How did you pick your program/college ?

The Wiles-Barre - Scrnaton area is unique and strange when it come to academics - (and other things) It is interesting to see people who are from
"the area" notice that.

My eldest child graduated from Holy Redeemer HS in Wilkes-Barre. We were living there (Kingston) at the time. The public High Schools were so bad including Wyoming Valley West, were so poor, that although we are Protestant, we chose Holy Redeemer over WVWHS.

The guidance counseling at Redeemer was atrocious. The very idea that a student would want to go away to college was lost to them. This was not a financial issue. Most of the students at Redeemer were middle to upper middle class. So money was not the problem.

The idea of going to college outside of North Eastern PA was the problem.

At Redeemer, the year that my son graduated most students chose, in this order - Kings College, Wilkes University, Luzerne Community College, University of Scranton, Marywood or Miseracordia in Dallas.

There were a few students who went to "away" colleges. Popular ones included - St. Joseph in Philadelphia, De Sales in PA, other PA state affiliated colleges - Keystone College and that was about it.

Other than that. one student went to Hofstra University (NY) and one to Harvard.

They honestly have different ideas about colleges than people in any region of the country.

NEPA is a unique area, to be sure, and living there was quite educational.

 

So just wondering, does the 'brand' of the school really matter ?

If one just wants to get a decent job in, let's say, IT. Will ASU's program do just fine ?

Or must they go all out to get some branded name ?

 

Shippensburg University of PA - Pennsylvania State School, I went to a cross-country camp in High School at SU - decided to attend the school

University of Akron - I lived a few blocks from the campus and I used military TA for their evening MBA program

Capella University - online convenience (not many options 10 years ago).

Shawn

 

We have a large IT department at my company. We have two people who went to top shelf schools (for IT). That's two out of nearly 150. The rest went to a smattering of schools ranging from large public institutions to small, no-name liberal arts colleges nestled in the picturesque mountains of wherever. I think we only have a handful who have undergrad degrees from for-profit schools. But nearly a third of our IT people have Masters degrees from Capella (we had an HR person who had a love affair with Capella and pushed it heavily while she was in charge of tuition assistance).

Generally speaking, their degrees were not the reason they were hired.

We needed programmers so we hired people with programming experience and demonstrable skill.

We needed network administrators so we hired people who had experience and certifications in that area.

We needed database administrators so we hired people with experience and certifications in that area.

Etc etc.

I have had IT people come in with resumes from college friends. So the networking aspect of college is significant. Then again, I've had equally as many people bring me resumes from someone they met at coding boot camp. Last week, someone brought me a candidate they had met (and conversed with over the course of years) on reddit.

I think that years ago companies relied more heavily on campus recruiting because it was the most obvious way to pick up young professionals.

Now, we have many ways of professional networking that extend well beyond college campuses.

If you came to me with an MIT degree and nothing else you might very well get the job. But if the candidate behind you had a degree from ASU, a relevant Microsoft certification and 3-5 years of experience in the field he/she would be more likely to land the position.

Top shelf schools are good. They definitely make the resume a bit more impressive. But there is a lot more to getting a decent job than your college. If your college degree is the most impressive part of your resume you aren't going to impress me or any of my hiring managers.

 

I debated between HES and Canisius for a long time. I was 3 classes into HES when I decided it was the wrong path. My degree, had I completed, would have been in Biology. My teaching history is 100% in culinary arts, so I'd have crossed my fingers that I could have used it to teach nutrition, but culinary programs are split- many are AAS programs (culinary dept nutrition, no masters required) and many are AA / AS programs (biology based nutrition, masters required). Ultimately, I felt like biology based nutrition would hurt my culinary-cred, while culinary nutrition could enhance it. I also wasn't 100% sure that an HES in biology wouldn't land me a job teaching intro to bio (yuck). Canisius is a good school, I'm satisfied with my education for the most part. It was too expensive for what I got, but all in all, it worked out ok.

 

Are some of the HES programs really that cheap or is that former prices? I thought it was closer to $500-800 per credit.

 

It's $1250 / 4 credit course.

So close to $300/credit hour now.

They accept up to 64 credits for transfer + you can concurrently do HES and outside credits to transfer in.

So a whole program from HES would be slightly over $20k

Not including the cost of living on campus for the 16 credit physical requirements.

 

Such a small world. I went to Bishop Hoban (the high school which resided in Holy Redeemer's building prior to Holy Redeemer being formed) for my freshman year of high school. I left and attended Coughlin HS because the guidance counselor (wanna bet it was the same one? Hint: his name rhymed with shmalvo) told me I should give up on the idea of college because neither of my parents graduated from college. I was on the honor roll. But, he felt that didn't matter. He strongly encouraged me to join the national guard once I was of age and suggested I go to beauty school.

The education at public school wasn't up to the same standards, but the guidance department was not only more helpful but also willing to be a bit creative. At Hoban, we were supposed to give our applications to the guidance office to "handle" for us. Direct application was wildly discouraged. At Coughlin they encouraged me to apply wherever I wanted. They also told me about the merits of going to community college and transferring the credits. It was also the first time I learned about TESC. Little nuggets of information that I carried with me through life.

 

I'm guessing that it's one of the benefits of that huge Harvard endowment.

 

How I picked:

I didn't have a lot of choices. I was actually looking for a bachelor's level degree in statistics, but there weren't any to be found. So then I looked at math programs, and found only a few. I chose UIS because they offer two "tracks," one of which was heavy on statistics classes. As an added bonus, they also accepted more transfer credit than the other schools.