Hi
I’m an international students and I applied to some ‘state colleges’(e.g. Fairmont State College in West Virginia) that have a lower cost of attendace but a higher acceptance rate and I was wondering about the academic and teaching quality of these colleges. The average GPA and average SAT scores of these colleges sometimes are incredibly low…Do you know anything about ‘state colleges’ in general ?
<p>You can not generalize. Some are excellent and some poor. The admissions standards should tell you much of what you need to know because peer group is a huge part of any college experience.</p>
<p>The fact that they are ‘state’ colleges doesn’t mean they are bad. Many state colleges are excellent institutions that provide an exceptional education. Some of them aren’t so good. The same can be said for private schools - some are excellent, some are poor.</p>
<p>example of a great state college: UNC Chapel Hill</p>
<p>example of a bad state college: SUNY Albany (no offense to any albany-ites)</p>
<p>they run the gamut, just like private schools do.</p>
<p>actually SUNY Albany is a fine state school parties or not. and no i am not an Albany-ite. try a school like SUNY Oneonta or Geneseo…</p>
<p>ok maybe a bad example- albanys pretty average. how about buf. state instead?</p>
<p>UC Berkeley, UCLA, UVA, Ann Arbor, and UNC-CH are generally very highly regarded and are more famous than some Ivy Leagues, such as Amherst.
And the total number of students at those 5 schools far exceed the total number of students at all the Ivys, Stanford, MIT put together.</p>
<p>plus colleges have like honors programs that are really good too</p>
<p>Penn State, UNC, and the UC’s are all rad public schools</p>
<p>Does anyone know how “good” George Mason University is?</p>
<p>University of Maine and University of Southern Maine are great state programs.</p>
<p>There are honors programs that are sometimes better and more rigorous than programs at higher ranked schools.</p>
<p>I’m at Tufts now and I can tell you University of Southern Maine was far more challenging and beneficial to my future. I grew alot more as a person there as well from the rigorous programs I was in. I mean, I had 4 finals that were 30+ paper essays…at Tufts I have only 3 written finals, none of which are required to be anything more than 15 pages</p>
<p>“more famous than some Ivy Leagues, such as Amherst.”</p>
<p>The last time I checked Amherst was not part of the Ivy League, has this changed? </p>
<p>I completely agree with most of what was said, state schools can be excellent (PSU, UNC, Rutgers, UCBerkley, etc, etc, etc) while others can be lackluster. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Matt</p>
<p>As others have said there are a lot of state schools out there, some of them are not quite up to par with the best universities in the naiton, others are among the best in the naiton. Look at the UC system, all of those schools (some more then others) are considered to be good state schools. Many other states have wonderful state schools as well!</p>
<p>lol Hope, Albany and Geneseo aren’t really comparable, one being a university the other being a college, but I’d say Geneseo is better.</p>
<p>Percentage accepted:
Albany 56
Geneseo 44</p>
<p>Average GPA
Albany 3.6
Geneseo 3.7</p>
<p>Average SAT
Albany 1150
Geneseo 1250</p>
<p>You’re right about Oneonta though
Average SAT 1090
Average GPA 3.4
Percent Accepted 45</p>
<p>A lot of state schools started out as normal colleges or land-grant institutions. Many of them remain the best at what they’re done historically–meaning some great teaching programs, great ag programs, decent engineering, etc. As others have said, it’s hard to generalize.</p>
<p>Even seemingly “mediocre” schools attract some good students and can support honor programs. Some students don’t want to be far from home, even if they have the chops to be at a much more prestigious institution.</p>