For those of you who went to high school++

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aka 'community college'

Were there less slope-foreheaded, knuckle-dragging morons when you transferred to a university?

I feel like I'm pulling a Kepler here b/c the past two years (which are thankfully coming to an end) have been some of the most depressing times of my life.

I'm not saying I hate everyone here. In particular, I like: most of the faculty, some of my engineering peers and a lot of the foreign-born students. However, the majority of the native-born student body ranges from 'dull' to 'loser', with some 'weird' for spice. It's the ugly truth.

I've had people say my situation will improve when I am at any of my prospective transfer institutions, e.g., SUNY @ Buffalo, Lehigh, CMU, Temple ... maybe even Cornell. Is this true? What are my best school choices to avoid troglodytes?

I went backwards. I transferred from a real university to a so-called "university" that's really just a 4-year community college. In my opinion, they're both pretty bad, but the smaller one is worse. Except I like some of the teachers a little better, but some are completely ignorant of the subjects they're supposed to be teaching. Still, it's probably not representative because it's Baptist and overrun with Jesus freaks. The only reason I'm going is because I can't go to any state schools for the semester after I got put on academic suspension because of my terrible grades. I kinda messed that up... But I'll probably keep going because it's cheaper with the awesome scholarship they're giving me. Christians may be crazy, but I can't say they aren't generous.

Also, are we talking about students or teachers? My professors have all shown themselves to be idiots, except the one I have for Contemporary America, who is French (not that it matters, but it's ironic).

You listed some good schools, and they would all be very different from community college. I actually applied to Lehigh and CMU (Lehigh accepted me; CMU didn't, but that's because I didn't do part of the application). I went to UVA for a couple years, which is a great school, but then I had to leave because of my grades (I'm smart but an underachiever at school). Since then I've taken a couple of semesters of community college classes, and they are terrible. They are horrible. The content of the courses is high school level but I'm interested in graduate level subjects. I'm still failing, but that's beside the point. I know what you mean about the intelligence of the people there, because the majority of community college students are there because they are below average in smarts. So, don't worry, the environments of community colleges and good universities are very different. Any school that is considered competitive in admissions or has a good reputation will have many very bright students.

Temple? Lehigh? Do you live in PA? I live reasonably close to Temple and two of my neighbors, who were also classmates, attend them, and I know them not to be dull losers. Whether they're representative of the crowds you'll find there, I couldn't say.

Thanks for the heads-up.



I like many of my classes, especially now that they are getting specialized. In this last semester here, I am taking Data Structure & Algorithms which is pretty cool.



Why are you failing??



Cool. And, yes, not every university with high acceptance rates is bad: Drexel and Temple are both very good.

There are a few reasons. I was never challenged in school before going to college, so I didn't learn to put any effort into it. Also, I'm now more than three years into college, but it took me until now to decide what I want to major in, if I continue and finish college. Before, it seemed that I was told that what I choose to major in should be the one thing that I am most interested in, want to learn about, and want to have a job in for the rest of my life. But now I know that that isn't true.

Whatever job I have will only be for the purpose of making money to support what I really want to do, which is to make music. Music is my passion, but I'm never going to make money off of it. I had started college in the engineering school at UVA. I switched to the regular college because engineering wasn't what I wanted to do. But if I could go back, I would have stuck with engineering, because it would have been much easier to do well in than liberal arts classes, and engineering jobs pay well. The grades in liberal arts classes are based off of writing essays, and I'm bad at those, mostly because it is a non-straightforward task that I have to schedule my own time to come up with a topic then research, write, and revise. By comparison, a set of math, physics, or programming problems is a straightforward, logical task, that I can do in one sitting.

Besides being bad at work, I still do badly at easy classes, because I don't have motivation to pass them. One reason is that the class just doesn't interest me, because I already know what is being taught and the course content doesn't go beyond a superficial concrete level. Moreover, I do most of my learning on my own. I love to learn, so I see the goal of getting a grade supposed to represent what I have learned, as secondary to my actual learning. If I get a college degree, all that will signify is that I put up with spending my time doing things that I didn't want to do, but had to do, just to get the degree. If that's a character trait that an employer is seeking, then I don't want whatever job they're offering. I know that the system isn't going to change soon, so finishing college would be the better choice, but right now it's hard to see myself doing it.

People at Cornell are unhappy. CMU is disgustingly overpriced unless they're handing you mass scholarship money or you really want their computer science program that badly. Lehigh, from what I've heard, is a pretty good school. Don't know anything about Temple or SUNY.

Drexel is a private university and a bit more prestigious than Temple, which is public, but they are both very good schools and I hear positive things about them (my mom actually did her undergrad at Temple). I've never been to Drexel, but I've been on the Temple Campus; it's sprawling, urban, and I've heard that the food court is legendary.

And hey, if you choose either of those two I'm right across the river at Rutgers-Camden, so we can meet up and get coffee and make fun of business majors.

LOL my best friend is a business major

And if that doesn't pan out you can just give me math pointers, since I'm probably going to change my major from biology to applied math and/or physics, and I'll reciprocate by telling you where to find the best cheesesteak in University City.

Giving up on biology? Traitor!

So why math/physics?

I don't feel as if I'm truly giving up on biology for the time being, I still love the field and I plan to continue to do research on neurobiology for the rest of my undergraduate years. Plus, since after this year I'll have fourteen credits in General Biology I and II and graduate Neurobiology I and II, I'll just take two or three more biology electives and make it my minor.

I was torn between biology and physics entering college, and chose biology for the reasons that it would satisfy all premed requirements (I was thinking about med school at the time) and that I had scored lower than expected on the math placement test, so I would have to postpone taking the calculus track. However, I'm starting to think that theoretical physics may have been my true aspiration all along (even if I haven't hopped on the string-theory bandwagon ) and I fear the type of regret I'll encounter years from now if I believe I gave up on my real calling. Due to my postponing my math track (and thus the physics track since I opted for the calculus-based physics course for physics/engineering majors instead of the physics for bio majors), it will take me an extra year to graduate. However, since the physics program heavily overlaps with my school's applied math program, I could probably use the extra space afforded to me by the extra year to complete them both as double-majors.

And yes, I know it's probably a poor career aspiration. My parents seem a little uneasy about it.

Physics, huh. I would not major in physics generally. True, I converted my idea for Master's to EE, but that's only one area of physical engineering I seem to grasp well. I definitely don't like kinematics.

If you are doing applied math, I can help with algorithms and whatnot.

I don't really like kinematics either; it's dry and I get nothing aesthetic out of it. I merely see introductory physics as a means to more interesting stuff like relativity and quantum mechanics.

I might have to take physics, in which case I will be in a world of shit.

I'm taking it now, it's dry but really not so bad.