OT: OSU admissions: Feeling the love?
This probably fits in the "Cool Story Bro" category, but I'm very amused, and I thought I'd share. I'm the parent of rising high school senior (an awesome Michigan fan!) who has good grades and test scores and, as such, gets a lot of unsolicited email from colleges. Today she received one from "The Ohio State University" with the subject line "Feeling the love?"
I was feeling awkward and I hadn't even opened it. It was remarkably brief, and the highlight was this:
It's entirely possible that you are the brightest student ever.
The Ohio State University just might be the finest institution of higher education on the planet.
Seems we should learn more about each other.
They really published "finest institution of higher education on the planet." Words fail me. I figured y'all could help me respond appropriately.
in your response... a lot
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/na…
I noticed in that link that Purdue's student body is 57.6% male. Whoa. That's 14 (!) percentage points higher than the national average. (IIRC, U-M is around 47% male.)
I'm guessing Purdue doesn't mention this too much in recruiting.
The Purdue Boilermakers Sausagefest
Purdue is a strong engineering school, which is probably why that male enrollment is higher. The College of Engineering at UM is around 80% male...
Why do you think Wolverine318/319 is always so cranky?
Well, if she is in to tats or cars...why not?
...the brightest student (sorry, I'm not objective; she's my daughter!), OSU would have a tough time getting her. She has high standards.
If she is the "brightest student" ever, we could be in a heap of trouble as a society.
this IS a cool story bro.
It reminds of an argument I got in the other day with a friend of mine. She got her UG at UM and her PhD at MSU.
When I told her my wife and I were going to move across the border (from Toledo) so my kids can have in-state at Michigan - she FREAKED out about how UM is not the only school in michigan and how MSU has a LOT of programs that are better than Michigan and how can I limit my children by making them go to UM, and so on.
I only said to her - I am sorry. MSU is a good school, but it doesn't touch Michigan, and there is not one national ranking that even puts them in the same league.
What planet are these people living on?
For those who can't get enough of this UM v. MSMoo on the academic side, there is a spirited discussion going on at College Confidential on this very topic:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-michigan-ann-arbor/254762-msu-over-michigan.html
They don't live on the planet DORKOTRON like you do.
Sheesh, really, get over yourselves. The joke will be on you when your kids end up playing with Lincoln Logs and Play Doh until they're 45.
I remember getting 40+ pieces of mail in a day early in my senior year. Hopefully most of that is email today.
As for your response, recommend a YouTube video slideshow of all the schools you can think of off the top of your head that are better than OSU with particular emphasis on the Big 10 schools that are better than OSU.
Or, you could write a nice email expressing concern that your daughter would be uncomfortable in such a morally casual atmosphere.
why did tOSU hire Fred Jackson to write their letters?
It was just a typo. What they meant to say is that tOSU just might be the finest institution of higher education in COLUMBUS. Sadly, while their football is currently the tops in the state, their academics are not, taking a backseat to programs such as Oberlin and Case Western. But if you want to go to school in Columbus, there may not be a better program to be found in the entire downtown Columbus area . . .
And did I mention? Every incoming freshman gets a free tattoo! Whee ! ! !
You forgot Miami.
Indeed -- it doesn't seem that many people realize how well their incoming classes measure up to schools like Michigan. IIRC their grades and test scores (SAT, ACT) are at least in Michigan's league. They were historically, anyway.
To the parent: CWRU and Oberlin (especially the latter) are good schools, but in this day and age I don't think their private-school premium isn't justified. If I lived in Cleveland and I had college-age kids, I'd send them to OSU way before I'd consider private schools. Of course, Miami (OH) would win easily over the Bucks.
I don't think the private school premium is worth it unless you're paying the premium for an elite school. Frankly, if you aren't attending an elite school, it's probably best to go to a big state school. The name recognition for say, Kansas, is probably going to give you a much better return than a private school without a big name. At least employers have heard of Kansas.
/I may regret attending private school...
I just realized that I wrote "I don't think their private-school premium isn't justified." Please change isn't to is. :)
Case gives A LOT of merit based scholarships though. That's how they lure a lot of the state's top talent. I don't know how much it compares to the cost of attending OSU, but a lot of my friends chose Case over OSU (and other schools) because of the money.
My sister goes to a relatively no-name private school, I go to a state flagship and her debt will be less. If I had stayed in-state the debt would be almost equal, with her having slightly less (something like $8k after four years). It all depends on the scholarships you can get, and she wasn't even a top student coming out of high school.
Very few people pay the sticker price for private school, I'll give you that. From my experience, your sister is going to struggle with employers not recognizing her school outside of her school's immediate area if she plans on getting a job right after college. It doesn't mean she'll struggle, but the lake of a name brand on a resume makes it difficult to get your foot in the door.
That's why I feel like the return is better from a big state school. Brand matters when a hiring manager has to weed through 100 resumes to decide who to interview.
My philosophy as well. Especially at flagships, the difference is very little between saying ___University/ University of ___ and another, unless it's an absolute top or bottom tier school. On top of that, I like the big school atmosphere. As an aside, she should do alright because she's staying within the immediate area, wheras I didn't want to be tied down for a few years.
If the comparison were between Harvard or Stanford and Michigan, how would you feel?
Ultimately, it comes down to the student, not the school.
Having had two kids who recently received two degrees each from Michigan, all in engineering, there are some very good things at Michigan and some not so good, just like everything else. I can't tell you how many times I heard how the instructors could barely speak English, or the very large class sizes, etc. Umich also has the highest OOS tuition in the country of any public U.
In case you haven't looked lately, USNWR has Umich ranked 29 and dropping, so keep some perspective on things.
That your perfect little kids really DID just graduate from UM (with, of course, as per usual, MULTIPLE degrees), I'll clue you in on something you should already know (which is why I'm dubious of your message board credibility grab):
There is NO perspective in htese types of arguments. They are for the dregs who have very likely never set foot on a college campus.
Seriously--why would a Michigan graduate ever feel the need to defend UM in an argument like this, or why would an MSU grad feel the need to do same? These are the silliest of D**K measuring contests the internets provide us. And again, they are usually reserved for the mouthbreathers who can barely leave their message board for fear of being discovered as completely fraudulent posers.
Frankly, I'd pick Harvard or Stanford, probably Stanford because I like the weather better.
The funny part was just how over the top the letter was. It's like when Cooley Law used to say it was the best law school in the country.
The US News Reports are pretty flawed for a lot of reasons, but in particular I think they're unintentionally biased against public schools. Public schools need to admit many thousands of applicants each year while private schools may only need to admit a couple thousand, so public schools are necessarily going to be less selective. Add a mandate to educate people from the school's state and it's easy to see why public schools are ranked lower. That said, the difference between #10 and #30 is probably pretty small in actual ROI or education.
I think I would pick Stanford too....just from having spent so much time in A2.
Your point about USNWR is valid. I don't understand how we have so many programs so highly ranked yet the overall ranking is way below what you would expect.
The bigger picture is that many schools, OSU, MSU, PSU, etc. that we sometimes look down upon do an excellent job of educating tens of thousands of kids who ultimately have successful careers. I, for one, never dis other programs as I believe in large part you get out what you put in.
In general, I'm a fan of big school public education because it gives so many people the opportunity to get an affordable, quality education. Frankly, you could do a lot worse than to encourage a high school senior to focus solely on BCS football schools in their application process. I only thought the over the top, Fred Jackson-esque hyperbole was mockable.
Also, FWIW, Cooley Law School rates itself as the #2 law school in the country using its excellent blend of 40 equally weighted factors. These include LSAT and GPA, but also include obvious items like library budget, total enrollment, and total number of incoming first year students. Never mind that few actually practice law afterwards...
If we're just talking names, I'd probably pick Stanford, too, though I loved my Michigan experience, and I studied music, and Stanford sucks at that, as does Harvard. I'd also be very unlikely to pick Harvard for engineering. The comparison of Michigan to Stanford and Harvard is, to me, sharply different from the comparison of Michigan to OSU, though.
There are no public universities in USNWR's top 20, and the first 5 (Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, UVa, and UNC) have been pretty interchangeable in their rankings.
Every school has good and bad, even OSU (which, I hear, has a great dental school, for instance). Fortunately for my daughter, though, there are a lot better schools available to her.
USNWR is notoriously all over the map. A school ranked #4 one year can be ranked #12 the next, with no change whatsoever from one year to the next. Why? Because USNWR changes their criteria so often, making their judgements suspect (there is AMPLE discussion of their methodology out there--just google). For consistency, check the following link, where UM is ranked #15 in the world, not in the nation:
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010
I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, every engineering school has instructors who barely speak english because the rest of the world is passing us in those fields. Its a a reflection of the international composition of the grad school more than umich itself and its true at every top school in the country. In terms of large class sizes you know that when you go to a public school, its one of the tradeoffs you make but if you make an effort to see your proffessor outside of class I don't think it makes much of a difference. Regardless pretty much all ranking systems are crap because they use stupid criteria and it should be in brackets more than individually. There is nothing seperating schools 20-30 and so on and the most important thing is what you want to major in. Obviously everybody thinks their school is better than it is but most of the problems you stated are ones you will find at pretty much every school including harvard and stanford just to name two schools.
I also received an engineering degree, but long enough ago that I didn't have the same problems. My point though, which you reinforce, is that no school is perfect. I love Michigan but there are many things I would change.
Most schools these days have gotten very good, particulalry state schools as the number of applicants keeps increasing and class size remains relatifvely constant, thus resulting in higher and higher admission standards. Affordability plays a huge part, particularly when the country is deep in the throes of a recession. Also today, there are so many PhD's from top schools looking for jobs, that most U's have superbly qualified faculties.
Bottom line - you can get an excellent education in a lot of places, including OSU.
Have my mechanical engineering degree as well. Going back to get my MBA at tOSU because it's where I'm stuck at for work and it's the best business school in Ohio. In my classes we have kids from school like Carnegie Mellon, Minnesota, PSU, and yes, even U of M. Most of us are there becase it's the best school within our geograhpic limitations at the time. When you get a little older and realize that rankings aren't all they are cracked up to be, you realize that there isn't really that much of a difference between #10 and #25. At the end of the day, Universities preach capitalistic ideals, and they also practice them too. It's a lot about marketing and creating revenues.
Also, it's more about choosing the school with the best program, rather than the institution itself. Most state schools are pretty easy to get into if you want to do general studies or communications; it's getting into the progams that is the tough part. I'm not all that impressed with a general degree from U of M.
That being said, I think going to any Big Ten school is an accomplishment you could be proud of. By the way, did you know that Max Fisher (tOSU Fisher School of Business) is Stephen Ross' uncle? Apples don't fall far my friends...
It reads like they are claiming to be one of the top institutions based on academic standards. And if you didn't know any better or an osu slappy you'd believe it. But all they are really saying is that they "might" be the finest college but based on nothing.
It's similar to saying we might be the finest professional sports team. Or we might be the finest car dealership. Or we might be the finest tatoo shop.
It's a very clever marketing trick they are using.
That's funny. For anyone who read my hockey journey blog, you'll recall that as a young hockey prospect one of the letters I got was from OSU and it said something like "We scouted you at the (whatever) high school tournament and are aware of your talents"...and I never played high school hockey, ever. I think they have a team of monkeys working around the clock writing these letters,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I'm feeling the luv, how about you guys?
My friend once got an email from ohio state admissions that started by saying:
Dear First Name.
Sounds like somebody's C in Visual Basic programming came back to haunt him/her.
Recommended response:
The below email was sent to me from what appears to be an official email address of the Ohio State University. I feel you should be aware that some moron is distributing stupid messages from that address.
Sincerely,
The above is a riff on one of the great response letters of all time (http://deadspin.com/5716038/the-greatest-letter-ever-printed-on-nfl-tea…).