Saturday, 20 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
A place where people applying to college can ask questions of college attendees, and college students can ask questions about grad school.
Continued from v. 2012.
Date: January 14, 2014
Categories: Life
I’m trying to figure out grad school. The program that Ebeth does would give me an MLIS with some additional museum studies courses. It seems really great for what I want to do. BUT. I really like MIT’s science communications program. However, that program is a lot more expensive than the MLIS program. Over twice as expensive each semester. Is it important to have a MA to do science writing/communications? Is a higher degree important for museum work?
The other problem is that most museum studies students have one field (say, paleontology) that they get an MA or a PhD in as well as their Museum Studies certificate. I don’t necessarily have a field like that. Currently I’m really interested in math and the history of math, but I don’t know whether that would be something I’d want to get a MA in, especially since I have no BA in math and might have to make up a bunch of classes (also expensive).
~Decisions~
Bleh.
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Does either program offer funding (need-based, teaching / research assistantships, etc.)? Because that can totally change the cost from the price-tag tuition, if you stay on top of the financial part of the application.
Also, second BAs are totally a thing people do, but if that isn’t an option, there are definitely some graduate programs that let you take a year (at that school) to catch up on undergrad coursework. I know the CS department at my university has a program like that, and there might be math ones too!
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The program that Ebeth is in definitely does.
Maybe I should look into what the specific math options are. Hmm.
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As of yesterday, I’m now getting email ads from colleges. Presumably a result of entering said email when I took the PSAT.
…I’ll probably get really sick of them soon. They’re kind of nice right now, though. They give me an unjustified confidence boost.
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You might consider sequestering them to a label in your inbox – either automatically, or after seeing the subject in case it catches your eye and you discover a cool potential school – where you can look at them when you want without having them drive you nus.
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Oh, I’m sure I will sooner or later, when I get annoyed enough.
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Heh, I know the feeling. Like, I have no chance of actually getting in to Yale, but gosh, it’s nice that they’re in my inbox.
(You will get sick of them once they start mailing brochures and stuff to your house. I have two shoeboxes full of letters now.)
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Yeah, my mom just recycled a huge stack of letters. Furthermore, I think it was the pile I sorted out as “definitely not interested”. I believe it was only still around because my brother used it for a collage or something. If you’re looking for pictures of happy people and pretty buildings, they’re very useful.
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When I first got to college I made a list of Necessary Things to Accomplish based on those brochures. I think the first thing I did was “Play frisbee with several friends in a large, grassy area”, and the last was “Use laptop outdoors while smiling and wearing school paraphernalia”.
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Ha. What is on the rest of your list?
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One would have to involve putting on goggles and staring intently at an Erlenmeyer flask half-full of mouthwash.
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Then, of course, there’s the binocular microscope…
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Out of those, I have played frisbee in an open area and used a binocular microscope. BU-specifically, I’ve also walked down Bay State Road admiring the fall leaves, but have yet to attend a hockey game.
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i used a laptop outdoors while wearing school paraphernalia once but i was not smiling. it was in between classes and i had a paper due.
if by “play frisbee with several friends” you mean “try to keep up in ultimate with half the parkour club” then, well, check.
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Eastern Mennonite University emailed me and I’m not even a Mennonite…
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If it makes you feel any better, when I was in high school I kept getting emails from various different Christian colleges (all from different sects). I’m an atheist from a Jewish family.
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And I keep getting spam for Jewish dating sites. The internet is strange.
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Anyone have any ideas about what I could, you know, do with my life having achieved a degree in psycholinguistics?
I’ve gotten to the point where I am absolutely certain I’m studying what I want to be studying, but there’s also not really a clear next step in the process as to getting a Real People job… Or at least, one that’s relevant to my field. (Which I guess could be included in the ‘Real People’ label, but I digress.)
-A
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Psycholinguistics is, VERY loosely, a cross between psychology and linguistics (big surprise there, I know). A little more specifically, it’s related to development, language acquisition (child or adult), & cognitive processes with respect to language… Still figuring out exactly what I wanna do with the field, but I took a flatnastic course in cognitive neuroscience, and that’s one of the angles you can approach it from.
Minor in communication sciences & disorders, which is similar (in the courses I’ve been following, anyhow), but edges more in the direction of atypical development (for a classic example, stuttering) and addressing problems, Ã la many of my friends heading for careers as speech-language pathologists.
Cheers to anybody in advance, and props for reading my confused [and hopefully mildly college-educated] gibberish.
-A
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Learning how to help people and solve their problems is usually a good way into a real-world career.
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i actually was going to suggest communication science&disorders when reading your post until i saw your bit about the minor. it’s a great application for psychology and linguistics.
you can also get something approaching a Real Person job in academia studying language and psychology because it’s honestly a fascinating field, and big schools will pay to have you do research on it. that will be a lot of time and effort though, you’ll pretty much be stuck in school for basically ever and it will be cutthroat competition. but you’ll get paid to study what you want and teach others about your field, so that can be kind of appealing. if that’s the way you want to go i highly recommend starting to approach people and make contacts with the goal of getting an assistantship of some kind – either research or teaching, both are available and will pay your graduate tuition
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Gradster, I would be really interested in hearing more about psycholinguistics.
Usually I tell people that I’m very undecided in my direction – my most developed plan is for biology, I’m still considering international relations, etc. When somebody challenged me the other day “if there was anything I could see myself being”, I got to thinking, and the career that popped into my mind was neuroscience / linguistics / neurolinguistics, with a focus on bilingualism and particularly education.
That’s not entirely just because “neurolinguistics” sounds like the coolest thing ever. I like biology a lot, and the brain is obviously cool. Languages are another huge interest of mine. I went to a two-way immersion Spanish elementary school (hence the interest in bilingual education) and dabbled in other languages afterwards. For a while, I was considering linguistics by itself as a major; however, my past experiences have not been all that enticing – I find I don’t care much about how a language is built. I’m fascinated by how language is used. More like anthropological linguistics / linguistic anthropology / sociolinguistics? I don’t even know. If I could come at bilingual/immersion education from a scientific perspective and gather evidence about how that shapes the brain – for kids from the dominant language culture, kids from other language cultures, different age groups, and so on – I think that would be really cool. I could also come at it from a sociology perspective, looking at the communities around these immersion schools. I like that neuroscience is more on the biology/hard science side of things to which I’m inclined, though.
Basically, I realized I have strong interests in those diverse areas, but putting them together makes that career seem really specific and improbable.
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You went to Spanish Immersion school too? *high fives*
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Yeah! 
*high five* One of the best decisions my parents made for me, in my opinion. I’d send my kids to a school like that.
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Advice on choosing the courses (up to a third of your total but no minimum requirement, spread over three years) that aren’t required for or closely related to your major and specialisation?
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A good rule of thumb: pick courses taught by awesome professors. An excellent teacher can make anything interesting.
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Don’t be afraid to use ratemyprofessor.
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My school has an “anti-calendar” run by the artsci student union, which does comprehensive course reviews based on surveys done by students at the end of term. There’s also a similar one specifically for Chinese students (somewhat different criteria and in Chinese). Might be worth seeing if your school has anything like that!
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So, I’m not enrolled in classes this term for medical reasons. To fill my time productively, I’m working on a research project – a statistical study of canine extremism, focusing on coat length and texture. Right now I’m in the process of emailing many hundreds (into the low thousands, I guess) of breeders who had dogs entered into the 2013 Westminster Dog Show. I was slacking over the holidays, but yesterday I emailed 60 or so breeders from the sporting group, mostly retrievers. As their choice in dog would suggest, they’ve been very nice and eager to assist. While I’m getting coat measurements from these breeders, I’m also drawing heavily from a paper published in Science in 2009, Coat Variation in the Domestic Dog is Governed by Variants in Three Genes, by Cadieu et al.
One of the people who emailed me back today was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever breeder. She mentioned that there was debated in the Chessie community about the presence of the gene for long coat (FGF5, for the record), and said she’d be able to provide blood samples if needed. So, I took a look at the 3 Gene paper to see if they’d tested the Chessie at all (they tested about half of the 188 breeds entered into Westminster). I was lucky, and they had – three individuals, all with the genotype “GG 11 CT”. That first pair, GG, refers to the aforementioned FGF5 gene, and means the dog is homozygous for the short hair allele. The second pair is the RSPO2 gene, which controls for wire or furnishings – in this case, the dog is homozygous for the smooth coat allele (so, not a wire coat). The final gene, KRT71, is the most relevant, and controls for curl. In every other described phenotype (the researchers determined there are seven), CT (or TT) would result in curl – but for this genotype, they decided that the gene was not expressed. Everyone take a minute and look at a picture of a Chessie, and then at a Labrador. You’ll notice they have quite different coats. In fact, the Chessie was the only breed found to have this genotype, barring a single Pharaoh Hound individual. For the only other Pharaoh Hound tested, they couldn’t determine the alleles at the KRT71 locus.
So, the long and short of this is that, despite the good science in this paper, I’m quite sure that the researchers drew the wrong conclusion here, and that there is actually an eighth phenotype (“short and curly”). I’ve emailed my advisor to ask if the school has the tools to perform the requisite tests. If the tools are available, then I can ship in some purebred Chessie blood and get an actual decent sample size for the breed (this one breeder alone has 12 adults and 6 puppies). So, I’m trying not to get my hopes up TOO much, but if everything works out then this will be a huge boon to my research. I’m on tenterhooks waiting to hear back from my (incredibly kind) advisor. I also asked her about a very significant change in my approach, but I just don’t have the resources (mainly, time) to go with my initial plan. This study is very much self-guided, and basically grad work (as both of my advisors have said)… so it could end up being pretty significant towards my academic career. Certainly something to distract from my GPA!
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Woah hey there hello just stopping by to say that Glassboro and I are having a great time in college. We sing and contra dance together. Yay fun times. I can’t promise I’ll be back to check this.
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First day of classes today! Well, class, singular. Literature of the Restoration is either going to totally kill me or it’ll be great. Or both. I don’t know yet, but I’m terrified. Today being the first day of class we talked about historical context, which I was a-ok with, but I’m worried that when it turns into, oh, y’know, a 300 level English class for English majors instead of “let’s talk about history, yay!” I’m going to be blown out of the water. Urgleblergh.
Meanwhile I’m getting more disillusioned with college and it’s worth to my life. I know I’d hate myself if I dropped out now, because I want proof that I can do structured education (even if I don’t really agree with it) since I never did before coming here, but still. I can’t help but wonder if I’m just wasting my time and my parents’ money.
Aside from all the horror or actually doing work for classes, I like the fun times when we learn cool stuff though, so I guess it’s okay, and just a year and a half more and I’ll be free, until I figure out whether or not I’ll go to grad school, I guess.
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here’s an english major secret from an english/history dual degree perspective: they’re basically history majors that talk about things that are documented by writers instead of things documented by historians
basically, you’ll be fine. if in doubt, just take the hard-line “motivation and context are everything” perspective and you’ll get to just write about history anyway.
and don’t worry about a little disillusionment, i think of it as just the logical next step in your education. you’re outgrowing undergrad. the fact that you still like the learning cool stuff is what’s important, you probably just want to get to the point where you can do that on your own in your own time and for your own reasons. i was SO sick of undergrad my senior year there, and i almost didn’t go to grad school because of it but fortunately i found a way to just talk about things i care about. there’s a lot more freedom in grad school. even so, i’m trying to push through it as fast as i can because i don’t want the next stage of disillusionment to hit before i’m ready to graduate. i guess basically i think the way to escape it is to keep pushing forward until i get to the level where i can set my own schedule/projects, which is an exhausting prospect but it’s working out so far i guess?
then again, college genuinely just isn’t for everyone. i have friends who have dropped out who are honestly doing just fine. some jobs are much more about skill and networking than academic achievement, and in order to do what they wanted to do they needed to get out of the structured system. again, it’s the learning that’s the most important
i think you should definitely finish it up though, having a degree opens a lot of doors even if you don’t necessarily work in the field you studied in undergrad
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THANK.
Having now attended all of 2 sessions of said class, I think it’s going to be fun, though still drowning me in readings. The professor is really great, and I actually have Things To Say that are relevant, so that’s good, and it’s especially helpful that we’re talking about a time period I have a decent stranglehold on understanding. We might read the Beggar’s Opera for it, in which case I might just have it completely made, because I’ve spent so much of my time reading and pondering and researching that play for fun that honestly I’m not worried about being able to coherently ramble on pretty easily.
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Good luck Midnight Fiddler! I know exactly how you feel. Last semester I took a class called “Gateway:Intro into Critical Methods”, which was essentially a literary analysis course required for majors, and it took me much of the semester to feel comfortable in the class and not fear getting “blown out of the water” as you put it. I was totally intimidated by the seeming genius of my fellow classmates at analyzing texts and I totally freaked out before our first written assignment. The class made me (very briefly) question my decision to be an English major, a decision that I had been very clear on since the second half of my senior year in high school (3 years ago).
In the end, the course became one of my favorites. The professor was really nice and helpful, and it turned out that everyone in the class felt like “everyone else” was more knowledgeable than they were, and once we all got over trying to make an impression, the atmosphere calmed down a lot. It also helped when we actually read some texts (lots of Joyce), vs. theoretical discussions that encouraged waxing eloquent.
Also, I would like to note that I always find the first day/first week of classes to be overwhelming and nerve-wracking, and I’m in my 4th semester now. Give your classes a chance to develop, and remember: the professors do not expect you to know everything on the first day even if you seem to get that impression (have totally fallen for that one). You’re taking the course to learn the skills/info, not review something you already know.
Hope this post has been helpful vs me just rambling on…
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My tentative physics major course plan resembles a Feynman diagram.
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One of my goals for this semester/really-need-to-do-this-or-else plans is getting an internship for next fall. My current plan is to try and get an internship in publishing, either in a publishing house or a literary agency. In all honesty, I find the task somewhat daunting. Yes, I have a working and well-constructed resume, and the Career Center at my school is somewhat helpful, but the thought of entering the “real world” of the workplace is something that both excites and scares me.
I suppose my question is, any advice to give on getting an internship in general or specifically in the publishing field.
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don’t be afraid to just send out emails, not every job/internship gets posted right away. research the company beforehand, reach out to the appropriate person, and show that you’re really interested. they’ll probably send you back through an application process, but your name will stick out and you might get a sense of what they’re looking for in an intern which can help your cover letter
oh yeah, and do a cover letter. even if it’s not listed as a requirement.
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SFTDP, not logged in
but one more thing on the cover letter, make it unique/tailored to the job you’re applying for, don’t just give them a generic “here is me and here is what i’m good at.” that’s what your resume is for. talk about what you think makes that specific job a good fit for you
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Thanks for the advice, Ebeth! Time to put it to use.
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Kittymine — I feel like I *should* be able to offer advice, since I have successfully acquired an internship, but it’s probably very different doing so in a technical field than in publishing. Good luck, though!
—
Today is my third day of class. After today, all my classes will have met at least once. So far, they’ve all been pretty good, although I am not sure that I got enough sleep last night to successfully deal with three classes today. My third class starts in an hour and I should probably go buy some tea or something but I don’t want to go outside into the 14 degree weather, so the soda in the vending machine will have to do. If I’d had more time between classes, I would have gotten tea at the farmer’s market in the building my first class was in. I am so glad that the farmer’s market is back, I can buy fresh bread and cheese for lunch on Thursdays again.
I’m taking 17 credits this semester! This is the first time I’ve taken five classes all at once! I am hopeful that nothing will go wrong. I can graduate a semester early (December ’14 as opposed to May ’15) if I don’t drop any classes this semester, but if I need to for health or time management reasons, that’s okay too.
These are my classes:
History of Math (last course for my minor, I think)
Language Processing (upper-level CS; compiler design)
Geomorphology (mid-level geology; processes leading to the creation of Earth’s surface)
Computer Information Security (my first graduate course!!)
Software Engineering (more upper-level CS)
anyway this has been kind of rambling but I am excited for the semester!
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Ooh, History of Math. Tell me all about it!
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Hey, that’s so cool! I’m taking History of Math next semester as well… *further course-twinness ensues*
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History of Math is, at my school, an elective course that isn’t offered very often, so I’m lucky to catch it! According to the professor, we’re going to be spending most of our time on ancient and modern systems (largely skipping over the dark ages/medieval era). In our first class, we learned about the Babylonian base-60 arithmetic and writing system.
I’m mostly excited to learn about the modern-era mathematics! I don’t have a class schedule so I don’t know when that will be, but I’m sure we’ll get there eventually.
Our textbook is “Journey into Genius” and I haven’t bought it yet, so I don’t know how good it is, but it’s a paperback that costs book-price and not inflated-textbook-price, so if it’s good I’ll let you know!
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oops, the book title is actually Journey through Genius. A bit less like Fantastic Voyage than I remembered….
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So I am finally getting around to actually applying to those internships I had in mind, in no small part hanks to the fact that we’ve had three snow days in row. I worry, though, that my professors will not receive my requests for rec letters in time because of this. I shouldn’t have left it to this late. Some of those deadlines are coming up real soon.
Also it takes me forever to check the little race box on forms. It’s mandatory for this one form though, and I know what I’m going to check off, probably, but I don’t particularly like doing it. Either have it not be mandatory or let me specify ethnicity, please. I really don’t like the broad categories the official US census uses.
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I don’t know about other fields, but I do know in music the stated deadlines don’t really apply to recommendation letters – the program realizes that it’s not under your control and that many professors are notoriously bad at completing a task within a deadline.
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I’ve heard that before, but this program specifically noted that rec letters had to be received by the regular deadline, which is why I’m more worried than I might otherwise have been.
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Life update, college course edition:
-Information Security was pretty boring at first and he relies a lot on Mathematica, but we covered RSA in our last class and I love RSA.
-I feel in over my head in Geomorphology. Everyone there is geology majors and I feel like every question I ask is dumb and obvious. Also we did a lab about viewing 3D pictures and I was afraid it wouldn’t work because my eyes are not great, but it did… eventually. I just need to pass this class and I’m done with geology, though!
-Software Engineering is going to be a group project and I’m pretty excited, I like my group members and I think we can accomplish the assignment.
-Language Processing is like an alternate universe where the course I hated at U of R, the course that soured me on U of R, was taught by a competent and interesting professor. I actually like the material this time around, it turns out!
-History of Math is fun! We spent the first three classes on ancient Babylonian and Egyptian math, and our most recent lecture was on pre-Socratic Greece. My professor emphasizes that stories about the ancient Greeks are only that, and not facts, and that Pythagoras probably did not actually sacrifice 100 oxen when he thought up the Pythagorean Theorem. It wasn’t even necessarily his — it might have come from someone else in his cult.
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Did any MuseBloggers apply to the Claremont Colleges this year? (aka might any of you come visit me sometime?)
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Yes! I got waitlisted at HMC last year, but really hoping that I’ll get in fully this year.
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So I have a list of possible bachelor’s degree majors that are offered at nearby colleges, are at least somewhat interesting, and don’t involve too much advanced math or other things I struggle with. Some feedback from sciencey people would be appreciated?
Anthropology: I was always interested in paleontology, archeology, and evolution. Learning about early humans seems interesting. Mom*Storm (PhD biologist and veterinarian) says there aren’t too many jobs in it so I would probably end up being a teacher. 
Biology (general): I did well in biology courses in high school, I would like learning about animals, plants, fungi, and ecosystems, and it involves less math than chemistry or physics. Mom*Storm input: I would probably work in a research lab, which she doesn’t recommend because it’s not a stable job and doesn’t pay well. (I wouldn’t mind doing research and experiments though)
Environmental Science: According to Mom*Storm, a growing field for jobs since companies need people to study their environmental impact. I took a high school environmental science course and did well.
Marine Biology: Only offered at one school, but that’s okay. I live near the ocean and I wouldn’t mind going out on boats to study sea life.
Other things: I love space, but jobs at NASA or private space companies would involve advanced math, physics, and engineering, so they’re probably not for me. I can still learn about astronomy on my own and follow new developments in space exploration. If science jobs prove too difficult I might be interested in journalism, I’m good at writing concise reports and informing people about events is important to me. I like theater and want to continue doing lighting for shows in college, but probably not as a job.
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There is a growing need for environmental science (I’m in APES this semester and learning all about it), but is there any way you could use biology skills in that field? If you enjoy if, you could probably minor in it or take enough classes to be of some use to the field of study. Environmental seems to involve a fair amount of statistics and math, but probably not so much such as to be inaccessible- I know the math vs science struggle all too well. (Sampling water and cataloging trees is not quantum physics.)
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The phrasing of your post makes me feel like you’ve been told that you’re not good at math or science. Please consider if that is actually true or if it’s something you believe because others have bullied you into thinking it.
With that said —
Biology does involve a lot of chemistry, I’m told. I have never taken a biology course at a college level, so will have to defer to someone else.
Have you considered geology? I don’t know if it’s offered in your area, but I really like the geology courses I’ve taken, and they haven’t been too math-heavy. You can get a job making a lot of money looking for oil as a geologist. It’s also related to environmental science.
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Second the thinking about if you’re good at math or science. I don’t know what math you’ve done so far, but math continues to change as you go to school. I was pretty good at math up until calculus, which I was bad at. But there is other math, and I took calculus again and did pretty well with it a second time, but it did not have to be the last math class I took! There were plenty more (though at the time I stopped taking math out of an interest in other areas because I am interested in everything and there isn’t time to take Everything every semester.)
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Biological careers do NOT necessarily involve lab work, and in fact can be very stable. The pay depends primarily on your degree, but at lower degrees it is correct that you would not make much. If you wanted an extremely general biological career, you could for instance teach or work in a museum. If you wanted to branch out more you would have to specialize. Marine biology is a fantastic area with a bunch of possible careers, some of which get funding from the government while others do not. If you enjoy it, I would recommend looking into it further. For the more highly specialized areas, though, it will require organic chemistry.
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You’re describing biological/physical anthropology, so make sure the schools you’re looking at have strong departments in that specifically, rather than (or of course in addition to) cultural or linguistic anthropology!
Also, if you’re pursuing a general-science bachelor’s degree (rather than say engineering where you have to apply into program), keep in mind that you will probably have the chance to explore classes in a lot of these fields. I also think it’s relatively rare for a degree to lead that directly into a job.
They all sound interesting. You sound the most interested in biology, although I don’t think you should discount astronomy straight away.
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Anthro major here. So the first job I had out of college was selling things at a bakery. The second job was awesome, fun, paid fairly well and wanted an anthro major. So that was exciting. It was with a design company. Human-centered design is something that is becoming a strong field in design, and design research jobs are something that anthro majors can do. There are a lot of jobs out there working with recent immigrants, with government. Basically anything involving people. All that is cultural anthro, which is not the sort that studies ancient humans but at least at my school you took classes in all three areas (we didn’t offer much linguistic anthropology but there were plenty of biological anthro, cultural anthro, and archaeology courses). I know someone who was an anthro major with a bio minor and I think that worked out pretty well for her. One thing that anthro is NOT is paleontology. Geologists do that. However there aren’t tons of jobs digging up dinosaurs as far as I know but I’m not actually a paleontologist.
One thing that my school, Beloit College, offered is a museum studies minor. Museum work is an awesome way to keep learning and showing things about the world. Most jobs require a master’s, though, but a minor in Museum Studies would be a good start and something most other students didn’t have.
Have you looked into Psychology? A lot of my biology interested friends seem to like it. And I’d second Geology. It combines a lot of the things you’re looking for out of biology and anthropology.
Good luck! Do you have to decide before you get there? I think it is best to take a couple classes and then see what you liked.
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Thanks for the input, everyone. I narrowed it down to environmental science and marine biology, and ended up choosing marine biology because it interests me more. Assuming I can do all the prerequisite classes, I will learn the ways of the squid and corals. Hopefully I chose right.
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Okay, panicking again. I thought I liked marine biology but my parents pointed out that I don’t go outside or swim in the ocean very much. How can I know if I’m really interested in something or not? I’m afraid that even if I’m interested in a field now, it’s just a phase and I won’t care about it in a few years. Help?
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why do you have to decide right now?
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I don’t have to for the first semester, but depending what major I choose there might be prerequisite classes I have to take in the first two years.
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My advice is to approach marine biology as a hypothesis that you’re going to test for a few semesters. Take the prerequisite classes on that track since it’s your best guess right now for what you like, but – and this is important – take other cool classes at the same time and keep your options open. Like backup hypotheses! That way you can try something you really think you’ll like, and if it doesn’t work out, you’ve already got some other balls in motion that you can pick up.
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Since you live in a state with access to the ocean, go outside and look at marine life now! I’m not saying it’ll give you an idea of what you want to do in life, but at least you might feel more certain about this field with a bit more practical experience.
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Rainbow*Storm:
Biology woes! I hear them. Here’s my advice, as a college student with no job/possibly not gonna be able to get one even without grad school.
MACRO or MICRO: which do you prefer?
Do you like thinking about biological processes, genetics, medicine, and things on a molecular level more?
Or
Do you prefer thinking about ecology, animal interaction, and evolution on a larger/interspecies scale?
I’ve found there’s mostly a divide between people who like these two sides of biology (though there’s always some overlap and some people in the middle). I personally prefer macro way more. Unfortunately, that’s also the side it’s harder to get jobs in, since fieldwork is harder to find & more expensive than a lot of labwork.
People who are into the first tend to encompass a lot of premed students as well. After I came to my college and figured out I was pretty firmly in the second category, it was kinda tricky because my school really offers a lot more micro stuff, and really has a pre-med track that a lot of people do, and I find that my school in general is really grad-school-pushing oriented. As someone who’s no longer sure whether or not grad school would be good for me, this can be daunting at times.
On marine bio specifically: it can be pretty competitive (very much so if you’re into mammals, much less so if you want to study invertebrates or algae or such), and is much harder to get into as a field unless you’re going to a school with a program specifically for it. I don’t know where you are in the college-application or decision process, but that’s really a factor to consider as well.
I have a lot more I can say if you’re interested/it’d be helpful (esp on diff fields in bio) that I can talk about later, but I gotta run for now!
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Macro, definitely. And I think marine mammals are cool and all, but they’re kind of overrated when there’s cephalopods and deep-sea fish and stuff. Thanks for the advice. <3
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Let me make sure I understand the situation, R*S. You’re planning to study marine biology in Nebraska? Wouldn’t it help to have an ocean nearby?
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I suppose the heat in California is the price we pay for being near the Squidrealm.
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I saw this in the recent comments and thought: “Wait, what? Did Rainbow*Storm reply to what I said about Nebraska earlier?”
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Sorry, I can’t always keep track of where MBers are in real life, especially when you start going away to college and things. It’s much easier when we’re all space squids. Of course, Randomosity and Piggy are our agents in Nebraska.
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I’m going to second this — my partner’s older sister is having some trouble doing her marine biology graduate work since she moved to central Tennessee. I keep hearing about her talking about moving back to the Northeast to finish her degree — there’s some good programs in Boston, apparently. (Granted, there were a variety of other factors that may have caused her trouble. Having to move with little notice due to family troubles has definitely affected my partner’s life for the worse, and it may be safe to assume a similar reaction)
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There’s only one really interesting-looking history class being offered next semester and I’m nearly done with all my gen eds, so I really need to be taking history classes from this point out. BOO.
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Word of warning: don’t go to a 4-year college until you’re ready!
I went to Washington State in 2011-12. I was totally unprepared to live alone; I didn’t have the maturity or self-motivation to succeed. Never left my dorm for anything but classes and meals. Didn’t make any friends, failed a bunch of classes, got terminally depressed…not a great year.
Now I’m living at home again and going to a community college, which I should have done in the first place. I plan to transfer to another four-year college much closer to home. All’s well that ends well, I hope!
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I made this decision a while ago but I can’t remember if I’d definitively stated it on MuseBlog. I’m definitely, 100% going to music college next year!
I realised that deep down it’s something I’ve wanted to aim for all along, I’ve always loved it, but it was just a question of confidence. And funnily once I’d actually made the decision to go for music, and stopped worrying about all the things I was worrying about, it freed up many things to do with my playing also.
So this September I’ll be starting a bachelor degree in violin performance! A tiny part of me is still pleasantly surprised I’ve made it this far! But I know it’s a long and hard road ahead, and I still have an unbelievable amount to work on.
Here’s to dreams and attempting to follow them!
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God help you (but mazel tov!)
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Heh, thank you!
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A week away from graduation, I have one little piece of advice for anyone preparing for college: it takes very little effort to make friends with your professors, and the return on investment can be enormous. A few times this semester I chatted with one of my professors after class as he walked back to his office, and because of that I got an A in a class that I probably would otherwise (I estimate) have gotten a B or a B-. Professors are just geeks that love their subject so much that they choose to make it a living instead of a hobby. A couple of, “I was curious…” questions can get them talking for hours and can move you up quite a few notches in their eyes. It can get you better grades, more scholarship money, more research opportunities, more professional connections, and a more enjoyable college experience. Believe it or not, most professors actually do care about you and want to help you succeed, but if you pretend that they don’t exist outside of class, they’ll never be able to help you out. I wish I had realized this back when I was a freshman, because I wasted a lot of opportunities by thinking of professors as unapproachable demigods instead of as people.
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I visited a few colleges this summer and I thought I might note my thoughts about them? Just in case anyone else is interested.
Columbia: I couldn’t actually make out much of what the guy at the information session was saying, because the room, while very grand, echoed badly. I’m going to assume it was along the lines of all the other information sessions: “holistic admissions process,” “need-blind applications,” “generous financial aid,” “dynamic community,” etc.
They make a very big deal of their core curriculum, which isn’t something I was into, but it might appeal a lot more to someone who’s into classics and philosophy. Actually, it sounded like Pretentiousness 101, but that’s probably because I was tired. The campus is gorgeous, though small and sort of insular, and of course it’s in Manhattan, which is nothing to sneeze at. In general: obviously amazing academically, also pretentious and feels like it’s very expensive (mostly because all the students I saw were dressed like they’d walked out of an advertisement for Harvard).
NYU: I can’t comment much because didn’t actually do an official tour here, just followed Cat around the campus going “wowwww” because Cat is amazing. There’s not really a campus, actually, which is probably excusable as it’s in the middle of New York City. None of their programs look like things I’d be into, and also they seem to disregard SAT scores/not look much at standardized tests on applications, which is a problem because I’m much better at standardized tests than I am at, like, actual school.
Northwestern: Really, really friendly! I thought Northwestern seemed like a great place to be. They seem to genuinely put a lot of work into getting students (paid) internships and jobs, which is nice. They also have limited distribution requirements and you can study a lot of different things and double-major more easily than at most of the other schools I looked at. The community seemed quite down-to-earth and open, though, of course, I was there during the summer.
What I didn’t like was the emphasis on football. I realize that this is just a Thing that U.S. colleges do, especially Big Twelve or whatever it is schools, but I hate the whole culture of college football. (I mostly hate that I will be working a lot to earn money to pay to the university so that a bunch of muscley dudes can beat each other up. Which sounds worse when I write it out but seriously, I hate it.) The football thing aside, though, definitely one of my favorites!
University of Chicago: I was staying with my aunt, who lives in Chicago, and she kept telling me that if I went to U Chicago I’d get mugged. Apart from that, U Chicago seemed awesome. Or maybe I’m a sucker for Neo-Gothic architecture and ivy. It helped that we had a very cool and very attractive tour guide- but anyway. They have a core curriculum like Columbia does, but it’s much less extensive and it looks like you could use AP credits to get rid anything you didn’t want to do. It also seemed like a very challenging place, academically, which I liked! And much more diverse than Columbia.
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In summary: Didn’t end up liking Columbia much, not tremendously interested in NYU, really liked Northwestern and U Chicago! A while back, I made the horrible mistake of falling in love with Cambridge (specifically, their Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program). I’m trying to figure out reasonable schools, as all four of the above are reaches.
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I just wanted to let you know that I laughed about “Pretentiousness 101” because my mother graduated from Columbia back in the day and that was definitely the impression I got from reading between the lines of her trying to convince me to apply there. Maybe it was just something about the art history courses she took for her physics degree…
Most people choose state schools (usually in their home state because it’s cheaper) as safeties? I’m not sure if you are a US resident, though, and so that might not make sense. Anyway I’m genuinely glad I’m at a state school now because it means I will actually be able to finish my degree and use it to get a job – a B.S. from a state school is miles above no degree from a private school.
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Our student tour guide kept mentioning that the Core Curriculum made it easy for Columbia students to strike up a great conversation about great European philosophers. Toward the end of the tour, my dad leaned over to me and said, “It sounds like they’re bringing up the next generation of people I don’t want to talk to at parties.”
I live in California, though most of the UCs really aren’t safeties, especially Berkeley and L.A. I might apply to UC Santa Cruz as a safety- but really, I don’t want to go to school in California. I suppose my safeties are in New Zealand, where I’d be happy living. The downside is that the academic year starts in January, so I wouldn’t be totally certain for a while.
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Have you looked at any liberal arts colleges? You seem to value studying a lot of different things and colleges that put a lot of work into helping students find opportunities. I found in my search that small liberal arts colleges do those things really well. Also, many are small and don’t put much emphasis on selling out football stadiums! (With some exceptions, though.) I only speak for my school, but ballroom dancing is our most popular – and most successful – sport. There is also a wide variety of them, and some very good schools that have acceptance rates above the teens.
I am a big fan of liberal arts colleges. They’re not for everybody, but I noticed that there weren’t any on your list, and I think they’re worth looking into!
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I have! I toured Reed last summer and have looked into a few of others since then (Oberlin, Pomona, Carleton, etc.). Right now I’m not sure any of them are for me, because I’d like both a big school and some programs that I’ve not found at the liberal arts schools I’ve looked into. I’m going to research Swarthmore, though.
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Oh, whoops. Didn’t see this before adding my comment. What are the programs you’re looking for?
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From the graduates I’ve worked with, Carleton strikes me as the most Muserly of the small liberal arts colleges I know, though so far I don’t think any MBers have gone there. Brown seems like the most Muserly of the Ivies. Just an impression, but an informed one.
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Most of my family went to Carleton. Had I or my brother gone, we would have been a 4th generation student on one side and a 3rd generation student on the other side. I hope my school is Muserly. It certainly felt that way to me. I’m not sure how academic it is. It certainly has bright, wonderful students doing really neat things in the world. We’re also good at putting the liberal arts in to practice (working towards being a museum professional is my way of doing that!) We have a very high acceptance rate, though, and have a bit less of the “prestigious” feeling. Carleton is an awesome school too! I’m not sure where I’d be if I’d gone there. I almost attended. They certainly don’t have the museum studies program that Beloit does, but they have their own strengths. I may have ended up majoring in whatever they’re strength is as that is what I did at Beloit. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but it worked out pretty well for me!
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There’s a lot to be said for varying the mix. I would have been the fourth generation of my family at the Naval Academy if I’d gone there. That would have been a different life.
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Yeah. I’m really glad I went to Beloit. However, I’m pretty sure I would have had a wonderful time at Carleton too. Somewhere out there is an alternate universe me who attended Carleton.
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Obviously I’ve only attended Brown and none of the others, but Brown is indeed quite Muserly.
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My little sister is going to be a freshman at Carleton this fall. She applied early decision, so I assume there’s something about it she loved. I know she liked the vibe of the student body, the fact that it’s near (in?) an arboretum, and the size of the school. She was touring all small liberal arts schools, mostly in the midwest and northeast. Of course, she isn’t there yet, but I think she’s feeling pretty confident in her choice of school at present time. So–I guess this is an essentially groundless endorsement of Carleton? Probably worth checking out anyway!
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I went to a 3-week camp at Carleton and quite liked it. It’s an hour-45 min from the Twin Cities, so it’s easy to go out and do something exciting if you like, but if you want a peaceful atmosphere Northfield is ideal (the home of “cows, corn, and contentment”, if I recall correctly). I was considering applying to Swarthmore too, though I can’t remember why…
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Okay, that’s fair enough. If you like big schools, then small liberal arts colleges aren’t for you. It sounds like you’re on a good track with Northwestern and U Chicago!
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My liberal arts college was awesome! It definitely gave me many strong friendships and unique opportunities. I went to Beloit College, but I know that Carleton College, Grinnell College, Reed College, Oberlin College, Macalester College, Hamilton College, Mount Holyoke College are all good places too!
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Seven sisters in general, I think – I know a lot of smithies who loved it.
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I neglected to update here! I forgot this existed, actually.
As none/some/most/all of you probably know, I am currently at Stanford majoring in biomedical computation. If any of you are considering applying, I’ll be happy to answer questions! It’s pretty great here. I really like it. I am also doing on-campus research, if you also have questions about that.
Can’t remember if I told this story before, but I considered Stanford a “far reach” (who doesn’t?), so I went from deciding to apply to Johns Hopkins early to Harvey Mudd early (the order might be flipped on that) to settling on applying to Stanford early because hey, why not. As it turned out, I got in, so I gave up on the Common App, washed my hands of the whole college applications process, and just went here (also because I figured I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else more than here). I applied to the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin-Madison as safeties. I think other schools I’d have applied to had I not gotten accepted to Stanford were Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Johns Hopkins, UVA, Northwestern, Carleton, and possibly a couple others.
Also, I decided on biomedical computation after hating organic chem but liking bio and CS (and also looking at the job prospects and how much favorable they were with BMC than with bio, as shallow as it sounds… and also wanting to avoid the more competitive ‘premed bio major’ atmosphere). I am not premed. I don’t know what I want to do after college. I’m probably going to stay an extra year and get a master’s (it’s called coterming — bachelor’s and master’s in five years), and after that possibly grad school. We’ll see what kind of jobs I can get. The dream is to work at a biotech company like Genentech or 23andMe.
Anyway. That’s my spiel. Hopefully in the future I’ll remember that I’ve told this story and won’t tell it again and seem overly conceited.
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Great school, excellent major. *went to Stanford* *loved it*
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Thank you, I quite agree! This may interest you — there’s a new program within the PWR (Program in Writing and Rhetoric) department (if one could call it that) called the Notation in Science Writing that I’ve joined. As a result, I’m developing a portfolio of my scientific writings, which will be attached to my transcript and available online for all the world to see. It’s a work in progress, but so far I’ve decided that I’m definitely including a research poster I made last summer, a website I created for a class this past school year, and a critical review of different computational models of the brain I also wrote for this past school year, for a graduate-level class that I didn’t realize was graduate-level until way too late into the quarter. 
I’ll be taking more advanced science writing classes next school year in order to be able to add more things to the portfolio!
Also, my application for the program consisted of me rambling, pointing out how unprofessional the ramblings were, and saying that I would benefit tremendously from a program that would improve my writing, haha.
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♥
You should look up Rosanne sometime. She’s right there on campus, five days a week.
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Oh, I found her online! “Stanford Medicine Editor”? Cool. From what I can see, her office is slightly off-campus, near Gunn High School, but I’ll definitely try and email her / drop by sometime!
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Hm, her office was on campus the last time I visited, but that was a while ago. They must have moved. Anyway, she’s nearby, very friendly, and well worth meeting, as several other West Coast MBers can attest.
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I’ll be sure to do so when I get the chance!
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Wow. Belated congratulations to you!
(I live in the General Stanford Area if you’d ever like to get together! I can even drive now, although I probably can’t pay for parking in Palo Alto.)
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I love the General Stanford Area! I’d be content to live in NorCal for the rest of my life — I’ve never felt like that about a location before; I call “home” wherever my parents happen to be living. But oh man, this is a great area! The weather is good! There are things to do! there’s readily available filipino food at all times
*ahem* But I digress. I’m super busy for the next couple of weekends, and then I depart for Ghana, and then the school year starts, but if/when I have some free time we could definitely get lunch or dinner or something! Also, parking at Stanford is free on the weekends* and Palo Alto parking is not that bad or even free, if you know where to look.
* – some restrictions apply
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I don’t want to live in NorCal for a long time, but I agree- it’s a great place. There’s so much food. So. Much. And really pretty trails, and lovely people, and San Francisco…
I’m also busy right now- well, actually, all I’m doing is procrastinating on my summer homework, but I am in Singapore. That’s excellent to hear about the parking at Stanford. (I’m sure you’re right about the reasonable parking in Palo Alto; this is just because of that one time that I tried to park on University Avenue and it was so expensive that I drove all the way home and took the train instead and may or may not have screamed abuse at a curbside meter.)
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Oh, yeah, haha, University Ave is definitely a mistake when it comes to parking. It’s free after business hours, I think, but eesh — don’t even try during the day or on weekends. By some miracle, my friend and I once found parking there on a Friday night. There are side streets and parking garages that are free or cheap. (I don’t have a car, but I have friends with cars who mercilessly charge me for gas and parking even though I make so much less money than they do :'( so I have a rough idea of how much it costs.)
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Congratulations, and that sounds like a flammy major! *looks through course catalogue again*
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Thanks! Browsing the course catalog has definitely let me take really cool classes I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Apparently my friends know me as ‘the one who takes super-random classes just for kicks’, because I’ve taken classes about skeletal anatomy, the Tudor era, the ancient Egyptians, and various other things. Just for fun. It feels good to be able to get a lot of different things out of college.
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Good plan! College is the time to do that; as I’m sure you’ve heard, studying things for kicks becomes a lot harder later on.
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Hello, folks. As I’m going to go back for my fourth semester of UC Berkeley in a few weeks, I find myself at something of a crossroads and I’m not sure what to do.
My ultimate goal was (and is still) to become a writer, so I’ve been planning to major in English. However, last semester I became much less confident about the prospect than I was before — not just about the career possibilities, but on a personal level too. Literary criticism feels like endlessly inward and fractal tedium. It’s interesting, on a purely intellectual level, but the way it’s done is so far removed from why I think stories are important that I feel increasingly unfulfilled and useless. Furthermore, making a living off writing — especially fiction — is terribly hard. I knew that before, but I thought I’d get better at it faster than I have. I need a different plan.
Unfortunately, I went into college with a blithe confidence in my path that turned out to be ill-advised. So I focused on English, taking other courses only for breadth requirements. This has had some consequences. For example, I didn’t take a lot of the introductory math and science prerequisites. Doing the math on unit counts, it looks like I’ve locked myself out of the harder sciences as alternative prospects. I’d hit the unit ceiling before finishing the major requirements of Integrative Biology, for instance, even if I changed majors outright.
There is good news — I’m more than half done with the English major already. I only need to take six more courses in it to qualify for the degree, and I’ve taken most of the general education requirements. This makes a double major a very realistic option for me, at least in a major that’s not abnormally unit-heavy and doesn’t carry a lot of prerequisites.
I’ve been looking at the social sciences for options and have picked out three particularly interesting ones that I can fit into my remaining unit-space. Both History and Anthropology fascinate me, for different but related reasons, but generally speaking, they’re even less employable than English, at least with an undergraduate degree. Economics is a bit of a wild-card. It’s the thoroughly practical option, jobs-wise, and I find it very interesting as well. But it’s got downsides too. I haven’t had any experience with it at the college level, just AP Micro and Macro in high school. Also, it’s a capped major at my university, and you need to apply to get in. Even as a second major, you need to declare earlier than you ordinarily would. Also also, it’s got math prerequisites — not an insurmountable amount — but I’d need to take them soon and I don’t know how much good I’ll be at them, given my neglect of math since high school. I’ve already spoken to History and English departmental advisers, and I plan to meet with people from the other departments soon.
I think that’s the source of my anxiety, honestly: the uncertainty. I don’t know what will make me best able to support myself, or what I will be worthwhile and useful doing. I don’t have a lot of room for exploration now: if I’m to take a double major or a minor, I have to choose soon. This is the sort of thing that ought to be carefully considered. But I didn’t plan this well at all (“This:” university, adulthood, life in general, insert your favorite antecedent noun).
I mean, honestly, this isn’t cause for panic. I’d have to [cake] up catastrophically and repeatedly in order not to graduate with an English degree at least. No matter how I feel about the subject, I am good at it, and that will be useful in at least some fields (publishing, teaching high school, journalism). I’m just regretting breezing past a lot of missed opportunities and trying to branch out before it’s too late (again).
There’s also the nagging worry that my general malaise is a result of pre-existing depression and anxiety and I’d feel equally unhappy and pointless in ANY major, so I may as well stick with what I’m good at… but that’s a whole different kettle of wriggling benthic monsters. Further whining would probably belong on the Rants and Plaints thread, so I’ll just leave you with the thought that going to college while coping with mental health problems is like trying to drive a car while you’re repairing it.
TL;DR POSOC did not think this through
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First of all, breathe. It is fine. It is okay to be an English major. It is okay to be an English and anthropology double major. True, the more majors you have/more classes you have will open up doors for you, but it isn’t actually just majors/what it says on the diploma. Sure, that will help a lot sometimes, but not always. It is about the skills. There are likely skills you’re developing in your English classes that you could use in ways you didn’t imagine. As an anthro major 2 years out of undergrad, I’ve had five jobs so far. One was as a camp counselor at my school (which was fun, and the first thing I did after college. It was nice to have that as a transition.) Then I worked at a bakery. Sure, that didn’t have much pay, but it was fine for a while. The next year, though, I got a job at a design company. They were looking for people with anthro backgrounds. Then I briefly worked at a museum as a guard, but I quickly discovered that I would rather be /doing/ something with my brain instead of standing around even if it was in a museum. So now I work for a software company.
Do I have a computer science degree? No. Do I have an engineering degree? No. Have I even taken any classes in science/math at college? Well, yes, but only two: Calculus and Geology. (That is something I would like to change. I would like to go into more math, but that is all beside the point.) The point here is that your major can do so much more than “stereotypical” English things. There are the professions of marketing, technical writer, etc, which do call for people with English background.
Directly applicable advice for right now: think about what you want to do. What do you like? What might you want to go further in? Take classes in that. Even if you can’t double major, minor. If you can’t minor, just take lots of classes. There is this thing called Community College and they have classes that you could use to supplement the ones you graduate with were you to decide to go into some other area of grad school. A lot of people do. My former English major friend is about to head off to law school soon. I’d recommend taking a look again at your school’s courses and circling all the ones that make you think “ooh!” and then look for patterns. Maybe take a look at offered minors. During the end of my sophomore year, I realized that I hadn’t gotten any kind of minor whereas all my friends were planning their double majors and triple minors (a bit exagerated, but that is what it felt like). I felt so silly to not have picked out a minor, but my friend sat me down on her lap, showed me the list of minors and I saw Museum Studies. Museums is now what I want to work in for the rest of my life. I started that minor as a Junior. It wasn’t too late!
TL;DR: English majors have value too; it isn’t too late to also do other stuff if that is what you want.
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POSOC, you were already agonizing over this last summer, and I probably should have commented then. Now I’m at work and can spare only a minute or two, so I’ll just make a few very quick remarks, which other MBers or my fellow GAPAs may amplify at will:
– In the past decade, publishing and journalism have effectively ceased to exist as professions. Thanks to the Internet, anybody can publish anything: books, videos, approximations of journalism — you name it. And many people seem happy to give away their “content” free of charge. Nobody knows what the future holds, of course, but I wouldn’t count on having those career options available to you, regardless of your qualifications.
– In your post last September, you mentioned the possibility of studying Business but dismissed it as “eminently practical but dull, dull, dull.” That’s a caricature. Business is probably as interesting as anything else if you approach it intelligently, and — at the risk of sounding like a philistine — I’d say there is a lot to be said for getting comfortable with thinking about huge loads of money, asking people for it, and spending it on projects you plan. If business courses can teach you to do that, then bravo for them, I say.
– If you look around a little, you’ll find a LOT of quick-start programs designed to equip graduates for even-higher education in new fields. I’ve known liberal-arts majors who took a special one-year preparatory course in science and math and then went on to medical school. I’m sure there are analogous programs for almost any field you can name, limited only by your imagination and your tolerance for debt. So I think it’s too early to say that you’ve frittered away your future. (In fact, it’s always too early to say that.)
Whoops, time’s up. Back to editing…
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Robert, oxlin: thanks. This is good to hear. I spent a lot of my childhood believing that academic success was a Be Happy and Successful Forever Button; no matter how well I understand that that’s not true, now, large parts of my brain are screaming at me that the button is still there, I must have missed it, and if I’m unhappy it’s permanent and definitely my fault.
oxlin: you pointed out it can be useful to take classes in a particular field even if not majoring in them. I think this is germane to Robert’s point about business, too. (Though Berkeley is weird about how it handles business — it’s got a graduate school of business but no undergraduate department — accounting maybe? Need further research)
Robert: I’m very intrigued by your third point in particular. Do you know where I might start looking for quick-start programs like these? I don’t even know what search terms to Google.
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A Google search on “business boot camp liberal arts” turns up some intriguing offerings. Check out this article from “Fortune” magazine:
The rise of B-school summer camp for college students
by David BogoslawThese summer experiences offer deep dives into business fundamentals and are especially helpful to liberal arts graduates with little class work or training in business.
(Poets&Quants) — For most college students, summer is a time for catching up with friends back home and working on your tan. But for a growing number of ambitious undergraduates, it’s also a time for the equivalent of business school boot camp.
These summer experiences, which typically range from three to eight weeks in length, are deep dives into business fundamentals and are especially helpful to liberal arts graduates with little class work or training in business. The idea is to give graduates a leg up in landing an internship and, eventually, a job after graduation. And they’re run by prestigious schools like Stanford, Dartmouth, the University of Chicago, and UC-Berkeley’s Haas School.
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Thanks. I’ll probably look into science/math programs as well, because that’s something that interests me that I haven’t focused much on in college — at least, so far.
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“Pre-med boot camp liberal arts” and “engineering boot camp liberal arts” also give interesting results. The point is that there are many possibilities.
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What did you find for engineering boot camps? I saw mostly coding ones with that search term. I have been thinking recently that some kind of engineering might be a really good fit for me since I have good science, math, and creativity skills and like solving problems. It seems like something I should at least try. But I have a sneaking suspicion that with everything else I want to do (see above), I won’t have time to take even the first engineering course at Harvey Mudd. A summer program next year could be awesome, though.
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I think NC State University has some engineering camps, and they have quite a good engineering school. I’m not sure if that’s available I you, though.
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Mm. Accounting is one part of business. Maybe look to see what courses are offered for the graduate school and try to find undergrad versions of them? What sort of jobs might you want in the future? If you’re looking to work in non-profits (or the sciences, or lots of things really) take a grant-writing course! Grant-writing knowledge is really useful.
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Grant-writing is very useful, but it didn’t occur to me that they offered courses in it. *makes notes*
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There are courses in everything.
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We’ve toured Vanderbilt, Oberlin, and American University so far, as well as a couple tiny religious liberal arts schools, the names of which I’d rather not say just now. Vanderbilt was the most impressive to me, plus my parents like it a lot and I think there’s a very good chance I’d like living in Nashville. (It’s also terrifyingly terrifyingly selective???? dear Lord.)
Actually after Vanderbilt my favorite school was Tiny Religious Liberal Arts School #2: it’s a Catholic school right outside a big city. I’m not Catholic but the student body isn’t exclusively Catholic, and there’s a lot about it that’s very appealing. Increasingly I do feel I’d like to attend a Christian school.
(Tiny Religious Liberal Arts School #1 is my parents’ alma mater; it’s a good school but for a variety of reasons isn’t a top choice for me.)
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COME TO VANDERBILT!! I AM TOTALLY NOT BIASED HAVING TAKEN MUSIC CLASSES AND LESSONS HERE SINCE I WAS NINE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT COME TO VANDERBILT IT IS YOUR DESTINY
*coughs*
I can’t believe you were in Nashville and we didn’t get to Kokon!!
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Also Vandy isn’t really that selective/you’re definitely smart enough and good enough to be accepted and their financial aid programs and scholarship opportunities are really really really good; if you decide you want to go there, they will pretty much do everything they can (which is a LOT) to make sure you can afford it.
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I can’t believe I didn’t know you lived in Nashville!! I wasn’t there long, about two days and I spent most of one of them touring the school.
re selectivity I’ve mainly been scared by the percentages they reject? they reject a lot of people, but I do have near enough the right scores. And, yeah, the financial aid stuff is super impressive.
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I’d say it’s worth applying because from what I know about you, you have a really good chance of being accepted and once you’re accepted the FA office is your best friend.
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Well, I am through course registration. Two courses in History, two courses in English, which means an enormous amount of reading, but they all look like very interesting subjects.
I’m going to plan next semester a lot more carefully. For now, I’ll focus on seeing what kind of on-campus jobs and clubs I can find…
Thanks again for the advice, folks. You got me through a fairly panicky week.
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Update: I swapped the less useful (to me) History course out for an introductory Earth & Planetary Sciences course with a well-regarded professor, because I’ve done a lot of considering and I think I’ll regret it if I don’t try out a lab science.
Economics is a capped major, and I’ve done the math; I wouldn’t be able to finish the prerequisites in time to double major. (Unit ceilings…) Business has a similar problem. History and Anthropology look better: I have already taken at least one lower-division course in each, and they’re still possibilities for minors or second majors. But I haven’t really pursued sciences much in college, and wondering if I might be happier doing that has been the source of some of my anxiety.
E&PS is a major that offers a lot of different concentrations within the natural sciences (which have interested me most thus far). Additionally, the department offers a minor as well, so if double majoring is infeasible I could still do that. (My lack of AP Calculus is a stumbling block for pursuing science, true. But it’s entirely possible I could take Calc courses during summer, either at Cal or a community college near home, so I don’t have to cram too much into a given semester.)
And hey, if it doesn’t turn out to be right for me, I can go into English/History or something similar with an easier mind. Whatever happens, I’m walking out of here with an English degree anyway.
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Congratulations, POSOC! As Earth and planetary sciences are part of my editorial beat, I’m bound to approve. For inspiration, you could read news stories and features by Richard Kerr and Eric Hand in Science, Alexandra Witze in Nature, and other fine writers.
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I don’t believe in omens (unscientific!), but I saw a meteor while discussing my future with my best friend not half an hour before coming home and reading this post. If the universe isn’t actually coming into alignment, it sure feels like it.
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Update: I am looking at Alexandra Witze’s blog. She went to the same graduate program that you did, unless I misremember!
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Yes, Alex was at Santa Cruz three years after Rosanne and I were. Later I succeeded her as an editor at Earth magazine. There are a lot of “musical chairs” in our line of work.
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Like POSOC, I am done with course registration! I find it hilarious that, consistently, every single quarter the course registration site crashes at midnight the day classes are available for registration. I mean, Stanford should definitely improve their servers, but I also find it hilarious that Stanford students get super amped about registering for classes, even though it’s usually completely unnecessary due to class registration being almost completely noncompetitive (except for Advanced Wine Tasting, which was full in two minutes).
I digress. This fall I’m taking*:
– Computer Organization and Systems (basically C programming and machine-level coding)
– Introduction to Databases (SQL, XML, etc.)
– Molecular and Cellular Immunology
The first class is notoriously time-consuming due to the difficulty of uncovering bugs, but I’m expecting databases and immunology to be fun and (hopefully) only moderately time-consuming. The last class is a writing class, which I tend to spend very little time on but still do fairly well. I’m excited! All of my classes are relevant to my major or a program I’m doing, and two of them are advanced electives for my major.
* – I tried to make this a bulleted list but either my HTML is rusty or the blog doesn’t approve of that sort of nonsense.
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When I took a C course it was a disaster for reasons which had very little to do with the language. With that said, I found that my usual IDE of Eclipse was pretty much useless for C code, and ended up compiling my code with gcc and debugging with gdb. I would recommend getting familiar with gdb if at all possible. I never figured out how to get it to do more than display a stack trace, but even that was so much better than trying to put in print statements to figure out where code failed – some aspect of the optimization meant that print statements wouldn’t reliably print before the code failed for me on the following lines, and I had a lot of trouble until I realized that.
Tell me about how your databases class goes! I’m still annoyed that my school isn’t offering databases again before I graduate.
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I’m planning on using Sublime. Most of my friends use Sublime, and Eclipse is almost universally looked down upon here especially because it’s used for the intro Java course… pretty much everyone likes the course itself, but it quickly becomes obvious that Eclipse is (sorry) not that great.
Will do! I’m pretty excited for it.
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IBM kind of founded the Eclipse Foundation, and as such it is literally the required IDE at my internship and over half the tools I work with are based on it… I don’t mind it much, I like that it’s free (which is less of a big deal now that I have an internship/source of money, but was important when I was a freshman*) and cross-platform. My fingers remember the key shortcuts at this point, too. Wish it was less likely to freeze my work computer completely for several minutes while starting up, but you can’t have everything. I’ve been considering switching to vi, but I don’t have that kind of time/it doesn’t make as much sense to do so when I’m on Windows so often/most of the code I write is Java and that’s the one language I feel Eclipse is pretty great at.
*I initially started to write “was a freshman and didn’t know that I was going to stick with CS” but I think we all know that’s a lie and I’m too stubborn not to stick with it. I was/still kind of am really into the idea of open source, though.
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Also I totally left out the fourth class I’m taking — it’s a science writing class, basically, which makes the second sentence after the list much more sensible.
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Fun! Who is the teacher?
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Shay Brawn? Is (s)he famous? I have no idea. Apparently a teacher I had last spring quarter founded Ideo, and I had no idea at the time.
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I don’t know her. Google says she runs a multicultural women’s press in San Francisco. And the course description sounds as if you’ll be reading, analyzing, and critiquing science writing, not writing articles or papers yourselves. That could be interesting. I wonder what’s on the syllabus.
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Update to above updates: I have a phone appointment with a college adviser on Friday, to discuss my options.
Multiple people have reassured me that I’m not alone in having a crisis of faith late in second year. However, the advising website is full of things like “You should definitely have a four-year plan + major/minor chosen by sophomore year” (paraphrase, not quote). At least I am prepared to declare English, so things aren’t totally bleak. But the adviser I used to see has retired. I am not looking forward to explaining my situation to a stranger.
Still, it’s better than not having any advising. I’ll grit my teeth and get through it.
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I emailed my advisor (a Chinese professor) about my missing-Chinese-while-studying-abroad dilemma. A little bit related, I am going to explore when I get back in the fall which programs would let me take a biology class for my major while abroad, since that would give me some nice extra flexibility.
My current schedule for the fall is:
Organic Chemistry w/ Lab
Animal Physiology w/ Lab
Chinese 1A
Medieval Spain
I am seriously considering dropping Medieval Spain for Intro Computer Science (with a focus on biology) or Intro Engineering.
As I said in 24.3.1.1.1.1, I think engineering and computer science could fit me well because I like solving problems as well as purely discovering knowledge (as my concept of pure science is). But I’ve worried that I won’t have time for them.
Well, it is up to me to make time for it. Medieval Spain sounds cool, but it was a class I initially picked because I needed a 4th class and wanted a history class to fulfill my last general education requirement. I can take other cool history classes at other times. My plan is to attend both the biology-based Computer Science and Intro Engineering classes (both at Mudd) for the first few weeks, and then decide which I like best to continue for the rest of the semester. I can take the other in my sophomore spring if I like it as well.
Either way…as of now, I have taken 9 classes in 8 departments. With this plan, I will finish next semester having taken 13 classes in 10 departments. I totally buy into the idea of a broad-based liberal arts education, but the amount of unfocus I have had is worrying me a little. I fear that my front-loading of “what if I like this?” classes will force me to take only biology (and maybe Chinese…) my senior year. And even if I like computer science or engineering, I may not be able to take more of them.
Ah well – I am trying to keep myself more focused on the present even as I try to plan for the future. I think that two major-driven classes (O-Chem and Animal Phys), one for a long-time interest I’ve had that I want to put some time into (Chinese), and one that could be good for my career (CS or Engineering) is a good balance for this semester.
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you know I’m biased, but: Harvey Mudd is famous for having a great CS department, it’s 50% female, Maria Klawe has won awards for it I’m pretty sure.
Also, if you’re going into biology, programming’s going to be really useful for data analysis.
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*chants* biocomputation biocomputation biocomputation
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Maria Klawe is awesome and kind of a hero to me for those reasons. Honestly, knowing that promoting women in both CS and engineering is important to Harvey Mudd makes me want to take them both there.
I also saw her waltz in the campus edition of Dancing With The Stars, and she brought down the house.
Current plan: I will for sure take Organic Chemistry and Animal Physiology. I will also attend all of Chinese I, Medieval Spain, Computer Science with Biology, and Intro to Engineering to start with. Within the first few weeks, I will drop two of that latter set, bringing me back to the four classes I need. (This strategy is not uncommon at my school.) If one of the classes I drop is something I did like, I’ll take it the following semester. This way I will have the real, in-person information I need to be confident about my decision.
Nilly – Is that what you’re doing? Is the research you’ve done in biocomputation? What was that like?
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I am a biomedical computation major, but my research is in pure biology. During the school year I’ll probably start working on a biocomputational project for my major (wherein biomedical computation research is required). Honestly, though, the term “biocomputation” itself is incredibly broad. You could be working with algorithms, machine learning, simulations, data analysis… anything is possible, really. I’ll probably be dealing with mostly data analysis within my lab. If you Google “data science”, there was a recent Wall Street Journal article talking about how critical data analysis is now — a lot of people are getting tons of data, but without the tools to analyze it, it’s worthless.
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Greetings from Washington University in St. Louis! I moved in yesterday and had my first proper day of orientation today. I’ve actually made some friends and my roommate is pretty rad.
More on art school when classes start on Monday 
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We should kokon. If you’re interested, and the GAPAs are amenable, they can send you my email.
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Yes aaa that would be awesome!
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GAPAs, could you facilitate an email swap between shadowfire and myself?
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Ahhh seriously? Congratulations! I hope you have a great time!
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And now for a “Rós is a homeschooled 17-year-old who is trying to do college things and is managing sort of okay maybe but is also very scared”!
I’m going to take a couple of classes at a university which, due to its close proximity to my location, will probably remain unnamed until I am An Adult and allowed to be as dangerous as I want (unless the GAPAs say otherwise). I actually took Writing 121 there this spring and got an A and a perfect grade on my final paper despite having almost no formal English/writing education other than half of 3rd grade (!!!), so I’m kind of prepared, I guess? I’m going to be taking math 095 and (probably) music 111. The “probably” is because in the course catalog, MUS 111 is listed a being taken concurrently with a bunch of other music classes which I couldn’t take right now even if I wanted to. I don’t know if that means that one absolutely has to take those classes at the same time or not. I really want to be able to take it because it’s the only 3-credit class which I can/want to take currently. (since high school/non-admitted students can only get 8 credits per term and math is 4 and symphonic band is 1)
Perhaps someone who has navigated through this aspect of collegeing could enlighten me?
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Can you talk with/email a counselor at the college to find out about Music 111? Or the professor/someone else from the music department?
Is there anything else specific that you’re seeking enlightenment about?
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Talk to the registrar or your advisor about it – probably just sending an email would be enough.
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A list of things that require significant researching when you’re off to study in a different country:
-How to set up a new bank account – a Swiss one no less, so I’ll be here for all your swindling needs.
-How to find some kind of health insurance (legally required, but SO expensive)
-How to obtain a residence permit for at least the next three years
Okay, it’s a not a long list, but..so many adult-y responsibilities..
Bureaucracy aside though, I’m excited!
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Aw heck, I think I found a dream school.
(I’m pretty sure that’s what it means when you feel like crying almost before you’re off campus because it’s too selective for you and you probably don’t have a chance, so you’re trying to love it less than you do but, actually, you kind of love it a whole lot? Well. I’ve definitely found a top choice.)
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What schools are you looking at?
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I’m applying to eight? schools. My dream school is UChicago, and I’m also applying to Barnard, Vanderbilt, and three Tiny Religious Liberal Arts Schools. I’m also applying to Smith and Bryn Mawr just because there’s no application fee. I might add a couple more but I feel pretty good about my list right now!
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-quiet sobbing- University of Edinburgh
They have programs that look completely and utterly perfect to me in Middle Eastern Studies, I could go abroad for a year and study Arabic, I could live in Scotland, for god’s sake, oh my gosh. I am applying. I am applying so hard.
My current thought process: what if by some miracle of a chance I get in but Scotland becomes independent and the economy crashes and they raise the tuition for international students. No. Cancel the referendum.
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Go for it! I believe you’ll distinguish yourself wherever you go.
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I have a friend who’s just started at Edinburgh (reading medicine). Let me know if you have any questions you want answering!
I think the admission rate is pretty good, much higher than a lot of US universities anyway. There’s probably information on their website. But I’m sure you would be a highly competitive applicant!
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As someone with now substantial experience with schools in the UK/Ireland, I have a lot I can talk about on this subject! Mainly about how really different the education system can be here and various pros/cons that might have.
Let me know if you want me to go more into this ever? On the one hand it could be helpful to you but on the other, I never had that “I’ve found the perfect college!” moment when I was looking/applying and I’m reluctant to say anything that might take that from you.
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also I am internet-married to someone who spent a year at Edinburgh if you have more specific queries as well
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Which internet-marriage though
I would love to hear about the pros/cons! It’d be great to hear from someone who’s used to the American system; I’m not dead-set on a college yet, and I would rather temper my expectations.
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Ah yes, you probably know this but the UCAS deadline is January 15, but I think it’s worth sending your application off earlier than that if you can. I went through the whole UCAS thing last year, so if you have any personal statement questions or about anything else really, absolutely do not hesitate!
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I definitely will have some personal statement questions (once I’ve, like, started writing it- whoops); I know the UCAS one is extremely different from the essays I’ve been doing for US colleges. Thank you!
I actually have to turn in mine by October 15 for, uh, Cambridgey reasons, so I’ve been doing a lot of emailing with the admissions departments at both universities, mostly about pending exam results. [COLLEGE INTENSIFIES]
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Can Museblog give any reccommendations for good colleges in the north? I definitely want to go to college away from home, but I’m having trouble figureing out how to find colleges that are well-respected but not famous.
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Errata:
Northeast, northwest, or north central? And what’s wrong with being famous?
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I’m not that picky on location. I’ve lived my entire life in Texas, and I want to try something different, but other than that, I haven’t narrowed much down. Cold weather is a plus, though.
Nothing’s wrong with famous. I guess I more precisely mean “not ultra-selective”, ’cause I can find those pretty easily. Most of the college search websites don’t have a filter for “has a good reptutation locally”, though.
I thought maybe people who have lived in other parts of the country would be able to point me towards the options that are neat but not necesarily known outside the area.
[…Do you want to know how many edits this post has gone through? Too many. I think my middle name must actually be “perfectionist”.]
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I’ll put in a plug for Carleton, several generations of whose alumni have impressed me mightily.
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I will also put in a plug for Carleton, where my little sister applied early decision and is currently starting her freshman year!
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I was just about to say Carleton! I must have neglected to actually submit the post. If you like small towns with corn, but a mere 45-minute drive to Minneapolis/St. Paul, Carleton is the way to go. I don’t think it’s famous but it’s highly-ranked, if that sort of thing impresses you.
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Beloit College! I went there and it is a wonderful place in Wisconsin full of the liberal arts in practice and awesome friendly people. Other great places include Carleton in Northfield, MN, the home of Cows, Colleges, and Contentment, Grinnell in Iowa, Lawrence in Wisconsin, Hamilton in New York, Macalester in MN, St. Olaf in MN, Whitman in Washington, Oberlin in Ohio. I’d check out the book “Colleges that Change Lives.” It is organized by region and has many great schools in there. Additionally, if you look up one of these schools in the Fiske Guide to colleges, there should be a section in the back with a list of similar colleges.
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Thank you, everyone! Carleton is definitely on the list now, and I feel much better about this entire search for having a second exciting option. I’m sure I’ll find more when I have time to go through the rest of Oxlin’s list, too.
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So I’ve never had much reason to post in this tread, but I’m a junior in high school and I guess it’s now time for me to start Thinking About Universities. I’d like to go in-state because large amounts of money terrify me, and NC has a lot of good schools. NC State and UNC Chapel Hill, I think, are both too close and too prestigious for my liking (and Duke is out of the question.)
I visited Appalacian State University’s open house today. It seemed nice, if a little smaller than I expected. I love the mountains and cold weather, too, and it’s about the farthest I can get from home without paying out-of-state tuition. (The sense of independence is important for me, I guess.)
I think if I work hard and keep my grades up I’ll have a decent shot at getting in (plus I have a nice healthy dosage of extracurriculars.)
I spent quite a few hours in the music school, where I talked to a lot of people. The composition and theory program sounds amazing. I never really thought about majoring in theory&comp until recently, but the more I think about it, the less I can picture myself doing anything else. They have tons of great equipment and tools, and some amazing recording studios and synth studios, all of which are open to student use. I’ve spent a decent amount of my free time trying to figure out Audacity and FL Studio and “what mics can I buy that aren’t horrible that won’t cost me a fortune” and “how does the artist make this sound” and “how can I pace out this song and make it longer” and all these other questions and to be able to study them full time with people who know what they’re doing and equipment that is pro-level and people to teach me how to use it… it would be a dream come true.
As well as submitting a portfolio of my work, I’d have to audition in on my primary instrument, though, which is tenor sax, and obviously sax is a really competitive instrument. I could also audition on trombone (which I kind of wanted to mostly drop in college) since it’s less competitive, but I honestly don’t know where I stand compared to other trombonists my age. The only other trombone players at the school I go to are either years behind me or all-state level, and I’m not sure how good I am. I play lots, but rarely practice since it’s not my primary. I might just audition on both? Or wait and see. I have a year. I’m only a junior.
Wow, though. Music majoring sounds amazing and even though I’m sure a lot of people would argue that it’s a stupid life choice and that I’ll end up a starving artist I honestly think I could do it, and I just want to learn all these things!
Do these all sound like rational thoughts, old wizened college-age MBers? Or am I off-base with something? Hmmm. Either way, I’m really excited to go to university and learn things and live on my own and be a college student. Guess I’d better go study so I don’t bomb my junior year.
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You might want to look at UNC Asheville as well, since it’s also a public college in the mountains with a good music program.
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Also, from what I know about UNCA (a bunch of kids from my high school went there), people tend to love it. It’s a lot smaller than App, too, so depends on what you’re looking for in size.
Also, as I’m sure you know, UNCG’s music program is supposed to be outstanding.
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Yes, I’ve actually spoken to quite a few professors at UNCG and I’ve spent significant amounts of time there with music camps. UNCG and App are my top choices right now.
I’ve looked at Asheville, and it seems intriguing- they have the Moog factory and stuff there. However, the only two majors they offer are jazz studies and music technology. I’m definitely not ruling out music technology but right now I think I want to do compostion. Of course the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Perhaps my perspective is just because it’s easier to get your hands on a piano and notation editor than to get Pro Tools, mics, cables, mixers, etc.
It seems whatever school I go to I’ll be able to experiment with different music “gear” and learn how to work with synthesizers.
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I’d second the recommendations to look into UNCA. I don’t really know much about the school, but Asheville is a great place. I’m not going to recommend Warren Wilson to you, because there’s no music major (just a minor), and it’s private so there’s no in-state tuition, but if you come visit UNCA you might as well stop by WWC to check it out and see a different kind of place. (Also if you give me a heads up you I could give you a tour.)
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If someone on the internet can say anything that would make you rethink doing music, then you shouldn’t do music.* From what you’re saying it sounds like an audio recording / engineering program might be a better fit than theory/comp, though?
*I mean a music degree is a college degree, you can go to law school or med school or into office work off of it, so it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll starve even if you change your mind later. I think a lot of people who decide to go into music though do so out of a vague feeling of “this is something I’m good at / I’m kind of interested in this / I like the public recognition I get from doing this” and then they run into problems when they realize that it’s actually an incredible amount of work (I’ve heard it compared to med school to give you an idea) and most of it your feedback consists of getting rejected.
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If you want to major in music, go for it! I would recommend shopping around for classes, though; you don’t want to narrow your options too early. I don’t know how unit-heavy music is at other schools, but here it’s pretty light in terms of academic requirements, so you can (and should!) take classes in other things you’re interested in, even if you don’t want to major in those things, just because hey — it’s college, when else are you going to study whatever you want?
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I wouldn’t knock out non-state schools entirely. If you want a big school, it might be hard to find an affordable one, but most small private schools offer lots of financial aid.
I’d look for schools with a good music department, as well as other good departments. I’d sign up for some music classes your freshman year and also some not-music classes and see what you end up enjoying.
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It sounds to me as if you’ve decided what you want to do with your life. Financial security is important, and you have to think about it. But if you’re too “sensible”, you can easily work very hard at something for which you have no enthusiasm, and end up in a well-paid job which you hate. It’s then very difficult to convince yourself you could live on a lot less money and be happy.
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Midnight Fiddler! I’m planning to go visit UNCA about two weeks from now and I just saw your post above about Warren Wilson! Would you possibly have any free time on October 13th in which you may be able to give me a mini-tour of Warren Wilson? If so, that would be super flamabulous
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((SFTDP: or the 12th if more convenient))
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Eek, yeah. That’s homecoming/family weekend for me, so things are going to be mad crazy all up in here and both my parents are coming, but you can totally come on over, you just might also end up meeting my parents (it’ll be like an old-fashioned Kokon!).
Also I don’t think we have non-blog contract, sooo. GAPAs, if you want to give fireh my email or phone number or whatever, that’d be cool.
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Sounds cool to me!
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fireh, we’ve sent you a message.
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Thank ye kindly, O GAPAs.
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Tips for college applications:
1. somehow convince yourself the supplemental essay has a maximum length of 750 words
2. get to 830 words before finishing, reasoning that you’re pretty wordy and can edit out 80 words without losing much of anything
3. accidentally get really proud of what you’ve done
4. realize the maximum was actually 500 words
5. eviscerate your essay
6. ?????
7. get into college, I hope.
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Yeah, my first draft of my common app essay was about 1500 words. It was a fun editing time…
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I’m sending in apps tonight. If you — I don’t usually say things like this, but — if you pray, at all, please pray for me.
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I don’t pray, but I do want to let you know that I have my fingers crossed for you! Best of luck, ZNZ, I know it will go brilliantly because you are brilliant.
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I finally get to say this. May the odds… be ever in your favour.
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3/??? are in, it will be 4??? tomorrow. Bedtime!
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I’ll pray for you! Pray for me, if you have a second? I’m sending my EA one in tomorrow night and I’m spending all of tonight doing essays.
ZNZ, they have every reason in the world to accept you ♥
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Good luck, ZNZ and CO!
I hope you both get into your first choice!
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So I made another semester plan on my community college’s website using drama as a major. There are fewer classes than the marine biology major and more of them seem to be classes I would be interested in. (I would have to take two acting classes but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.) I would transfer to the nearby college my parents work at, which has a pretty good theater program, and hopefully find a job in stage lighting, which is a more in-demand skill than acting and such. I’m not sure yet but this is probably the major I’ll pick when I have to decide in a week or so … ? I always wish I had more time.
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Waitlisted at the Dream School. So. Am I relieved or miserable? We just don’t know.
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♥ I was deferred at one of mine. They should be begging to have you, ZNZ, but I hope it works out.
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But! I was admitted to a college! I’m going to have a college education probably!
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That could still work out! My freshman year, the initial yield was low so they took a ton of people off the waitlist. Lots of my friends got in off the waitlist. If it continues to be your Dream School, accept the spot on the waitlist, keep demonstrating to the admissions office that it’s your first choice and you would definitely go there if admitted (write a polite letter reinforcing why you want to got to that school and what you would bring to the campus community, for example). [Only if you would definitely go there if admitted, of course.]
Make other solid plans, find the best of your other options, and move forward with that, but you don’t have to give up on the Dream School yet if it really is your dream!
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I’m trying to decide if overloading is a great or terrible idea for me. i.e. taking five equal-credit courses in one semester instead of the standard-to-complete-your-degree-on-time four. Making one of them (the infamous) Analysis I would definitely be a terrible idea, but argh so tempting.
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Have you felt overwhelmed in earlier semesters with normal course loads, or felt like you have lots of free time? Did you get healthy amounts of sleep and food? Are any of the classes particularly difficult or time-consuming? Do you want to focus very deeply on or immerse yourself in any of them if you have free time during the semester? What kinds of “outs” would you have mid-semester if overloading was too much (dropping a class, taking it pass/fail, a class that isn’t as important where you could let the grade slip)? Are you genuinely excited about all five classes? Are you also adding (or dropping) any extracurriculars or leadership roles this semester?
I’m going to try taking five courses this spring if I can get into the Spanish class I want. I took five last spring, too. I did well in all five then, but I did feel like I was forced to take time away from all of them and spread it around, so I didn’t go as deep into any of them.
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Mixed, mixed, yes, focus deeply, several, no. I’m been improving my terrible habits and getting a success-spiral-thingy going, so my stress-before-I-lose-it threshold is better than it was. I think not being able to focus on any of them is what I’m worried about. How do you feel about how it turned out for you?
Most are supposed to have the same relative difficulty as what I’ve been doing this year. Whether people’s abilities to cope scale up as well is uncertain. Three are directly necessary for my planned majors (which I’m a little uncertain about, but I still want to keep studying for both right now), the others are really exciting.
Of course, I’ll have to convince the stats convener, who has never heard of me because I haven’t been around the economics faculty, that I can survive their class without having taken the prerequisite course. But I know first-years who signed up for ALL the second-year courses last semester, so that should work out.
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I applied to four colleges early: I was accepted at three and deferred at one.
I’ve applied regular admission to (so far) four colleges.
I still have to send in my applications to NYU, Carleton, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, and Smith. I’ve finished my essays for Barnard and NYU, and I’ve nearly finished my essays for Carleton, so I should be able to submit at least three applications today! (The ideal would be to finish all my applications today, and it’s not looking that achievable. [frowns at Bryn Mawr essay])
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Go, ZNZ, go! Those are all awesome schools.
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Sounds like you’re on a good track! Seconding oxlin on “awesome schools”.
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I’ve applied to NYU and Barnard. Thinking I’ll drop Bryn Mawr — I can’t think of anything at all for the essay question, and I’ve already applied to Swarthmore. I’ll apply to Smith as soon as I manage to cut 13 words from my essay. I might apply to 1-2 more Christian colleges, with my only issues being
a) I’ve already applied to two Christian colleges, and
b) these places are NEVER on the common app and I hate filling out their applications, which are always long and weird.
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I’m so proud that you got into three schools! Obviously who wouldn’t want you but ZNZ you’re going to college. ♥
I’ve applied to nine so far (though three of those were UCs); only one of them was early action, and I got deferred. The rest I won’t hear back from for ages. *sweats nervously*
So, yet to do: Johns Hopkins, Yale (HA HA but they waived my application fee so why not), and Swarthmore (same). I’ve also applied to UChicago, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Northwestern, Georgetown, and a couple outside the country that I’m too scared/superstitious to name until they reject me.
I think my major criteria for schools is “big and not in California.” Does anyone have a recommendation?
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Brown is worth a look, though I think you’re more of an urbanite.
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Robert, thank you! I had sort of overlooked Brown in college research, but I liked the open curriculum and I submitted my application last night.
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COME TO BROWN ask me any questions you have and then come visit and we can hang out
Brown is great and you’re great so basically it’d be perfect
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Over the years, I’ve noticed a few colleges that inspire exceptional affection and loyalty in their alumni and really seem to have shaped their lives. Brown is one. Carleton is another. It’s anecdotal evidence, but it’s consistent: They seem to be special places.
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I know someone who went to Tufts. There is also BU. Not really sure how big either one is, but I think they have grad schools.
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BU does indeed have a graduate school, and I’ve heard it’s very good, but sadly, the archaeology department is small enough that people who were BU undergrads are not allowed to apply to the graduate program in archaeology because “you’ve already learned everything we have to teach”.
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Vanderbilt’s big, and it seemed nice when I visited! (and fireh likes it, so.) And Duke’s supposed to be a lot like Vandy.
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I hope you get into Northwestern, it’s pretty great! (Not plugging my own school at ALL nope.) If you end up going to UChi I’ll be contractually obligated to hate everything you stand for–the rivalry is pretty strong–but don’t worry, I won’t really hate you. Much. 
As for other recs….. Well, Harvard, but I’m not sure how you feel about that one, since it’s so… Harvard. BU is fairly big, I think. How big is “big”? Uh, Cornell? I’m cycling through the list of where my high school friends ended up in my head, but those are all I can think of right now. A lot of them ended up down south–Florida and NC mostly.
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Wait, you go to Northwestern? Why was I not informed of this? We should kokon or something, but quickly since it’s my last year at school. Do you go to C2E2?
Also I’ve heard several Northwestern people play up the rivalry but on the UChicago side it’s not really a big deal. We’re more annoyed at UIC and actually play sports against WashU. But I guess Northwestern is the intellectual rival?
I think we might be just too flattened by work to put too much energy into rivalry.
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Wait! What? You go to UChicago? Wow, it is a small world. I haven’t had a chance to get to C2E2 yet but I’m thinking about it for this year. Problem is, I’m taking a really intensive film production class spring quarter and I have a feeling I’m going to need that weekend to film. I go to Chicago occasionally though, so there’d definitely be a chance to kokon!
Yeah, I think we hate you guys a lot more than you hate us. I’m not even sure why NU kids hate UChicago so much, but it’s probably because your energy is drained by all that work. We’re kind of the same, in a way, but like… we have more fun. Or at least that’s what the rhetoric is. I have a feeling that us making fun of you guys doesn’t really affect you much because you’ve already said all the relevant things yourselves…
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Sounds good! Hopefully we can coordinate something.
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*whispers softly of New York*
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*raises eyebrow* Outside the country, huh? In certain antipodean countries, perhaps? I’m pretty sure you’ve already thought about New Zealand, so I’ll just mention that ANU and Uni Melb have about 4000 students each, Melbourney Melbourne is Melbourne, and Canberra is full of politicians and not much else but the university is a holdout of awesome. And you probably wouldn’t need essays.
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Melb and UNSW are both definitely on my list, along with Auckland and Wellington! I’m putting them off for now, though, because the applications are due after I find out whether I got into any of the U.S. schools…
I’m definitely interested in going to university in the antipodes, largely because I can get citizens’ tuition but also because I think it’d be pretty cool to have six months after high school to go travel/work/do interesting stuff. Like a gap year, but with more certainty.
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Oxlin- Looking into Tufts right now! (Yay, advance planning.)
ZNZ- I ruled out Duke for financial reasons but gosh, their campus is pretty (this is pretty much the basis on which I choose colleges).
RQ- I really liked Northwestern! It seemed like such a fun and hardworking place. I instinctively flinch at the word “Harvard” but I’m gonna research Cornell more; there’s at least MBer already there and it looks so pretty.
Dodec- *drifts slowly northeast*
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Please consider UChicago if you get in! It’s both great and awful at the same time. Like, making friends through shared misery. The plus side is that (according to several anecdotal sources) it is more difficult than real life.
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Congrats, ZNZ, that’s awesome! College apps are so frustrating and stressful, but you’ll be so glad when they’re over!
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Hey all. I know college apps are stressful and can get pretty overwhelming, but you will get through them. And if anyone on the ‘blog ends up considering Wash U or any other schools in St. Louis, I’d love to tell you about my experience. Or art school in general, actually, I think they’re fairly similar structurally across the board.
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12 apps done, between one and three still to go.
One acceptance, one deferral (which I get a final decision about in March).
Two scholarship applications due Thursday noon.
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My college major options are narrowed down to either marine biology or theater, I’ll have to decide which one by the end of this semester to keep my schedule on track.
Marine biology – Requires classes in math, chemistry, physics and biology, so I would have a wide base of science knowledge if I could keep up with the coursework. I think biology is interesting and marine biology would be good since I live near the coast. I could learn and discover new things and be a Smart Person with a Real Science Major. Biggest obstacle would be passing all the math and science classes, since studying and turning things in is sometimes hard for me.
Theater – I would like to be a lighting designer/operator for professional shows and events. I’ve done stage lighting at high school and college for about 4.5 years and haven’t gotten sick of it yet. I really like experimenting with lighting designs, seeing a show come together, and being around theater people. Most importantly, though I might sometimes complain about rehearsals I would never quit theater because it’s such a rewarding part of my life. Biggest obstacle would be taking 2 required semesters of acting classes, which is not my division and kind of scares me.
I think I would be happy with a job in either of these fields, I just have to decide which I would prefer. This semester I have both chemistry and theater production classes, so I can see how they go.
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I think i just
got a conditional offer from Cambridge????
conditional on five 5s on my AP exams this year but an offer????
now to pay for it
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YEAH CHOKLIT!
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Congratulations, that’s amazing news!! I knew you could do it! Now go and ace those APs! 
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*squee* Congratulations!
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CHOK CONGRATS WOW
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Kitty’s Update from College-land:
Status: LAST SEMESTER SENIOR GRADUATING IN MAY. AAAAAAHHHHH!
This final semester is also my hardest semester because I’m taking 7 classes, plus my senior project, plus being a co-editor of the news section in our school paper, plus chorus.
As this is my last semester, I should also be looking into grad schools for Library Science, taking the GRE, and being on the lookout for jobs in the publishing field – preferably the children’s publishing industry. But of course, I don’t have much time for all that because I’m working too hard just Trying To Graduate. It doesn’t help that pretty much all of my classes are reading-intensive and discussion based, so I’m buried in readings from now until May.
On the plus side, I genuinely enjoy all of the classes I’m taking AND have great professors, which I think is a first for me. I’ve usually had at least one class I didn’t like much (Statistics *shudder*) or a lousy professor (Intro to Psych *double shudder*). If I had to pick favorites, I’d say that Baroque and Classical Music and Children’s Literature are up at the top, closely followed by The Irish (literary) Renaissance.
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Library Science? Easy: University of Maryland. Excellent programs, near jobs and a GAPA!
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Not to mention in-state tuition.
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On this episode of Cerulean Needs Advice About College, Now That An Actual Direction Has Been Found:
Background: I’m getting an Associate of Arts & Sciences degree from my community college next spring, and I’m trying to find an institution to transfer to, as a junior, and probably study biochem? probably? or something else bio-ish but not general biology.
Question 1: Is it/under what circumstances would it be preferable to attend a school at which I am a big fish academically? Or better to be on roughly the same, high, level as my classmates?
Question 2: Should I be looking mainly/exclusively at “Research Colleges” to find a strong science department with cool equipment, or nah?
Question 3: Any suggestions for specific schools I should look at? Because I’m at a college-search-engines-helped-but-it’s-time-for-fresh-blood-in-my-idea-pool moment. Intentionally wide net: Strong Science Schools You Think Are Cool.
Question 4: Did you (or someone you know well) transfer? Either from community college or a 4-year to another 4-year? Do you have comments?
Question 5: Is the system intentionally unhelpful or am I just frustrated?
Question 6: Do problems I have with the administration of a university wrt perpetuating social ick necessarily reflect/damage the academics and/or student body?
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1. I was a big fish academically at the second school I attended, and I thought it was great because I am self-driven and worked a lot on personal projects that helped me both academically and emotionally with all the spare time I suddenly had. If you are not internally motivated this may not be great for you.
2. The words I want to say here are too strong for MuseBlog. DO NOT GO TO A RESEARCH COLLEGE DON’T DO IT RESEARCH COLLEGES CARE MORE ABOUT MONEY AND THEIR TENURED PROFESSORS THAN THEY DO ABOUT YOU LEARNING OR DOING RESEARCH OR BEING MENTALLY HEALTHY ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING
3. A school with a small but up-and-coming department might be good for you. No clue what’s good in biochem.
4. I transferred from the University of Rochester (NY) (you, uh, may have heard of it in your search for research colleges). It was an incredibly toxic environment, and while it may have just been the computer science department, I don’t trust it even a little. I transferred to a State University of New York school, one of the small liberal arts ones, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. What I lost in academic rigor came back to me in other ways many times over. There’s more to life than pushing yourself past the breaking point.
5. It’s the system.
6. Listen to the huge red flags the administration are throwing up for you. Don’t give your money to people who are going to hurt you and yours.
Best of luck with your search.
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So, uh, everything I’m going to say is almost the complete opposite of what Dodec has said. (I go to Stanford)
1. Going to a school where I am perfectly average has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I’ve been thoroughly knocked off my high horse and put in my place, and it’s challenged me in a way I’ve never seen before. As someone who basically coasted through life before college, going to school here and getting bad grades (like C’s?!? omg wtf) has been a real wake-up call — but also a huge blessing (I hope). I love meeting people smarter than me. It’s an eye-opener.
2. There are so many opportunities for research here that it’s really incredible and really shown me how much I do not want to go to academia (lol). Don’t underestimate the power of connections and resources. Having access to powerful and well-connected researchers can be really cool. Professors can be focused on their research, and you can fall through the cracks, but you don’t have to! You can go to their office hours, meet with them personally, etc. I have befriended a few professors here and I think it’ll be very useful later on. Plus they do really cool things.
3. Harvey Mudd, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford were my top choices when applying to school. Harvey Mudd, I guess, is the unknown one. It seemed really nice. I would recommend it if you’re looking for a smaller school! I hesitate to recommend Stanford because of the intimidating admission statistics and high upfront application fee, but I do really love it here.
4. Yes, I know someone who transferred from a school in Wisconsin to Brown and someone else who transferred from Harvard to Stanford. They both seem happy with their decision. Go with your heart, I guess, and if that school is really toxic for you then do it, but it’ll always be harder to transfer to a school than get accepted there right away.
5. Nah, college apps suck. Luckily you only have to do them once (unless you transfer or go to grad/med/law school).
6. Well… I do have an opinion about this. Stanford has earned (undeservedly, I think) a bad reputation on-campus for investment in fossil fuels, mental health funding, and sexual assault punishments, but there are tons of different factors contributing to all of those things and not all of them are Stanford’s fault. I guess it depends on how stringent your criteria are. Keep in mind — all universities have those issues. If there’s no mention of a university having those issues, there might just not be any awareness on campus. I would rather go to a campus that is at least discussing and fixing these issues than one that’s ignoring them entirely.
So those are my two cents.
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Kokonilly – I don’t think you were active onblog while I was transferring, (for that matter, neither was Cerulean), so please let me explain why I’m wording this so strongly.
While I am glad Stanford is working out for you, a lot of the toxicity I’m describing is the kind of thing that’s hard to notice and easy to write off until it’s happening to you. Maybe you’re lucky and your department doesn’t have it. Maybe you’re lucky in that you didn’t come in with a preexisting chronic illness, and all the garbage that’s thrown at those people just never got as far as you.
Professors were openly hostile to me at U of R, during class in front of 50 people, to the point where I was scared to go to office hours and be put in a situation where it would be my word against theirs (because it was already amply clear to me that my voice would not be the one heard).
With other professors, there were times when I’d go to office hours and sit there and be ignored for the full duration of my time there, because he was helping other people with easier to solve problems, and then be told that I couldn’t have an extension on the assignment I was having trouble with, because I should have just figured it out myself in the two weeks I’d been sitting in office hours for four hours a week.
When I say it was a toxic environment, it’s easy to write it off as “well maybe I just couldn’t handle the rigor” – it’s true that I was fragile emotionally, but I have always been very strong academically, even if you can’t see that from this perspective, and you shouldn’t need to be tough emotionally in order to learn academic things. There’s a difference between rigor and abuse that was completely missed here, is what I’m saying.
I regret losing the connections that U of R had in industry, and it’s been an eye-opener in some ways the reactions people (and recruiters) have now that I ended up getting just as good a job, and it’s not apparent that I didn’t come from a high-profile school. But I don’t regret transferring and I don’t regret wording my posts strongly.
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I’m sorry, Dodec — I didn’t mean to make to seem like I was writing off your experience or trying to say that you couldn’t handle it, and your strongly-worded post is completely justified from your experience. I’m glad you transferred; it seems like it was the right choice for you and your mental health. I just wanted to show Cerulean that there is a positive side to research institutions, and that these things vary widely from person to person. En knows their own strengths and weaknesses, and it’s probably easier to transfer out of a well-known research institution than to transfer into one, so if en gets accepted into a good research institution and they want to go, they might as well try it out first and then transfer rather than writing it off completely based on someone else’s experience.
I hope this makes sense, and please know that I am not trying to be disrespectful of or write off your story in any way. Sorry if I came across that way.
P.S. Cerulean, College Confidential is probably the most discouraging site on the planet and I would take any advice there (e.g. “it’s impossible to get into any Ivy League school without playing 6 sports and 10 instruments and having a 27.0 GPA”) with a grain of salt. Better yet, avoid it completely.
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I did not go to an academic college, so obviously take my thoughts with a grain of salt, but a few points I didn’t see raised:
2. Does being taught by tenured professors matter to you, or are you okay being taught by grad students or adjuncts?
4. One thing to consider, especially going from a less prestigious (ie community college) to more prestigious school, is that just because you’ve taken a course doesn’t necessarily mean the school has to accept the credit. I don’t know how common this is not-music, but if they have a sequence of classes they require and don’t accept stuff you’ve already taken as prereqs, it could set you back for graduation a semester or two – this might be worth looking in to.
5. System.
6. Ask yourself if you feel okay supporting this culture with your tuition money, and if you would want to be around people attracted by this culture. Campus visits are helpful here. If the type of social ick being perpetuated is anti-intellectual (ie some of the more religious institutions), this will likely affect the science departments. That said, there’s good professors everywhere.
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(Context: I go to Pomona College and really like it.)
1. I love being roughly on the same, high level as my classmates. (I’ve even been known to wish that for me personally some of the intro classes were a bit harder here, which would frankly not be a good thing for the student population as a whole.) I don’t think I would be as happy at a school with weaker academics or where my classmates weren’t also very invested in their education. Dodec does make a great point, though, that self-driven people may be able to make even more out of free time via personal projects and initiatives. My biggest criticism of life at my college is how ridiculously busy people are, with a combination of academics and extracurriculars and social life. I really do think it often reaches an unhealthy point where people don’t have time to take care of themselves or have unscheduled time to do things like read, think, imagine, and work on personal projects that are also really important for one’s learning and growth. So while, again, I love my college and the experience I’ve had, you need to know yourself and consider how you feel when you are very busy, whether you know how to keep your life balanced, whether you thrive under a little bit of stress or suffer from it, etc.
2. A lot of small liberal arts colleges, Pomona included, have enough money to have strong science departments with cool equipment, so don’t limit your search exclusively to research colleges. I prefer my school because of better/more personal relationships with professors, increased ease of getting research positions when you’re not competing with grad students, and really strong support systems when I need help, which I think of as correlated with its small size. One disadvantage I only paid attention to once I declared my biology major, though, is that at a small school, there are fewer upper division electives offered each semester, and they are less likely to correspond to exactly what I’m interested in. Since you’ll probably be moving into upper-division classes right away, I would look very carefully at course catalogs for each school you’re considering (as well as what classes are actually offered each semester/quarter) and see if you could fulfill the rest of your degree’s (or possible degree’s) requirements with classes that you think would really interest you. Definitely look beyond big research colleges, though!
3. Continuing with liberal arts colleges because that’s what I applied to… Pomona is good in sciences as I said, Kokonily is right to mention Harvey Mudd (although it’s difficult to transfer there because they have a very rigorous Core at the beginning, and a small, very tight-knit community), and I also considered Williams, Swarthmore, Carleton, Grinnell, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Wellesley, and Smith for liberal schools that seemed well-regarded for sciences. (I may have been mistaken with some, so do your own research too!)
4. One of my best high school friends transferred to a different 4-year after her first year. Her original school was too Catholic and too isolated, and she had some bad experiences with classes/professors. She has told me now that she’s very glad she transferred, and in fact she’s glad that she went to the other school first, since now she appreciates her new school even more. Her big advice would be to visit a school with an open mind to see what it really is, not just what you want to see because you’ve already decided you want to go there.
5. Unhelpful and unnecessarily scary.
6. You want to make sure that you’re going to a place where you will feel safe and supported by the institution. Remember that the administration has lots of power over hiring professors, creating campus climate, and funding programs, and the social ick they perpetuate could very well carry through to other parts of the school. I agree that I would rather go to a campus that is discussing and trying to fix difficult issues than to one that’s ignoring them entirely, though. If you can, maybe ask some current students, because they are probably well-aware of icky administration things (Kokonilly mentions a list for Stanford, I could make a similar one from Pomona) and can tell you if/how they affect academics and student body.
I hope this helps. If you have any other questions about my experience, I’d be happy to answer them!
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Re: Upper division classes
Take a look at what professors in the bio departments’ professional interests are. That will likely become the elective/upper division courses they teach. Don’t be afraid to email professors/departments if you have questions!
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1: I’d go with same-ish level. That way group discussions have more give and take and you’ll stretch your brain.
2: Consider small liberal arts colleges! There are plenty with strong science departments. What region of the country are you looking to be in once you transfer? I don’t know much about big research universities. Often you’ll have a grad student teaching your classes, not a professor at those. At small liberal arts schools, your professors are not grad students at all, but full tenured professors. Another thing to consider is size. Research Universities tend to be big. Some are public, some are private. What cost do you want? Sometimes big private schools give good financial aid, and small liberal arts schools generally give good financial aid, but some big private schools (NYU) do not give much aid at all.
3: Carleton College, Beloit College, Oberlin College
4: I know a couple people who transferred to my small liberal arts school, Beloit College, some from a community college, some from other 4-years. I know someone who transferred from a community college to a big public school (University of Wisconsin) and that seems to be working out well. I don’t really know how the process went for those folks.
5: try the Fiske Guide to colleges?
6: Somewhat/sometimes. Depends on the nature of social ick. A lot of schools have trouble properly prosecuting sexual assault on their campuses, a lot of schools also have poor mental health resources. These things may affect one’s student life/academic life. The course material itself may not be affected but check out the policies for students turning things in late if they have a mental health crisis, etc. Some professors are not very understanding; some are very understanding, does the administration/Dean of Students fight for the students?
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“I don’t know much about big research universities. Often you’ll have a grad student teaching your classes, not a professor at those.”
Hm, I’ve heard this before but I’ve always been curious — is this actually true? I’ve never experienced this (except for my freshman intro writing course). Maybe this only happens at large state schools?
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I dunno. It probably depends on the school/classes. Likely grad students teach the big intro ones at some schools? I went to a small liberal arts school, though. Every single one of my classes was taught by a professor. I do have a couple friends who are current grad students at a much bigger university and one is constantly grading her students’ tests, so I assumed she was teaching. There is another friend who is talking about her sections of classes and which ones she was teaching. As far as I can tell, yes there are often grad student taught courses at schools with both grad students and undergrads. There may also be schools that have only undergrad students and aren’t small liberal arts colleges and therefore always have professors.
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At UC Berkeley we always have professors teaching the lectures, but labs and discussions are almost always led by grad students. Not sure how that differs from other places.
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Oxlin — Oh I see, yeah, here graduate TA’s usually grade your assignments and exams.
POSOC — That’s how it is here too.
I didn’t realize that that’s what people meant when they said grad students were the ones teaching you. I see I’ve been wrong all this time.
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The actual course lecturing is done here by the faculty, while the labs tend to be led by one lecturer with a bunch of grad students being the demonstrators. The tutorials and the CS lab sessions are often led by other undergrad students.
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My boyfriend’s experience at a large state school in the LA area (guess) has been like POSOC’s, with professors teaching lectures but grad students leading labs and discussions.
Note, however, that labs and discussions (and smaller classes in general) are some of your best changes to get to know professors.
I’ve also noticed that his school doesn’t seem to have nearly the academic support system mine does, which I could imagine varies a lot by school and even by department, so you might ask students about that at the various places you’re considering.
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1: I was desperate to meet other people who were as passionate about and as good at the things I was into as me. I was also terrified of not having a social role anymore, but the first thing won – I chose somewhere with a reputation for being very academically rigorous. I actually was well above average in first year, and spent much of my time with the math students who were roughly at my level. This year one of my friends has befriended somewhat more normal physics students, but we still form a productive study group. I used to be extremely jealous of various other people for quite petty reasons – it wasn’t that I didn’t realise it wasn’t helpful, but I couldn’t just turn it off. But I know this one guy who’s maybe the best student in our shared courses and I have the standard “I would love a slice of his brain” reaction, so that’s good. On the other hand, I have been overwhelmed by stress this semester. On the other other hand, it’s not just academics causing that.
5: It’s probably evil.
6: We have a lot of Labor (sadly that’s the correct spelling…) politicians and the politics of the average student matches the faculty’s. But in terms of the actual school climate and how students are treated, the administration initially seem nice and professional and that seems to actually be the case. I’ve had a good experience with our mental health facilities, and we don’t have a bad sexual assault problem.
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Y’all are lovely. <3 Thanks so much for helping me! I hugely appreciate everything you've all written.
Reply all:
Conclusion 1: Ok! I need to guess my sweet spot between being stretched and not being snapped. I've got new thoughts about how to do this, thank you all!
Conclusion 2 & 3: New search perspectives in time to not burn out, callooh callay!
Conclusion 5: Oh, thank mercy it's not just me.
Conclusion 6: *Drums fingers* I still find (and this is A Me Problem) that I have red flags from every uni of every variety I've looked at, ever, and ??? Nobody? fights for students when they can fight for reputation? As far as I can tell. Blergh. I know it's their job to keep the engine runnin' sweet, but I need Ethics, o oilers, and Decency! Ahem. Cerulean Distrusts Authority: Film at eleven. I will look for campus consciousness.
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Bleh, premature post with awkwardly incomplete phrasing. I don’t don’t don’t want what I said in 6 to indicate that I think anyone else doesn’t have ethics/decency, I was trying to write that I get overwhelmed too easily by red flags that are widespread issues which it simply isn’t reasonable to write off a college for, because Society and Things Do Not Occur In Vacuums. And I’m failing to find a way to stop internally yelling about ideals and start actually sorting Genuinely Scary from Standard Scary. And the notes about campus consciousness are A+, I will def do that, and I’d love any other advice if anyone has it.
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Hey GAPAs, I responded to CP but it looks like it got sent to spam. Mind fishing it out for me, please? Thanks!
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I applied to two schools- UNCG and App State- and I’ve been accepted into both of them. Now for auditions!
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Congratulations! Good luck with auditions!
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Best of luck!
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Well it looks like my UNCG audition went well, as I’ve been accepted into the saxophone studio. Looks like learning a Bozza piece paid off! I still have to hear back from the composition studio, though. In all likelihood I’ll be wait listed for the comp studios at at least one school because the studios are so small! but the professors at both schools seemed to think I had to potential, and the UNCG professors really liked my essay (they also stalked me online and found my bandcamp and said the stuff on there was way better than what I had put in my portfolio. I don’t know what to take away from this??)
Either way, I’ve been accepted into the sax studio at UNCG so I have a definite foot in the door as a music major.
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Congratulations!
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So I think I might’ve found a Masters Degree program I like? It’s called “Computational Science” and is interdisciplinary between Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Biology, Chemistry and Astronomy. I get to skip all the boring prerequisites, and I only have about one semesters worth of compulsory classes (intros, which actually sound interesting) and then I get to pick all the rest of my classes out of the grad/senior undergrad programs of the six disciplines! I can take classes about Game Theory and Quantum Physics and actually get credit for them and…
…oh cake, I think I’m in love.
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Wow! What fun! When do you have to/get to/plan to apply?
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I have to wait until applications open in March, then fill out an online form, then pay 17€. Oh, and I need to plan out my classes a bit beforehand because I’m fast-tracked out of most of the Intro lectures and so get to come up with my own timetable for the first semester classes. I’m leaning towards signing up for absolutely everything interesting, then dropping out of what I don’t like or can’t handle. And if I end up managing a bit more than the 60 credits during my first year, I can go gallivanting off to Paris for the first half of my second year without graduating late.
Before I commit absolutely, I still need to speak to some current/former students about the accreditation process for classes. They’re supposed to “have something to do with computational science” says the fine print. There’s a list of recommended classes in Physics, Bio, Chem,… that you automatically get credit for, while for others you have to submit a form to the SPL of Physics.
My Math SPL was pretty much the coolest professor I have ever had- he just basically wanted you to grok things you were interested in and encouraged/supported you in finding those things. I have no idea how uptight his counterpart is. Only being able to choose classes of the rec list would put quite a damper on this adventure. Still, I think there’s enough interesting stuff to come up with 48 credits and I might be able to get around the list by doing in exchange program with *my chosen university* in France for which the accreditation process is different.
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Life update:
I go to community college. I am a Fine Arts major and will graduate with an associate’s degree this time next year. Frankly I have no intention of using my degree for anything practical, I just want to learn how to do art better and take an inexpensive step along the path of higher education.
My photography is being recognized more and more in my local music scene. I shot for a website for a while and now I shoot for individual bands. I’ve befriended some of them. I might go to Europe with my friends’ band as a merch guy.
I’m progressing much more slowly musically, which is disappointing. I put way more effort into music and am more passionate about it and yet photography comes more naturally to me. Oh well, I’ll get there some day.
My parents got divorced. That was strange. I’m dating a girl from my town who goes to school in New York. We just hit the two year mark, although it was not uninterrupted. My younger brother is turning out to be good at all the things I’m terrible at, so that’s neat. I just got a job at Guitar Center. I had my first day today, but it was just paperwork. Looking forward to digging into it.
How are my friends at Museblog?
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I’m doing okay! I’m at community college as well, studying technical theater, and I’m trying to transfer to a four-year college to get a bachelor’s degree and hopefully become a lighting or set designer. Currently I’m running lights for a community theater production of Into the Woods. I have a part-time job at a donut shop which is alright, but they have a lot of employees and so can’t assign me many work hours, which is disappointing to my parents. Last movie I saw was Deadpool which was fantastic.
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i happened to stop by today for the first time in quite a while
and i’m studying theatrical design (probs set or costume design) at ithaca college so if you’re considering transferring here and you want The Details…i got you
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Thanks, but I’m in California and it’ll be a while before I’m mature or responsible enough to move away from my parents. How is your theater stuff going though? c:
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Isn’t it kind of weird that I remember starting out here when the average age was thirteen or thereabouts and now we’re all going to college and generally adulting?
Adding to my sort-of status update above: I might be buying my first car this week. Holy frak. I keep having visions of something terrible happening to it. Should the “Car-Ownership” Quest really be unlocked for a character with such a low level? I haven’t put a non-negligible number of skill points into automotive competences since… August?
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Yes! I feel so old.
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If it’s worth anything, I acquired a car ~2.7 years after getting my license, not having driven for more than 15 minutes at a time in the interim period. I didn’t even drive it much until I had to commute to/from work on a daily basis during the summer. Granted, it was only 5 miles, but it still took 20 minutes (hashtag California).
I would recommend getting a very old yet reliable car if you’re so scared. I drive a 2002 Honda Accord (dad’s old car) and it has not failed me yet. Plus, it’s okay if I back into a pole or something (ok in fairness I couldn’t see it in the rearview mirror, it was quite a short pole) because it’s not like it’s in perfect condition anyway.
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I’ve driven my dad’s old car in Vienna a bit- a twelve-year old Honda soccer-mom mobile which I felt really comfortable with. Going with an old car is definitely my best option here- cheaper, and less likely to be stolen/carjacked*.
I think I’m most worried about what I’ll call the South Africa factor- cars break down a lot and the number of traffic accidents is freakishly high. It’s like turning on the traffic news yesterday …”something something serious accident involving a taxi in Sandton… this is the fourth serious accident involving a taxi since noon today” (it was about 6 p.m.).
Decent insurance is pretty expensive, so I’m basically just trying to find something that’s cheaper than a rental for that period- so if I total it, I still end up ahead. Though “I total it” can also include “there was a freak storm and a tree branch dropped on it” or “someone stole it”.
*Ah, Joburg. We’re number one! We’re number one!
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Soon I’ll have been on MB or the Gaboomba for half my life. Wheee!
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Since we’re posting updates! Yeah, it’s really weird that the average age used to be like 13-14 and now many of us are Old. I found MB the fall of my ninth grade year, and here I am, three months from graduating college. Very weird.
Anyway, I’m graduating from Brown at the end of May, two days before I turn 22, and then I’m driving down the East Coast home to NC with a stopover in NYC to see Hamilton on my birthday (!!). One of my best friends is getting married (???) that weekend, and then… Who knows. My entire life after June 4 is a complete mystery right now. I’ve applied to some summer internships at Yale University Press and a few other presses and museums, I’m doing a million informational interviews with people in publishing and then sending them all my resume in the hopes that they will get me jobs, I’m applying to the Columbia Publishing Course. Hopefully I’ll have a summer thing, and then hopefully find something for the fall, and hopefully it will be in Boston or NYC, and then hopefully the rest of my life will keep on without me being too painfully sad about college being over all the time? I’m not really excited to graduate–well, I’m excited to try out Real Life, but I’m not ready to leave behind what I’ll leave behind. And I hate uncertainty and I will miss my friends something awful. But hey–starting out the rest of my life. That’s kinda cool.
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I should note that driving down the East Coast from Rhode Island to North Carolina involves two periGAPions.
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I’ll have to get back for the (ahhhh) wedding, but I’m sure I’ll be back through
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Life Update:
Preface: If any of you recall, I was initially applying to a coterminal master’s program but I have since come to the realization that I don’t like school anymore and if I had to do another year of it I would probably crash and burn. I can already see the symptoms of burnout in myself. So… not a good idea. Real Life it is!
I will be graduating from Stanford mid-June, a couple weeks before my 20th birthday and have (verbally) accepted a (verbal) offer for a full-time position at the company I interned for last summer! I have yet to receive the paperwork but I trust that it will be here soon. Before that, I will probably (once again) blow my bank account on an overseas backpacking trip, this time to Japan (!!) with one of my best friends (who is going to med school in Texas) to visit her family and friends! I’m super excited for Japan — the only concern is whether I will, in fact, have enough money after that to survive until my first paycheck (probably?). This will need to be Extremely Budgeted in order to work, but hopefully I can swing it.
Other than that, I need to start figuring out Real Life: a place to live, how to schedule doctor’s appointments, how car insurance works, the works. But I feel a lot better now that I have a plan. Just a few weeks ago I was descending into full-blown panic on a near-daily basis because I didn’t have a plan, but now that I know I will have friends in the area and even a job (?!) I am doing much better.
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If this is too nosy, feel free not to answer but did you do 3 years of college if you’re only 19 and graduating now? Sorry, just curious.
Good luck with all the real life stuff! It is intimidating at first but it is nice to have a bit more free time than when you have it all taken up with homework.
A Japan trip sounds awesome! I’d like to do a trip to celebrate my Grad School graduation in May 2017, but we’ll see. Once you start working there is a lot less time for trips so take them while you’ve got the chance!
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Not a problem, I don’t mind at all. It’s a reasonable question. I did/am doing the full 4 years of college but skipped grades in elementary school.
Yes, I’m looking forward to having more free time. It’ll be nice to finally be able to read for leisure again!
Luckily the company I’ll be working for has unlimited vacation, but yes — I will probably be too busy to travel regularly. Hopefully I can take annual trips though, I’ve come to the realization that I can live frugally and spend most of my “fun money” on travel if I save up for it, so that’s exciting. So far it’s looking like my biggest expense will be rent… sigh. It’s pretty discouraging, I will likely be spending at least $1500/month on rent if I don’t share a room.
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At $1500 a month for rent, I would consider looking into what the price of a small home might be in your area, as you are approaching the cost of a small mortgage payment at that point.
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I appreciate that you’re trying to help and I’m glad home ownership is working out for you! But in the part of New York where I live, buying a house would cost a million dollars (I wish I were exaggerating, I’m seeing apartments in my neighborhood for more than that) – with a 10-year mortgage, monthly payments would be about four times as much as my rent. As San Francisco is the one place with more expensive housing than New York, this advice may not be sound.
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Oh I absolutely agree that with costs that high for a home, even with a 30 year mortgage, that renting would be cost affordable. I wasn’t completely certain from her post where she was going to be living post college. And I meant to word my post to suggest that, if property were such that you could have a comparable mortgage payment, it might be worth considering. But at that price I absolutely would not be thinking about a house, as that would be way out of most young adults (or even not young adults) price range.
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Dodec is right, homes here are at least a million dollars and can easily reach into the tens of millions. I actually looked it up recently and I could get a small condo for $2 million.
$1500/month for rent is also pretty conservative; it could easily reach at least $2000/month. I am okay with living in a slightly worse apartment, so $1500/month is reasonable for me. If I were open to sharing a room, it might be able to dip into $900/month.
Basically… real estate is insane here.
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But at least you don’t have to worry about an earthquake coming through and destroying everything, right?
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Yep, that’s totally not a concern here whatsoever.
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Even for Dodecahedron, earthquakes aren’t out of the question. East coast quakes have happened, and New York buildings aren’t designed for them. Most of those beautiful Brooklyn brownstones will pancake if their walls crumble.
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Only 19 but her mind is older, these New York City streets gettin’ colder
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So, life updates, huh? I was 16 when I started posting on the ‘blog (almost 10 year ago, holy cake!! 
). Everybody was all much younger than, we were all pre teens/teens, not adults doing adulty things for the most part.
Now….I’ve been done with college for nearly a year, after completing 7 years of college. I’ve had an adult job as a veterinarian for 9 months (holy cake, has it been that long?). I own a house (!!!), and while I’m still working on unpacking even after 3 months of living here and only just moved my bed over from the parents a couple days ago…I own a freaking house!! I still have a hard time wrapping my head around this some days). I bought a $150 table (it was on sale for less than half its normal price) the other day….for my Hogwarts Express train set, that cost me $10, when I bought it used 8 years ago. Dad is making me a dining room table for a birthday present. Mom is making me Harry Potter/Doctor Who/Star Trek curtains for my house. I am planning my first vacation of my own, have gotten the time off work, booked my hotel room, still need to buy plane tickets, but if everything goes according to plan, will be going on the first vacation *of my own* as *an adult* next August (to Star Trek 50th in Vegas, baby!!)
And….I think we can all agree that while I may be an adult doing some adulty things, I’m kind of still not very adult, lol. And am still rambly as ever when posting posts at 1 in the morning (which, really, it’s a work night, I should be in bed).
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I’ve gotten unofficial word back from both schools that they’ve accepted me into both the composition and the saxophone studios everywhere??? Both schools want me?? I thought ASU would waitlist me for sure??? they were only taking one or two people?????? now I have to choose between them?????? HELP!!!!!
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CONGRATULATIONS! AHH
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Congratulations! For decision making, if you’re super torn, I’d look at which is more affordable. If they’re equally affordable then I’d try flipping a coin and seeing if you react strongly to the result. If you either feel disappointment at the result you got, or relief, then perhaps you prefer one over the other.
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Which city do you like better?
Have you visited both? Which campus do you instinctively feel most comfortable on?
Talk with students in your particular department, ask what they like and don’t like.
Which is more affordable? If you get financial aid, is the aid guaranteed beyond your first year?
If there are any extracurriculars you’re really interested in, check those out and make sure they’re a good fit. (e.g., the school which was shuttering its theater department was not a good fit for my friend who loves theater)
Make a list of your top priorities in a school, and weight them if you want (e.g. “dorm quality is twice as important as school spirit”). Rate each school on those priorities, multiply by the weights, and add the numbers up to see which gets a higher score. [if you don’t like the result, there’s your answer, too!]
In the end, if you have given it a lot of thought and truly feel like you would be happy at both – then you have no bad options! Yes, picking one or the other will surely lead to different outcomes, and there are no guarantees, but if you have only good options, you should feel good about picking either one.
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“If you don’t like the result, there’s your answer, too!” WISDOM.
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late to the party, but a. congratulations and b. the most important thing is the teacher and your relationship with them. If you haven’t already met with them, you need to do so now because you’re going to be working one on one for the next four years. Also, consider the other students at the school: are they going to inspire you to get better? as a composition major, your works are only as good as the people playing them.
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Thanks for the advice, everyone!
After a lot of deliberation I’ve decided to go to UNCG. I know being a music major is very difficult work and I think that their program is going to be the best fit for me- it’s a bigger program, but after all the times I’ve spent with it, I think that that’s going to be the best place for me to study music. The schools were just about equally affordable (my state’s public universities are very affordable and very good) plus I was offered a $1500/year saxophone scholarship to UNCG, which is a smallish scholarship but still helps!
Lizzie- I did meet with all the department professors I’d be working closely with (saxophone and composition) before making my decision. I think I’ll be able to work well with them. UNCG is the bigger music school and has a LOT of really really good people.
Anyway! I’m a little nervous but also very excited for next year.
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Congratulations on deciding, and on the scholarship!
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