bogbeast

Hey,

So I finished my freshman year at Reed College last semester, but I had to take a leave because of familial ******** and an accompanying change in financial circumstances. Things went well at the beginning of the first semester, but then I got really sick and that carried over to the second semester, at which time some heavy personal stuff emerged--I was basically miserable for the majority of my time there, but things were going a lot better just when I found out that I needed to take a leave (sigh). I'm at a CUNY right now and I feel under stimulated, so I'm trying to weigh my options: go back to Reed, go to Bard, or go into an honors behavioral neuroscience program at CUNY Hunter.

My Reed GPA is lower than the already low Reed average (I saw only because of submitting my transcripts while transferring), so I'm not sure how that will play into applying to graduate school--I want to study neuroscience, neuropsychology, or psychopharmacology. I already have a solid personal statement that explains what was going on in relation to my not-so-great academic year (I didn't fail anything, but just didn't perform as well as I could have), but that following me through graduate school is kind of daunting.

So, basically, Hunter has much more affordable tuition ($5k vs. $55k), a broader range of research labs to choose from (I'm already in a lab at a different CUNY and they collaborate so it shouldn't be difficult to get into the one I'm interested in at Hunter), but less of a community, while Reed (and Bard, I imagine) have the academic rigor I'm yearning for, the venerability/name that allows for a higher likelihood of getting into a prestigious graduate program, but the often irritating homogenous and pretentious student bodies. Bard has more of the practical application opportunities I lean toward becoming involved in, but it's in a rural area that I grew up about an hour away from. However, I have some neuropsychological and medical connections in the Bard area because of a program I was in in high school.

Is taking on at least $50k in debt worth a Reed or Bard degree? How will my low freshman year GPA affect applying to graduate school?

sometransfer

I would say no. Go to Hunter. Stand out there as a stellar student, and you will be better off than staying at Reed. I can say with confidence the Reed and Bard name are worth less than $50,000.

bogbeast

Thanks for your reply. Can I ask why you say "with confidence" that Reed and Bard aren't worth $50,000? Reed has a really high rate of sending students to awesome graduate programs, no less sending them well-prepared, though it's not well-know outside of academia.

I'm also concerned about finding a sense of community at Hunter since it's a big state school--not that finding a more readily available community elsewhere is worth thousands of dollars.

CalDud

Reed or Bard aren't Ivy league colleges. Even then a 50K amount of debt is something to think over.

You get what you put into your education. If you're simply the student that attends classes, studies for the exams, and calls it a day...what are you doing? Graduate schools don't care all that much about where you went for your undergraduate school, only that you made the best of it that you possibly could and could show you could hang with the rest of them on the standardized exams. Your low GPA during that one year will probably put a damper on getting into prestigious programs.

I remember reading about an ivy league student who was good but not as great as the other people in his major. He was rejected to a majority of his top programs on his list because that was written in the recommendation. Stand out somewhere. Your letters of recommendation are important as well as extremely high grades.

austonian

To me, it seems like you should go to Hunter. I can relate to your problem personally because I am currently in the process of transferring from Reed to a state university.

1. Debt has the potential to ruin your quality of life after undergrad. I think that's the most important point. If you wanna know more about how student loans can really mess up your life, there are better authorities writing on the web.

2. This community has a dominant culture of concern for name and prestige (that's why these people above feel that they can say, with confidence, the worth of a Reed or Bard degree). The truth is, like you said, Reed has a lot of cache among graduate programs. If you graduated from Reed, it would be easy for you to get good recs for grad school because of the thesis and conference classes. (You would also be super prepared for grad school work, although you would probably be too burnt out to wanna go immediately.) Compared to other schools, from Ivy League to state universities, it is *easier* at Reed to get good recs. You don't even have to work towards relationships w/ profs. Of course, if you put effort into relationships with profs, it's possible at any school.

Like you've also seen, Reed GPAs are really low. It's really hard to show someone that you were doing incredibly difficult work and writing grad-level papers and succeeding at it when all you have to show for it is a bunch of B+'s (my experience). A professor at Reed told me (s)he was penalized for giving out multiple A-grades in sections. So what you have to show for your weekend all-nighters in Hauser is a ****ty GPA and a little insert that says "we don't inflate grades." ********, I would say that they actively deflate grades. Professors risk losing a chance at tenure if they give As. Of course, my experience is based in the liberal arts, so if you were to graduate from Reed with a Psychology degree it would be a better transcript (this is not an arbitrary example). I actually have the Reed average GPA after 2 years of classes, and it would definitely get better in my final two years if I were to stay at Reed. Only at Reed would having the average GPA mean you are a nervous wreck about transferring to a regular old state university (my situation).

3. As for rigor, you may go back to Reed and be challenged, but I am leaving because I did not feel like I was being challenged. The professors at Reed are some of the best in the country, and they are extremely intelligent, well-read people. However, because almost every class at Reed is a conference course, you are spending more time listening to your peers than to the professor--or, you are talking yourself. The best part of Reed are the readings assigned and the thesis. Personally I was not going to sit through more boring conferences, listening to kids talk out of their asses while the most educated person in the room sat quietly (the prof)...all that, just to write a thesis. If I wanna do that, I'll pursue a Masters or PhD. Then my paper will be published, and not just end up in the thesis tower.

4. "Reed [has] the often irritating homogenous and pretentious student bod[y]." Yeah, that is not going to change. Reed is full of entitled white kids. There are normal people there, but they are not the majority. If you already feel this way, then I would strongly suggest transferring. Reed only stays a glittery intellectual dreamscape if you continue to be ignorant to, or ignore, the fact that no one is willing to step outside their entitled, privileged world view. Not to mention, going back to rigor, the fact that people still manage to slide by at Reed, never doing readings, turning all their papers in late and well below the page requirements. Really takes away from the feeling that you're in a special thinking person's paradise (especially if you're not getting the grades that match your work). Oh, and you can always go to Renn Fayre as a guest. I plan to.

5. One more thing: I have a LOT of friends who are recent grads from Reed (last two years). At least out of these two groups of grads, most people don't go to graduate school right away out of Reed. Too burnt out. The ones who get sweet jobs out of Reed are those who had already networked enough through internships (hard to do except in the summer with the workload), or those who had connections because they come from wealthy powerful backgrounds (lots of those at Reed). All of the smartest Reed grad friends of mine work in food service right now. Probably not a coincidence. They'll go on to do well in grad school, no doubt, but it certainly doesn't feel right to go from thesising to food service. A lot of grads are living in hip places on their parents' dime, doing unpaid internships. I could write a whole nother post on that ****.


Just so you don't think this is ********, although it is all *just my opinion and personal experience*, I am a would-be junior taking a semester off to transfer from Reed. I never had any academic or behavioral problems at Reed and was considered an excellent student by my profs there. I was really involved in a lot of stuff at Reed and have a lot more opinions on it. PM me if you want.


Edited to add: I really do hope that helps. Obviously I think very strongly that you should go to Hunter. But maybe you can budget in another semester or year at Reed to make sure. A lot of people I really respect graduated from Reed...they were able to recognize these same problems about it but still enjoy 4 years there. I also apologize for the starred words, forgot about the filter, ha.

bogbeast

Thanks for the replies.

@Caldud The debt bit is definitely true. Although something to consider, being overshadowed by my classmates doesn't worry me; even when I was incapacitated I was able to keep up with them when I attended class.

@austonian Being away from Reed at a largely less stimulating (definitely compared to Reed and, from what I hear, to Hunter) school is making me put a lot more weight on names and prestige than I realized (the very thing I went to Reed to escape, sigh). I'm also in the same position of being wary of rejection from a regular state school...I'm hoping I can fallback on my high school transcripts.

I definitely agree with you about ******** grade deflation. Part of my affinity for Reed stems from knowing (well, assuming) that I'd be mostly free from the dull and inefficient conferences because I'd be in more lab-based courses. Working in Hausser at a thesis table is also pretty appealing...but that doesn't get rid of being surrounded by rich white kids who are unaware of the world outside of Reed as they strive to be the organic hippies they can never be.

You're definitely bringing me down to reality. But that reality seems to be counteracted by something my upperclassmen acquaintance told me, that the first year at Reed is basically bootcamp and that thereafter it gets a lot better. If I had stayed, I really think that would've been the case for me because I know how to better navigate things: live off campus and become more involved in the Reed/Portland community. It just sort of seems like I didn't really have any closure, but I can probably procure that for myself once I'm situated elsewhere.

I'm basically at the point where I'm overwhelmed by pros and cons relating to whether all of the things that made me unhappy at Reed are resolved or not and if I can get the things I'd take out of Reed elsewhere.

The starred words are welcomed, haha. Your thoughts really helped--I'll definitely PM you.

Scienceguy1

Completely unrelated note: psychopharmacology awesome, I haven't seen anyone express an interest in that on this forum yet. Check out the book PiKHAL by Alexander Shulgin, great biochemist and just an awesome read its more about him than psychopharmacology.

vonlost

Because of the heavy Reed workload, you know you will learn more at Reed, graduating with the equivalent of a Master's, already showing PhD schools that you know how to do research. Is that worth it to you?

austonian

A Reed education is not the "equivalent of a Master's." It's still a BA. Your italics are very dramatic. And I think the suggested connection between heavy workload and learning more is also a dramatic gloss on education.

vonlost

Yes, I should have qualified that with "in the eyes of PhD schools." All Reed grads do indeed earn a BA; sorry for the ambiguity.

austonian

That is definitely a strange and essentialist way to put it. Reed is very well regarded among graduate schools, for sure. But PhD programs certainly do not consider Reed a "Masters-in-a-BA." No matter how rigorous it is, the education at Reed (besides MALS) is undergraduate level.

Anyway, I'd be glad to go back and forth about it, because apparently I can't send a private message until I've racked up a few more posts. Sorry, bogbeast, will respond to you ASAP.

vonlost

Some other schools also highly regarded in this way are Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, Swarthmore and UChicago.

bogbeast

@vonlost Like austonian said, just because Reed has a heavy workload doesn't mean that you learn more. I'd be able to write a thesis and conduct research at Hunter or Bard, too. I guess at this point I'm looking for a more readily available sense of community that I only started to foster just before I took a leave from Reed. The lack of practical application, among a lot of what has already been discussed in this thread, at Reed is turning me off from returning.

@austonian Thanks, no worries.

vonlost

"just because Reed has a heavy workload doesn't mean that you learn more."

When a typical college two-semester course is packed into one semester, most students end up learning more over eight semesters.

austonian

@vonlost

Sorry, what course(s) are you referring to? I took 60 credit hours worth of classes at Reed. There are no accelerated courses. For example, intro science classes are two semesters and first and second year language courses are two semesters. The only thing I can think of is Hum 110, which is not accelerated, but is 1.5 units per semester because it is considered a crash course to Reed college. It is also considered very reading/writing intensive for first years.