Applying to college

toshimelonhead

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Hiiiiii, I'm a somewhat nontraditional student in that I spent 4 years at community college part time while working in order to save money for a University. I imagine most people in this thread are applying straight from high school but maybe someone could have some advice for me anyways I hope. I'll be graduating from CC next month and I'm applying for a couple universities that have a partnership with my CC so I can transfer fully as a junior, but really the only one I actually want to go to is the University of Pittsburgh. I've noticed browsing through their website that I'm applying to one of the few programs that requires an essay for transfer students. The guidelines for it are very loose though and I'm one to stress about everything so I was just wondering a couple things. The only guideline given for length was that it should be less than 8 pages, but most of my friends say they only wrote like one or two pages for their entrance essays? Would around 2 or 3 be enough? Also, I'm kind of confused on how scholarly I should really get with it. The prompt asks that I explain why I chose to pursue the field, what do I think I have to gain from the education, and what do I think is one of the most pressing social issues of our time (I'm a Social Work major.) For the first two questions I just gave pretty much personal anecdote and opinion as was asked, but should I be going deep for the third question? Like is a detailed and researched essay expected of this? My friends who applied in high school said they don't think it's really that serious but I don't wanna do too much or too little I guess.
The easy answer to this is enough to answer the question. Is this multiple promps or one prompt with three questions? It looks like 3 separate, well written paragraphs (one per question) will do the job here.
 
So an update on my status in terms of transfers:

Waitlist
Cornell University
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University
University of Chicago

Rejected
Columbia University
Swarthmore College
Williams College

Unknown
University of Notre Dame

It has truly been a sad year.
 
Columbia student transferring out:
Accepted
Yale
Stanford
Harvard
Rejected
MIT


Well, at least I can always try for master's at Cambridge.… :(
 
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Hey guys! Got accepted into Kansas State University and Purdue and eventually decided to attend KSU!!! My father went there and my parents lived there when they were growing up (I have never lived in Kansas myself) so I am pretty familiar with Manhattan (it's nickname is the Little Apple LOL) My plan right now is to mathematics although I'm not sure what I will do exactly with that degree. I really just enjoy math and so I'm honestly just excited to focus on that for the next four years!

If anyone is in that area and wants to play mons or whatever hmu!!
 
Just a quick question: why were you thinking about transferring out of Columbia? If anything Harvard College is more or less similar to Columbia College (LA-esque discipline).

Unless you're naming all the possible HYPSM schools one can transfer into without actually applying to any of them.

Just an assumption...
 
Just a quick question: why were you thinking about transferring out of Columbia? If anything Harvard College is more or less similar to Columbia College (LA-esque discipline).

Unless you're naming all the possible HYPSM schools one can transfer into without actually applying to any of them.

Just an assumption...
I plan to declare CS as my major and start doing machine learning and NLP research, so Stanford, Princeton, Harvard and MIT are all considerable improvements for me. Transferring to a stronger school (Stanford) should help immensely wrt research opportunities and graduate school
admissions.

In short, prestige matters.
 
If Machine Learning is your thing, it confuses me that you're transferring out of one of the top institutions for Machine Learning research.
 
Still not changing the fact that Columbia's faculty who specialize in these areas produce a lot of papers on the subject (a lot of which are cited very heavily). I do research in swarm AI in UAVs, so I do go through a couple of papers on the subject. I feel like you're trolling me now, especially since a person who goes to Columbia would recognize the strength of their machine learning research regardless of U.S. News rankings.
 
Still not changing the fact that Columbia's faculty who specialize in these areas produce a lot of papers on the subject (a lot of which are cited very heavily). I do research in swarm AI in UAVs, so I do go through a couple of papers on the subject. I feel like you're trolling me now, especially since a person who goes to Columbia would recognize the strength of their machine learning research regardless of U.S. News rankings.
I had a response to this, but I removed it because it was too edgy.

Instead, I will talk about Mike Jordan.
 

Shrug

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if i can interrupt the dick-measuring spat to ask a question of knowledgeable smogon members:

what do i take my first yr of college? i understand this is too broad a question, but like what are dos and donts. Im interested in political science economics and statistics maybe trying to go to law school. I was thinking Stats course - Microecon (which wont be as hard bc i took econ in hs, although still hard, prolly), a political science course, and an english class. it's hinted at in the catalogue i can place out of stats 101 based on the ap score: is this typically good or bad to do? idk im just confused
 
if i can interrupt the dick-measuring spat to ask a question of knowledgeable smogon members:

what do i take my first yr of college? i understand this is too broad a question, but like what are dos and donts. Im interested in political science economics and statistics maybe trying to go to law school. I was thinking Stats course - Microecon (which wont be as hard bc i took econ in hs, although still hard, prolly), a political science course, and an english class. it's hinted at in the catalogue i can place out of stats 101 based on the ap score: is this typically good or bad to do? idk im just confused
It ultimately depends on which institution you go to. A lot of institutions have 4-year plans which gives you the recommended path one should take to complete his or her major in four years. You can usually google your institution, major, and specify 4 year plan and get what you need in the first link or two Shrug
 
You should take courses your first year that are prerequisites for a lot of the upper-level courses you wish to take, if such courses exist. That way, you don't realize halfway into your academic career that because you didn't take chemistry 1, you can't get into the biochemistry class you really need to take for a biomedical engineering major (as a lazy example).
 

GatoDelFuego

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if i can interrupt the dick-measuring spat to ask a question of knowledgeable smogon members:

what do i take my first yr of college? i understand this is too broad a question, but like what are dos and donts. Im interested in political science economics and statistics maybe trying to go to law school. I was thinking Stats course - Microecon (which wont be as hard bc i took econ in hs, although still hard, prolly), a political science course, and an english class. it's hinted at in the catalogue i can place out of stats 101 based on the ap score: is this typically good or bad to do? idk im just confused
What year are you now, in high school I would assume?

It really depends on what you're comfortable with. If you have AP credits, then you'll have free courses out of the way, which means you can either move up classes that you've completed prerequisites for (as in take them a semester early) or take classes in other degrees. Most colleges should have a "flowchart" of courses that you're planned to take each year, and if your school doesn't have one then get an excel spreadsheet out and make one yourself. That way you can see what the difficult years are, which classes you can move around to balance things out, or which semesters will be easy ones for you to pad your GPA. You have to consider tradeoffs between doing well in the classes, graduating a semester early if possible, and managing extracurriculars/personal time.
 

toshimelonhead

Honey Badger don't care.
is a Tiering Contributor
if i can interrupt the dick-measuring spat to ask a question of knowledgeable smogon members:
what do i take my first yr of college? i understand this is too broad a question, but like what are dos and donts. Im interested in political science economics and statistics maybe trying to go to law school. I was thinking Stats course - Microecon (which wont be as hard bc i took econ in hs, although still hard, prolly), a political science course, and an english class. it's hinted at in the catalogue i can place out of stats 101 based on the ap score: is this typically good or bad to do? idk im just confused
I had an Excel spreadsheet planning out four years of college - and it didn't go like my plan in HS, but better. Adjust accordingly.

I would definitely be fine with English / PoliSci / MicroEcon - even if you have AP credit in those classes, there are usually variations that are not review classes from high school. Be careful with what Stats you take - there is a HUGE difference between calculus based stats and non-calculus based stats (AP really only covers stats without Calc, and econ / stats majors will most likely need to take calc-based stats). It was also common at Wisconsin for students to not do as well overall if they took a math class their first semester - a bigger issue with calc than stats, though.

The fourth class should be something random and fun, IMO. The more random the better. Enjoy what the massive course catalog has to offer before locking yourself in and facing a crunch to graduate on time.

When deciding between taking and not taking AP credit, remember that 2 successful grades >>> 1 not so great grade. They did help me graduate in 4 years when I wouldn't have otherwise, but it wasn't always a smooth transition from AP to college. Keep in mind that you're not only taking a harder class, you are also competing against students a few years older with better study habits. Hard to top the curve (or even make friends) in that type of class no matter how good your HS background. The material doesn't always change between AP and college, but the pace certainly does.

Also if you have retroactive foreign language credits, take advantage of that by enrolling in a language course. Wisconsin granted retroactive credit for foreign language classes given a B or higher in the first university class taken.
 
I'm applying rn! Applying to University of Washington and Western Washington cause I did an in-state "community college in high school" program (Running Start) and want my college credits to transfer. Really hoping I get into UW, I have a 3.99 GPA (literally ONE A- KILL ME), 1380 SAT, and I did Running Start which they supposedly like at UW :D My only problem is I have very low extra-curriculars, I only did National Honors Society and some babysitting here and there, and while NHS did provide a lot of community service and require a high GPA I'm not sure it'll be enough... I've been wondering if it'd be worth putting all the articles / analyses I wrote for this website on my app, what do you guys think??

Western is my safety although tbh if I don't get into UW I'd probably just try to transfer with an AA since I'll be pretty close to it by the time I've graduated high school.
 
Applying to colleges now as well; running took up most of my "after school time", so wouldn't look better that I did XC, indoor and outdoor track for 4 years with large improvements (in times) as opposed to multiple clubs/ groups? I already finished my Common Application essay (the 650 word max one) and wrote about a summer job I had done. Applying for architecture if anyone else can relate; almost finished with my portfolio thank god.
 

Bad Ass

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just checked this thread randomly. My advice to incoming freshman is to skip every class you possibly can (in terms of applying AP credits). your "intro to randomthingoutsideyourmajor" class is going to teach you about as close to nothing useful as they can possibly pass with these things still being considered 'courses'. You're not going to get blasted in the second introductory econ course because you didn't take the college version of intro econ, unless you go to a truly ultra-rigourous school like caltech or something. And, if you're anything like me, a few years down the line you'll really be resenting having that 5-6 hours cut out of your week writing bullshit bio 2 lab reports when you could be doing anything useful (developing in-major skills, hobbies, friends, reading, the list goes on). Knock anything that you can out.

as a side note, don't just apply to schools based on prestige. You will learn far more and have a better time if you're at a school which is a good fit for you personally. I go to georgia tech and it definitely bugs me that my junior and senior level CS classes are still massive impersonal lecture halls -- if I could do it over again, maybe I'd go somewhere smaller. Easy to gloss over the fact that your social life is still important when you're applying to schools.
 
As someone who took a class that I didn't need to (I could've skipped it using AP credits) for the sole purpose of making my schedule "easier," i'd like to echo bad ass's statement about skipping all classes you can. It's not worth it, it's a waste of your time and effort, and you won't learn anything from it. If there's any situation where you can get out of intro classes, absolutely do it.
If you really really want to take an intro class that you've ap'ed out of for whatever reason, at least try to talk to students already in the college to see whether it's a good idea or not. There may be some situations where it's a good idea to retake classes, but it's almost always not worth it.
 

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