the side.)

I'm now just finishing an MFA at Columbia. I would recommend the program and instruction, but now they're raising tuition and not funding people, which makes it a pretty unappealing choice.

A lot of my vitriol towards Carleton is the fact that it went from 100% need-blind admission (which is why I was able to go) to 0% need-blind at this point. It should be noted that tuition went up $20000 per year in this time span.

Allow me to correct myself. Comprehensive fee (That's tuition and room and board) when I went was ~$18000. Current comprehensive fee ~$45500.

Dicks. You may have 0 of my dollars, so stop calling.

Hey, Spencer!

I finally went with a major in English and a minor in uh, Education! Heh! The minor program was alright but I feel I could've gotten along fine without it.

I was discouraged from pursuing the sciences because of the vicious "weeding" courses. Although I did have some illuminating encounters with brilliant professors (who were actually not Berkeley's most famous intellectuals), my overall experiences is poisoned by that bitch errrr...I meant the chair of the department, the huge faceless lecture courses, and the TA crisis. As mentioned, due to budget cuts some of my large courses had to do without TAs, who are the ones who really do the teaching. TAs were also on strike or on walkouts, and I didn't blame them. My TAs were nice, bright folks, but they were too burdened and inexperienced to even compare to the professors who taught the humble elementary courses at CSU.

I did take science courses at both UC and a CC, and I stand by my pronouncement that the quality of instruction and opportunity for learning at a CC was far superior to that of Cal's. We were actually learning science at the CC instead of just trying to trample on others who might fuck up the curve. At CC, they still graded on a curve, and in the more advanced courses it was a tough curve because we competed against people who were entering medical and dental schools. There was an element of competition with the curve, but also wisely built into the course was a grade that required successful collaboration with presentations and experiments because that is how it would be in the real world.

I haven't taken any literature courses from CC, although I have taught literature at CCs. The intellectual level is generally lower at a CC, but that doesn't mean students and instructors do not engage in sophisticated analysis. At the CSU I attended, I would say that actually the discourse is very sophisticated and on par with Cal's without the "I fart higher than my arse" attitude. At a UC I took a graduate seminar with Sue-me 3ll3n C4ase, who is a huge name in lesbian-feminist discourse, and she was the worst instructor of my entire career. I am not impressed with famous intellectuals. It's not simply a personality clash between me and her; she was uniformly disliked by all except one (her pet) in the seminar.

As for Aja, I think you should definitely leave SF. Going to college away from home is a great opportunity and convenient excuse to explore another place. Grab it because you never know when you get to choose the place where you want to live.

http://www.thaibikeworld.com/images/updatednews/usa/018.jpg

Bristol University, 1989-92 BSc Joint Hons in Biology and Geography

I lived here:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/conferences/images/badock4.jpg

and I graduated in this building

http://img.search.com/thumb/4/4f/Wills_Memorial_Building_from_road_during_day.jpg/250px-Wills_Memorial_Building_from_road_during_day.jpg

i know what uncg means

xpost

I did a second B.A. because I got a Marshall scholarship and knew that I intended to got to grad school back in the USA afterwards; because I had pursued a double major in my first undergrad degree, I felt a little bit weak in some of the areas that I knew would be covered far more intensively for the Oxford B.A. (i.e. Middle English and medieval lit) than in the American undergraduate system. I thought that spending two years reading and writing widely across many historical fields would be better prep for a PhD in English than doing a two year Masters and then starting the whole process over again stateside.

To Melinda re: undergrad at Cal . . . I found that Cal got better and better. My first year I was unhappy with the size of the classes, but things really improved in the home stretch as I got out of the basic requirements and into the seminars. That said, I think my experience with the philosophy department as an undergrad was both more welcoming and more intense/stimulating in comparison with English undergrad because it was a smaller department and had smaller classes across the board. Going to the same place for undergrad and grad school is a little disorienting, you do have a strong "travelling without moving" sensation.

hstencil: That article was in EW actually. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1174152,00.html.

I know a little about DC schools. I interned in the GW library. It is currently the most expensive school in the US I think. The students seemed pretty savvy and motivated. G'town has a very nice campus: it's probably the most traditional of the DCers. I think I applied there and didn't get in so obv. they can make mistakes:) I haven't been to American but I've heard good things about it. All of these schools will offer great opportunities if you are interested in politics, foreign relations, policy, etc. If you are interested in things that more normal students are interested in, you might have to struggle a bit to find your nitch. Other schools to consider: Catholic is very pretty and has a smaller student body, but it probably not worth the money if you are paying full price; George Mason is not in DC but in Northern Virginia, but it is probably the best value. Of course if you are paying out-of-state fees the value may be negligible. GMU is a large state university that has been chasing name professors and basically increasing their prestige over the years. One negative is that the campus isn't all that picturesque. Another thing you might want to consider Univ. of Maryland: very near DC and also has a tradtional campus, and it won't skew so heavily toward policy but will have oppurtunities in anything you want to pursue. So will the other schools, except for many of the students there will be there bc they are attracted to the machinery of DC, I think. Good luck!

<em>so the real question--if you went to an expensive, highly touted school, do you:

a) think you got a better education than you would have at a lower-usnews-ranked school?
b) if so, do you think it was twice as good as a school half as expensive?
c) has yr school's name/rep given you otherwise unavailable opportunities?

in my case, a) probably, b) very doubtful, c) no, mainly because i'm a slack motherfucker

-- mookieproof, Thursday, September 13, 2007 11:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link</em>

COSIGN

fuck u, nu-ILX

http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/puma/oct05/images/Tulane1.jpg

tulane in one of its soggier moments

xpost: oh, dear. one of my best friends really wanted to transfer to tulane a few months before katrina...perhaps lucky for her that it didn't work out.

to a: given my high school friends' experiences, a few spots lower ranking makes no difference, but waaaaaay lower ranked schools don't sound as good educationally; also, friends who went to large state schools had a very different <i>kind</i> of education, and are better educated than i am in some ways, worse in others.

to b: haha, no.

c: yes, one, but it seems like the otherwise-unavailable opportunities are only good for the first year after college, then you're on your own.

I went to Tulane, too...(sigh)...

southern arkansas university, home of the muleriders.
went cuz they gave me a spot on the tennis team and scholarship money for my only slightly above average act score.

one cool thing about the school is (or at least was) its above average international student population. met some rad people from all over. many of them told me the same thing when i asked how, of all the schools they could've picked, they chose sau. they had a big book of u.s. universities. they ran their finger down the tuition column and picked the cheap one.

Aja - My roommate is a linguistics major at BU and claims the linguistics department at MIT (she's worked there as a research assistant) is really intense. Everyone I know from Emerson (most of them transferred there from BU) really like(d) it, but they were all marketing/english-y types. The kids there seem a little more "art school" types--kind of a nice midway between the "normal"/preppy kids at BU and the totally weird kids at Berklee.

UNCG

Do you know what that means?

-- Jesse, Friday, 14 September 2007 03:04 (13 hours ago)

UNC GREENSBORO!!! I know probably thirty people there lol.

and finally:

a) A lot of those "rankings" are pay-to-be-listed, so I don't put a lot of stock in them. At the same time, I'm pretty sure I got a better education than at a school with lower admissions standards (but at the SAME TIME AS THAT, my school has a program specifically for kids who are a little dumber and a lot richer than the rest of us).

b) Yes and no. I probably would have gotten just as decent an education in the general lib arts stuff at Chapel Hill, but they didn't have my major. Also, I got no financial aid whatsoever from Chapel Hill, so in the end BU was actually the cheaper school. I don't really feel I've been cheated out of my money.

c) No idea.

Being for the benefit of Aja, who asked:

I would recommend The Evergreen State College to any student who knows what they want to learn, is very motivated to learn it, and wants to direct their own education. For such students, TESC is pure gold, since they know how to get out such a student's way and to encourage rather than hinder them. If you are liable to just drift in the absence of a well-defined structure, then a more traditional declare-a-major-and-take-the-required-courses approach is probably better for you.

My major problem with Carleton was that I didn't fit in well with their campus culture. Strike that. I didn't fit in at all.

They were very Midwest and middle class and middling students - not bad people, really, but possessing a sort of splendid mediocrity that at first depressed me, then drove me half mad with misery. No one seemed to have a single original thought, nor were they interested in ever having one, if by some magic they were enabled to. It was stultifying and ultimately horrific - for who I was.

Also it's very good for the student with absent-minded hygiene.

I kid, I kid. It seems like a nice school with fairly strange (in a good way) alums.

I'm a freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill right now, majoring in god only knows what. it seems pleasant enough. kinda weird tho since I was raised an NC State fan.

man i thought all you guys were still in high school

thanks for the link, bill! great article.

But just outside of Adolph's, he sees it. The house. ''Right there is the house that I was busted in,'' he says, gesturing toward a two-story structure nearby. Here, finally, lies the story behind ''My Old School.'' It was around 5 a.m., a Thursday in May 1969, when a swarm of sheriff's deputies descended on Bard, sweeping through dorms and off-campus residences, including this small house, where Fagen lived with a roommate. ''They went up and down the halls, knocking on doors,'' says Boylan, who was in his room at Ward Manor at the time. ''Toilets were flushing everywhere to get rid of any pot that you had. I threw mine out the window. All you had to do was say to the cop, 'What are you doing?' They'd say, 'That's it, resisting arrest.' Somebody would say, 'What the hell is going on?' 'Oh, profanity! Arrest him.''' Fagen, Becker, and Fagen's girlfriend, Dorothy White, were all dragged off to jail.

''These were the days when there was a 'war on longhairs,' as they used to call it,'' says Fagen, ''and Bard's in this kind of rural district. They picked up about 50 kids just at random. There were a few warrants, and one was for me, which was based totally on false testimony. They handcuffed our hands behind our backs and put us in a paddy wagon and took us off to the Dutchess County Jail. They took all of the boys, about 35 of us, most with really long hair, and shaved our heads. I remember some of them were crying. I don't think any of them had seen their head for three or four years. It didn't make that much difference to me. But it was scary, you know? To hear the cell-block door slam shut, the whole business with the handcuffs and the paddy wagon. I'd never been arrested or put in jail before.''

what it doesn't mention is that this drug raid was most famously led by then dutchess county ada, mr. g. gordon liddy.

Hmm...I'm realizing that the schools I want to get into are some of the harder ones to get into...I need some safety schools, but I have I don't know which ones would be good...

What are some good schools that aren't impossible to get into?

Dang it....I need to think fully before typing...I keep typing half sentences and then changing my mind on what I want to say and forget to delete the part of the sentence I wanted to change...

Dangit!

The University of Missouri-Columbia.

Oh, wait..."Good"? NEVER MIND.

Haha..yeah, I know...

I'm gonna need one kick ass personal statement, aren't I??

I'm so screwed...

What are you looking for in a school? If you can narrow that down, by location, size, specialty, then you can come up with a list of reach schools, possible schools, and safety schools. If you can do this, it might also save you a lot of time and headaches in applying. I think the book "Colleges that Change Lives" includes lesser known schools that are not impossible to get into in.

Hmm...I hate getting more books about college...just got one today, but that one sounds like something more useful to me.

I definately want a school on the East Coast...preferably DC, or Boston area. Size, I'm not too too picky about that. I would like a smaller school, but wouldn't be heart-broken at a big school. Speciality, I need to think more on...Three differnt jobs I would like to have are translator (for the UN if the world was perfect or I study super super hard), a pathologist, or even a graphic designer...These three things have absolutely nothing in common!!!!! This is probably the biggest reason why I can't decide on a school...

http://letsturnthisfuckingwebsiteyellow.com/yellowcounter.php

Don't worry too much about what you want to study. Most schools will offer at least a sound liberal arts training, and then you can specialize in gradute school. It might be a good idea to have a feel for what type of students you would like to be around, for example heavily engineering/science based versus liberal arts based. Of the things you mentioned, any school will let you study foreign languages, for some of the more obscure languages though, you might have to research which schools have offerings. Pathology? I have no idea . . . I guess you could do what pre med school students do and fulfill the premed requirements while majoring in whatever you want (or whatever you feel will make your med school app attractive). Graphic designer? For something like that, you might want to go to a more artsy school. Or a large university. I'm not sure how much graphic design a small liberal arts college would offer, though I have no idea really. For that you might want to get your BFA from an art school or a large state school. What you might want to decide first is if you want to go to a small liberal arts college or a larger university.

This page (though it is slanted to the former) discusses some of the distinctions.

http://www.ctcl.com/why/myths.htm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/numerosiete/sets/1403349/

as other people are saying, it's way too early for you to decide what you want to do with your life. many if not most people leave college with a very different idea of what to do than before they went in, and there are people who are twice your age who haven't answered that question. however, given that you're interested in lots of different things, you might want to choose a university over a liberal arts college because it will afford a greater breadth and depth of offerings. i was initially pretty attracted to the small college thing, but when i actually visited one or two of them they reminded me unfavorably of high school in their size, and i was ready to go to college, not back to high school, and it wasn't long before i was swayed to the notion that the best undergrad experience is at an undergrad-centric research university - find the universities that have the smallest undergrad classes and/or that are known for their focus on teaching and you've found maybe the best places to go to school. which isn't to denigrate small colleges completely - there are certainly some very good and great ones, and some people may be better-suited to them, and the choice might be tougher up against a very large university - but if your possibilties are boundless, why potentially limit yourself? of course, you can apply to a mix of colleges and universities and decide once you actually get in or not.

is there a reason you've left NYC off the list? or the midwest?

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b361/tapestore/wear.gif

it's way too early for you to decide what you want to do with your life. many if not most people leave college with a very different idea of what to do than before they went in, and there are people who are twice your age who haven't answered that question

I considered large universities mostly because of the "greater breadth and depth of offerings" (as a senior in high school, I wanted to major at American Studies, which doesn't even exist at smaller schools) -- but one of the reasons I liked my small liberal-arts college is that it allowed me to pursue a wider variety of extra-curricular interests than a big university would have. For instance, I was in several plays and in the campus improv troupe without having to take so much as a single theatre class. I also spent a semester writing for the paper without having to be a journalism major. A university might've done a better job at directing my focus toward a specific academic interest, but it wouldn't have let me play outside of the classroom as freely, and since that was a huge part of my education, I can't imagine trading that away.

Let me add that for me there was also the fact that I liked being a big fish in a small pond, I liked being someone that strangers recognized on the quad, I liked feeling like I was an integral part of the campus community, that I had a voice.

I got a taste of a large school when I studied at Lancaster University in the UK and threw myself into more refined academic pursuits (this is where I really discovered cultural studies and philosophical aesthetics, e.g.), and I'm glad I was able to have that experience, but I have to say, it wasn't very socially engaging at all, and I think I'd have been sad if it was the entirety of my higher education.

El Tomboto, you went to George Washington??? How was that??

I've kind of been looking at it, but at this point I'm considering Georgetown and American University before GW.

― Aja, Thursday, September 13, 2007

is she a junior now????