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Posted on 08/03/2011 11:39:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
One thing we’ve suggested to our son is that he live at home and go to a good local college. He would then have money to afford going to graduate school. He’s a senior in high school so we’ll see what he decides.
I don’t think the government should be in the college loan business, anyway.
Consider community college for the first two years. Then transfer. It’s worked out great for us so far.
You save about half the cost of college, and you have a better chance of getting into the four year college of your choice once you are a proven entity with a nice high GPA.
If you go this route, take the tough courses, with honors if possible, and get the highest GPA you can. If in California, pay attention to fulfilling the IGETSE requirements.
In California you can actually get GUARANTEED ACCEPTANCE at several UCs through your community college, after you have proven yourself. It’s called a “transfer agreement” and the counselors at the community college should be able to get you one.
Graduate work is seldom worth much if it hasn’t been seasoned with a bit of real world work experience, following your undergraduate degree.
Agreed, and in my profession this may be doubly true. After earning a computer engineering degree 15 years ago, I decided to start a computer science master's program last Fall. My interest, commitment, and ability to learn are much higher than they were before, in spite of having other important things on the docket--a full-time job, 4 kids, volunteer work, etc. Going back to school has given me an opportunity to learn a lot of advances in computer science that have been developed in the 15 years or so since I finished my undergrad. I would never have used the word "fun" to describe school until I started grad school, and even though it's a ton of work, I'm having the time of my life.
Lucky for you. Most of the schools our son wants to apply to do not accept community college classes from our state for credit ... so a waste of 2 years and thousands of dollars. His college choices do, on the other hand, accept AP classes. Guess our community colleges are just not that good (in WA).
“You save about half the cost of college, and you have a better chance of getting into the four year college of your choice once you are a proven entity with a nice high GPA.”
I think they are on to that trick in our state. My two eldest kids took some courses at state university while in high school, got all A’s, transferred to a bigger university within the state system, and although the credits were accepted, the courses were not. They are required to re-take practically identical courses.
One of my kids decided to transfer from a private college to the state university for the cheaper tuition, and switch his major from pre-law to computer science. The state university won’t accept any of the (IMO) “junk” courses he had already taken although he received high grades across the board. As a transfer, he has to re-take the same types of irrelevant junk courses at the state U in order to earn a degree in CS!!! After two years of top grades at a highly ranked private school, the only courses he’s able to transfer are the calculus courses, so he’s practically starting from scratch at the state U.
And yes, I’ve noticed that the tuition rises annually in lockstep with the student loan increases. What a scam.
Graduate students in liberal arts and most social studies should not get any subsidies — student usually end up with large, unnecessary financial burdens from their student loans when they find it difficult to find good jobs with these degrees.
For the others, they should probably seek private financing as well.
.
The burden of proof for government spending has to change.
Instead of automatically assuming that all spending is beneficial and leaving it up to opponents to prove otherwise, the assumption should be that government spending is inefficient and wasteful, and the activity should be done by individuals in the private sector, unless there is overwhelming proof otherwise.
so sorry!
hafta forget your foucault and derrida studies.
I can only speak for California.
Here at our community colleges you get an official list of transferable courses - there are thousands.
Also a checklist of what to knock out for your major.
Also a guaranteed acceptance letter after two full semesters with a GPA of 3.5 or better with decently hard classes. The letter is for a specific U.C.
Perhaps other states make it less worthwhile, but in California it’s the way to go.
I would add scientists (real, not social) and engineers to that list. For both categories, however, the program is almost always either funded through doing research or being a TA. The salaries that I am familiar with (on top of paid tuition) are around 15-20k/year.
Oh, and no funding for graduate work in social sciences. It’s subsidizing a product that is not valued in the marketplace. Where it is valued, it is because it will be used in a government job. It would be nice if the nation would refocus on the sciences. There are perfectly bright kids who graduate high school who choose degrees that should not be offered only because the government is paying and the department offering the degree is subsidized by the university through degree requirements.
Based on my experience in academia, most of the ‘grad’ students here are foreigners anyway....I sure as hell hope they have to pay up big time.
It works here too if you want to stay in-state (yay ... one good college, one okay college and a lot of poor cousins). My son is looking at CalTech, MIT, Cornell, and UChicago. None of them accept our community college classes. He’ll get almost a year of credits with AP classes though. CC doesn’t work for everyone. His scholarships will keep costs down for us.
Hey, that's me! Except I graduated from college 37 years ago, and hubby and I raised 4 kids in between then and now. ;o) I know I'm 'underemployed', but I like the job.
The other thing my son is kooking at is my alma mater, Texas A & M. We are in California and there are lots of problems with the state schools. His high school counselors have encouraged all the kids to look out of state.
My son did really well on his ACT and he’s in the top quarter of his class, so he can be an automatic academic admit to A&M. I’m hoping he gets a $1000 scholarship. If he does, he can get an out of state tuition waiver. He’ll also get first choice on dorms and new dorms will be available next year.
A&M is not his first choice. He’d like to be closer to home.
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