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Let me elaborate on my prior post. When I was studying to be a Civl Engineer at CCNY, I had a friend who transferred over to City from Stony brook. In SB he had a 3.3 gpa, and thought that CCNY was going to be much easier due to it being a college in the city. Well, after failing his a couple of classes, and two years later, his CCNY GPA is at a 2.2, and is still a few semesters from graduating. He told me that CCNY's C.E program is many times more difficult than SB. I think he's going to end up going back to SB to finish.
Another example,
One of my closest friends was taking electives with me before he decided to go into C.E. Guess what? He couldn't make the C.E program at City. Basically flunked out. So he goes to Brooklyn Tech and has a 3.7 gap in C.E.
City College is EXTREMELY difficult. Only like 5-10% of students graduate in C.E. I don't understand why they make it so difficult but my belief is that since the school takes in the brightest students in NYC who
a) Don't want to leave the city.
b.) Don't have money
They have to have a program to filter out and sort them all out. You're competing with the best NYC has to offer.
Go with SB, City College is too difficult. I had to switch over to Applied Math and finally graduated this past May. Hell, even in Applied Math only 25-30% of students graduate.
Take it from me. I was in City for 7 years. A lot of these people have never stepped foot into city. They assume that since it's a cheap college in the city, that it is an easy school.
There's a lot of money being invested in the Stony Brook engineering department right now. Well, I'm partial to Stony Brook engineering, but not as much to do off campus as you would have being in Manhattan.
There's a lot of money being invested into Stony period...
Let me elaborate on my prior post. When I was studying to be a Civl Engineer at CCNY, I had a friend who transferred over to City from Stony brook. In SB he had a 3.3 gpa, and thought that CCNY was going to be much easier due to it being a college in the city. Well, after failing his a couple of classes, and two years later, his CCNY GPA is at a 2.2, and is still a few semesters from graduating. He told me that CCNY's C.E program is many times more difficult than SB. I think he's going to end up going back to SB to finish.
Another example,
One of my closest friends was taking electives with me before he decided to go into C.E. Guess what? He couldn't make the C.E program at City. Basically flunked out. So he goes to Brooklyn Tech and has a 3.7 gap in C.E.
City College is EXTREMELY difficult. Only like 5-10% of students graduate in C.E. I don't understand why they make it so difficult but my belief is that since the school takes in the brightest students in NYC who
a) Don't want to leave the city.
b.) Don't have money
They have to have a program to filter out and sort them all out. You're competing with the best NYC has to offer.
Go with SB, City College is too difficult. I had to switch over to Applied Math and finally graduated this past May. Hell, even in Applied Math only 25-30% of students graduate.
Take it from me. I was in City for 7 years. A lot of these people have never stepped foot into city. They assume that since it's a cheap college in the city, that it is an easy school.
I went to Stony. Maybe Stony engineering is easier than City but it's definitely not easy. Science, Comp Sci, and Engineering especially the early intro classes have high fail rates and are brutal. Pretty much at most public schools where some of these majors are very popular they try to weed people out early. Stony in general is not an easy school. Especially in a lot of the bigger majors, a big chunk of the classes were taught by Grad TA's or young inexperienced professors, you really had to work hard and rely a lot on yourself to get through. Now I graduated in 03, so I'm guessing in 10 years that's probably gotten better now that stony has more money and can pay more professors. That school has changed a ton after I graduated.
CUNY in general has had sort of a renaissance in the last 10 years or so. City, Baruch, and Hunter are extremely competitive schools these days. So yeah people going there should not expect an easy time.
Last edited by NooYowkur81; 06-10-2014 at 07:06 AM..
Bear in mind though that the lesser institutions have hired people to plant reviews, I would not think Stony Brook or CUNY, definitely not Columbia (they do not need to) but I do know one place in particular where this is a constant practice very ambitiously followed. And their targets, I mean, their "prospective students," are the ones who suffer while forking over enormous sums for tuition and fees.
Random advice - look at the faculty. How many have tenure or are tenure track ? Many professors will have a set of pedagogical ethics, meaning that they will do their best job at educating even given really poor and often unethical treatment by "leadership," deans, provost, whomever. But not all will, and people become resentful of bankrolling "leadership" salaries, bonuses, retreats ...
It is important to discern how much cronyism is happening as well, because this is death for any program or school at the same time that the problem has grown hugely in our predatory culture. Are the best people hired, or are those hired from that small village where some "leadership" individual is also from ? Too many university administrators are openly predatory, toward students on the one hand (take $$$$$$) and toward faculty on the other (withhold $$$$ and create hostile work environments). Again, it is the students who suffer in such environments.
My point - imagine this as a set of assumptions and locate those programs where none of these things are true - they do exist. Everything else is a diploma mill. This advice is even more important if you are looking at a high tuition bill.
Let me elaborate on my prior post. When I was studying to be a Civl Engineer at CCNY, I had a friend who transferred over to City from Stony brook. In SB he had a 3.3 gpa, and thought that CCNY was going to be much easier due to it being a college in the city. Well, after failing his a couple of classes, and two years later, his CCNY GPA is at a 2.2, and is still a few semesters from graduating. He told me that CCNY's C.E program is many times more difficult than SB. I think he's going to end up going back to SB to finish.
Another example,
One of my closest friends was taking electives with me before he decided to go into C.E. Guess what? He couldn't make the C.E program at City. Basically flunked out. So he goes to Brooklyn Tech and has a 3.7 gap in C.E.
City College is EXTREMELY difficult. Only like 5-10% of students graduate in C.E. I don't understand why they make it so difficult but my belief is that since the school takes in the brightest students in NYC who
a) Don't want to leave the city.
b.) Don't have money
They have to have a program to filter out and sort them all out. You're competing with the best NYC has to offer.
Go with SB, City College is too difficult. I had to switch over to Applied Math and finally graduated this past May. Hell, even in Applied Math only 25-30% of students graduate.
Take it from me. I was in City for 7 years. A lot of these people have never stepped foot into city. They assume that since it's a cheap college in the city, that it is an easy school.
I also heard that the CUNY engineering programs were quite good.
Not speaking against Stony Brook - I just do not know and have heard little.
Let me elaborate on my prior post. When I was studying to be a Civl Engineer at CCNY, I had a friend who transferred over to City from Stony brook. In SB he had a 3.3 gpa, and thought that CCNY was going to be much easier due to it being a college in the city. Well, after failing his a couple of classes, and two years later, his CCNY GPA is at a 2.2, and is still a few semesters from graduating. He told me that CCNY's C.E program is many times more difficult than SB. I think he's going to end up going back to SB to finish.
Another example,
One of my closest friends was taking electives with me before he decided to go into C.E. Guess what? He couldn't make the C.E program at City. Basically flunked out. So he goes to Brooklyn Tech and has a 3.7 gap in C.E.
City College is EXTREMELY difficult. Only like 5-10% of students graduate in C.E. I don't understand why they make it so difficult but my belief is that since the school takes in the brightest students in NYC who
a) Don't want to leave the city.
b.) Don't have money
They have to have a program to filter out and sort them all out. You're competing with the best NYC has to offer.
Go with SB, City College is too difficult. I had to switch over to Applied Math and finally graduated this past May. Hell, even in Applied Math only 25-30% of students graduate.
Take it from me. I was in City for 7 years. A lot of these people have never stepped foot into city. They assume that since it's a cheap college in the city, that it is an easy school.
This is my case, I don't have money (I don't qualify for financial aid but I'm not rich) and I don't want to leave the city (I have no desire to drive). We'll see how good I do in Computer Science.
Let me elaborate on my prior post. When I was studying to be a Civl Engineer at CCNY, I had a friend who transferred over to City from Stony brook. In SB he had a 3.3 gpa, and thought that CCNY was going to be much easier due to it being a college in the city. Well, after failing his a couple of classes, and two years later, his CCNY GPA is at a 2.2, and is still a few semesters from graduating. He told me that CCNY's C.E program is many times more difficult than SB. I think he's going to end up going back to SB to finish.
Another example,
One of my closest friends was taking electives with me before he decided to go into C.E. Guess what? He couldn't make the C.E program at City. Basically flunked out. So he goes to Brooklyn Tech and has a 3.7 gap in C.E.
City College is EXTREMELY difficult. Only like 5-10% of students graduate in C.E. I don't understand why they make it so difficult but my belief is that since the school takes in the brightest students in NYC who
a) Don't want to leave the city.
b.) Don't have money
They have to have a program to filter out and sort them all out. You're competing with the best NYC has to offer.
Go with SB, City College is too difficult. I had to switch over to Applied Math and finally graduated this past May. Hell, even in Applied Math only 25-30% of students graduate.
Take it from me. I was in City for 7 years. A lot of these people have never stepped foot into city. They assume that since it's a cheap college in the city, that it is an easy school.
I believe you. People forget that Stanford University itself teemed up with City College when it bid to be the operator of the NYC tech school. Cornell University and Technion won the bid, but Stanford/City's bid was the second in running. Stanford wouldn't have teamed up with City if City didn't have an EXCELLENT program.
Also it is a research university for Brookhaven National Laboratories, which is funded by the US Department of Energy.
But are "the sciences" and engineering synonymous ?
It was my sense that the OP was asking about engineering.
I am a humanities person and somewhat "expert" on academia at this point (how not), if not so much specifically about the sciences and engineering.
That said, I did know that broadly speaking Stony Brook is expanding all sorts of things. Devil's Advocate, though - this can be the case where there are deficits ...
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