I'm not applying, but in deciding on undergrad for next year (I'm between choosing an expensive liberal arts college or a state school), in discussion with my parents, they've made the point that it might be better to save on undergrad and then splurge on grad school. Now, from reading this forum, it's my understanding that most noteworthy graduate schools won't make students pay if they're studying sciences & humanities, but almost all MBA programs and Law schools make you pay out of pocket. Am I correct in saying this? I'm not really sure if I'd enter grad school (or what I'd do), but it's just something I want to be clear on when figuring this stuff out.
I think that's probably generally true--professional schools accept far more students than any given grad program and could not possibly cover them all (but there are fellowships for a select few). On the other hand, it's not always the case that a graduate program, no matter how prestigious, will pay for you, however. Some programs accept no more students than they can fund in any given year, and some programs don't. I was accepted by the top-ranked US program in my field and I was funded throughout. There were others who had to scramble for money, though. I have to say that funding for grad school seems like a pretty tangential rationale for choosing an undergraduate school. I'd recommend looking more at things like what would the "extra" money get you if you went to the state school: a chance to study abroad? a summer program? What would you lose by not going to the private school? Also, there's no telling what you might be thinking by the time you finish your undergraduate school. I'd expected to go straight to grad school but instead worked for three years and paid for grad school myself.
Not sure I agree with that. It should be A consideration, absolutely. It was for me. As a quick example - I had the choice between Ohio State and U of Chicago (a couple of Ivy schools dropped out early since they they wouldn't give me credit for the 8 undergrad classes I had already taken). Chicago woudl have been a very tight fit with money, and would have required me to borrow a considerable amount. However, since I knew I wanted to go to law school, I chose Ohio State (not altogether happily, but c'est la vie). I went to the Honors program, studied my ********ing ass off for two years and graduated in three years with two majors. Not carrying an extra 30-40K worth of debt isn't something to sneeze at considering how expensive law school was potentially. Now, is dstrunner going to go to law school/grad school for sure? I don't know. I've lost count of freshmen I've met with pre-med, pre-pharmacy and econ degrees who end up at school for 5 years because they realize its either hard or they just don't have that much of an interest in it. If one has the money, go where you want to go. It makes a huge different to your experience, I found, in not looking at things with a "what might have been" attitude, and there's probably a good reason that attracted you to the private school in the first place. Especially since you don't know what you want to do with grad school (or if you'll go at all). But to dismiss the consideration of money outright is a bad idea. In fact, I'd almost reccomend going to an excellent school for undergrad if you're not sure what you want to do, because if you choose to stay an extra year while figuring that out, it makes sense not to pay as much for it. I understand dstrunner is in Texas, and UT at Austin is a very good school. You'd hardly make a mistake going there. I will also add two quick things: 1) If you're going to grad school, "splurging" on grad school is vastly more important. In my field no one cares that you went to Harvard for undergrad if you couldn't get into a top law school. Your graduate degree is far more important. 2) Ignore any thoughts of MBA in these calculations. You won't be getting one straight from college anyway - good MBA programs won't take anyone without work experience. Furthermore, if you're looking at a small liberal arts college, that's a bit of an unusual base for a degree where networking can often be half the battle.
I second nicephoras' recommendation. Take graduate level courses in your junior and senior years. That will prepare you well for any "high level" grad school you wish to attend. (What were you going to be doing in your free time your senior year anyway? )
I'd be shocked if undergrads would be allowed to take grad classes, at least in the humanities or social sciences, at a school like Texas. Department honors, certainly, (and those can be very rigorous courses) but no high-level PhD program is going to have undergrads in their grad courses. I know I never had undergrads in any of my grad classes at Michigan.
Undergrads who want to take grad classes (including those in hard science) typically would require the special permission of the instructor for such classes. YMMV on your chance of getting such permission.
I more or less add my approval to what Nice said above...I managed to get out of undergrad with no debt, but I'm carrying insane debt from law school, and most of my friends are in similar situations. It is possible to get an MBA from a good school straight out, but it isn't typical or as valuable. Also, if you know where you want to practice, a really highly ranked law school is unneccessary unless you are planning on practicing certain types of law in, say, NY or internationally. That being said, a ************ law program will probably get you nowhere.
Sure, but I wouldn't decide on an undergrad institution with the expectation that you could take graduate coursework. Faculty want to keep those classes as small as possible for a variety of reasons. High achieving undergrads would most likely be channeled to department honors classes (usually a junior-senior year combination of methodology seminar and original research). I've been told as a prospective faculty candidate at some schools that I wouldn't have to admit even masters candidates to my grad classes, only doctoral students. While I'd have a hard time not admitting a master's student to a class I was teaching, I would personally never admit an undergrad to a graduate class, especially at a place like UT, which has large grad programs in almost every discipline. There's a vast gap between the pedagogic intent of undergrad and grad classes, at least in the humanities and social sciences. To get back to distrunner's dilemma, the choice between large public institution and small liberal arts school really comes down to your knowledge of self. If you are someone like nicephoras who's received some guarantees about being in an honors program and who knows that you're aggressive and driven enough to follow through and get into the department honors program, then the public institution is probably a good choice. The research resources (library and research databases) will certainly be better than those at any liberal arts school. But if you know that you perform best with a lot of individual interaction with faculty, and if you're not sure about your direction, then the liberal arts is probably a superior choice.
That's probably the main reason. Going to the largest school in the nation and having to focus in a certain field almost right away doesn't really appeal to me given that I haven't a clue of what I actually want to do.
I'll respond to this a bit more fully in a bit, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. I actually think it'd make more sense the other way around. If you decide after a year at a liberal arts school you like math based economics..........
Any large school will require a lot of general education classes anyway. You'd not have to focus on a field immediately.
I think a lot of this depends on how you respond to general ed classes that are large lecture courses versus smaller seminars. And I know from personal experience at one of the schools he's looking at (Bard) that you'd actually get a lot of attention if you decided you liked math based economics, since econ faculty are less in demand than say, photography or screenwriting faculty. Any decent liberal arts college is going to have pretty good econ faculty who are at least familiar with most disciplinary approaches. Edit: I'll also say that after teaching at Bard for a couple years, I'm trying to move to a Research I institution. I think liberal arts schools are great for students, but can be fairly confining for faculty.
Ah, but if you're in the Honors program, your classes will be a lot smaller. The only large lecture classes I had in undergrad were a few science classes (blech) and a couple history classes because the demand was so high. But I had no trouble with teacher contact there, because it was my major. My Econ 200 and 400 classes were all 20-30 person. Does Bard have much of a math based econ department? I honestly don't know.
From what I know from being on a few committees with people, the econ and poly sci departments were fairly quantitative. They have a separate department in political theory, which draws the qualitative econ and poly sci people. Granted these are departments of between 2 and 5 people, so if you have a conflict, your options are limited. So Ohio State has an honors program that's completely separated out from the student body? At Michigan, there were separate honors sections in the lecture courses (those sections were led by the professor rather than the grad students), but the only stand-alone honors class for incoming students AFAIK was a two-year Great Books seminar required of people in the honors program. Then there were honors programs in the various departments that were for juniors and seniors, but the two types of honors classes were not linked. I guess the larger point is to be sure to understand how the honors programs are structured before making a decision. And also know that there's no bad decision here, only different good decisions. These are nice problems to have.
Which is what I was alluding to, in a way. If you KNOW you want a history/English degree, yes, a liberal arts school is not a bad idea. But if you're thinking of graduate school in the future, you're likely to be more specialized then; no absolute need to specialize early. That's my take on it - I was considering more "full service" institutions personally. Thus my interest in U of Chicago (which has excellent programs in both my majors). Of course, that choice is likely personal, so this entire discussion should be tailored to the reader's personal tastes. I wouldn't even begin to presume to tell anyone that going to Bard is a "mistake". Its nothing of the sort. So Ohio State has a better Honors program than Michigan? No surprise there. But seriously, yes, the intro Honors classes were all quite small (and you needed an exemption to get in as a non-Honors student). They were generally considerably harder, but hey - that's what you're there for as an Honors student. Of course, this may have changed, but as far as I know, for Econ 200 (generally a 700 person lecture), the Honors section was completely different and only had 24 people. This is an excellent point, and one that I ignored (assumption is the mother of all ********-ups). Check what the Honors department at Texas is structured like. Very true. If you can afford Bard, you're unlikely to make a bad choice either way.
It's clear that the honors students have to be separated out so you don't wreck the curve. With OSU's general student population trying to figure out why paste isn't a food group, it's easy for the Ted Ginn's of the world to remain eligible. Unlike the warrior-poets of Michigan, who go immediately from the locker rooms to the particle accelerators, and then of course, onward to ... the furthest reaches of space, bitches. http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/?p=1468
I made the mistake of not really considering the honors program at UT (which I've heard is good), and then this past week a classmate of mine with similar credentials got in. So I kind of ********ed up. But that's life.
I was just looking at the UT website and was surprised to discover that they expect first year students to apply to a given major, as opposed to a liberal arts college. For contrast, at U of M, students do have to choose which college (Engineering, Liberal Arts, Kinesiology, etc) to apply to, but they are not required to choose a major until after they've had some experience with actual courses. Michigan students in the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts aren't expected to choose a major until the end of their sophomore year. So I understand your hesitation. You might contact an admissions counselor at UT directly, to find out how easy it is to change your major once you're in the school, should the option arise. However, to my mind (and take this with a large grain of salt since I've never met you personally) given the statement you make above, a more traditional liberal arts education, such as at Bard, will suit you better. Based on what I've seen from your posts over the years, you strike me as the sort of person who would do well in that kind of environment--you have lots of interests and seem pretty self-directed, which are two key ingredients for success. I also suspect you'd appreciate the intensive faculty contact available at a smaller school; perhaps more than you'd appreciate the breadth of options available at larger schools. (Just for clarification, when I say "liberal arts" this is what I mean: A program that encourages students to combine breadth of study with their focus (in a major, specifically). The assumption is that at its most basic, a liberal arts education provides the ability to learn new information, analytical skill, creativity, and problem solving, as opposed to a finite skill set targeting a specific field of work. The liberal arts college at U of M, as its name implies, includes the sciences, social sciences, and humanities fields and thus a major in any one of the disciplines specific to these fields is possible. It may very well be the case that a similar sort of education, via a different approach, is what's intended by the UT structure, but requiring entering students to declare a major is an, keyhole point of entry, by my reckoning.)
Ditto. Now. I'm half asleep. [I just now realized that you had specified UT vs. Bard. Take the points. Bard's backcourt can't handle UT's speed in the transition game. But I digress... ] But I'll try to make sense. What's really, really nice is to have a sweet lil' cushion while in grad school. Trust me. The TA'ship and/or scholarship you get in grad school are just enough to get by. You ain't gonna get rich. Having said that, I personally would've done better economically if I had learned to contextualize my research in "chic" or "hip" terms. And like bungadiri said, it's never too late to ask to get into the honors program at UT. If you can't get in this year, make sure you get in next year. (btw: I honestly haven't been all that impressed w/ honors programs I've seen at UCLA and Berkeley)
There are more applicants to Berkeley with 4.0s than there are places for them. Berkeley, as the flagship for the UC campus is in essence a very large Honors College. Its also not especially large as far as top state universities go. I didn't even know Berkeley had an undergrad Honors program - though I didn't go there for undergrad.
You know, they actually might not have it. I may be under the impression b/c occasionally I had students come w/ forms in order to have the class count for something. It may have been to have a course count as upper division writing or something. My UCLA and UCB teaching experiences are all blending together now.
A friend of mine just told me that her advisor's first piece of advice to prospective grad students (in history, but this probably holds for the rest of the humanities) was "don't do it." Which is probably pretty good advice given the continual state of the academic job market. My advice for potential grad students: anytime you hear anyone talking about the opportunities that will be opened up by forthcoming faculty retirements, just replace those words with "I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about."
Those were my advisors' words as well--although now sometimes I wish I hadn't followed them...law school just isn't nearly as fun as academic.