My son is graduating this spring and plans to attend grad school. He has crushed his education at Penn State and has applied to an impressive list of schools. He chose Michigan as one of his safe schools. He has been accepted at all the schools he applied to including Univ. of Washington, Cal Berkeley, Univ of.Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia, MIT, and Harvard. He found out this week that he was not accepted at Michigan. Bummer, I guess he will have to pick from one of the other schools.
Found out this week that my son is not Michigan man material
- Thread starter bhill29
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Chemistry, he’s graduating with a degree in chemistry and minors in math and physics.
Like we said after one of our buddies sons scored a lax goal, "that's good parenting".
May I suggest Harvard?
Id say he's going to do just fine.
Michigan turned him down because they knew he would turn them down if they accepted him. It’s all about the ‘yield’, from their point of view.
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Don’t just pick a school for grad school. Pick the lab he’ll be in and what it’s productivity for scholarly work is. And pick the lab advisor and his or her record of actually having people finish their degree in good time and moving on to good postdocs or good employment. Being at Harvard won’t mean so much if he spends years in an unfriendly lab working for a taskmaster who treats students like personal slaves and leaves with a courtesy masters.
He got accepted to many better departments than michigan.
The “yield” post above may be correct.
IMO we have a woeful lack of chemical literacy in our society. "Chemophobia" is a thing, where people fear chemicals. "It has chemicals in it" is a thing you hear people say to indicate a thing is bad, despite the fact that everything has chemicals in them.
There is a guy in Canada named Dr. Joe Schwarcz and he is a PhD Chemist that is sort of like Canada's version of Neil deGrasse Tyson except that he focuses on chemistry We need one of those in the US.
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anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
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Something similar happened to an Army buddy of mine. He was getting out of the Army to go to law school then seminary (why, I have no idea). He was accepted to Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, NYU - but no Chicago. He was so p*ssed about that. But, he ended up at Harvard (which was where he wanted to go anyway) and I have no idea what he's done since.
Congratulations!! You can't spell Scum with out UM!!!
Congratulations! You have to be happy for any man whose son isn't going to Michigan.
I went to PSU for chemistry grad school. Screw UM....the other list of schools is better. Did I mention I hate Michigan?
Congratulations on all of the above .. incl not being Michigan Man material
Bragging or complaining?
UM is goal over Northwestern?
So what is the skinny here? Non acceptance by UM, why?
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Either his son has not been seen shopping enough at Wal Mart, he lacks the arrogance to attend ScUM, or he was not deemed ethnic enough. Seems like I'm missing one? Can anyone help me out?Bragging or complaining?
UM is goal over Northwestern?
So what is the skinny here? Non acceptance by UM, why?
Can you have a conversation with him or does everything he says go right over your head?
Congrats to you and your son.. He sounds like he'll do great no matter where he goes!
I did not apply to Michigan because their application was extremely confusing (Chemistry too). They wanted you to translate all the courses you had into their Michigan equivalents, which had added difficulty as PSU was still on the trimester system at the time. I ended up at tOSU and did fine, though did not get my Ph.D. Ended up with a good job in town, where I am still at.
Curious, what are his long term thoughts about employment? My daughter is a HS soph, taking AP chem and calc already,loves it. She's thinking medical schoo/dr but I don't think she knows what else is available in those fields.
My son is a ChemE and BioMolecular Biology major. Growth in Bio Eng, NanoTech, Genetic Eng, Synthetic Biology are a few fast growing fields.
There are a lot of good jobs for someone with a technical degree. His goal is to become a university professor and be able to do self directed research but there are commercial opportunities as well.
Bragging or complaining?
UM is goal over Northwestern?
So what is the skinny here? Non acceptance by UM, why?
Couldn’t care less about UM, just thought it curious and ironic that they would reject a candidate that some others thought to be well qualified. Given the boards outrage for all things UM I thought it be interesting to post here.
Most (if not all) of those schools have a better national reputation than UM anyway.
I was accepted to Michigan twice; once for undergrad and once for graduate school. After I was accepted for undergrad, I went to tour the campus and talked with a fellow high school junior who was on the tour. She was from Michigan and UM was her dream school. She was shocked and impressed that I had already been accepted and was appalled when I told her I wasn't sure if I was coming. UM has a weird sense of self importance. It is a good school, but is not significantly better than a lot of other large public universities (UNC, UVA, PSU, etc).
To add to that, as another poster said, for STEM graduate school the most important things for where you go are not the school (I mean, it matters; you don't want to spend years of your life somewhere that you hate). The reputation of your adviser carries way more weight than the school you attend, but you also need an adviser that you can work with. (just for those on the board who maybe aren't familiar, your STEM graduate adviser isn't like your undergrad adviser; they are essentially your boss for the duration of your studies. They have tremendous ability to help you out (both in school and later in life) but they can also make your life hell).
First, make sure you have an adviser who actually wants you as a student. In other words, talk with them ahead of time and get to know them as much as you can before you decide to enroll.
Second, talk to other students (and if possible recent graduates) who have worked with that adviser. They will give you some sense of day to day life, expectations, things to be wary of, etc.
Third, and this should go without saying, you shouldn't be paying anything out of pocket for a STEM degree. If UW will give you a research assistanceship (full tuition, plus a stipend or salary), but Havard won't? Hello Huskies.
With a B.S. from PSU and an M.S. from tOSU, I ended up as a technical editor. There is a gal in my department with a Ph.D. from PSU. Turned out to be a decent career path for me. I'll never be famous, but no complaints.
Thanks for the advice. He has been very fortunate so far, he has done a lot of undergrad research and his advisor has been great at giving him advice and coaching him about what he should be considering when making a choice. He’s already eliminated a few of the schools and has identified at least two PIs he would like to work for at the schools he is till interested in.
He has a full ride with stipend to all the schools.
Great! Congrats to him and best of luck. I really enjoyed graduate school (B.S. from PSU, PhD from UNC) and love my career!
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