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No, just pointing out how pointless these so called rankings are....
Somebody asked for the rankings and I took the time and effort to look them up FWIW.
Quote:
Originally Posted by toobusytoday
Muhlenberg is very popular for Jewish people from North Jersey and NYC. That's not meant to be a bad thing, but while it started as a Lutheran College, it's pretty much non-denominational now. Pa. Lutheran college hot among Jewish students - USATODAY.com
The Lutheran colleges that I am familiar with are all fairly non-dom. You are not required to attend chapel, or do volunteer work for the church, or anything like that. I explained St. Olaf's policy on religion courses in another thread. Many of these courses are "comparative religion" courses, not theology.
Sheena and Katiana, I understand rankings, and you are right Katiana, Sheena or her husband did ask for them, some of us just don't understand why. Except for the name brand colleges, it's not as if other people know how a school ranks either.
^^I suppose the "why" would be that if you're going to shell out the money for a private school (even with financial aid), you want to know if you're getting a good deal.
But rankings don't especially correlate to jobs. For education majors, they have as good, or even better chance of being hired, if they went to a State U. My husbands company tends to hire from one local private college. When my kids were looking for colleges we were aware of rankings, but that was a low priority.
It is a very conservative school. Your daughter might not have been part of the conservative crowd but the majority of the school is very conservative. Being that the school is right down the road from us, I spend quite a bit of time on campus....it's a conservative school....
That's laughable. Literally.
St. Olaf is not remotely conservative in any national or even local (ie, Minnesota) sense of the word, your claim that since you live 30 miles to the north you understand this nothwithstanding.
I've spent abundant time there, I know many former (and a few current) students and faculty, and I took classes there during high school. It is not liberal in the Paul Wellstone sense of the word, but it is most definitely liberal in the mainstream DFL sense of the word.
You are simply wrong. You do not know what you are talking about in this instance.
Our daughter is getting ready to apply to college and my wife is a Lutheran and so is she. I have not heard of many of these colleges. She really likes St. Olaf and Witenberg.
I'm not a Lutheran.
Also, do any have Fashion, Interior Design or Merchandising? Her secondary major would be Math or Accounting and I know that most colleges have those majors.
A little back story. Our daughter is Asian, has good SATS and a 3.75 average. She in liberal politically.
Thanks.
Why Lutheran or a nominally religious college at all? Some schools have an historical affiliation with a particular denomination, but are largely secular in practice. Other schools are intensely religious and controlling, but that doesn’t sound like what your daughter wants.
Nowadays, nominally religious colleges are not significantly different from secular colleges. She may be limiting herself unnecessarily. That being said, I lived in Minneapolis for five years and St. Olaf was very well regarded.
Regarding design, if she really wants to go into those fields, she would be much better off at design school, like RISD or Pratt. Regarding fashion marketing, I work in PR and the arts in New York and know a lot about that world. It’s very elite and super competitive: school rank (or at least name recognition) makes a huge difference.
I don’t mean to be a snob, but people who don’t live in Manhattan simply don’t understand how much college rank matters. Ivy degrees are a dime a dozen here and it’s very hard to stand out. I went to a very good (and very expensive) liberal arts school in New England, but it was not as famous as some other schools I could have attended. Had I known then about school status hierarchy in New York, I would have chosen a different school.
Bottom line: if she wants to work in fashion marketing, she’ll probably have to be in New York, and if she’s in New York, school rank matters. She’s going to be up against and entire army of “girls who went to Brown.”
Gustavus Aldophus in St. Peter, MN would be another place to look into. The campus isn't as pretty as St. Olaf but its a great school and is one of the best in the nation for merit/financial aid. St. Peter is a pretty town, similar to Northfield. Gustavus also has a pretty top notch tennis program if she chooses to go that route.
I'm a Gustavus alum. Our campus was beautiful up until the F5 tornado that ripped through and decimated it and surrounding St. Peter when I was a student there. It's coming back nicely, but the loss of the trees is a terrible thing, as was the necessary demolition of the landmark heritage buildings that were so badly structurally damaged.
I didn't do sports at Gustavus, but I was VERY active in all performing arts. In my experience, it was a highly liberal (definitely in the Paul Wellstone sense of the word) campus for a parochial school, which was a plus, for me. There were small student-run conservative groups that were active enough, but overall, as most ELCA-affiliated institutions, it leaned more to the liberal end than conservative, socially. I also got tremendous merit/financial aid, there. I do know that their current president is a controversial figure, and am not sure if that has changed the overall atmosphere there, though.
I agree with the poster who stated that visiting and getting a feel is most helpful. When I was a prospective, I visited both Gustavus and St. Olaf within days of one another, and in doing so, the choice of which was the better fit for me was pretty obvious and gut-level. A lifelong Lutheran, I looked exclusively at (ELCA) Lutheran colleges when I was a prospective student, and the differences in the quality of education at most ELCA schools I looked at was so minimal that it just made sense to go with where I got the best feel (as long as they offered my programs of interest, anyway).
At any rate, both Gustavus and St. Olaf (and many other Lutheran schools, nominally Lutheran and fairly non religious, or more rooted in faith traditions) are highly regarded for academic rigor and selective admission, in general. Ranking, with all its controversy and politics, matters some places and in some fields more than others, but quality of education is really the prime consideration for most people who are not of a very particular subset where ranking is God. I will say that I didn't choose my school for name recognition (and who would, when your school is the Latinized version of the name of a Scandinavian warrior king little known by most people unless they are military history buffs?). I still live and work in the Midwest, but not Minnesota, and honestly, nobody knows Gustavus (or St. Olaf, for that matter) unless they are Minnesotan, ELCA Lutheran, really big Prairie Home Companion fans, or are particularly plugged in to the a capella sacred choral music scene. Most of us who go to Lutheran colleges do so for reasons that don't necessarily include USN&WR rankings or name recognition.
Last edited by TabulaRasa; 01-02-2013 at 07:24 PM..
Agree with golfgal, Rank them how? What is important to your daughter? I think rankings are silly if they are rating things that don't matter to the student like sports or certain programs. When my last son was college shopping he realized that the program was the most important thing to him, but there were other priorities too. How the schools ranked was inconsequential. Many colleges are recognized regionally and if the student is planning to stay in that area, that's fine.
No one knows at 18 where they are going to be living at 40, or even 30, unless they're joining a monastery or something. I'm not saying regional schools are a bad idea, but if you end up out of your region, no one will have heard of it. It is more the case for women, who get married and go where the husband's job takes them, even in this day and age, to end up someplace they had never even considered at age 18. I don't believe sports are considered in the US News rankings, which is what I used. I'm not sure if they even consider extra-curriculars.
Quote:
Originally Posted by toobusytoday
But rankings don't especially correlate to jobs. For education majors, they have as good, or even better chance of being hired, if they went to a State U. My husbands company tends to hire from one local private college. When my kids were looking for colleges we were aware of rankings, but that was a low priority.
My husband does some hiring too, and he says about half the people they hire come from the U of CO/Colorado State and the rest from all over. Colorado has a lot of transplants, so people are more accepting of unknown schools here. However, in some places, your resume may be passed over.
Bucknell originated as a Baptist seminary but now appears to be nondenominational as opposed to being Lutheran.
Yep, my ex's mother is on faculty at Bucknell, and as far as I know, it does not have Lutheran affiliation, and never did (although the Susquehanna Valley, where it is located, is not without Lutherans).
Muhlenberg is a solid school. We are originally from L.I. and many people from that area are include MU in their list of schools.
She would be very comfortable with those demographics.
What is of concern when it comes to some of the deep mid-West Lutheran schools is a lack of diversity. My daughter is Asian and a North Easterner. We are politically liberal.
ELCA is a liberal denomination, but that means there are quite a few ultra conservative members who are welcomed because ...well, we are liberal.
Just as our congregations vary, so do our colleges.
Has your daughter spent much time in the Midwest/upper Midwest? Culturally speaking, I have known more than a few instances personally of Northeasterners who have decidedly NOT enjoyed their time in the interior of the country when transplanting for school and such. Just a little too fish out of water.
Gustavus, where I attended, was not incredibly culturally diverse when I went there, as the Lutheran church is not incredibly culturally diverse. It did have a fairly sizeable black student population when I attended, mostly students from the Twin Cities, and the Asian population wasn't tiny (largely Hmong students, as many Hmong families in the Twin Cities were sponsored in immigration by large Lutheran churches). But still more lily white than your average large state university, obviously. Native Americans were also pretty underrepresented; I knew a few kids, but not many, and given its proximity to various reservations, that's notable.
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She really likes St. Olaf and Witenberg. 
