Undergrad Options for Grad School

WiscoFeller
Tue, 04 Oct 2016 04:52:04 +0000

Thanks for the response! Yes, I did indeed mean an academic graduate program, versus the professional program. And for the UW schools, that is what I have heard before, but again (as evidenced in this post even), there seems to be a pretty big divide in opinion. Out of curiosity today, I called Brown’s Philosophy department and the lady on the phone told me, in response to my question about the importance of the undergrad institution, that they “blot out” institution names to avoid any prejudice and that it does not at all matter where you attend for undergrad school (assuming you do well, and have a very good background, quite obviously). The same was more or less told to me by Duke, aside form the blotting out of institution names. This was a surprise with me, especially given their entering class statistics.

In terms of cost for me, the UW colleges are going to be free. I am dependent of my father for VA benefits here in Wisconsin, and UW system colleges get full tuition reimbursement. However, that being said, UMN, assuming I don’t pull out loans for living costs/expenses (off campus), would be about $8,500/year that my parents would have to pull out. College of the Atlantic would actually be quite a bit cheaper than even UMN, about $7,000/year total that my parents would have to pull out, including on-campus housing (this would be quite a bit cheaper, I believe if I again did not take out many loans to live off campus). This was surprising to me, as I thought that a LAC would be much more expensive that a university in which i am eligible for reciprocity (my saving grace for UMN). I also work for the federal government seasonally, which I believe offers some tuition aid.

Would you say going to COA or UMN would be a good investment if this is the case? I personally love the structure of COA; the Human Ecology major with being able to zone in on basically any interest I may have otherwise, plus I have been in contact with a couple professors and they have already expressed interest in working outside of class on independent studies and projects if I end up attending there this spring. I’m not sure how well-known they are, but the fact that they have been able to show that interest already has me pretty well sold. Plus, they currently have PhD candidates at schools such as Harvard ('16-'17 I believe) and Yale, so from what I can tell, they have a good placement standing at very highly rated colleges. Also, my Philosophy and Literature professors both thought it was a good program, since I thrive in small classes. The location is also ideal in every sense of the word. Conversely, UMN is decently affordable like I said, and honestly is an option I’d be open to. It’s a little less ideal for me personally, especially being in a giant city with a pretty high student/faculty ratio, but they have the programs I am interested in (Philosophy and English respectively) which seem to be well-regarded. so if it will yield better results for graduate prospects, then I would likely enroll at UMN; the trade off being the lack of close communication with professors, and the location… I come from a town of 450 people where our biggest high school sport was canoeing if it’s any correlation. I’d be interested in what you have to say on the matter.