Going away for a week . . .

[[XC] moddolicous]

To Pennsylvania. It is that time in my life that I have to make a major choice and choose where I want to go to college. There are four schools I am looking at in PA. They are:
1: Temple
2: Upenn (hey, one can dream, right)
3: Arcadia
4: Lehigh
I heard temple is in a BAD part of Philly, but I'll check it out anyways. They also have a decent crew program. Upenn I heard has a really nice campus, good crew program, and getting a degree from there is good. I know NOTHING about arcadia. Lehigh I heard is a very nice campus (nicer than Upenn) inside a nice college town and they have a semi-OK crew team. Hopefully either temple or Lehigh will offer money for crew. So anyways, I will be leaving tomorrow and won't be back until next Friday (29th). Try to behave without me:rolleyes:.

[DAK1640]

You'll be missed:( :( :(

[mcflurry4321]

I was doing this over 2 years ago :) I remember it like it was yesterday haha.

It may seem stressful, and it sort of is, but enjoy it. Have fun and see you when you get back!

[[XC] DragonOrta]

Yes, Temple is in kind of a bad part of Philly. One of my friends that went there had a guy shot right outside of his apartment sophomore year. He went somewhere else for junior and senior year. But I still love the campus. A few of my friends went there and used to visit there at least 3 times a month. Had some good times.

If you do end up going to Temple, there are quite a few XSers in the area.

[[XC] serlv]

I wish you well on your trip. UPenn is an excellent school. If you were to go there and do well it'd be a heck of a ticket.

I was born in that area; my dad ran the print shop at UPenn at the time. It was his first job in his field after graduating from Carnegie Tech ( Carnegie Mellon, now ).

[ShootStraight]

Good luck, Moddolicious!

UPenn and Temple eh? Not a very good student were we? ;) :P

I'm entirely joking of course. :D

-SS

[[XC] gomeler]

I vote for U Penn :) I've got a few friends that went to U Penn and they liked it.

[mcflurry4321]

UPenn has a KILLER drumline. For any of you who are into that like I am lol.

[[XC] moddolicous]

If I can get into Upenn, I'd probably go. The only downside is I would probably have to quit crew and really focus on my studies.

[Movieman]

moddolicous;2270694']If I can get into Upenn, I'd probably go. The only downside is I would probably have to quit crew and really focus on my studies.

I'll tell you what I told my own kids:
The harder you work while in school means the easier you'll work the rest of your life and the dollars made are directly porportional to the amount of effort you expend on your studies.
Now I wish I had someone to give me that good advice back in 1967 and I'd be building a data center for this team now instead of running 4 PC's..
Best of Luck to you no matter what school you decide on!:up:

[Bail_w]

You can always go back to school, movieman :)

[Movieman]

You can always go back to school, movieman :)

At this point in my life, no..not a good investment of the time I think.
The only thing that interests me now is in understanding the electronics on the boards so I can keep up with you young guys..:D

[Martijn]

Good luck and have fun!! :D

[NaeKuh]

I'll tell you what I told my own kids:
The harder you work while in school means the easier you'll work the rest of your life and the dollars made are directly porportional to the amount of effort you expend on your studies.
Now I wish I had someone to give me that good advice back in 1967 and I'd be building a data center for this team now instead of running 4 PC's..
Best of Luck to you no matter what school you decide on!:up:

Tell all the Medical Doctors that right now dave.

A lot of them are struggling unless they uber specialize.


I am in the Ins. Business, so i have a lot of clients, as well as know how the health care system works. If we dont get computers to replace doctors pretty soon, we'll have a major shortage on MD's because they'll all become dentists.

[[XC] moddolicous]

Well, yesterday I visited Temple, UPenn and Arcadia. Basic first impressions:
Temple: Very nice campus. Buildings were all new and state of the art. Surrounding town doesn't look too good, but as long as I stay on the campus I should be OK. Very affordable. Also has a crew team (which I'm interested in).
UPenn: WOW! Everything is old and new at the same time. HUGE campus. The two girls I talked to really enjoyed it and said that they accept a huge range of SAT scores (good for me). She also said that she has friends that got recruited because of sports. The price tag was a tad too high (47,000+) but it turns out that we would be accepted for financial aid and their financial aid averages ~20k, so that would help a lot. If I seriously want to go here, I'm probably going to need at least a 1350 on my SATS. It made a HUGE impression on me.
Arcadia: Completely different from the other two. Most of the colleges I am looking at are locating in a city (BU, Temple, UPenn). This one was located about 10min away from Philly and was MUCH quieter. Most of the buildings are historical landmarks. Very nice, spread out buildings. Huge fields in between them. The admissions hall, in the basement has a huge ballroom where they hold events. A good benefit of this is that I would get to know people much better. Unfortunately, no crew, so the only money I can get offered would be academic.
Now I basically have to decide if I want a big city campus or a small quiet campus. They both have their benefits. If I had to list the order of schools I want to go to (the ones I visited so far) they would go 1:Upenn, 2:BU, 3:Temple, 4: Arcadia. This could all change with scholarships / offers. Schools I still have to visit: LeMoyne (syracuse, NY), WPI (worcester, MA) LeHigh (tomorrow Bethlehem, PA), UConn (hartford?, CN) Bryant (providence?, RI) and Barruch (manhatten, NY). After I have visited all of them, I will start to narrow down. Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to start and finish most of my entrance essays before school starts.

[mcflurry4321]

Wow, I didn't know UPenn was that expensive!! Holy cow! I bet it would totally be worth it though. I go to Iowa State and it's ~27000 a year and that's out of state tuition with no reciprocity.

Iowa State is in a nice quiet little town. I really like it. I chose between University of Minnesota and Iowa State. What decided it for me was the city around it. U of M is right downtown in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Waaaaay too busy for me.

[Patriote]

Good luck and enjoy moddolicous!

[[XC] moddolicous]

Well, I'm back. Lehigh didnt really do it for me, so they are off my list. Basically, the order of colleges I would attend go like this:
1: UPenn
2: Temple OR Boton University (depending on the offers eah one can make me)
3: Lemyne, Arcadia, Barruch, WPI

[[XC] serlv]

BTW, I don't know if Carnegie Mellon is on your radar ( the school is in western PA ), and I don't know where your scholastic interests lay, but they have a killer IT/Computer Science school. Check out where they stand in one ranking...

Computer Science :

1 Stanford University
ckgaa@forsythe.stanford.edu

2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
mitgrad@mit.edu

3 University of California - Berkeley
gradadm@eecs.berkeley.edu

4 Carnegie Mellon University
apps@ece.cmu.edu

5 Cornell University

6 Princeton University
gradinfo@cs.princeton.edu

( rankings taken from here... (http://www.greguide.com/comps.html) )

~~~~

And,
tied with Stanford, for third, here... (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/articles/950320/archive_011127.htm)

1. University of California at Berkeley

2. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology

3. Stanford University

3. Carnegie Mellon University (Pa.)

5. Univ. of Ill. at Urbana-Champaign

[[XC] moddolicous]

Thanks Serlv, but Carnegie Mellon doesn't offer the major I am interested in (actuarial science). My grades aren't horrendous. I got 1210 my first time on the SATs and 29 on the ACTs. There are only something like 80 schools in the US that offer it as a major. That is one of the reasons why I am looking at a few select schools. Thanks for your interest though. It sounds like a great school.

[[XC] serlv]

moddolicous;2279992']Thanks Serlv, but Carnegie Mellon doesn't offer the major I am interested in (actuarial science). My grades aren't horrendous. I got 1210 my first time on the SATs and 29 on the ACTs. There are only something like 80 schools in the US that offer it as a major. That is one of the reasons why I am looking at a few select schools. Thanks for your interest though. It sounds like a great school.

YW, Mod. :)

Make those insurance companies pay when you finish! That is a good field to be in...
I wish you the best in your endeavors.

[[XC] moddolicous]

Thanks. My dad is the one that brought it to my attention. I always just told myself that I was gonna be an accountant, and one day my dad came home and said "I know what your gonna be: an Actuary". I had no idea, but my dad says the ones at his company (GEICO) make 200k+ right out of college. Since he has been there 5years now, he is sure that I could get a job there out of college and afterwards name my price anywhere else (maybe Microsoft?). Also, it turns out that the FBI and other federal organizations need actuaries.

[[XC] moddolicous]

Well, I am back on the road looking at colleges. This week: UConn, WPI and BU. I will be having lunch with the BU freshmen crew coach, so that is exciting. I'll post back on tuesday night and relay my findings.

[Frisch]

moddolicous;2352751']Well, I am back on the road looking at colleges. This week: UConn, WPI and BU. I will be having lunch with the BU freshmen crew coach, so that is exciting. I'll post back on tuesday night and relay my findings.

The best of luck ( and good judgement). :)

[DarkCow]

shame you don't live in Georgia, the Hope Scholarship is freaking awsome (free 4 years of college for a 3.0 GPA)

I'd personally go to the college with the best crowd of people, but then again i do find my self partying when i should be studying a little too often.

[[XC] moddolicous]

Well, back at home now. In case anyone is wondering, these were my views of the schools:
UConn- Much more rural compared to my other picks, but still very nice. Everything is well layed out. Women looked very attractive (big part in my college choosing ;) ) Connecticut gave them 2.3 billion dollars in 1995 to update / build new stuff, so everything on campus is super modern.
WPI- VERY academically structured school. Instead of semesters, they have 4 7week terms. Also, it is impossible to fail a class. If you get below a C average for a class, it is NRed (not recorded). Also, since there are about 10 other schools in the Worcester area, I am able to take a class there (one that is not offered at WPI) and it will count. Only downfall: 3:1 guy to girl ratio :down:
BU- My second pick as of now. I like being in the city and having to fend for myself. Also, from what I know, Boston is one of the best college towns around. The BU coach was extremely cool. He showed me around their facilities, gave me some tips about the application process, and we talked a little of an official visit this upcoming fall.
I liked all the colleges I visited on Monday and Tuesday. They were extremely nice and as far as I know, they all have decent reputations.