How to Decide Which College is Right for YOU!

With so many choices and decisions to be made it is easy to get caught up in the name game. Here are my experiences on this.

So, it's that time of the year, college visits, online researching, interviews with admissions departments and of course trying to decide where do you really want to go. You or your son/daughter is finally a senior, and so close to leaving High School. Now however is when the real challenge begins.

My belief is the first mistake you can make is looking at those magazines with the college rankings in them. True this provides instant information on set guidelines the magazine focusses on, but many of these readings are hard to understand at best and can often leave the reader confused. Besides this, do you really want to find a school that cares solely about these rankings, or do you want one that prepares you not only academically but also socially and mentally for life after college.

If a college is truly good, then all you need is to hear about it from word of mouth. Advertising's sent in the mail to you, unless you have already told that college you are interested in them, are usually a bad sign.

So that is my little rant, here is where the real one begins.

I graduated from High School in 2005, a ranking position that puts me with a bright future for almost any decent college and even some of the better than decent ones. So if we look at this, I should be a junior now and looking at graduating next year.... should be but I'm looking at 3 more years or so due to the changes I have made in schooling If I had just started out where I am now, I'd be done on time. This was my first mistake, thinking that I needed one of the better than decent universities. I was looking at a major in Computer Science, yes I'm a computer geek, and in my search, heard that Worcester Polytechnic Institute was a great school. My SAT scores weren't anything more than average, but like I said, my academic transcript was key, and I was accepted into WPI. There I decided that Computer Science was a less than desirable major and I switched to Civil Engineering. Now this was a change for me, this was what I wanted to do.

So I've got my path towards graduating with a civil engineering degree, but I've got one complaint the whole way through this school, I don't like it. The people I met there were great, but there are great people everywhere, the school in short, sucked. It fell short on everything necessary. For example, In all my engineering classes, I never got below a B. I recently transferred to Central Connecticut State University, and I got a D in my engineering class. Ok, so lets look at this, same effort put into both classes at both schools, and a big grade difference. This is because I figured that the amount of work I put into the classes at WPI is the same amount to be put into CCSU, because after all WPI is the better school right? Then why does this little state school need more work than the better school? Easy answer is CCSU has the better more involved and harder, closer to real life classes. Don't get me wrong, this D won't stay, I Will retake the class and override the D with my new grade putting the effort the class deserves into it, but that is besides the point. Something else I noticed was at WPI the english and history classes were HARD. I got by with a C in every one of them, maybe a B in one. At CCSU however, I got an easy A in my history class, and this is not a intro history class for freshman, this was an in depth history class made for the junior level of the history of africa through European colonization and rebellion.

Another thing, especially for you parents, don't' look at a school and listen to those claims about "this school does not have TA's (teaching assistants), all help comes from the professor directly so your student gets the right information." This is bogus, if there is one complaint I have about CCSU, it is that there are no TA's for the engineering department because it is brand new and they don't' have any yet. TA's at WPI were a godsend, for me and many other students like me, we just don't feel comfortable asking the professor too many questions that we will gladly ask another student that happens to be a TA. If it wasn't for TA's in some of my math classes, I probably would not have passed because TA's tend to make more sense than the professors, especially if you have a professor that uses broken english, then if you have no TA to explain the missing pieces from not understanding, how are you going to learn. So with that said, TA's are good. Why do universities not have them and try to make it seem good, easy, it saves them money, TA's are a university job, and they can't just pick anyone who needs federal funding to be a TA, so if they have a TA who doesn't have work study, the college has to pay, and that costs $$.

Another worry is co-ed dorms. Many parents worry about this, but not many should. The truth is your dorm becomes your family, if you are a parent, you should instead worry when you kid goes to other dorms. Also having females on the same floor as the guys keeps the guys in check. I remember I lived in an all male building my freshman year, and wow the trouble we caused and got into. People were pouring 2 month old sour milk on the bathroom floors, others created a shooting club where they all went out and bought pellet guns and then had wars in the dorm common room. Does it make sense to think if girls were on the floor they would have allowed this, I doubt it. I didn't see any of this happening on co-ed floors.

So what is the moral of this little story here. Go for a more reasonable school. Wpi was my dream school but when I was in it, I felt like I was under pressure all the time with no time to just stop and breathe, it was a horrible feeling. Like you always have too much to do and no time to do it. Along with that, the $40,000 a year price tag was not a deal at all, I was getting ripped off. Now I pay $9,000 a year and in my opinion I get a better education.

Now many will say, but when you leave your going to get a worse job with lower pay because you don't have that name school, and I say to you, that's a lie. If there is one thing I did learn at WPI, and no not from the school but from a good friend who I will call 'Charleston' taught me that no matter what anything about you says, if you know in yourself that you can do it and are worth it, it doesn't matter what anyone or any record says, the person judging you will see that you know you can accomplish anything you want and will be perfect for the job. Charleston currently owns his own business for the summer and is making, well enough to pay off that $40,000 price tag for WPI, that's all you need to know to recognize it's sage advice and it works.

A name school isn't worth anything, it's the person who is worth it all.

The World Gone Wrong?

An article in Central Connecticut State University's Newspaper, The Recorder, has recently published a shocking article! This article titled "Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It" has caused quite an uproar. I don't believe this is the kind of topic that should be taken lightly. It is written as a satire, an apparent plea to the campus to donate more student work for the paper, however this has to be the worst way to go about gaining student support.

The article says, and I quote:

"Most people today would claim that rape is a terrible crime almost akin to murder, but I strongly disagree. Far from a vile act, rape is a magical experience that benefits society as a whole. I realize many of you will disagree with this thesis, but lend me your ears and I’m sure I’ll sway you towards a darkened alley. If it weren’t for rape, Western Civilization might not exist as we know it today.

When the Romans were faced with a disproportionate ratio of women to men in the early kingdom, they had to do something, lest their fledgling society die for lack of sons. To solve their little dilemma, they did what any reasonable man would do: they threw a festival for their Sabine neighbors, and then stole and raped their women. It’s quite logical; in fact I don’t understand why the settlers at Plymouth didn’t do the same to the local Indians—it certainly would have saved on shipping costs. Obviously, in the case of the Rape of the Sabines, rape was a tremendous help to society. The Sabine women, for their part, didn’t seem to mind so much, as they threw themselves between their brutish old Sabine husbands and their charming new Roman ones to prevent bloodshed when the Sabine men came to reclaim their wives.

Yet even when society was totally against a rape, the raunchy act has benefited society too. Where would the Romans be, after all, if it weren’t for the Rape of Lucretia infuriating the people to the point of overthrowing their last king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus? If it weren’t for that event, the world might never have had the Roman Republic for a pristine example of a flawless government. Rape’s glorious advantages are not, however, exclusively found from 2,000-year-old examples.

In actuality, rape’s advantages can very much be seen today. Take ugly women, for example. If it weren’t for rape, how would they ever know the joy of intercourse with a man who isn’t drunk? In a society as plastic-conscious as our own, are we really to believe that some man would ever sleep with a girl resembling a wildebeest if he didn’t have a few schnapps in him? Of course he wouldn’t—at least no self-respecting man would—but there in lies the beauty of rape. No self-respecting man would rape in the first place, so ugly women are guaranteed a romp with not only a sober man, but a bad boy too; and we all know how much ladies like the bad boy.

Ugly women are not, however, the only people who benefit from rape—prisoners enjoy its many perks too. What, after all, could possibly be more boring than spending years of your life confined to some tiny cell 23 hours a day? The answer, of course, is spending years of your life confined to some tiny cell 23 hours a day and never getting some hot action. With rape, prisoners never have to worry about that. Instead, they merely need worry about treating their rapists with enough love and respect to earn a quick reach-around. But if there is one bread and butter reason for why rape should not only be accepted, but even endorsed, it is because our news editors are in dire need of interesting stories for our front page. Bookstore stories? Fossils? One dollar coins? Please. Now, some saucy circle-jerk rape action? Yeah, that’s the ticket."

--JohnPetroski -Opinion Editor

So what do you think? Is this something that despite the morality issues of it, free speech (which according to a statement released here by Central; "A free press is a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and the courts have continuously upheld the freedom of college newspapers to publish articles without censorship by faculty advisors") prevails and articles like this should go unchecked?

Do morals and journalistic integrity and credit of work mean the student(s) responsible should resign their posts?

Is this any worse then your common supermarket tabloid? Nobody makes you read a supermarket tabloid, and surly nobody made you read this article. Is it possible to just turn a cold shoulder or grow thicker skin?

Where do you believe the boundary line is drawn?