The Cellar - View Single Post

SteveDallas · 06-24-2002, 11:59 PM

Umm hmm Haverford also... used to work there... seemed like a nice place to go to school.

As a grad student at Penn my perspective was that undergraduates were not treated well, but I've been told by Penn alums they liked it just great, so don't take me too seriously.

Eastern University (formerly College) seems like a nice place. The local amateur astronomy club had a meeting there once. They have an observatory with two computer-controlled 16" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes that was built almost entirely by fundraising on the part of an astronomy professor. It was very impressive!

My best advice is to look at what programs you want and follow that to the schools that have good (not necessarily big) programs in that area. And most of all, don't get yourself too tied up with one particular school. Once you reach a certain level, the admissions process becomes a crap shoot, and you can't let yourself become convinced that your life is ruined if you don't get your first choice. When I worked at Haverford, I twice met people (one mother of a student, and then an actual student) who had been turned down and were so bitter about it it was shocking.. you'd have thought the kids had been run over by a truck instead of denied admission to a college. The student, in fact, was complaining to me (yeah, like over in the computer center we had a whole lot to do with the admissions process... "Hey Joe, this girl has an OK GPA... send her papers over and see if the network engineer thinks we ought to take her"

) while she was a computer science major at Wake Forest!! I told her I was sorry she did not get in since she wanted it so badly, but that she was at a fine school and she should let go of Haverford and concentrate on getting a good education at Wake Forest. She was mortally offended that I wasn't broken up by the injustice of it all.

06-24-2002, 11:59 PM	#4
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	Umm hmm Haverford also... used to work there... seemed like a nice place to go to school. As a grad student at Penn my perspective was that undergraduates were not treated well, but I've been told by Penn alums they liked it just great, so don't take me too seriously. Eastern University (formerly College) seems like a nice place. The local amateur astronomy club had a meeting there once. They have an observatory with two computer-controlled 16" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes that was built almost entirely by fundraising on the part of an astronomy professor. It was very impressive! My best advice is to look at what programs you want and follow that to the schools that have good (not necessarily big) programs in that area. And most of all, don't get yourself too tied up with one particular school. Once you reach a certain level, the admissions process becomes a crap shoot, and you can't let yourself become convinced that your life is ruined if you don't get your first choice. When I worked at Haverford, I twice met people (one mother of a student, and then an actual student) who had been turned down and were so bitter about it it was shocking.. you'd have thought the kids had been run over by a truck instead of denied admission to a college. The student, in fact, was complaining to me (yeah, like over in the computer center we had a whole lot to do with the admissions process... "Hey Joe, this girl has an OK GPA... send her papers over and see if the network engineer thinks we ought to take her" ) while she was a computer science major at Wake Forest!! I told her I was sorry she did not get in since she wanted it so badly, but that she was at a fine school and she should let go of Haverford and concentrate on getting a good education at Wake Forest. She was mortally offended that I wasn't broken up by the injustice of it all.