Why does PNW not have good universities ?? (Seattle, Pacific: law school, price)

[509]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

No, that's not what this shows. How it works, as far as I can make out, is that what major you list in your UW application letter as your first choice and second choice, may ********* out of admission altogether! It says, that choice of major is a factor in considering the applicant for admission!

This is strange. I can see that there might be a crush of students applying for STEM fields. But I don't know why obscure humanities majors are listed in the "pre-major" category. As if there's serious demand for Norwegian. Is this a symptom of the UW being underfunded, so they haven't been able to hire enough faculty to keep up with demand?

I don't know what to make of this. I do remember, that sometimes there was so much demand for certain language classes, that students had to be turned away. There wasn't enough staffing, including TA's, to open an additional section (class) to register the overflow.

Hmmm.....

It is unclear, because UW doesn't want students or parents to know that they can easily waste two years of college.

STEM fields are too HARD for American students, and UW would rather have foreign students and their tuition money.

My daughter was a straight A student in math and science. She wanted to go into Industrial Design, UW faculty thought math and science for Industrial Design was NOT a necessary skill.

Staffing is a BS issue.

I went to UC Berkeley. For one Forestry class a 120 kids showed up for a 20 student seminar class in Forest Recreation. The faculty quickly recruited a instructor and structured a course in Forest Recreation in two days for the 100 students that could not get into the seminar class. BTW...less than 20 of us chose the seminar class.

UW doesn't care about students. It is that simple.

As a taxpayer, I want Washington state students to get a quality education without the BS.

Really, the entire higher education system in Washington state needs a review by the Governor and state legislature and then a dramatic overhaul to serve the needs of Washington state.

How about we close Evergreen and set up a Washington Tech school to compete with CAL Tech or MIT. Now that would be worth spending tax dollars to set up that school.

[Glenview94602]

Even for the directional schools such as Central or Eastern, they still provide a service to our state. We fund them better than Idaho.
Not to mention that we have academic freedom here unlike Florida or Idaho (a year or two ago they cut UI's yearly funding due to politics).

UW is really high in the rankings, but some people prefer a more hands on school like WSU. WSU is important for Ag and veterinary research and is essentially the state university of Eastern WA.

WWU is important because it provides an alternative for those in Western WA who either might choose to attend there or not get into UW. When I lived on the west side, I was impressed with the academics of that school and the profile of students attending. They also cut football and invested it into their academics and it has paid off. They have a number of masters programs. Computer Science is very popular there. I work in insurance I see a lot of counselors get a degree from WWU. This is also a liberal arts school without the activism of Evergreen College.

Central Washington is another alternative for those in WA. It is well placed being not too far from Seattle but far enough it is going away, but yet not too far from places like Yakima and the Tri Cities. Central Washington produces a very large number of our teachers in this state. My son's K teacher is one of many who have come from that college. WWU also produces teachers, but Central's bread and butter is in education related fields and it seems that is their strong point.

Eastern WA...I'm not as familiar with, but they also serve an important role for Spokane. Granted a lot of courses are online, but some are just better in person such as labs. WSU is just a bit too far to commute esp in winter, whereas EWU is just west of Spokane and there is a bus that goes from EWU to downtown. So if you want to go to college, save some money at home and get a degree, you can attend EWU. Or if you're an older student who has received their AA degrees, they can transfer to EWU without uprooting their life. So while EWU and WSU have a somewhat confrontational relationship, they are both important for the local economy of Spokane.

Evergreen State College: This is the liberal arts school in Olympia. They have been struggling of late, but if you are a free spirit or someone who is active progressive causes you will like this place. They also have a system not based on letter grades (similar to how UC Santa Cruz used to do for those transplanted Californians reading this thread). I personally would not choose Evergreen but it serves a purpose for our state.

This doesn't even count the branch campuses for UW, WSU, Central, and Eastern so there are a lot of varieties here.

Another fun fact: if you live in any county that borders Oregon, you can get something like 110% of in-state tuition at Portland State. If you live in Asotin County, bordering Idaho...you get a similar discount for attending Lewis and Clark State College in Lewiston. You have also WUE options throughout the west, where tuition is 150% of in-state... but I feel like the latter two options are not well known.

[texasdiver]

Yes, there is a LOT of demand for engineering and computer science judging by how difficult it is to get into the UW school of engineering or computer science. Washington could probably do with a Polytechnique university. MIT and CalTech are both private schools and CalTech is very tiny. It only has about 900 undergrads.

The better model would be to take one of the existing universities and built it into a replica of Cal Poly which has 20,000 students. I would pick WSU-Vancouver for that. It is a growing campus in a good location with lots of room for expansion in a part of the state with a lot of population but no other colleges other than Evergreen, which is a hot mess. WSU-Vancouver has already passed Evergreen by in terms of enrollment. And the campus is gorgeous and laid out perfectly to double or triple in size.

WSU-Vancouver 3,233 undergrads
Evergreen: 1,868 undergrads

And there are a lot more tech jobs in the fast-growing Vancouver area than Olympia or Bellingham. The more Portland struggles, the more Vancouver grows.

[Transmition]

Originally Posted by 509

It is unclear, because UW doesn't want students or parents to know that they can easily waste two years of college.

STEM fields are too HARD for American students, and UW would rather have foreign students and their tuition money.

My daughter was a straight A student in math and science. She wanted to go into Industrial Design, UW faculty thought math and science for Industrial Design was NOT a necessary skill.

Isn't it an art course? Not getting a direct-to-major for an art course is a very risky move. Even community college courses require interviews and a portfolio before accepting, it's much more subjective than math and science.

I feel like we're missing half the story here, couldn't she complete a degree in a different major or transfer the credits to a different university?

STEM is easily the biggest industry in this area, and despite the huge number of immigrants coming here for it, it is still mostly US citizens. Being one of the top universities in the world for the subject makes it pretty attractive for people from everywhere.

[rjshae]

Ivy League isn't everything. Here's what we get wrong about getting a good education.

Instead of focusing on how 'selective' a school is or how many applicants it rejects, students and their families would be better served by focusing on myriad other factors.

It’s hard to think of another space or industry where we’ve allowed the distortion to get this crazy and to so severely affect decision-making. For example, there aren’t cars that cost 10 times more than a similar model despite being comparable in what they deliver. But that’s precisely the type of mentality that’s been allowed to exist in the higher education space.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by Transmition

Isn't it an art course? Not getting a direct-to-major for an art course is a very risky move. Even community college courses require interviews and a portfolio before accepting, it's much more subjective than math and science.

I feel like we're missing half the story here, couldn't she complete a degree in a different major or transfer the credits to a different university?

STEM is easily the biggest industry in this area, and despite the huge number of immigrants coming here for it, it is still mostly US citizens. Being one of the top universities in the world for the subject makes it pretty attractive for people from everywhere.

Yes, the two years aren't wasted. You can transfer to any other university and the credits will come with you. Or, alternatively pick another major. For example, students who don't get into Business often major in Economics and take a lot of the same classes anyway.

My daughter is at UW and frankly I'm not sure there is a better way to do it. There are real capacity limits within each department in terms of facilities, faculty, etc. And the alternative would be to require direct admit to each major when you apply as a HS student before your freshman year. And many students are nowhere near ready to make that decision at that point.

If you don't like system at UW which is due largely to the selectivity of the school you can always pick another school like WSU or WWU which don't have capacity constrained majors. When I visited WSU with my younger daughter last year I think I remember saying that Education was their only capacity constrained major and that was mainly because of the need for them to find student teaching intern spots. There are only so many places to do student teaching within an easy drive of Pullman.

What happens a lot at UW is that applicants who aren't competitive enough to land a direct-admit spot in engineering, computer science, or Foster School of Business end up enrolling anyway into the College of Arts and Sciences. And then become disappointed when they find out that this back-door way into Engineering or Computer Science is far from guaranteed and few actually pull it off due to capacity limits in those programs. They only really have room for the number of internal transfers to replace the students who drop out or transfer out to other universities or majors. Which is a small number.

[509]

Those are just excuses.

Look if UC Berkeley, can admit students without a competitive admit process in the junior year, why can't the UW do the same??

They JUST don't care about serving the state of Washington.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by rjshae

Ivy League isn't everything. Here's what we get wrong about getting a good education.

Adding to your point. Alan Krueger and Stacey Dale published two studies essentially proving among very highly qualified rising college freshmen it makes no difference where any of the group attends college. IIRC the only exceptions being first generation minority students and then the advantages are trivial.

[Guineas]

Originally Posted by 509

Those are just excuses.

Look if UC Berkeley, can admit students without a competitive admit process in the junior year, why can't the UW do the same??

They JUST don't care about serving the state of Washington.

UC Berkeley is more selective at the front end, while UW is not. So to me it sounds like they are serving Washington better by giving you an opportunity to prove yourself. At some point you still have to do the work.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by 509

Those are just excuses.

Look if UC Berkeley, can admit students without a competitive admit process in the junior year, why can't the UW do the same??

They JUST don't care about serving the state of Washington.

UC Berkeley has the same exact issue of high-demand and competitive majors as UW. If you are already UC Berkeley student, have a 4% chance of getting into the Computer Science major, for example.




Same exact thing at UCLA where your chances of getting into a high-demand major are far lower than at the UW. For example, there is only a 9% chance of getting into a Communications major for existing UCLA students. Or take Biology where the chances of getting into the major at UCLA are 17% compared to 46% at UW. From their web site: https://admission.ucla.edu/apply/tra...iding-on-major