US undergraduate degrees (not spam)

[Brother Oni]

Okay, I've known for a long while that US degree courses are significantly different to UK ones, but between a couple of new threads and getting into Community, I'm getting confused on what exactly the differences are. My google-fu is failing me as well, since I'm getting either pay-for-assessment sites or specific queries on the comparison between degrees (eg US Engineering vs UK Engineerins).

Suppose I'm an international student, looking to study in the US. I have some decent upper education grades and I've been accepted to a US university: what next?

I'm primarily interested in working what classes I need to pick and why: I understand that there's a general education requirement that needs fulfilling which involves basic science, language and literature?
Do I just rack up points (credits?) for completing classes and when I have enough, I graduate? How many credits are required?
Major and minors - these are specialisations taken from the second year onwards to focus my study for either personal interest or obtaining employment?

Any experiences on the actual life of an US college student is also welcome (the room mate system is something I don't quite get either - if you live in dorms on campus, you have to share with somebody?), as British student life is also considerably different given that alcohol is involved from the start.

[noparlpf]

Generally, you need 120 credits to graduate. Most classes are three credits, some are four if they have a lab attached. But some schools do it differently for some reason, which makes transferring confusing.
You need like forty credits of gen-ed stuff at my school, which is ridiculous. Then you need stuff for your major. For an example, here's the online bulletin for my major from my school (http://sb.cc.stonybrook.edu/bulletin/current/academicprograms/bio/degreesandrequirements.php). At this school there are too many students to keep track of, so you have to apply to graduate once you have enough credits and have all your gen-ed and major requirements filled. Oh, and a minor is only like, twelve credits of upper-division classes, so those aren't too hard to do.

Living on campus at this school sucks. Dorms are super expensive. It would cost me about $6k to live on campus between the dorm and the overpriced, mandatory meal plan (for terrible food, mind you). My tuition itself, including all the miscellaneous fees, is about $4k. Yeah, the dorm costs more than the education. And it's for a dingy room with a saggy bed covered in who knows what kinds of bodily fluids and an annoying, drunk man-child in it. And a bathroom (two toilets and two showers) that you have to share with forty other drunk man-children. And there's one kitchen four floors and half a building away, and three washing machines and three dryers to share between the three hundred people in the dorm, and to make it worse, the washing machines and dryers cost $1.50 per cycle. Oh, and the supposedly 24-hour quiet dorms aren't.
Don't even think that alcohol isn't a part of the equation just because of the law.

So now I live in a (still pretty dingy) basement apartment off-campus, but at least I have some space, and I'm only sharing a kitchen, washer and dryer, and bathroom with two other guys who are usually pretty quiet. And it costs about half as much. $550 a month for rent and utilities and around $120 a month on food comes up to about $6k a year, as opposed to $6k a semester.

[warty goblin]

The credits system is, so far as I can tell, mostly meaningless. So long as a person consistently takes four classes a semester they're pretty much guaranteed to have sufficient credits by the time they finish a major. Most places you do need to take at least three classes (or some number of credits) each semester to be considered a full time student.

To graduate you need some number of credits, and to have completed a major, which is basically a specific class list for one department or the other, usually along with a requirement for some other number of credits within the department, or a closely related one. So a physicist can get credit towards their major for certain classes offered through the math department. If what you want to do isn't quite standard, many schools also allow a person to draft their own academic plan and get that approved, although this is fairly unusual. This process actually makes sense.

Then there are indeed the gen ed requirements. These are good in theory - at least if you believe in the liberal arts - but my experience is that because the overwhelming majority of the students have no interest in being there, they are more than a bit listless in execution. They are also enormously weighted towards the humanities in my experience, although this varies by school. The first college I attended had a very long and exceedingly explicit list of gen eds (so many of this class, so many of that), the second just demanded that I disperse my credits across the Math & Science, Humanities and Social Science divisions to some degree.

Life on the American university campus is, in my experience, a festering horror. The only major activity is consuming irresponsible amounts of alcohol - my floor of ~30 people sent IIRC 4 people to the ER to get their stomach pumped in one semester - or sports fandom, which also involves the consumption of irresponsible amounts of alcohol. At least you get the knowledge that your massive tuition payment is subsidizing somebody else's hobbies, and they in turn are almost certain to involve the school in some sort of sex scandal. Tragic, but also incredibly predictable, which lends a certain black comedy to the inevitable announcement that the administration is 'shocked, surprised and saddened'.

Dorms are bad, particularly if they're single-sex by floor. I've heard tell of people actually being friends with their roommates, almost exclusively from women. Usually this works well until one or the other gets a boyfriend, and her unfortunate compatriot is forced to spend long stretches of the night sexiled to the corridor, or else in the room pretending to sleep while wondering how to hide the bodies. I spent most of my (mercifully brief) beroommated time trying to ignore their existence, or wishing it was still legal to give somebody a good thrashing. Fortunately at my first school I could move home, while at my second I could get a single by Junior year, and my Sophomore roommate cracked up and dropped out about March.

American schools like to say BS like 'it's the best four years of your life.' I think it was markedly closer to the worst four years of mine.

[Chen]

American schools like to say BS like 'it's the best four years of your life.' I think it was markedly closer to the worst four years of mine.

This is clearly dependent on the person in question. If you're more introverted then trying to go through university with a party attitude is probably not going to be that pleasant. On the other hand if you're more extroverted spending all your time alone in library may make your college time terrible as well.

In most cases, social interaction via parties/get togethers/events are going to be quite common as the "standard" extra-curricular activities in college. Many will involve a lot of alcohol and music. Depending on the size of the college, it may be difficult to find other activities if these types of things are not your cup of tea. However, in a big city college/university there are usually a WIDE variety of clubs and other social groups for people who don't just want to go get smashed and party. Clearly its also easier to find like minded people in a larger city/university, if your tastes are not the same as the majority.

[TSGames]

As it had already been said: the credits system is meaningless. If you take all the classes laid out in you degree program, then you will have enough credits to graduate.

What matters is the degree program. You can usually find this info on line. Each University has a list of classes that you are requiredto take to graduate. If you mots even one, then you cannot graduate.* Generally, this information is easily accessible on line.

Also, don't take Community to seriously. .. That could be bad (or AWESOME)


*in some circumstances there are waivers and things, but you should never count on these.

[AtlanteanTroll]

It is common to apply to graduate even if your school doesn't have loads of students. My school has just below three thousand students and we still require you apply to graduate.

Also, my school being a liberal arts college and not a (research) university, things are a bit different. (Our classes are also worth 4 credits each.) Each student must the following requirements: two classes in the humanities, two classes in the social sciences, two classes in the natural sciences, two cultural diversity classes, two writing intensive classes, and two quantitative reasoning classes. These requirements can overlap however you like, and as far as I know, can fulfill major requirements. For example, I took the introductory economics class in the fall. It fulfilled one of my social science credits and one of my quantitative reasoning credits. I disagree with warty goblin's assessment of such workings being good in theory but negative in practice, as most people I know in public universities have far less gen. ed. requirements and most people here are fully aware they're going to a liberal arts college.

Our dorms are fairly nice as are our cafeterias--we're one of the most dietary needs friendly schools in the country. None of our dorms have by-the-hall sex divisions (though we do have a single female only dorm), and anyone can live with anyone here. You have to agree that you're okay to live with someone of the opposite sex, but it's definitely doable. Drugs and alcohol can be a problem, but if it bothers you, we have a pretty decently sized substance-free dorm. We also have loads of clubs, in addition to themed housing where you can and will meet people with shared, non-habit forming personal interests. Oh, and actually enforced quiet hours, something I've noticed is rare in other schools. The school is also ridiculously expensive, but with financial aid, it becomes manageable; the fact that noparlpf is paying just 10K per semester nearly made me do a spit-take.

Personally, I'm enjoying it loads. This first year hasn't quite been as good as the last year of high school, but it's beat all the others and is getting better all the time. The one downside, and it is a downside for many who go to liberal arts colleges, is being in the middle of nowhere. It's at least an hour's drive to an actual city, and that city is Cleveland, so :smallyuk:. (:smalltongue:)

[warty goblin]

This is clearly dependent on the person in question. If you're more introverted then trying to go through university with a party attitude is probably not going to be that pleasant. On the other hand if you're more extroverted spending all your time alone in library may make your college time terrible as well.

All I can say is that I went to college wanting an education - which I obtained - and hated pretty much everything else about it.


In most cases, social interaction via parties/get togethers/events are going to be quite common as the "standard" extra-curricular activities in college. Many will involve a lot of alcohol and music. Depending on the size of the college, it may be difficult to find other activities if these types of things are not your cup of tea. However, in a big city college/university there are usually a WIDE variety of clubs and other social groups for people who don't just want to go get smashed and party. Clearly its also easier to find like minded people in a larger city/university, if your tastes are not the same as the majority.
That depends on your tastes. As a rural person, the larger the city, the harder it gets, by and large. I mean just try to find somebody who understands pitchforking hay at -20, or knows the first thing about slaughtering an animal.

It is common to apply to graduate even if your school doesn't have loads of students. My school has just below three thousand students and we still require you apply to graduate.

Also, my school being a liberal arts college and not a (research) university, things are a bit different. (Our classes are also worth 4 credits each.) Each student must the following requirements: two classes in the humanities, two classes in the social sciences, two classes in the natural sciences, two cultural diversity classes, two writing intensive classes, and two quantitative reasoning classes. These requirements can overlap however you like, and as far as I know, can fulfill major requirements. For example, I took the introductory economics class in the fall. It fulfilled one of my social science credits and one of my quantitative reasoning credits. I disagree with warty goblin's assessment of such workings being good in theory but negative in practice, as most people I know in public universities have far less gen. ed. requirements and most people here are fully aware they're going to a liberal arts college.

What I can I say, I have very distinct memories of being one of the ~three people in Freshman Studies who had done the reading. Boy were those useful discussions. I also had to take a writing intensive class after I transferred. Total pages written: 8. It was a fun class though, if nothing else it let me get credit for The Iliad twice.


Our dorms are fairly nice as are our cafeterias--we're one of the most dietary needs friendly schools in the country. None of our dorms have by-the-hall sex divisions (though we do have a single female only dorm), and anyone can live with anyone here. You have to agree that you're okay to live with someone of the opposite sex, but it's definitely doable. Drugs and alcohol can be a problem, but if it bothers you, we have a pretty decently sized substance-free dorm. We also have loads of clubs, in addition to themed housing where you can and will meet people with shared, non-habit forming personal interests. Oh, and actually enforced quiet hours, something I've noticed is rare in other schools. The school is also ridiculously expensive, but with financial aid, it becomes manageable; the fact that noparlpf is paying just 10K per semester nearly made me do a spit-take.

Personally, I'm enjoying it loads. This first year hasn't quite been as good as the last year of high school, but it's beat all the others and is getting better all the time. The one downside, and it is a downside for many who go to liberal arts colleges, is being in the middle of nowhere. It's at least an hour's drive to an actual city, and that city is Cleveland, so :smallyuk:. (:smalltongue:)
This sounds precisely like my second college on paper. Except for the co-ed floors, I found most of that to be lies and marketing (aka almost lies). Fortunately that was only two and a half years, and I got the education I came for, even if the rest of the experience was miserable. Some of which was, admittedly, entirely my own fault. Quite a bit of it though wasn't, so I still get a good hardy chuckle out of the letters they send begging for even more money and talking about what a special place it is.

[Chen]

All I can say is that I went to college wanting an education - which I obtained - and hated pretty much everything else about it.

As I said, to each their own. University gave me plenty of time to learn independence and make friends, socialize, party etc. And I got a good education out of it. The college itself clearly has a role here. If its a known "party" college, clearly it's not going to be a good fit, if you don't like partying. That said, unless you're forced to live in dorms, it should be reasonable to get away from the partying by just not participating.


That depends on your tastes. As a rural person, the larger the city, the harder it gets, by and large. I mean just try to find somebody who understands pitchforking hay at -20, or knows the first thing about slaughtering an animal.

A lot of the people going to almost ANY college enjoy the partying/socializing aspects. If there is a limited number of people at the university and you DON'T enjoy partying, it's going to be tougher to find people for you to engage with. As the university gets bigger, the absolute number of outliers who don't want to go party and such gets bigger, thus making it easier to find people to socialize with, without having to endure the parts you don't like.

[AtlanteanTroll]

What I can I say, I have very distinct memories of being one of the ~three people in Freshman Studies who had done the reading. Boy were those useful discussions. I also had to take a writing intensive class after I transferred. Total pages written: 8. It was a fun class though, if nothing else it let me get credit for The Iliad twice.
8 pages or 8 papers? Writing intensive courses here equal about a page and a half of homework due each day for homework, with actual papers being anywhere from four to sixteen pages in length.


This sounds precisely like my second college on paper. Except for the co-ed floors, I found most of that to be lies and marketing (aka almost lies). Fortunately that was only two and a half years, and I got the education I came for, even if the rest of the experience was miserable. Some of which was, admittedly, entirely my own fault. Quite a bit of it though wasn't, so I still get a good hardy chuckle out of the letters they send begging for even more money and talking about what a special place it is.
It is unfortunate that you had such a sucky time at college, but a good many people do vastly prefer it to most other times in their lives. Not everyone can be pleased. And my post wasn't marketing, it was my honest thoughts.

[warty goblin]

8 pages or 8 papers? Writing intensive courses here equal about a page and a half of homework due each day for homework, with actual papers being anywhere from four to sixteen pages in length.

Eight pages, not counting midterms; although a person had to bring their A game to the discussions. I had a lot of fun in that class.


It is unfortunate that you had such a sucky time at college, but a good many people do vastly prefer it to most other times in their lives. Not everyone can be pleased. And my post wasn't marketing, it was my honest thoughts.
To be clear, there were parts of college I enjoyed. The majority of my classes were excellent and I liked them. Once I made my peace with what the college actually was, instead of what they kept telling me it was, life improved as well. Ditto getting the hell over myself - I was an obnoxious little bastard at 20 - that made a big difference. But there's no denying the level of BS in their marketing, or the degree to which I was hung out to dry when I transferred.

On the other hand, I'm really quite glad college wasn't the best four years of my life. Even if they were extremely good years, that would be an entirely sad statement about the rest of my life.

[Slipperychicken]

It's sometimes possible to get a "single" room which you don't have to share, but that tends to be harder to do. There's really no reason to willingly share the room unless you're already friends with your roommate. I've heard that women only pretend to be friends with their roommates, but are really just passive-aggressive about it. People say that dorming is part of the "college experience", but I think it's a wash: it's an excuse for a college to charge you thousands of dollars to share a room with someone you don't even know. The main reason to dorm is so you don't need to waste time commuting to and from classes.

Colleges tend to have a set of "core" requirements which everyone needs to take. Your major/minor are basically a set of specialized classes which will show your prospective employer that you understand the subject matter. You want to select your major as soon as possible, and finish the requirements without hesitation. Choosing your major in 2nd or 3rd year often results in needing to take an extra semester or more. The specifics depend on the college, however.

Most college kids don't care much about the law. Underage drinking (plus use of other illegal drugs) happens so often that the cops are likely to let offenders go unless they're clearly being disruptive or dangerous (or if the cop is having a bad day).

After you graduate, your college will unfailingly and shamelessly beg you for money, no matter how many hardships you endured paying for college. They gouge you for everything you're worth, charge $300 or more per textbook, skimp out on "financial aid" (which is just loans anyway), squander half your tuition on the football team (including free tuition for the football team, and legal costs incurred defending/covering up the athletic department's countless abuses and scandals), they screw you out of your meal-plan through various shenanigans, set you up to take more semesters than you wanted, and yet they nonetheless ask you to "give back" as if your education was free.

[SouthpawSoldier]

On a related tangent:

Outside of the U.S., is there a noticable difference between a vocational/technical ("VoTech") school, and a university?

Are you also having the issue of imbalance in those fields?

Is there any kind of cultural emphasis or encouragement towards particular fields of study?

In America, they're two distinct types of education, and there's a huge cultural difference between the two. Universities and colleges are dedicated to "higher" learning, and votechs offer certifications and licensing. These schools specialize in fields like welding, heavy equipment operation, trucking and shipping, manufacturing; fields that require 6 months to 2 years of vigorous training and certification, rather than the 4-8 years one would spend at university.

For the last few decades, there has been a huge emphasis on traditional university in America. This has led to a glut of people with "white collar" certifications; accounting, medical, business, programming/computer networking and the like, and a dearth of "blue collar" plumbers, electricians, et al. Our media and politicians keep beating the uneployment drum, but there's actually a huge demand for skilled labor. It's only unskilled labor and high education fields that have a high worker:job ratio.

There's finally some attention being drawn to this cultural issue. Mike Rowe is a minor celebrity that made his name hosting a show ("Dirty Jobs) dedicated to those infrastructure jobs without which industry would halt. Manufacturing, munincipal water/sewage, various specialized agriculture fields, and a few oddballs specialties have all been featured. He shows up, does a "day in the life" highlight of their work, discusses various issues and difficulties they face, and generally draws attention to the smaller, family-owned business that keep America humming.

He's now lending his name to organizations and foundation with the goal of connecting people in search of work with education programs and technical/vocational schools. He's also desperately trying to change the mindset of "Work smart, not hard" to "Work smart, AND hard". Many businesses in the field are now offering sponsorship programs and scholarships in the field, because of the high outflux of trained personnel. Most are hitting retirement age, and there's not enough younger people getting certified and coming into the laborforce.

[Zrak]

Not all schools have gen ed requirements; the university I attended did not. Requirements within a major can vary greatly from one major to the next. After looking into a lot of majors after my plan fell apart in the wake of some departmental shake-ups on the University's part and some serious thinking on mine, the best generalization I can give is that math and the hard sciences tend to have more specific class requirements, history and the social sciences tend to have few specific class requirements but fairly specific "track" and theme requirements, while arts-based humanities departments have no specific required classes and more track flexibility. For instance, history students have to choose a region or a time period and take so many classes of this and that level in that region/period, then there are a few other requirements like a historiography class; biology students, on the other hand, had to take certain specific classes, such as introduction to biology and organic chemistry, then had some flexibility in choosing a focus area; English had more of a "checklist" you had to cover over the course of ten classes, with focus areas adding a few extra items to check off.

[SarahV]

Well, I've actually attended both a US and a UK university - both pretty high level (a top 25 university in the U.S. and in the UK I attended University College London). They were quite different experiences.

UK: They expected me to take only classes in my major, and nothing else. Dorm life: every dorm room was a single, and it was a lot worse than my university at home. One step up from a prison cell. No internet, no phones, no appliances, terrible beds (we did eventually get phones but we didn't have them when we moved in). Most of the students in my dorm were freshmen, which meant they'd just moved out for the first time AND become legal to drink simultaneously. And there was a pub IN the dorm because apparently they think you should encourage 18 year olds to drink as much as possible :smallsigh: But I was living in central London which was pretty awesome, I really enjoyed my time there :smallsmile: And studying English lit in England was a real treat.

US: My school had a strong emphasis on a well-rounded education, more than any of my friends' universities. I took everything from Dostoevsky to philosophy to history to chemistry to calculus to playwriting to archeology to film analysis to African-American studies. None of which were in my major. I mostly really enjoyed taking classes outside my major, it lets you broaden your mind way past what you learned up to that point, and follow up on what your interests are, and find new interests. You can take classes in several subjects before making up your mind on a major (I started out in biology and ended up in English lit.) I'd really encourage you to read through the whole course catalog and find some interesting/creative ways to fulfill the requirements. Some of those classes were the highlights of my time in school. We even had a phys ed requirement... so I learned to tango. :smallsmile: Take advantage of all the opportunities!

The dorms were much more modern than the one I had in the UK. We had phones, the rooms were wired with ethernet, the rooms were bigger, you could get a mini-fridge and microwave in your room, there were real beds with real mattresses, etc. Single-sex bathrooms which I preferred. I had (through somewhat unusual circumstances including things like lost housing application forms and not being in the country to file application forms) three different randomly selected roommates at that university. Two of them were disasters: one was a very religious girl from Texas who woke up at 4:30AM every day (I'm an atheist who stayed up till 4:30AM every night, we would meet in the bathroom brushing our teeth). The other was a very sheltered girl who had never spent a night away from her identical twin who had to be in bed by 9 every night and could not bear it if I was so much as reading with a flashlight, so I basically was not allowed to be in my own room every evening. Both of those people were so incompatible sleepingwise that the school let us "divorce" - in one case we both got singles, in one case I swapped "problem" roommates with another dorm room down the hall - they were exporting their diva with a ton of clothes who hogged the phone, which I didn't mind a bit because I wasn't using half my closet space and was never a big phone talker. :smallsmile: We ended up being really good friends. My brother had three random roommates at his school and he ended up being really close friends with all of them, to the point that one of them was his best man 10+ years post-graduation. I think the mandatory freshman roommate experience is supposed to give you an automatic friend when you go to a new place where you don't know anyone, and at the same time maybe expose you to someone who's different than you and open your world up a bit.

The school I went to has no football team and outlawed frats so we didn't really attract the partying sort so much as a lot of other schools seem to. Suited me just fine. It was very academically oriented... just like me.

Now, I will point out, the university I went to in the US was among the most expensive in the country (which didn't bother me because I got a big scholarship) - so the facilities were probably nicer than a lot of places might be. At the time the sticker price was almost double what it cost an international student to attend UCL.

Hopefully this was a little helpful as a compare/contrast.

[Zrak]

(I started out in biology and ended up in English lit.)

Huh, I did the basically same thing at a similarly expensive and prestigious institution on a similarly substantial scholarship. I can only assume we are twins.

[Razanir]

My college experiences:

We have three sets of requirements to graduate. Some gen ed requirements from the university, some more specific requirements depending on your college, and, of course, requirements for your major.

Our minors vary greatly. They can be as simple as picking up a math minor because you took calc 3, or as complex as my CS minor, which feels like a second major at times, because of how little it shares with my major.

Dorms, I've done random two years now. Last year was fine, we got along. He's an RA now. This year, I didn't get along so well with my roommate, and he moved out. (We're still friends, we just couldn't stand each other as roommates)

Back to classes, I've taken some cool gen eds. So far, for them, I've taken a class on digital humanities and a class on theatre. I also took an English class where I wound up writing a paper comparing dubstep to Stravinsky at the end of the semester. (Technically I've also finished the math requirement several times over, but that hardly counts :smallbiggrin:) I've also had everything from small 30-40 person classes, to massive 200+ person lecture halls. (Take my advice, and actually read textbooks)

Dorms are fine. Mine's the academically-oriented one, so we get a lot fewer stereotypical college parties. Although we do have a Yule Ball, Harry Potter reference fully intended.

Oh, and SarahV, your first roommate you mentioned (Texas) sounds a bit like a girl me. Religious, to the point of religious decorations in the room. Up at 6:30 (so a bit more reasonable of a time). Except I also pray for a solid 15 minutes every single morning.

[Bulldog Psion]

Having been to the University of Wisconsin, I can only describe what I saw there. I was fortunate in one way; I have a somewhat unusual physical condition, which scarcely interferes with my life, but which I was able to cunningly parlay into a room for one, rather than having to share with somebody. I still didn't like the place hugely, though. In particular, I found the food they provided to be vile, and broke out some of my own cash to stock up on stuff at the grocery store, which I was then able to prepare at the communal kitchen in the basement.

Anyway, as to the structure of the courses:

There was a set of core requirements. English, algebra, political science, etc. etc. Kind of a quick tour of human knowledge in a Mickey Mouse kind of way.

Then, there was the major. This was a hefty chunk of credits, including a required bunch and another bunch of classes where you could pick from two, so you could customize your major a bit.

You could pick a minor, or not, depending on what you wanted. If you chose a minor, it had a shorter list of required courses. I think you could have two minors, actually, if you wanted, though I'm not too clear on that.

Finally, there were the electives. Those were probably about 25% of the total credits, and could be anything you wanted if you could make it work in your schedule. I kind of built my own minor using my electives. I took a bunch of meteorology and a bunch of geology courses, because the elemental makeup of the world fascinates me.

As it turned out, I've made far, far more money off what I learned in the meteorology and geology courses than I did off my big fancy macroeconomics major. Go figure. In fact, I don't think I've made a red cent off my actual major. Which is kind of depressing, when you think about it. The stuff that I did for fun ended up giving me income; the stuff I broke my posterior doing to perfection yielded absolutely ZERO monetary return on all that effort. :smallconfused:

[SarahV]

Huh, I did the basically same thing at a similarly expensive and prestigious institution on a similarly substantial scholarship. I can only assume we are twins.
:smallsmile: Are you currently regretting a career in print publishing, by any chance?

It's funny actually, when I was at university I had a doppelganger I never met. A couple of times some random stranger would walk up to me and start talking to me like they knew me and were continuing some earlier discussion. I would stare at them baffled until they realized that I just really looked exactly like their friend. :smallconfused:


Oh, and SarahV, your first roommate you mentioned (Texas) sounds a bit like a girl me. Religious, to the point of religious decorations in the room. Up at 6:30 (so a bit more reasonable of a time). Except I also pray for a solid 15 minutes every single morning.
I would have been totally fine with it except for the 4:30AM thing. And even that would be OK if she were quiet about waking up (I was very quiet in the late nights when she was sleeping - just studying/on the computer/reading). If I ever went to bed at a reasonable hour (if I had a morning class, for example) her alarm would wake me up, and then she'd hit the snooze alarm so it would go off again right after I'd fallen back to sleep... and sometimes she'd fall back asleep at which point her friends on the crew team would CALL HER on the shared landline phone and wake me up a third time. At 5AM. :smallmad: The thing is... the school has you fill out a questionnaire about your daily routine to make sure this exact thing doesn't happen. So it really should not be a common problem! Aside from the sleep thing, I have no problem with someone who is putting Bible quotes on the wall and stuff like she did. I'm very live-and-let-live. She didn't like some of my movie posters because they had guns in them, but that was a pretty minor issue.

[Zrak]

:smallsmile: Are you currently regretting a career in print publishing, by any chance?
No, I just finished regretting a brief career in non-profit work and am looking for a new field to regret until I can save up money to regret a graduate degree. :smallwink: I'm thinking of trying technical writing, given my bio/neuro and computer science coursework, but it really comes down to whatever hires me first.

[SarahV]

looking for a new field to regret

Good news. We're hiring! :smalltongue:

[warty goblin]

No, I just finished regretting a brief career in non-profit work and am looking for a new field to regret until I can save up money to regret a graduate degree. :smallwink: I'm thinking of trying technical writing, given my bio/neuro and computer science coursework, but it really comes down to whatever hires me first.

Grad School: Where a person does a week's worth of undergrad work in a day, then feels inadequate.

[Zrak]

Haha, really? I am actually living in Newton right now and looking for work, so I wouldn't be too surprised if I end up applying there if they post any ads for the position.

[Pie Guy]

I'm a freshman at University of Massachusetts Amherst right now (technically a junior because I have 44 AP test credits, which will never stop amusing me). I've had a perfectly active social life and I don't go to parties. The facilities at the dorms are quite good, so I can't say I've experienced the same hardships that some other posters have. But yeah, I'm majoring in Computer Engineering and Math, so at my school I have to take a minimum of five gen ed classes, in writing, history, sociology/behaviorism, art/literature, and some interdisciplinary class. Otherwise, because I'm in engineering, I pretty much have my entire schedule mapped out, and I can't graduate in less than four years even with my credit count. I'm considering doing the five year BS/MS engineering program they have here before I decide if I want to go for a doctorate in engineering or follow in my dad's footsteps and go for math...

I'm living with a roommate right now, but I'm getting a single next year. He's an alright guy, but he plays his music all the damn time and I'd rather not chance it next semester.

Really, though, it's the flagship university for my state college system, so it is actually good, and I'm happy (we'll see how I'm doing when I get into upper years engineering...).

It helps that the food at my school is actually ranked somewhere around top third in the country.

[Dienekes]

For my part, attending a US college.

You have a couple "core curriculum" classes, the goal of which is to help round out your education and to see if you're interested in anything you otherwise didn't think you'd be interested in. I've heard people say how the core classes helped them decide what they want to do with their life. And that's good. But for me, all I really think about is how that one damn Drawing 101 class knocked me out of summa *** laude because the jackass of a professor graded on skill and I found out I cannot draw. Other than that, the political philosophy class was at least interesting, and the ethics class was fun. But that was more because we were given topics to discuss and I would always try to entertain myself by vigorously arguing the side the class seemed to be against. I think I tried to defend a genocide at one point. One of my classmates was on the verge of slapping me. Good times.

Dorms are a crapshoot. My freshman dorm was a small corner room that I had to share with a guy I've never met. We had nothing in common and so he looked around to switch roommates. I ended up getting stuck with apparently the "other" creepy guy on my floor. He didn't bother me as much, but he did bring bimbos over after midnight unannounced and sexiling me a few times. It would have been fine, if he gave a little warning, but I have no desire to voyeuristically sit through two drunk idiots sloppily grabbing each other so I normally waited outside on the lobby couches for a few hours. But the guy was so stupid that at least I got a few stories out of the experience. The next year I had a much bigger multiple room dorm with two other guys I didn't know. A drug addict and one of the most flamboyantly gay men I ever saw. Both were nice until they got drunk, which unfortunately was a tri-weekly occurrence for the gay one who seemed to think when he was drunk that it was ok to tell me that I reminded him of Jeffrey Dahmer, say he wouldn't trust me with a gun, and then try to kiss me and call me homophobic when I wouldn't let him. Still, generally a good guy and I got a few stories out of that experience as well. Third year I moved off campus with a friend and his girlfriend now wife. That was great.

As to the other living experience things, the cafeteria was great. Cheap semesterly payment that came out to about $3 a meal if you get 3 meals a day, and it was always buffet. Not gonna lie, I put on a lot of weight in college. I assume there were parties, but I only went to one, thought it was loud, annoying, and it smelled like body odor. I've been informed by my various roommates that these parties were fun, I'll take their word for it. There was no sports teams that mattered, except for I think our women's tennis team or something was good. I don't know, I never went to a sports game. There was also a lot of benefits set up with the local museums where certain days students from my college would get in for free, as well as half price for various play tickets. Those were worthwhile. The professors in one of my major were always helpful and willing to go the extra mile to make certain you grasped the concepts. Most of the other professors were good two, except one or two exceptions.

Overall, it was a positive experience. Not fantastic, definitely not the best years of my life, but positive.


Grad School: Where a person does a week's worth of undergrad work in a day, then feels inadequate.

Being in graduate school, this about sums it up. Doesn't help that I'm trying to learn a language at the same time. I'm terrible with languages. They're my weak spot, along with drawing. But now I commute, so no real college experience there to post about.

[Eldan]

What level is grad school anyway? PhD? Master's?

My university experience can be summed up like this:

Bachelor's: 40+ hour lecture/lab weeks, plus homework. We weren't allowed to choose lectures until year three, everything was predetermined by your chosen subject. Everything was more or less relevant to that, too, though as a biology student, I had more mathematics and chemistry than biology, at first. I took two hours per week of a voluntary history course (The History of Science) and that meant that I was already more diverse than just about anyone.
Dorms don't exist, people live with their parents. There's no clubs organized by the university either. People spend their time either at home or in 300 person lecture halls, where no one knows the other students other than their lab mates.

Master's: glorious freedom. You get a long list of possible lectures and choose your own. If your supervisor agrees. Lectures involve 20 students, first name basis with the professor and a lot of discussion. People move apart, because everyone attaches themselves to one research group to do their theses, so after the first year, you'll barely see the other students.

PhD: you probably won't ever see a lecture hall from the inside, unless your prof thinks you should teach some of his lectures. Welcome to working all night and weekends, for less pay than a supermarket cashier.

[Razanir]

Aside from the sleep thing, I have no problem with someone who is putting Bible quotes on the wall and stuff like she did. I'm very live-and-let-live.

One part you might appreciate, being a gamer. That daily prayer I mentioned? Pretty much the real-life equivalent of clerics praying every day in D&D.


You have a couple "core curriculum" classes, the goal of which is to help round out your education and to see if you're interested in anything you otherwise didn't think you'd be interested in.

Although, again, it's not as much work as it may sound like. Some of them will be met just by taking all the classes for your major. And where I go, they even have a gen ed requirement that's a capstone in your major.


What level is grad school anyway? PhD? Master's?

Either? I've heard it used for both.


Bachelor's: 40+ hour lecture/lab weeks, plus homework. We weren't allowed to choose lectures until year three, everything was predetermined by your chosen subject. Everything was more or less relevant to that, too, though as a biology student, I had more mathematics and chemistry than biology, at first. I took two hours per week of a voluntary history course (The History of Science) and that meant that I was already more diverse than just about anyone.

Ah, sounds like the college of business here (the part about predetermined classes). There's a reason I jumped ship and joined the college of science.

[Eldan]

That was Science. 8 hours of math lectures, plus 4 hours of math study with an assistant, 4 hours of physics plus two hours of study with an assistant, 8 hours of chem lab and so on.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Real world religious discussion, in any context, is an Inappropriate Topic on this forum. Please avoid it.

[pendell]

Answering questions out of order.



Do I just rack up points (credits?) for completing classes and when I have enough, I graduate? How many credits are required?


Correct. A 'credit' is roughly an hour of class time a week. Not all classes are equal. A physical education in class in say, tennis, which meets once a week for an hour, would be a 1 credit class. A class in physics which meets 3 hours a week would be a 3 credit class. The same class with a 1 hour lab component would be 3 credits lecture plus 1 credit lab -- four credits in all.

Exactly how many credits are required to graduate depend on the particular major you're pursuing, and whether it is bachelor of arts or of science.

For instance, I got my Master's at George Mason University (http://www.gmu.edu/)

All students are expected to complete 40 credits (40 hours) of Core requirements (http://catalog.gmu.edu/content.php?catoid=25&navoid=4941) . This includes writing, reasoning, information technology, and natural science.


The next step up is whether you are considering a bachelor of arts (http://www.gmu.edu/academics/catalog/0203/cas/ba.html) degree or bachelor of science (http://www.gmu.edu/academics/catalog/0203/cas/bs.html). Both require roughly 8 credits (hours) of additional coursework, but where art focuses on literature, the BS requires physics or chemistry or biology in those credits.

And then there are the major-specific requirements. My own degree is computer science (http://cs.gmu.edu/programs/undergraduate/cs/BSCSBrochure13-14.pdf). As you can see, that's 91 additional courses within the major, including prerequisites in mathematics and natural sciences. Some of these overlap the core requirements above, but it works out to about 115 credits -- approximately 38 3-hour courses lasting three months each. If I take 4 courses a term, and there are two terms a year, I will be done in about 5 years. If I take 5 courses a term, it will be closer to four.

Of course, I don't actually have to attend lecture for all these courses. Credit from A-levels (http://admissions.gmu.edu/exams/examAdvancedLevel.asp) counts towards the degree requirements. It is also possible to challenge out of courses via challenge exam (http://admissions.gmu.edu/exams/examDepartmental.asp). I failed Calculus twice so I was behind. I made up for it by studying over the summer and challenging out of discrete mathematics, proving by taking the final exam at the start of the term that I already knew the material.




I'm primarily interested in working what classes I need to pick and why: I understand that there's a general education requirement that needs fulfilling which involves basic science, language and literature?


Correct.




Do I just rack up points (credits?) for completing classes and when I have enough, I graduate? How many credits are required?


Once you have enough credits you have to fill out a form applying to graduate. If the college agrees with your assessment you will then graduate and are eligible to attend the graduation ceremony. If you don't they'll just send you your degree in the mail.



Major and minors - these are specialisations taken from the second year onwards to focus my study for either personal interest or obtaining employment?


FIRST year. Some of the general ed requirements overlap with the major requirements, so your best bet is to already know your major and be planning for it the moment you set foot on campus. If your degree is in a major with significant requirements such as advanced mathematics, it's wise to be preparing even before you set foot on campus.




Any experiences on the actual life of an US college student is also welcome (the room mate system is something I don't quite get either - if you live in dorms on campus, you have to share with somebody?), as British student life is also considerably different given that alcohol is involved from the start.

I lived off-campus with relatives. Unlike others here, I had no 'social life' in college save through on-campus clubs. I got my head down, I studied, I graduated. I did not drink so much as a single glass of alcohol during my university time, and it was not an issue because I did not stay in a dorm. Off-campus housing may be available through, say, a church or other hospitably-minded people.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[noparlpf]

Correct. A 'credit' is roughly an hour of class time a week. Not all classes are equal. A physical education in class in say, tennis, which meets once a week for an hour, would be a 1 credit class. A class in physics which meets 3 hours a week would be a 3 credit class. The same class with a 1 hour lab component would be 3 credits lecture plus 1 credit lab -- four credits in all.

That depends. At my old school, that Physics I class would meet for three hours a week plus a three-hour lab for a total of four credits. At my current school it varies. For example, Biochem meets for three hours a week for three credits, and the lab is technically a separate course that meets for four hours a week for three credits. Chordate Zoology meets for three hours a week and has a three-hour lab for a total of four credits, same as my old school.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Credit = hour only makes sense for a purely lecture, or purely lab class. I.e. 3 1-hour classes a week is a 3 credit course. 1 3-hour class a week is also a 3-credit course. Some schools also have tutorials (at least in Canada, not sure about the US), they are often mandatory to attend but aren't worth credit-hours. Labs can vary. In general, a course that has a lecture + lab component is worth 4 or 5 credits, and often it does not depend on the length of the lab itself. There are classes with a 2 hour lecture + 2 hour lab that are worth 4 credits, and other classes with 3 hours of lecture + 4 hours of lab (usually introductory classes) that are worth 4 credits as well.

[huttj509]

Whatever the situation, my best advice for the introductory classes and labs:

Do the reading, get started on the homework early in case you have questions, don't be shy about asking those questions, it's what office hours and tutoring hours are FOR, and at least look over the week's lab before you get into the lab room.

Your TA will love you.

[noparlpf]

Yeah, don't be me. Doing homework the hour before class is a bad idea. Skipping a lab report because the lowest grade is dropped is a bad idea and the TA won't like you.

[tomandtish]

Okay, I've known for a long while that US degree courses are significantly different to UK ones, but between a couple of new threads and getting into Community, I'm getting confused on what exactly the differences are. My google-fu is failing me as well, since I'm getting either pay-for-assessment sites or specific queries on the comparison between degrees (eg US Engineering vs UK Engineerins).

Suppose I'm an international student, looking to study in the US. I have some decent upper education grades and I've been accepted to a US university: what next?

A lot of my answers are obviously going to be subjective depending on which school specifically you are going to, and if you know (or think you know, since it may change) what you want to do once you graduate.


I'm primarily interested in working what classes I need to pick and why: I understand that there's a general education requirement that needs fulfilling which involves basic science, language and literature?

Pretty much every U.S college/university wants to show that they produce well-rounded graduates, so you will need to demonstrate some base level competence in the fields of science, math, English, etc. (how many and which ones depends on the school. The two important things to keep in mind:

1) MAKE SURE YOU KEEP TRACK AND TAKE THEM ALL! Sounds obvious, but every year there were at least 3-4 seniors (and my school's total student body was 1200) who came into the spring semester and suddenly realized they had never taken their English requirement, etc.

2) IF possible, and if your school allows it, look for courses that can do double duty. Statistics took care of my math requirement, and was also a requirement for my psychology major.


Do I just rack up points (credits?) for completing classes and when I have enough, I graduate? How many credits are required?

As before, the exact numbers depend on your school, but you have to have enough hours. You also have to have enough hours in one specific area (a major) as well, unless your school is one of the rare ones that still offers a "general studies" degree. As an example, my school's classes were 4 "credit hours" each (+1 for a lab). A full load was four classes a semester (and an intense 1 class Jan term). So a full time student earned 36 hours a school year, or 144 in four years. Currently it requires 136 hours to graduate, with a 2.0 average both overall AND in your major and minor (or second major).

Again, your school may have different requirements. Just depends.



Major and minors - these are specialisations taken from the second year onwards to focus my study for either personal interest or obtaining employment?

Yep. Your majors show what you focused on during your college career. You're going to have to pick one no later than the start of your junior year (rules may vary, check with your school). Any classes you take your 1st year may count towards it, it just depends if your school allows this or not. For example, since all the upper level history courses at my school (upper European, upper Latin American, etc.) required the intro level as a prerequisite, taking the lower level met both a requirement for my history major (I doubled) and my general history requirement.

You're going to have to take X hours in your major (at my school it was a min of 32 and a max of 44) AND presumably maintain an acceptable GPA. Most schools require that the GPA of the major also be acceptable separate from the overall GPA.

A minor is an area of lesser focus, usually 2/3rds that of a major. It was 20-28 hours at my school. It will not carry as much weight as a major, but can be nice to point to. Make sure your school doesn't require one. Mine put the requirement in place my senior year for new students (I double-majored anyway).

An important thing to keep in mind is your degree end goal (if you know). I say this because there are many degrees that have several paths. For example, if you are interested in a business degree, there are at least 3: Bachelor of Science in Business, Bachelor of Arts in Business, and Bachelors of Business Administration. Each of these has differing ratios of undergraduate course requirements. However, even the same degree doesn't mean the same major. It's possible to have a BA in Business with a straight math major, an accounting major, an economics major, etc.

In short, when employers look at degrees, they fall into three categories:
1) Those who care about the title of the degree. (Do you have a BBA versus a BA).
2) Those who care about the coursework involved. (did you focus on statistics versus economics).
3) Those who just care if you have the degree at all.
(Snobbery about where the degree is from is a separate issue)

So keep that in mind as well.


Any experiences on the actual life of an US college student is also welcome (the room mate system is something I don't quite get either - if you live in dorms on campus, you have to share with somebody?), as British student life is also considerably different given that alcohol is involved from the start.

My experiences are 23 years out of date, so not sure how much help they will be. I had a roommate the first semester who was OK, but moved in with a friend the second. That was fine. Lived with a different friend second semester which was also good. Was an RA next two years so had my own room. It was possible to get single rooms but you paid a lot.

We were in a dry city (and a private religiously affiliated school), but there was a lot of drinking given the student size. Remember, the problem you may see is not that alcohol is present, but the irresponsible use of it. They may (please note use of word may) be those who feel the purpose of the weekend is to get drunk. Not to have a drink or two, but to get drunk. At my school that was about 30% of the population. And given we were a dry city, many of them were driving places before and after.

[Razanir]

Yeah, don't be me. Doing homework the hour before class is a bad idea. Skipping a lab report because the lowest grade is dropped is a bad idea and the TA won't like you.

Also, if you have the ability to run a grading program beforehand and see the exact output they'll be grading you on, please use it. I'm a TA (in computer science) and I can't stand when stuff doesn't run because they never checked it.