25 years old and deep in debt

[garbon]

Quit bragging.

It's garbon. He's second only to Martinus in terms of the effort he puts in to making sure people know how great he thinks he is.

I copied that from facebook where stanford kids were all excited.

[CountDeMoney]

So I guess George Lucas has it right, and we should be putting low-income housing in rich neighborhoods.

The ghetto model has managed to continue to work and achieve its aims, though.

[derspiess]

http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/

My alma mater is #183. 

We're #126.  GO HENS

[CountDeMoney]

We're #126.  GO HENS

LOL I got kicked out of #127, and graduated from #400.  Now that's academic accomplishment!

[MadImmortalMan]

OSU is #138. And apparently 40 grand a year. Yay?

[garbon]

Quit bragging.

Actually I think this is the only place where I've spoken positively about my old school.

Generally it goes something like this:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/06/26/060626fa_fact

One of the things they did back then was start you off with a modesty seminar, an eight-hour session that all the freshmen had to sit through. It might be different today, but in my time it took the form of a role-playing exercise, my classmates and I pretending to be graduates, and the teacher assuming the part of an average citizen: the soldier, the bloodletter, the whore with a heart of gold.

"Tell me, young man. Did you attend a university of higher learning?"

To anyone holding a tool or a weapon, we were trained to respond, "What? Me go to college?" If, on the other hand, the character held a degree, you were allowed to say, "Sort of," or, sometimes, "I think so."

"So where do you sort of think you went?"

And it was the next bit that you had to get just right. Inflection was everything, and it took the foreign students forever to master it.

"Where do you sort of think you went?"

And we'd say, "Umm, Princeton?"—as if it were an oral exam, and we weren't quite sure that this was the correct answer.

"Princeton, my goodness," the teacher would say. "That must have been quite something!"

You had to let him get it out, but once he started in on how brilliant and committed you must be it was time to hold up your hands, saying, "Oh, it isn't that hard to get into."

Then he'd say, "Really? But I heard—"

"Wrong," you'd tell him. "You heard wrong. It's not that great of a school."

This was the way it had to be done—you had to play it down, which wasn't easy when your dad was out there, reading your acceptance letter into a bullhorn.

A: "Where'd you go?"
Me: "Oh a school in the bay area"

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/

We look at factors that directly concern today's incoming students (and their families) who will be be footing a bill which has multiplied into the six figures: ... Is it likely I will graduate in four years?

I have a problem with that metric, specifically that there are many engineering programs that can or should be five-year undergrad degrees.  Additionally, there are many dual BS-MS programs in engineering and other majors that take five years to complete.  Making an absolute completion time a metric unfairly penalizes schools with significant enrolments in such programs.  A better metric would be measuring the rate of students who graduate on time for their program.

[Jacob]

Actually I think this is the only place where I've spoken positively about my old school.

A: "Where'd you go?"
Me: "Oh a school in the bay area"

Yeah, when we met in person you didn't come across even remotely as braggy as you do here. I wonder what it is about languish...?

[Admiral Yi]

A buddy of mine at grad school used to call it dropping the H bomb.  As in "i was hitting on this chick at the party and I dropped the H bomb on her."

[Berkut]

Man, Arizona is 200something. I thought they would be considerably higher than that.

[MadImmortalMan]

Man, Arizona is 200something. I thought they would be considerably higher than that.

They kick ass in the hot babes per square mile category.

[garbon]

http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/

We look at factors that directly concern today's incoming students (and their families) who will be be footing a bill which has multiplied into the six figures: ... Is it likely I will graduate in four years?

I have a problem with that metric, specifically that there are many engineering programs that can or should be five-year undergrad degrees.  Additionally, there are many dual BS-MS programs in engineering and other majors that take five years to complete.  Making an absolute completion time a metric unfairly penalizes schools with significant enrolments in such programs.  A better metric would be measuring the rate of students who graduate on time for their program.

That said, they do seem to look longer out though too. In the detailed profile of each college, they list what % graduate in 4 years and what % graduate in 6.

[ulmont]

Hmm.  I have degrees from #83 and (hah!) #427.

[Barrister]

University rankings are poop.

[Ideologue]

A: "Where'd you go?"
Me: "Oh a school in the bay area"

I hope a giant stop-motion octopus takes Stanford into the sea.