Is curriculum different in public universities different than private schools

juillet
Wed, 03 Sep 2014 19:25:23 +0000

The difference between public and private tends to be in the environment: privates tend to have smaller class sizes, closer and better advising (advisers you can “drop by” to see vs. upon appointment, personal adviser vs. general adviser, etc.), more funding for research presentations/conferences, material that’s more up to date (or, when broken, that is changed more quickly). This may or may not matter to you.

Then, you have the university’s academic level: classes with stronger students can go faster, more in-depth, vs. classes with weaker students. This has nothing to do with private vs. public (CSULA and UCLA are both public but the class content and expectations are different).

Size also plays a role: a large university will offer more classes. Note, however, than you can only take 5 classes a semester.



Mm, sometimes, but not always. Those comparisons would hold for a comparison between an elite/top private and a mid-ranked public, but not necessarily for two schools at the same level or if the rankings were reversed.

For example, I would be very surprised if Loma Linda (private) or University of San Francisco (Private) had more money for research and conferences, better advising, and better material than UCLA or UC-Berkeley - or even some of the better Cal States. Honestly, I wouldn’t even assume that USC or Stanford had better material than UCLA or Berkeley, although given California’s budget crisis they probably have more money. That doesn’t mean they want to give it to you, though. I have found that it seems the money flows more freely to support students at my current university, where I am a postdoc (an excellent public university), than it did at my graduate institution (a private Ivy).

Also, OP, I’m pretty sure people were trying to be helpful when they were advising you not to use UCLA as a back-up school. UCLA routinely accepts less than 30% of all transfer applicants. And if you are OOS it is even harder - UCLA accepts about 5-10% of it’s non-resident transfer applicants, so in any given year it could be as difficult to make it into UCLA as an OOS transfer as it is to get into Harvard. But if you’re an in-state resident at a California CC then you probably have better chances.