Jon'c brought it up in another thread: I'm currently going to Grant MacEwan University, a relatively new university in the Edmonton area that used to be a college. I quite enjoy it here; classes are small, I've met some cool people, and the buildings are all very new. The library is also wonderful. However, as I mentioned this is the new kid on the block as far as schools go, there's not really any prestige attached to this school. So I ask you, should I try to transfer to the much older, much more experienced, University of Alberta? I definitely have the marks to make it, and it would be better to transfer sooner then later. It's also possible that the UofA has better courses in general, and this whole "Prestige" question wouldn't be brought up if I thought so, I don't know anybody who goes there so it's hard to tell, although I would assume the UofA would have more experienced professors. I just want to get the best out of my schooling, which is currently "Learn stuff, pick a major (leaning towards physical sciences, particularly geology), and get degree.".
(Comedy answer: Go overseas, which I would love to do but don't have the resources for.)

Well, I guess prestige and contacts matter a lot more than many other factors in this Kuh-razy Whirled of ours.

Also, that reminds me of how I worked at a place I hated way more than liked, decided to start studying political history at the University of Helsinki* in 2011 to possibly earn a (horrible-sounding, at least in English) degree that could result in a nicer job in the future**, only to realize that

A) it won't
B) I may have done all this ONLY to have more time to work on DXN (yet, especially in the past 3 months, it hasn't done much good for the project)
C) after the initial giddiness, I've found myself from the same mental dullness as before I decided to undertake the whole thing
D) I took the 2-year study leave from my job in 2011 just because but discarding a permanent work contract with not-that-bad-pay in a kuh-razy whirled like ours might be a bit quite dumb. I'd somehow have to manage to study at the same time (at a far far lower pace than now, though)

Oy vey!

* = only Finn-Uni that could even be recognized internationally, pretty much
** = even if around here you have to become an engineer or a plumber to guarantee an actual job

A girl I know was one of the first people to get a Grant Mac undergraduate degree, with great grades and letters of recommendation. She was shut out of grad school because of where she got her degree. It wasn't even an option for her, some of the people she talked to literally laughed. Last I heard, she was at the University of Alberta re-earning the same undergrad.

I can't tell you if the professors are better or if the classes are smaller. I can't even tell you how prestigious U of A is for EAS, because I don't know anything about the field. What I can promise you is that you'll have more opportunities than if you get your degree from a downtown high school for the nominally-adult.

I guess you're right, I just hate to drop everything again. I'll get my **** in order and hopefully transfer in the fall.
Also Earth Sci is incredibly fun, I came here expecting to major in poli sci, but I almost immediately got bored with it. Rocks? Yeah I can stare at rocks.
I did a lab report on martian fluvial formations, It was incredibly fun. Same with the labs on rocks and minerals. Glacial geomorphogy is hella cool too. Gets me a 100% better chance of a career then majoring in poli sci too, heh.

I guess you're right, I just hate to drop everything again. I'll get my **** in order and hopefully transfer in the fall.
Also Earth Sci is incredibly fun, I came here expecting to major in poli sci, but I almost immediately got bored with it. Rocks? Yeah I can stare at rocks.
I did a lab report on martian fluvial formations, It was incredibly fun. Same with the labs on rocks and minerals. Glacial geomorphogy is hella cool too. Gets me a 100% better chance of a career then majoring in poli sci too, heh.

What the hell just happened, I was editing the first post when the site **** itself and then I guess the first post went through mitosis.

I honestly don't know the career outlook for geology undergrads. In Alberta I expect the best path to success there would probably be geoengineering/petroleum engineering/mining engineering, but engineering degrees are a lot more work.

Usually employers will look at a science undergrad as a generic accomplishment - better than an arts degree, but not enough for the domain positions. If you're lucky you can find something like a lab tech or research assistant job. With most sciences you're pretty much forced to go to grad school to stick with it.

The career outlook is great if you get good grades from an established / respected / well connected school, and you also get in to a master's program. You sound pretty liberal, though; would you be comfortable making a killing working for the oil and gas industry? Or moving to Houston?

Which, again, means I have a 100% better career outlook then majoring in poli sci.
(The joke is poli sci majors are homeless, jobless, and dead.) Grad school would be cool, if I could just spend my life learning things forever I would honestly be a pretty happy guy.

It doesn't really matter, I don't think you could argue I'm contributing to mass murder by mapping oil deposits.

My experience with college is that if one of the larger differences in schools is the "job fair" that comes with the extra prestige. If you're looking to get a job, you're probably going to have to go external to your current university simply because there aren't the alumnae from that to draw companies back for more. I don't know anything about earth science, but I would imagine that's already not the easiest thing to find jobs/internships in.

If you want to go on to graduate school, it's more of what you've done and letters of recommendation (according to graduate friends of mine). If you don't have anything standout from this school, and your letters of recommendation are from people who aren't connected with where you want to go, you'll likely have a difficult time with that route as well. Sticking around this university and wanting to go to graduate school basically requires that you get your ass in gear and do something standout in your field as an undergrad, which is difficult if you don't have the resources to pull from.

I guess my advice would be to either get extremely ambitious about what you're studying so that you are, without a doubt, the top candidate for any job/graduate position you want, or go somewhere that gives you the resources to do so much easier.

Grant Mac isn't a research university. Even if the graduate admissions board doesn't care about the name of your school, you'll be hamstrung by the fact that the professors who wrote your letters of recommendation aren't well-known.

I always believed prestige mattered most for a field like law. I don't know anything about your school of choice, but its seems like, according to Google, a community college retrofitted to handle transfer credits or something...?

But a hard-science degree from a school with no research-orientation would cause problems for future endeavors, methinks.

For my master's degree, I'm thinking of looking for a well funded school with very little prestige. Reason being, prestige seems to come from research, and research schools seem to have a pretty good change of being staffed with apathetic research professors who only care about their research, and not about offering a proper curriculum or teaching worth a darn.

University of Phoenix.

When I say "well funded" I don't mean the board of directors.

An example school of "well funded with little prestige" would be?

Graduate school is about research and publication. I'm not exactly sure what you plan to do with a MA from a teaching school, since you'll be overqualified to work for anyone who'll be impressed by it, and your CV will be too weak to get a job elsewhere. If it's not research it's also not funded, so you'll end up having to pay for something that's free at a good school.

I really don't get what you're trying to do here.

What school and subsequent prestige would get you the most hot chicks?

You're welcome

PageWizard's Prestigious School of Chickbangery.

Surprisingly many seem to graduate from that one these days.

Not MA, ME. I don't plan on going into research, I just want some more technical training. Electrical/Computer Engineering seems to require more than just a B.S. worth of technical training if you want to do anything really interesting, even if it's non-research. I'm not very happy with the options that a BS gets me, but there seem to be a lot of places out there for people with master's degrees. I'm not against research, but I'm not going to waste a bunch of time doing something extremely esoteric for some socially dysfunctional school who's just going to use me as an underpaid pawn. I don't want to get involved in the idiotic social bull**** that goes on in academia.

Don't get an MS without industry experience (e.g. through co-op) unless you're doing a joint BS/MS program. TONS of jobs here in Houston for engineers with MS for amazing benefits and $90K+ starting, but will also need at least 2 years industry experience.

Of course, if you're in it just for the money and you're going to a **** school, just do petroleum engineering. Acquaintance is a University of Tulsa petroleum engineering grad getting $85K, hasn't done any real engineering work and it's been 2 months into the job. Another dude had a scholarship out of high school from Saudi Aramco, went to University of Houston, was getting his tuition reimbursed 100% AND on top of that getting $12K/month stipend. ****er bought a Nissan GT-R straight out of college and shipped it over to Saudi Arabia. Only catch was he had to work for them for four years after school.

As for prestige, yes, it's important if you want to get into top tier industry jobs (big 3 consulting, bulge-bracket investment banks, to a lesser extent oil and gas supermajors, etc). Prestigious schools are feeders for these firms due to alumni connections and the fact that the schools have already done most of the preselecting for them. I find this especially true in strategy consulting - clients want to see Ivy Leaguers staffed on the projects. Where I work (one of the big 3 consulting firms), I rarely meet anyone from a school not in the top 25, and if I do, they were usually academic superstars. Many of my math-econ peers from my undergrad who got into one of the BB banks have made VP already. Top firm perks: compensation, limitless exit opportunities, easy Harvard/MIT/Stanford B-school admits.

siiiiiiick! i bet he's with bombshell *****es on either arm, hittin' up all the bars and ****. heard riyadh is a major party town, esp for americans

Odds are good you should just go to whichever school has the highest gash to cock ratio.

wanna go overseas, **** college join the national guard for a few years then become a contractor.