Do most students stay on campus on the weekends?
I know a student to went to essentially a college where students went home on the weekends…it was out of state for her, but she was unaware of that student behavior.
Is the typical class 4 credit or 3 credits?
My DD’s went to state schools where the typical class was a 4 credit class so they took 4 classes/semester.
@lr4550 I think it’s less about when classes start/end, how many classes, how long to gain credit, and more about students failing to realize how fast a say quarter v semester system is and how critical it can be to be ready on day 1, and how easy it is to be behind very quickly.
Frosh applicants generally apply to start in the fall semester. Some colleges offer a small number frosh applicants admission to start in the spring semester, which could have one or more of these purposes:
A. Enrollment balancing between fall and spring semesters. If everyone starts in the fall semester, the fall semester tends to have higher enrollment than the spring semester, because students who graduate a semester early or late tend to have an extra fall semester. Starting some new frosh in the spring helps balance the enrollment, which may be important to colleges (often public ones) that are trying to enroll to full capacity without either overflowing (in the fall) or having unused/wasted capacity (in the spring).
B. Moves a few of the new frosh with the weakest high school credentials out of the fall semester start that is captured for the purposes of common college rankings.
Sometimes, a spring admission comes with an offer of an extension program in the fall (limited frosh-level course offerings, though students can live on campus with other frosh), or a study-abroad program in the fall, although students also have the option of taking a gap semester or sometimes attending a community college in the fall (details vary by college; in some cases, these other options for the fall may be less expensive than a regular semester while allowing earning a semester of credit). However, most frosh consider spring admission less desirable than regular fall admission.
Since relatively few are given spring admission (as opposed to regular fall admission or rejection), this type of thing mainly becomes a consideration if an applicant actually gets a spring admission to one of his/her colleges.
And I will add, spring matriculation will generally mean far less adjusting to campus support (social events, how to x info sharing, etc) so the frosh may have a more difficult time. The excitement of getting into that school might make this seem minor, but the student should consider it.
@Jugulator20 I agree, and that was sort of my round about way of trying to point out how important it is to look at the academic calendar since each system will have a different pace.
@Cheeringsection: Eh. On the other hand, the spring admits have a ready-made cohort to bond with (the other spring admits).
How about only offering a Waitlisted Student a Deferred Admission for the following year, so Fall 2019 instead of Fall 2018, which is what occurred at Chicago, Harvard and many other highly selective universities this past year.
Or, only offering a Junior Year Guaranteed Transfer like Cornell has been doing for years.
All of these are yield management tools that work and will likely be more prevalent across all highly selective schools as acceptance rates get further compressed.
re #26: “Or, only offering a Junior Year Guaranteed Transfer like Cornell has been doing for years.” ???
I’ve not paid attention recently, but if the period is “for years”, Cornell’s colleges have routinely admitted students off of their waitlists, when warranted, in the conventional fashion, without deferral.
In addition, (not “only”") some of the university’s colleges have issued “guaranteed transfers” to some applicants, offering the prospect of deferred admission subject to meeting certain course and GPA standards elsewhere. As far as I’m aware, such admission was into sophomore year, not junior year. And “for years”, the vast majority of these guaranteed transfers were issued predominantly by its state-affiliated colleges (ag school, ILR, Hum Ec). The endowed colleges (eg Arts & Sciences) were not highly represented in this. If the endowed colleges are getting in on the act now in a more material fashion, that is relatively recent, not “for years”.
Cornell’s state-affiliated colleges have articulation agreements with community colleges, and those students are admitted into junior year. eg, https://admissions.cals.cornell.edu/apply/transfer/transfer-agreements
Perhaps that’s where the confusion lies…
FWIW there is more than “yield management” behind the use of guaranteed transfers by the state-affiliated colleges. The “general ed” courses are often taught in the endowed colleges, and that involves internal funds transfers out from the state-affiliated colleges. The guaranteed transfer students have already taken these courses elsewhere, so when they show up they will be taking more credits in-college, so less funds transferred out to CAS. Versus. other transfer applicants they might admit who may not have completed these particular courses.
One’s peers. If attending a school with a high percentage of students who continue for graduate arts/sciences degrees, a student is more likely to pursue that option because it will be discussed often. Conversely, if most students head for business/Wall street, your student is more likely to as well.
Another factor in the mid-year admit is test scores. Only the scores of first-semester admits count for ranking purposes. (see NUIn).
Ease of transportation to/from home. DD went to school in Boston. She could be at our local airport in six hours door to door, with plenty of flight choices. One of her friends went to school “closer to home”. Even though she stayed in California, it took 10 hours by bus or 7 hours by car each way. Use actual air, train, bus schedules to determine actual cost and convenience of each school for comparison.
@labrad00dle How do you know about the Greek life? I know my son is not interested in a Greek heavy school, but we aren’t sure how to find out about it. These are all good points, but we just don’t know how/where to get the answers. Choosing a college is harder than I thought.
Assuming that you mean sororities and fraternities…
The college’s common data set section F1, or the campus life tab in the college’s entry at http://www.collegedata.com , usually tells what percentage of students join sororities and fraternities.
The most overlooked factor in college choice is teaching quality. All the large universities that dominate the rankings fare poorly on this dimension when compared to the small LACs. Most students would get a better education by going to any of the LACs that are farther down the rankings table than by going to the large Unis that are probably at the top of their college lists. It is all too easy to “win” the college admission battle but lose the war once you find out, too late, what you have actually won.
@ucbalumnus yes but I really don’t think those percentages tell the real story. Even schools with 30 percent Greek kids can seem VERY Greek on the weekends.
@RustyTrowel wow. I totally agree with that. So odd to me that more people don’t know that and think they will get better teaching a private research university. Most of the time, I think that’s not the case. At $70k a year, I want our kids to know their professors and to get some personal guidance.
Catholic colleges are usually great options.
My thesis is that 80% of students can find at least one “good fit” college within a 4-5 hour drive of home. Committing to a college that you have to fly to, or that requires an overnight stay to make the round trip, isn’t something to do lightly.
30% in sororities and fraternities is typically at the higher part of the range.
But that is a very difficult thing to measure directly, and it varies from one instructor to another at the same school. Also, a specific major may have some useful teaching techniques that are specific to the major. What is better teaching also depends on the student.
Campus security.
Some campuses offer campus escorts to their dorms, labs, anywhere. Some don’t. Any person, from what I’ve seen, can walk onto a college campus.
Do most of those campuses have blue lights in case your phone runs out of juice?
Distribution requirements. Especially at LACs, students find they need to have math above calculus, some sciences, perhaps a FL, to graduate.
While DS was looking for schools that had these (so that he could explore before committing to a major ), this is a deal-killer for othrrs. And it’s completely discoverable on any school 's website.