Comparing Schools: Pros and Cons of Brock University

[JasonRox]

We talked about what programs and courses we took, but let's talk about which school we went to.

Note: Although the title says School Wars, I don't want to see any negative comments on other schools. Post with respect.

While you post, you must also post pros and cons of the school. For every pro you put, there must be one con. I don't want an unequal amount between the two.

Brock University

Pro - Small student body in Physics/Math program, which I like.

Con - I said small student body in Physics/Math, but not at the University itself. Therefore, to find a student with similar interest ... is like searching for the final theory.

 

[recon]

Sekolah Menengah *********

Sekolah means school. Menengah means middle. However, kids from 12-20 years attend it. ********* means that the school authorities would probably be very mad if they came across this post.

Pro -

• It is a secondary school (or high school) that has special classes for more able students.
• It is a 6-minute drive away from my house.
• I have permission not to do Homework.
• The kids are so dumb that I don't have to study to keep ahead of the game.
• It's a pressure free environment.
• Discipline is strict, but there are still several people who smoke in the toilets.

Con -

• The so-called 'more able students' were selected based on a test done at the age of 11! So, as you can imagine, a lot of them are just blockheads that deserve to attend vocational school.
• The subject teachers, except for Malay Language- my worst subject - can't teach me better than I can teach myself.
• Having had no mathematics tutor for the past 4 years, I feel that my abilities in mathematics are going to waste.
• If you keep long fingernails, or wear white socks with little logos like the Nike sign, you could be asked to collect and throw rubbish from each classroom in the school as a punishment.

 

[singleton]

Seneca College (Toronto, Canada)

Pros: Culturally diverse student population (prepares you for the real world)

Cons: Culturally diverse faculty

 

[check]

The University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada)

Pro:
35,000 students, tons of people to meet
Beautiful campus
15 minute walk away form my home
At least 7 Tim Horton’s (doughnut shops) on campus that I know of.
Lots of good lookin’ girls
Tons of clubs
Good, friendly profs
Good transportation around campus
Great university hospital

Cons:
Parking is expensive
Lots of asbestos in the older buildings
Main food court is always crowded
No MSN on most of the computers
The substation or whatever that provided power to most of the university’s air conditioning broke early this year

I’ll add more as I think of them. UWO Rocks! :p

 

[Gokul43201]

The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Pros :

Over 50,000 students spread over an area of about 1700 acres among a total of over 400 buildings.

Has good programs (is ranked among the top 25 grad schools in the US) in nearly all areas.

The folks in my department are really cool, intelligent, and fun people.

We've had (in 2002 and 2003) a great College Football team. Our football stadium holds 105,000 seats, so we're quite the football crazy community.

Beautiful campus - in the summer.

Located in a medium sized city - so the associated advantages.

Cost of living is moderately low.

Location : St Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and DC are all within 6 hours drive of here.

Cons :

Over 50,000 students !

Parking on campus is ridiculous.

Health Insurance subsidy and paychecks for Grad Students are not great compared to similar schools.

Cold, dark and depressing place in the winter.

Flat land for miles all around.

 

[fourier jr]

http://www.uvic.ca/archive/homepages/assets/featurephotos/aerial.jpg
pros:
medium-sized math dept (i think), which is good because everybody sort of knows each other
girl/guy ratio is 2/1
nice campus
90-minute ferry rides from vancouver & seattle


cons:
it's in victoria, and I've been trapped on this island for far too long. (it costs money to leave)
from what I've heard, parking is ridiculous (i don't drive)
ridiculously self-serving, crude, obvious, embarrassing, patting-themselves-on-the-back university publications

 

[Polly]

Recon I believe you, and I feel sorry for anyone who has to compete with you .

The University of Hong Kong

Pro and Con: it churns out employable screws and nails, but if you are a stupid kid like I was, it's a okay place to study in.

 

[recon]

Recon I believe you, and I feel sorry for anyone who has to compete with you .

I attend school with semi-morons, Polly. Being able to beat them should not be considered as an achievement. If I were to attend school in Singapore or in Hong Kong, the kids there would squash the daylights out of me.

 

[imabug]

University of Alberta, Edmonton AB

these are the pros and cons that I recall from when I was there over 10 years ago. Things have probably changed since then.

Pros: talented diverse faculty covering a wide range of fields, http://www.su.uAlberta.ca/su/businesses_and_services/ratt , nice compact walkable campus, public transportation access, world class hospital across the street in case you keel over, N Saskatchewan River at the edge of campus. Nuclear reactor on campus.

Cons: crappy undergrad lab equipment, 6 months of vampire living during the winter, 40k students crammed into a nice compact walkable campus

 

[Polly]

Recon I agree with you in relation to the Singaporeans, they are SCARY. Can you believe a girl living in the dorm with us actually spent all her time after school chatting and mucking around but secretly hid in the toilet (with her feet lift up presumably) after curfew and swotted? only to slacken us? I found her so despicable I didn't even want to know her grades And talk about their capacity for sheer hard work and the ability to speak and write and think in good English, while we speak and think in a Chinese dialect! Horrid!

 

[BobG]

Belford University

Pros:
Rapid pace - I completed my Bachelor's, Masters, and PhD in Warehouse Management in only 10 days.
Low cost - Using the package deal, it only cost $899 for all three degrees combined.
Accreditation - Universal Council for Online Education Acreditation (UCOEA). Universal means that not only is accepted in the US and on Earth, but it will be accepted on other planets as well, right?

Cons:
Lousy graduation ceremony - the postman wouldn't even hum "Pomp and Circumstance".
Confusing directions to campus - I got lost trying to find the campus. Actually, I'm not even sure it's in the United States - they type with an accent.
Limited number of programs - The have the biggies like Astronautical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering (Don't laugh - quite a few of the German technician/engineers brought over with the Von Braun team had their degrees bought for them via mail order by the Army in order to give the Army's space program equal status with the Navy and Air Force programs - and which one of the three succeeded first?). But, I really had my heart set on Farrier Science.
School is not very prestigous - I applied to become part of the faculty at Belford University and got rejected. They wanted someone with a degree from a better quality school. (Either that or it was the fact that couldn't find the campus and missed my job interview).

Okay, I admit I'm exaggerating my academic credentials just a little. I was too cheap to complete even this degree program.

 

[check]

BobG

 

[gravenewworld]

Villanova University

Pro

THE HOTTEST GIRLS EVER. I guarantee the girls at my school are much hotter than the ones at your school. Almost every girl here looks like a model, and what's even better is that they are all rich too.

Con

Saturdays always suck here

 

[Chrono]

USC-Aiken

Pros:
Rated at least the top three in region.
Great teachers (as far as I saw)
Small class sizes
Close to home
Beautiful campus and all buildings are close to each other.
and biggest pro of all: at least 3:1 female to male ratio

Cons:
Not much to do outside of school, especially on weekends.
Some classrooms are hot and others cold. None have really comfortable.
Parking can be a problem, but I've only experienced it only once in my three years.

 

[JasonRox]

Ivy Leaguers?

I was hoping to see one.

 

[chroot]

Virginia Tech:

Pros:

25,000 students.
Excellent engineering curriculum, in the top 15 or 20 in the nation.
Wide name recognition.
Lots of opportunities for interesting undergraduate research.
Blacksburg is a cute town, which is pretty much taken over by students. Almost everyone you see is between the ages of 18 and 22. Practically the entire town is your peer group.
Relatively easy, cheap parking compared to most schools.
Great outdoor activites -- just minutes from the Appalachian Trail, the New River, and more.
Gorgeous stone campus. Lots of parks, open spaces, trails, etc.
The school has a world-class football program, but it isn't the focus of the school. It's not a "football school" like FSU.
Excellent greek system with lots of choices and great off-campus greek housing.
Absolutely amazing school spirit.

Cons:

Cold in the winter, often with several feet of snow on the ground.
They don't cancel class even if all the off-campus students are truly snowed in.
No large astronomical observatory (the largest is 16"), and only a very small physics/astronomy program.
No Astronomy degree program.
Slightly more males than females.
The closest "city" is Roanoke, which is 45 miles away and would not be considered a city by anyone who didn't live in Blacksburg.
Mascot is made fun of by practically everyone except students and alumni.

 

[fourier jr]

Villanova University

Pro

THE HOTTEST GIRLS EVER. I guarantee the girls at my school are much hotter than the ones at your school. Almost every girl here looks like a model, and what's even better is that they are all rich too.

i'm not sure about that. literally ~65% of the students at my school are girls (ie 2 girls for every guy), and there's lots of competition between them there. every guy can pick & choose between 1 model-type babe & another one. (or both)

 

[Smurf]

UBC has underwater hockey
'nuff said.

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

Laurentian University, Sudbury,Ontario, Canada
pros
best mining engineering program in Canada(we usualy sqwash every other school at mining games)
world class medical and artsie programs
average of 27students per teacher
great beautiful campus
great girls
awesome teaching
relativly cheap school

cons
next to no girls in the engineering programs
artsies everywhere
great campus far from everything
relativly cheap yet still too much
no hockey team

 

[fourier jr]

i thought queen's had the best mining engineering program in Canada?

 

[franznietzsche]

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Pros:
1. Awesome place to live (its an 80% residential campus, very few people commute)
2. Top-down programs--You decalre your major your first year, start taking classes in it immediately along with GE.
3. Learn by Doing Philosophy--Everything is hands on here. In Aerospace engineering, there is a whole class in which you learn about airplane design by designing one from the ground up. For physics we have a full year of quantum laboratory work, in addition to two quarters of lecture on the subject.
4. 5th Best University with Master's degree highest possible in US
5. Bit of a Party school--Social life is never dull here, unless you hide in your room all day.
6. If you're from California it is reasonably cheap. In-state tuitionis is $3,804 per year, out of state is $10,281. My total after Room and board, tuition, books, so on comes to about $15,000 per year.
7. Probably the sinlge best school for engineering in the West if not the country.
8. Burt Rutan, winner of the Ansari X Prize, is an alumnus.

Cons:
1. I'm a bit bored in my freshmen classes, i did too well in IB in high school, and know everything I'm doing right now already. But i'd be going through that anywhere.
2. Limited graduate programs.
3. Bit of a Party school-Us and UCSB are the two biggest party schools on this coast, and we're about an hour away from each other. halloween there, mardi gras here, its insane. We had riots last Mardi Gras. UCSB is worse though. They have 18,000 students all living within two miles of each other. Its within three miles for us.

 

[Tsu]

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Are these restaurants still there?

Wine Street Inn (in the Network Mall?) -On Marsh St.
McClintock's - On Marsh St.
Mee Hung Low's (honest to God! ) on Figueroa (?) St. - the next one north of Marsh... (NO! Wait. Figueroa is in SB. What's the name of that street? Dang. I need to go home for a visit! I'm forgetting everything about it! )

 

[franznietzsche]

Mclintock's, Firestone's, and Woodstock's are all still here. There's a thai place near Firestone's...don't remember the name. Not great with street names yet. The other two restaurants i haven't been to so i don't really know. Heading to that thai place tomorrow though, need to escape campus food for lunch.

 

[franznietzsche]

Villanova University

Pro

THE HOTTEST GIRLS EVER. I guarantee the girls at my school are much hotter than the ones at your school. Almost every girl here looks like a model, and what's even better is that they are all rich too.

Con

Saturdays always suck here

IN my experience the ones boasting about how good looking the girls are where they are, are not the ones dating them

 

[vsage]

University of Florida (although will be attending Georgia Institute of Technology next semester)

Pros - Surprisingly good faculty at times. Current physics prof. worked with Richard Feynman at Caltech. I can ask him anything no matter how absurd and he can either 1. point out how absurd the question was or 2. Answer it in a way I can understand which I think is cool.
- Honors courses with more emphasis on theory (Magnetism is derived from relativity in Physics 2 Honors as opposed to just being given an equation like in the regular Physics 2)
- 45,000 people on campus!
- Lots of course choices. Oftentimes several (5+) classes of upper-division courses like partial DE
- Lots of organizations. Not for the inactive student.
- Small city outside of the university. Lots of nature to lose yourself in.

Cons - Lots of classes taught by TA/people who can't speak english well
-Can only take honors courses if you have a 1400 SAT or better which is stupid/crazy
- I'm often the only sober one on the floor
- 45,000 people on campus!
- Weak math department. No participation in Putnam in the past 2 years (One of the main reasons I'm transferring is the weak math department)
- Lots of dumb organizations. There's an anime club but there's no math honor society? Hello?
- Hot girls. Why is this a con? They're stuck up As Jimmy Soul said: If you want to be happy for the rest of your life never make a pretty woman your wife

 

[franznietzsche]

: As Jimmy Soul said: If you want to be happy for the rest of your life never make a pretty woman your wife

Exception made for pretty nymphos.

 

[gravenewworld]

IN my experience the ones boasting about how good looking the girls are where they are, are not the ones dating them

Your damn right. I like being single though and just looking at skirt all day long without consequence. Its so much more freedom than I had.

 

[franznietzsche]

Your damn right. I like being single though and just looking at skirt all day long without consequence. Its so much more freedom than I had.

I like not being single and looking at skirt all day long with no consequences. Of course that's because I find the girl I'm dating attractive but...

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

i thought queen's had the best mining engineering program in Canada?

nah man, they have the theory down path right, but nothing practical, they won't even look at my resume if i went to queen's if beside my resume there is a Laurentian graduat resume, when they get sent out in the field they are total dimwits(no offence to anyone) but its true, its Laurentian U of Alberta is real close behind, then the rest

i did aply to queen's and was accepted, but the company said to go to Laurentian they look for students from there

 

[JasonRox]

Who cares?

Do you really need a schools reputation to back you up?

You should know your **** regardless of what school you went to. People are too occupied with what is on the exam rather than pushing their own god damn limits. There is no doubt in my mind any company would give an interview to a student from Queen's and if he knows his ****, he's hired. All they want is someone who knows their ****. When they say "go to Laurentian", which I doubt they did, they are just saying that the majority of the students who come out of that school know their ****. That's IT! It has nothing to do with which program is better.

Note: I'm not trying to vent, but it seems like everyone gets accepted to every school (We probably all did get accepted everywhere, but we obviously didn't apply to EVERY school so it makes no sense to say you got accepted to whatever school someone mentions. It is irrelevant even if you REALLY did apply there. We don't care.), but yet they settle for the school no one would go to.

No offense, but Laurentian is not known as a "good" school.

Let's move on.

No school is at the top. The only thing that is at the top is the student body. Not the program and not the school. It is the students who create the reputation. Everyone at Harvard can become coke addicts, and then what happens to their reputation? Yes, students can affect anything.

 

[vsage]

It's true. I was accepted at schools considered much better than the one I'm attending but money was a huge factor in where I went. With that being said, I hate all of the American "Institutes of Technology" for costing so much :(. However Jason it's natural for people to be loyal to their schools and brag about them so give them (us) a break.

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

Jason...holy **** man stop taking everything to literal, in mining it is practical to get your course where its mine country, i didnt aply to EVERY school i aplied at Queen's U of A and Laurentian, and i wasnt accepted by U of A, and i WAS told by an Employer that graduates in MINING come in higher regards when it comes to aplying to a MINING company, in case you haven't noticed its the Practicality given in the course that makes it good, if at Queen's they don't have the mines to work with, the explore and to learn then they are fit for a desk job, i did say Queen's has a good theorem program, thus they learn it, but when it come to facing it they get all confused on why something didnt work, with the experience you get at certain school because it gives you tht experience with it you get the edge employers are looking for, with time and experience Queen's students will defenatly get better in the practicality area, and can surpass others, but out of the box they don't have that certain edge employers are looking for

like you said its not all about notes in school, which is why for the MINING program Laurentian is generaly better, now take your head out of you ass and learn about the subject you are going to discuss before discussing it, i have lived all my life around mines, work in Diavik, Voisy's Bay Raglan (i doubt you've heard of any of them) i have talked with many employers and that is what THEY told me, now you can take it up with a MINING employerif you wish

now for different pragrams i have no doubt Queens is better, i hve friends that go there for civil engineering and such, it just so happens my school specialises in mining

 

[JasonRox]

You didn't read my post.

I said no program is any better than any other. No school is better than any other. That is what my post said.

"now for different pragrams i have no doubt Queens is better, i hve friends that go there for civil engineering and such, it just so happens my school specialises in mining"

I never said Laurentian was bad or good; just not known as being "good". Neither school has a better program. You have the ability to go deeper into the theory part just like Queen students do, and Queen students have the ability to go to work for a mining company during the summer to get real experience in the field just like you. That being said. Why don't you just do more than what the school asks you to do?

Go beyond the limits of the school or program. Just because its not on the final exam does not mean you don't need to know it. Everytime I discuss anything about a course at school, the first thing people usually say is "you don't need to know that for the exam" and then they drop it from the discussion. Asking the question "what is on the final exam?" should be prohibited. I find it very annoying.

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

i did read your post, and i do disagree, the schools who have the means to support a certain program usualy excels in it over other schools, the ability to go even further your studies depends on your surroundings and your enviroment, if your school puts a ton of money say... in the biology, you have better and more equipment then a more deprived school, your ability to further your studies is open to you 24/7, but poor jim at the other school is only able to play with a microscope during summer because of his job is no where near as advanced as the other guy

i agree everyone should think outside the box, but you are always limited by your surounding, and unlike what you are acusing me of, i do more than what teachers ask of me, i stay at school to around 10pm mostly every night for various reasons, but the most often reason is to learn from the upper year students, i do their homework on top of mine just for ****s and gigles, i don't always succeed but it helps with what i am doing now, it helps me think outside the box when faced with a problem, now my note is important buts its not the end of my world

 

[JasonRox]

I never accused you of not thinking outside of the box. I said in general students don't.

I'm dropping this argument because it's going nowhere.