Opinion on Raikes School/formerly JD Edwards Honors

huskermom2015
Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:47:01 +0000

Hello all,

@dewitt11 - Will your daughter be attending Raikes? My son will be there this fall (2011 - Class of 2015). If so, she can look for my son on ClubRed. PM me if you like.

Since we are from out of state, we knew very little about whether there would be opportunities for entrepreneurship and related mentoring in Lincoln, outside of the Raikes School. We are lucky to have many startups and VC-funding opportunities in our area and I hesitated to recommend Raikes to my son without knowing that he would have similar opportunities there. I’ve done some research and I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of innovation and support that I’ve found in Lincoln and Nebraska! Nebraska Global, Don’t Panic Labs, Silicon Prairie, NUtech Ventures, and more. Wow!

Mostly I was worried about sending him to a less-well-regarded college with fewer highly-credentialed professors. But I get the impression that the Raikes staff “vets” the professors as best they can, and only a subset of them teach classes at the Raikes School. In one particular case I see a prof who taught there in the past, and now does not. Then I looked at the ratings on ratemyprofessors.com and I breathed a huge sigh of relief! Yes, Raikes students spend about half their time in the traditional classes and they still need to be careful to avoid certain profs (if they can be avoided at all) but this is true at any university.

Gosh, I re-read this post and I think I’m coming across as elitist. That’s really not my intent, but since many students considering the Raikes School also have the opportunity to attend smaller and/or more prestigious schools, I suppose I feel the need to justify the decision to go with Raikes/UNL. Well, we did just that. The curriculum, opportunities, the warmth and friendliness of the UNL campus and the people in Lincoln (do they take happy pills?), and - I admit it, the super-generous scholarship - make it worthwhile.