<p>And you don’t get a reading period to catch up…</p>
<p>“NSMom - How can a professor expect that amount of work from an undergrad? Do the students not have any other classes?”</p>
<p>S’s 80-100-page paper is for script analysis, a required course in his theater major. It’s the make or break course for the major, and is all that’s required for that course, a course that many students have to take it over again due to their inability to write that paper. S chose to take it junior year so if he flunks it, he can take it next year without spending an extra year in college. </p>
<p>He writes the paper a bit each week based on weekly assignments. He is taking 3 other courses (including one dance course and 2 courses that require significant written work) and is working 10-14-hours a week and doing hours of theater tech work that – depending on the hours he puts in – he will get course credit for. The theater tech work is necessary experience for him to be employable in that field after graduation.</p>
<p>S-- who had been quite the slacker during high school (and by "slacker’ I mean getting lots of “C” grades and some “D” and “F” quarterly grades despite having SAT scores 98-99th percentile) has risen to the challenges of his major because he loves his major and loves his school and is fortunate enough to be bright enough and to have had a good enough educational foundation to be able to do the required work, though he’s a slow writer and the work is very challenging for him. </p>
<p>However, if he had been a hardworking, smart student who had come from a weak high school and had SAT scores in the 30th or lower percentile – as was the case with many students whom I taught at a 2nd/3rd tier public-- there’s no way that he could accomplish what he’s managing to do now via hard work, being very organized and spending many sleepless nights.</p>
<p>“What are tier 3 schools anyway? Michigan schools would be the ones I’d recognize, so what’s an example of a tier 3 school in Michigan? Like Michigan Tech, or Eastern?”</p>
<p>I’m guessing that UM-FLint and Wayne State would be examples of tier 3 schools.</p>
<p>It is impossible to compare unless the same person is taking the same class at different schools. Otherwise, we compare apples to oranges. And to tell that the best of the best do not go to state school is being completely not familiar with these schools. For some, it is the matter of finances. Why to spend much $$ in UG if, for example the plan is to go to Med. school which is extremely expensive and adcoms are not paying as much attention to name of UG as to UG GPA/MCAT score. Another example is engineering, most engineering companies hire locally. In both examples, average student and even above average most likely will not survive. They have to be very high caliber with hard working ethic. There are many valedictorians from private schools as pre-meds and engineers at state colleges with good number of them changing thier professional goals after first or couple semesters of college because they underestimated what it takes to be successful in their majors. Some classes are plain brutal with crazy hours required to prepare for regular exam. I do not think that these kids would want any more challenges, they have plenty. I am talking about kids who had stats to go to elite schools and were advised to do that by their advisors, but choose state colleges instead for various reasons. There are plenty of them and you would not find any mediocre one in some majors, they did not survive, and that includes some very top HS graduates.</p>
<p>Actually, Wayne State is a Tier 4 and UM-Flint is a “tier 3, Univeristies-Master’s Midwest”, whatever that means.</p>
<p>My D attends one of those so-called Tier 3 Universities (she gladly turned down higher-ranked schools to attend) and has managed to find plenty of “smart people.” Sometimes it seems like we have the same 5 or 6 conversations over and over again here on CC, only with slight variations!</p>
<p>“My D attends one of those so-called Tier 3 Universities (she gladly turned down higher-ranked schools to attend) and has managed to find plenty of “smart people.””</p>
<p>There are plenty of state flagships in the 3d and 4th tiers (U of Kentucky, for example). A school doesn’t have to be a flagship to have some smart kids, but you can be absolutely certain that any flagship will have a group of very bright students, regardless of its ranking.</p>
<p>Well, I saw a tier 1 school that by no means has more than their share of “smart” students - there ACT average is low and truly I am not sure what earns them the title of tier 1 - it’s a small school, somewhat average.</p>
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<p>The short answer is that they do not care. They give you a ton of work, you go to the library everyday, drink it all off on the weekend, and then repeat.</p>
<p>I did my undergrad at a state school that costed me nil. For my required English 101 course (that all majors took this course), we read and wrote essays of ~10 pages on 12 novels. And it was the norm to write 20 page term papers in every course.</p>
<p>Not sure what my point is- sorry- but I think it is that any time we try to draw general conclusions about large swaths of schools that are placed in some general groupings made by a magazine (that isn’t even in the education industry!), it becomes meaningless and argumentative rather quickly. </p>
<p>For a given attribute (students, pedagogy, facilities, ECs), the degree of variance within a school, and the degree of variance across schools within a category (private, public, tier 1, tier 3) is so large that looking at the variance of that attribute across categories of schools is not particularly useful or illuminating.</p>
<p>Well, I saw a tier 1 school that by no means has more than their share of “smart” students - there ACT average is low and truly I am not sure what earns them the title of tier 1 - it’s a small school, somewhat average.</p>
<p>If this was a Univ-masters or Baccalaureate school with a top 50 ranking, I’m not sure that would be Tier 1. What school is this?</p>
<p>I doubt there is as much variability in the top 50 schools, maybe a little more in 51 -100, but there is as one moves beyond 100 (with individual exceptions both at the classroom and program level). The regional universities have a different mission than do the top 50, and should be evaluated and applauded for largely achieving that mission. One of their primary jobs is to serve what are often first generation, often underprepared, students.</p>
<p>I will bump this up to ask the question already posed earlier: What is the difference between the national universities and the masters universities and the baccularate universities…?</p>
<p>how does one relate a school in one list to a school in another or is it like comparing apples and oranges?</p>
<p>Everyone will have a different opinion “what this means.” Anytime you try to rank order these types of things that are different but “the same” it will entirely depend upon the criteria used. It’s like fruit. There are apples, there are oranges, there are bananas…and then there is the tomato and some nuts. Pick your own criteria to judge, evaluate and choose. I’m also not aware that regional universities have a different mission from the former “ag” schools or the “flagships.” Different varieties of the same thing in my humble opinion some of which is obscurred by an over-riding desire to “rank” stuff and compartmentalize a decision making process or validate an expense.</p>
<p>motb: that’s why I have never looked at the rankings of the schools on my daughter’s list…I truly have no idea where they would be…</p>
<p>USNWR rankings mean nothing to me personally, and i haven’t yet come upon someone in H.R. that told me their hiring practices were based on the magazine.</p>
<p>I think I’ll follow the Ty Webb(for movie buffs) way of how I compare one college to another: by height!</p>
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<p>National Universities: Universities that offer the works (undergrad, masters, PhD, etc).</p>
<p>Masters Universities: Universities that offer many undergraduate and masters degrees, but very few or no terminal degrees (e.g. Villanova).</p>
<p>Baccalaureate colleges: Undergraduate institutions where fewer than 50% of degrees earned are in liberal arts fields (e.g. Cooper Union).</p>
<p>The latter two are ranked regionally by US News.</p>
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<p>I would add that I haven’t encountered a graduate school admissions committee that would take into account USNWR either! Especially with regards to PhD programs…every field has its own judgment about the quality of an undergraduate colleges in their field and this magazine has no relevance.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard (ah, delicious rumor time) that college presidents are consulted as to who they believe are the finest, second level, etc. and that there were often a flurry of gift baskets being delivered around survey time. </p>
<p>If it is true (or once was true) it would be funny. Most college presidents have more than a full time job just knowing what’s happening on their own campus – much less on someone else’s.</p>
<p>Hmm, maybe there is something to the gift basket rumor:</p>
<p>“In spring 2009, U.S. News asked respondents to its peer survey to nominate up to 10 colleges in their ranking category where the faculty has an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching.”
[How</a> We Calculate the College Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/how-we-calculate-the-college-rankings.html]How”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/how-we-calculate-the-college-rankings.html)</p>
<p>Wouldn’t completing a peer survey be the sort of thing one would want to do with a little wine and cheese? Methinks so!</p>
<p>Schools with large endowments typically are in the tier 1/2 range. </p>
<p>That translates to availabe resources to the whole student body. At lower/poorer schools, they could only afford to give the best resources to a limited number of students. So, if you are the top 1% in a huge state U, such as the presidentail schlorship winners at OSU, you will enjoy all the benefits of the schools at least equal to that of the best/richest schools. But to the average students at these lower ranked/poorer schools, they will not have those benefits/opportunities available to them.</p>
<p>Since there are about 50% of HYPS are full paying students, you have a much higher% of students from upper class families. therefore, the chance for someone to offer you a job or intern, I heard, is higher. I read from another web site that a Penn student got several summer intern offers already and they are all from the parents of other Penn students.</p>
<p>I would image at HYPS, the professor could gp faster and deeper about the contents. Just like the AP classes Vs regular classes in HS. The difference between the top students and bottom students in HYPS migh be smaller than a tier 3 state school. So, if you are one of those fully brought students, you might get very bored in a class where another student took three times as long to understand a concept.</p>