<p>hi all
after searching over and over ,discussing,reading,asking …bla bla bla I have found my answer.
today I was on Studentreview website ,reading what do students say about their colleges.
I can tell you ,I was shocked.
tons of negative comments ,even for MIT,Stanford.
one time a professor in Damascus university told me that success secret is in the student ,not the college he attends,I said he’s a douch-bag but now I think he was right.
as you know I had a battle choosing a college for Electrical engineering and I had to choose Cleveland state university eventually ,I read the reviews on it and there are negative/positive comments about it.
my 1st choice was Case Western Reserve and I thought about it a lot but,when I read reviews about it ,clearly it has negative comments as much as CSU !!!
today I had a conversation with an engineer who got his degree from Germany ,he told me that you can get good education in any accredited university because in college you will learn the basics and the rest is your responsibility ,I’m kind of persuaded by this.</p>
<p>there is a live example in my town “Damascus” and here it’s:
there is a doctor who is called “Marwan Alhalabi” ,this guy got his bachelor degree from Damascus university and I can tell you that this univ suuuuuuucks and for me it’s not even a university ,after that he went to France for Graduate school and he went to the Sorbonne!!! and now he is famous ,has 4 hospitals here and his fortune is more than 200 millions $.</p>
<p>he might be an exception though.</p>
<p>so what I want to say is that success is your responsibility and the college can’t make you successful unless you work really hard, some students just keep blaming the college they attend and forgot themselves.</p>
<p>This is true. Top schools give you more opportunities but you still have to work to attain them, and real success comes from your desire and motivation to succeed, not the school. Competitive schools may push you more and help you be better at things, but they may crush you too. It definitely depends on the individual, not so much the school.</p>
<p>An old office mate, a phd from Carnegie Melon EE once told me the difference between good schools and ho-hum schools is that in both cases the good students are good but in a good school even the marginal students are good while at a ho-hum school the marginal students are, well,marginal…</p>
<p>True. A lot has to do with the talent of the individual. Good to great schools do have more opportunities to collaborate with like minded individuals. That’s the real dividend of a top school. At top schools, students as a whole want to create something or do research than just go to school to get a job.</p>
<p>Here in Maryland, I am telling ANY prospective student who wants to go into computer science or mathematics to either stay in-state or do a 2+2 program (if they attend 1 of 3 certain community colleges in the area). I can personally direct them on what to take and have them ready to earn good money after 4 years.</p>
<p>I have some new students of parents I know in Pennsylvania who are almost in depression because they think because they have to attend one of Penn States branch campuses instead of State College. I am in their ear telling them that your diploma with STILL say Penn State. Most employers will not give a baby rat’s azz if you take the right major.</p>
<p>To the OP…</p>
<p>I am familiar with Cleveland State because I grew up in the area (HEIGHTS BABY!). All you really have to do for certain engineering/science areas in get your foot in the door. So what if that Stanford, Mellon or Georgia Tech grad gets $10K more to start off. Actual engineering AFTER college is like the playoffs in professional sports…EVERYONE STARTS 0-0.</p>
<p>Exactly. Engineering is not about prestige. It’s about ability. Everyone has a different utility amount on the price of a degree. For undergrad there really is not that much difference in job opportunities from good to great schools. </p>
<p>I was trying to get into UC schools but then realized this. I can save a whole bunch of money going to a Cal state school. Looking up the people that worked on the Mars rover at JPL and seeing a lot of Cal State alumni cemented my reasoning.</p>
<p>First, those sites for student reviews can be very misleading. The types of people that post are mostly the unhappy people. So no school ever looks good! So feel free to read what is posted and look for common threads, but don’t rely on it too much. There are whiners and complainers no matter where you go, but they are usually a tiny percentage of the student population.
Second, it really does come down to YOU and what you do with whatever opportunity you have. Go where you can get in and can afford to go and take full advantage of everything that college has to offer! Get to know professors, take advantage of guest lecturers, clubs and social organizations, research opportunities, the career center, the programs offered by the library, etc. etc. ALL OF IT!</p>
<p>That was one of the first sites I found when I started looking for reviews, what a downer. I stay away from it now and found some other ones I recommended my son look at. Of course I told him to stay off this site too until his apps were in! Just kidding around, and when he was finished he asked me if it was ok to look now :)</p>
<p>I have read the revues on “that” websight and I too find them depressing. My D will study ChemE somewhere. She would be considered quite bright and probably average among the lofty standards of CC. I am comforted by this post. Unfortunately my resources are limited and Mom and I are not willing to go into debt to pay for a prestigous name on her diploma. We live in Ohio and she has applied to CWRU and been accepted to the University of Toledo and Ohio University. With the offered scholarships we can afford to send her to either of the two state schools. We visited Toledo for their experience days a couple weeks ago and I was quite impressed with their engineering dept. It has 2900 students (around 300 in CHE), their retention rate from freshmen to sophmore year is around 70% and of those who make to their sophmore year nearly all graduate. They have a mandatory 3 term co-op program (4th is optional) and 85% of their students get jobs after graduation and the other 15% go onto graduate school. The school itself is rolling admissions and is not ranked by USNWR. The school accepts over 92% of it’s applicants so it’s definitely not selective. The engineering dept has higher standards but not high as engineering depts. go. The average GPA in Eng. is 3.7 with a 27 ACT not high but better than the school at large. In a nut shell it will cost my daughter after scholarships about $40k for 4.5 years of college and the co-ops will probably cover about half of that. She would graduate debt free. For Case Western, Purdue, Kentucky, and NU and WashU if she were accepted the cost would be 2.5 to 4 times that amount and all would be debt. It seems a no brainer to me. D understands Mom and Dad’s “financial aid package” so I think she is prepared if she gets accepted to the prestige schools to choose perceived value.</p>
<p>you can check the college I am going to ,it is Cleveland state university.
its tuition is 13 k annually for out of state and around 10 k for in-state,its ranking according to USnews is 139 ,just like Wright State university which you can check it out too BTW.</p>