How is the math department at Fordham

friedokra
Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:53:25 +0000

I know a LOT of students at several universities (friends of D) who are taking Calc, and having a BEAR of a time…ditto with Chemistry. College is NOT high school, that is for sure.

Agreed, that credentials are not the only measure of a professor. Its just a starting point and we only used it for a preliminary and cursory review of a department…not much else you can do when searching for colleges, right?

I had professors as an undergrad more than 30 years ago who were phenomenal who came from schools no one would recognize. I had some who were heavily credentialed who couldnt teach a cat to jump out of a bag. Point taken.

As for taking advice from freshmen, true enough as well. But this venue is just in essence a blog and therefore anything that is stated is just an opinion and one has to be careful with those! I saw for example comments on Princeton Review about various schools and in our search we found them to be 100% false. Radically incorrigibly false! Who made those comments? Ostensibly students at those schools. So it happens.

And it is axiomatic to say that one man’s heaven is another man’s hell. Meaning you must judge for yourself and how that school fits into your plan, personality and needs. What we are trying to do here is give people our best efforts opinion for anecdotal information from which we expect them to go to the next level in their assessment…best if they make a visit to campus. In Fordham’s case it is almost essential, in order to get a clear and accurate picture of what it has to offer and the quality of life there. We did and it sold us. But it would be foolish to say it will be nirvana for everyone who comes or everyone who applies. Judging from my freshman D’s experience to date, and how she says the students have all bonded very, very well…its a tight nit student body who look out for each other (Princeton Review is correct on that point), I would say that both the admissions office and the students have done an excellent job of determining “fit.”

But we are under no illusions (delusions?) that every class and every prof and every department is/will be wonderful.

I once met a woman (an administrator at a VERY prestigious southern school) who went to Harvard undergrad. She spent 10 minutes of the interview saying not so nice things about her experience at Harvard. We were rather surprised. All I could do was look at my shoes, nod my head in acknowledgement and say, “I am sorry you had that experience.” But is it the experience of everyone at Harvard? OF course not.

So to the original poster I say again, do your homework and then make a campus visit. I wish for you a stupendous experience and that you decide that Fordham is for you.