Cutthroat, laidback school list

College Search & Lists
21

<p>Wash U., fabulous academics, beautiful and maintained dorms, great food, and my daughter’s second choice had she not gotten into Tufts, ED. That said, my daughter kept hearing wonderful things about Wash U., but always with the caveat that it was cutthroat with a significant number of students doing inventory-taking of each other’s progress. True or not, it was redundant press in these parts.</p>

<p>In fact, she was told by some Wash U. students that if she wanted a less cutthroat version of Wash U., she should consider Tufts.</p>

22

<p><<<you just=“” don’t=“” know=“” about=“” the=“” private=“” public=“” school=“” dynamic=“” wrt=“” flunking=“” weeding=“” out.=“” schools=“” aren’t=“” into=“” business=“” of=“” out=“” students,=“” creating=“” ungodly=“” competition=“” as=“” in=“” schools.=“”>></you></p>

<p>This was true 20 years ago, and it is true, now. The UCs are designed, with its harsh grading and oversubscribed lower division classes, to flunk out a good 20-25% of its students. With an ever-increasing strong group, academically, the flunk-out rate is no doubt less, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not an attempt to eliminate some students, if eating on Telegraph doesn’t accomplish the task first.</p>

<p>And, yes, private schools do what they can to retain their students. Absolutely.</p>

23

<p>Maybe CAL–even though I graduated from there and didn’t experience cut-throatness; never felt that someone was angling to take something away from me or giving me misinformation so much as the inherent grading in the Physical Sciences (and certain lit courses, too) could be unforgiving.</p>

<p>I think of Hopkins as more academic than collegiate, so, maybe, it wins for the most cuththroat. You can also put Cornell, in that category, even if it’s not on your list.</p>

<p>Re: Tufts. A very bright and accomplished student body of students, passionate (or, even, zealous) about their plans (be it efforting to get into medical school or becoming a diplomat), does not make for “cuththroatness”; a lack of collaborative learning does. The feedback my daughter (and we) has gotten back, multiply, from current and historical Tufts students is that there is a pronounced esprit de corps and willingness to help each other. And, in fact, we have heard this from transfer students (from Georgetown, NYU, Brandeis, and Boston College) that the level of warmth and support at Tufts was notable, upon coming in from their respective schools.</p>

<p>USC? Cuththroat?? In my day, it was not. We know a significant number of kids, currently, who attend 'SC, most of whom are not academic powerhouses and a few who are (who couldn’t resist the generous merit scholarships they rec’d). I would think with such a diverse pool of talent, some of the cuthroatness might be diluted?</p>

<p>I suppose if you find community at a school, that might mitigate the effects of whatever cutthroat sensibility exists.</p>

<p>I know 7 or 8 students at Carnegie-Mellon, over recent years, who report being really happy with their choice and even have affection for Pittsburgh and who haven’t made mention of its being cutthroat.</p>

24

<p>

</p>

<p>I have no comprehension of this statement. There are two ideas behind taking cc students: 1) as at UC to integrate teh state’s master plan wrt higher education - the melding of the the three (or two) branches of colleges in CA: cc, csu, UCs, which UCLA follows; 2), to bypass reporting of the increased frosh class by directing some to cc first.</p>

<p>You tell me which USC is following, especially when it takes students only a year removed from high school from some other four year, or cc. </p>

<p>UCLA as we know takes mature students who are ready to step into their majors by their doing GE at cc or some other 4-year. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>No it’s not. There are a handful of large privates with ug > 15,000, BYU, USC, NYU.</p>

<p>None of these u’s are especially noted for compeition.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>The flunk-out rate is no doubt less now. But the quality of students to Cal and UCLA is undoubtedly higher, despite the terrible leap-frogging taht occurs in the admissions process to both. </p>

<p>The dropout rate for “at risk” students at UCLA and Cal is undoubtedly as high as ever, and too high, probably at 50% or greater, despite the administrations providing of academic services to tutor these students to wade through the curricula.</p>

<p>By the way, at-risk is someone from an underperforming high school (a really bad one), where the student would be top-10%, probably top 4%, but not manifest w grades (or even uw grades) because top-level courses are lacking at his/her hss, and he/she wouldn’t manifest high scores, say, ~ 1600 on a 2400 pt scale.</p>

<p>Holistics guarantees if not mandates that there will be some that are admitted with such stats, as well as UC’s quest for diversity. As publics, UCLA and Cal have duties to accept a portion of these students with large leap-frogging of other much, much more q’ed stats’ students, which I agree to, but the level and quantity, may be a bit much for my taste. This is where community college should come to into play. Especially with colleges having to monitor costs, and it takes more $$ to keep an at-risk student in school.</p>

25

<p>umm… many USC biology and chemistry courses (such as intro bio, mobio, biochem, gchem, ochem) are curved at:
15% A
25% B
40% C
15% D
5% F
giving you an average GPA of about 2.3 in each of those courses.</p>

<p>i really doubt that UCLA or Cal’s curves are much harsher than that.</p>

<p>oh and although USC is on a semester system, i’m not sure that we have less exams. general chemistry, for example has 3 midterms and 1 final along with 2 lab exams, giving you ~1 exam every 2.5 weeks. and that is just for one class.</p>

26

<p>… about the food on Telegraph.</p>

<p>Here’s a high school [PV Peninsula](<a href=“http://www.pvpusd.k12.ca.us/penhi/collegeacceptance/collegeacceptance2010.pdf”>http://www.pvpusd.k12.ca.us/penhi/collegeacceptance/collegeacceptance2010.pdf&lt;/a&gt;) which shows USC’s acceptances, denials, matriculants starting on page 94.</p>

<p>It shows as you said, some academic powerhouses, but some fairly uninspiring matriculants.</p>

<p>Is this school typical? Maybe, maybe not.</p>

<p>But here’s that other high school in SD for USC’s matriculants:</p>

<p>37 4.36 690 640 700 2030 LR720,UH660,SP630 USC, UC Berkeley, Tufts University, Emory University</p>

<p>41 4.34 670 750 710 2130 MB690,UH610 USC, UCSB, Cal Poly</p>

<p>45 4.31 SP570,LR560,CH510 USC, UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt, BC</p>

<p>48 4.27 670 610 760 2040 UH710,LR590,SP540 USC, NYU, UCSB, UCSD</p>

<p>51 4.25 620 640 690 1950 UH680,MB640,LR490 USC, LMU, USD, Cal
Poly</p>

<p>53 4.25 580 660 630 1870 MB670,UH620,SP540 USC, Boston University, UCSD, USD</p>

<p>54 4.24 CH690,UH680 USC, UCSB, Cal Poly-San Luis</p>

<p>69 4.11 630 680 700 2010 LR690,UH550 USC, NYU, UCSB, USD</p>

<p>86 4.03 660 670 610 1940 UH690,SP590,PH560 USC, BU, UCSB</p>

<p>133 3.77 580 680 600 1860 UH610,LR550 USC, Southern Methodist</p>

<p>Again, the same, some great and a lot more not-so-great students.
I always thought USC got class rank and w gpa from public hss and SAT scores from private hss. But erase that thought wrt teh public hss as USC dips from there also.</p>

<p>At least when UCLA dips into the 100’s wrt class rank it’s for athletes most likely.</p>

27

<p>Josebiwasabi:</p>

<p>USC doesn’t have nearly as many premeds as either Cal or UCLA. The applicants to med school from UCLA and Cal are generally > 700, from USC, ~ 200 or so.</p>

<p>You’re not going to say that USC is more cutthroat in premed as UCLA and Cal are you?</p>

<p>USC is good for dentistry, pharm, etc, but not for producing MDs, save for its 7-year MD program.</p>

28

<p><<<umm… many USC biology and chemistry courses (such as intro bio, mobio, biochem, gchem, ochem) are curved at:
15% A
25% B
40% C
15% D
5% F
giving you an average GPA of about 2.3 in each of those courses.</p>

<p>i really doubt that UCLA or Cal’s curves are much harsher than that.>></p>

<p>Then doubt away, because in my day, the top 2-3% in my Physics major classes got the "A"s. I remember tears and incredulousness when some of my Physics peers were in the top 10% of our respective class and got a nice fat “B” on their posted (in those days), by student ID number, final grades. Classes like P-Chem, with the “top” student, garnering 79% of the potential points, was an “A” ('twas moi).</p>

<p>I know of whence I speak because I have direct and current access to a lot of CAL students, in and out of the physical sciences, who say that grading remains rigorous.</p>

<p>And for what it’s worth, anecdotally, a friend’s son, who got into USC for engineering but not UCLA, took two of his engineering major pre-reqs at UCLA (through concurrent enrollment through UCLA extension). While he liked UCLA better, overall–socially, the campus–he reported that both the competition in his classes and grading rubric were “shockingly” harder at UCLA than 'SC.</p>

29

<p>is the number of students really a factor when they have set percentages of each letter grade to give out?</p>

<p>if you want to choose random high schools to choose from, i can mention my public high school up in washington state.</p>

<p>out of the people accepted to USC my year (2006), they were also admitted to Emory, Northwestern, Harvey Mudd, Cornell, MIT, Georgetown, Cal, UCLA, Rice, etc. my experience in washington was that only highly qualified applicants tend to apply to USC from out of state because it is viewed as a fairly prestigious school. my guess is that this is fairly common for most OOS applicants. (except for MIT and Rice they all chose USC btw)</p>

<p><em>edit</em>
my friend was chem-e at USC and the class averages on exams for all the p-chem and upper div engineering courses are regularly below 60%.</p>

30

<p>I think that this discussion now borders on the petty and anecdotal ('cause I sure as heck wouldn’t pay for my kid to go to USC for engineering over Harvey Mudd, for example, and I would imagine that grad. schools would look more favorably upon (given the same GPAs and GREs to consider) Harvey Mudd and Rice and MIT (really Jose’s high school acceptance list) over 'SC.</p>

<p>That said, the top student(s) at 'SC is the academic equal of the top student(s) at Cal Tech/MIT/CAL/Cornell/UCLA/TUFTS/CMU/Cal State San Luis Obispo/Michigan State/Univ. of Arizona/Harvey Mudd/Princeton/etc. That is a finite and special minority of student who lives at the top of the “food” (e.g. grade) chain. The air and the students are certainly different, more rarified, up there.</p>

<p>More importantly, re: USC, do they still parade that white steed around at the home, football games, whereupon the student body and alums get an almost maniacal gleam in their eyes and do a funny sort of collective saluting. And is it the same horse, 'lo all these generations of football games? I mean wouldn’t the horse be kind of decrepit and old, by now??</p>

31

<p>also, i am not saying that USC is more cut-throat than Cal or UCLA at all. i do honestly think that those schools are way more cut-throat and i don’t see that as a positive to be honest.</p>

<p>i just really disagree with the derogatory statements some posters have made, calling USC students “slouches” and making claims that the school would never give out failing grades because they need to keep the students “for tuition”</p>

32

<p><<i do=“” honestly=“” think=“” that=“” those=“” schools=“” are=“” way=“” more=“” cut-throat=“” and=“” i=“” don’t=“” see=“” as=“” a=“” positive=“” to=“” be=“” honest.=“”>></i></p><i do=“” honestly=“” think=“” that=“” those=“” schools=“” are=“” way=“” more=“” cut-throat=“” and=“” i=“” don’t=“” see=“” as=“” a=“” positive=“” to=“” be=“” honest.=“”>

<p>True 'dat.</p>

<p>Honestly, my modern day impression of who attends USC is a mixed one. A few incredibly high data, accomplished, and amazing students (who were given amazing merit scholarships, thus eliminating tremendous student loan indebtiture) and some (more than a few) insipid acceptees who ranged around 1900-1950 on their SATs, with very little academic promise and commitment (and, sure enough, those kids did poorly their first and past semester at 'SC). </p>

<p>Peace out, Jose, and g’night. :-)</p>
</i>

33

<p>

What’s wrong with Fat Slice?!</p>

<p>

This Berkeley guy says Traveler > Oski. Oski is decrepit and old.</p>

34

<p>Btw, you can subtract a good .6 gpa point from those students I cut and pasted for their uw gpa’s.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>That’s a bit anecdotal for my tastes. I would rather see a high-school database similar to PV Peninsula’s, with listing of gpa, w and uw, scores; along with acceptances, denials, for each college, etc. But most high schools don’t do that obviously.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>There’s an engineering prof at UCLA that flunks, I think it was, 80% of the students. Indian “gentleman,” pretty (in)famous.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Noted, re, first part, “slouches”… But it was my comment that some students didn’t pick up a book weeks into the term at USC. Sentiment stated that there are some students at UCLA that do likewise. I stated that it’s pretty hard to do this at UCLA because it’s only a 10-week term and much more accelerated. You stated taht you had numerous tests with two-week spacing. I’ll state here that I’m probably “speaking” of those outside of science curricula. And it wasn’t all encompassing, not at all… but I’ll be sensitive towards this.</p>

<p>Second part, re, keeping students for tuition… This is true of most private colleges but unstated obviously. Many private- college educated students would readily confess this. Drops late into the term…minimal or lesser progress- towards-degree reqs…higher median/mean grades, see Ivy League, 3.5 and above, as I leave the door ajar for sentiment…a lot less competition (I like this word better), less weeding out…generally taking in students that the school is dependent on in operating budget v being ultra-competitive and flunking some out and not having that tuition…and I’m not speaking of Cal Tech for this last part.</p>

35

<p>

</p>

<p>I like the old Joe Bruin better.</p>

<p>Re fight song: different tune entirely.</p>

36

<p>John Hopkins
Carnegie Mellon
Berkeley
Northwestern
UCLA
Emory
NYU Stern
Vanderbilt
Tufts
USC</p>