Academics and Sports

My child is in the process of applying to that charter school for his junior and senior years of high school, it is the Massachusetts Academy for Math and Science. Your junior year is very rigorus with long school days, from 8 - 4, and homework until late into the evening. Your senior year is spent at WPI enrolled in freshman level classes, so your day is flexible. At the recent open house we attended it was clearly stated that there is no time to fit HS sports into your junior year. We have known students to go there and return to high school sports for their senior year, but knowing current students there it is impossible to do it as a junior.
My child plays both club and vasity soccer and he knows that soccer will not get him to college, but he know that the education that this program provides will get him into a top college with a lot of financial aid. It is all about knowing your kid and what they want to do.

It's a great program, and it's free. These kids end up at great colleges and almost all with academic scholarships. As a result of the State Standardized Testing Tuition program, they all get at least free tuition from UMA.

[Cujo]

....nobody really cares what your grades are or what school you went to. Most employers want graduates who did the work and got their degrees. In that respect a degree from Salem State is worth almost as much as one from Bentley or Babson.

Maybe where you work that's true, but for many job opportunities that is simply not true.

I do a lot of contract management and frequently hire consultants. I have had bad experiences with consultants that come from the Ivy's. They are headstrong and have too many set ideas in many cases. My best experiences have been with Bentley MBA's, my worst have been with Harvard and Columbia MBA's. I look at many things when hiring new employees. I take resumes with a grain of salt. The interview is by far the most important factor in my decision making. Yesterday I conducted oral interviews for a major contract - none of them were ivy's all were second tier - UMA Am, BU, BC, WPI, RPI - and all were very strong. Where somebody has graduated from is not very important to me. What they have accomplished after graduation is of primary importance.

Which is the better investment for helping a kid get to play soccer in College?

Money for extra training and a top soccer camp, and a lots of top tournaments and being in the highest flights.

or

Money for a top SAT Prep program, a little extra tutoring, with a little less spent on tournaments and not making the top flights.

Post of the month....We have a winner!!! ^^^^

Agreed, the valedictorian of my HS class scored nearly 1600 on his SATS had a 4.0 and graduated from Harvard. He is a supervisor at a boxmaking factory and lives with a woman who has 3 kids from 3 different marriages. The most successful classmate went to Bowdoin, is a venture capitalist and is worth $20M.

Evidently your valedictorian classmate didn't have his heart set on a career in finance. It's hard to believe, but there was a brief time in the 1960s and 1970s when amassing wealth wasn't the universal index of success. Today I don't know why college students would major in anything but business, law, or economics, given our reflexive genuflection to the wealthy. (Of course, a PhD in math or science might also be useful to those who want to become a wealthy VC.)

[Cujo]

....nobody really cares what your grades are or what school you went to. Most employers want graduates who did the work and got their degrees. In that respect a degree from Salem State is worth almost as much as one from Bentley or Babson.

So whether you go to BU or Salem State, it's about the same. I guess I agree with at least that much. :P :P :P

Well, at BU you get taught by some of the brightest minds in the world (Levin, Zinn, etc). At Harvard you get taught by introverted inartciulate TA's who put their pants on backwards.

[Cujo]

....nobody really cares what your grades are or what school you went to. Most employers want graduates who did the work and got their degrees. In that respect a degree from Salem State is worth almost as much as one from Bentley or Babson.

Maybe where you work that's true, but for many job opportunities that is simply not true.

Were it only true what you are saying Cujo. In a perfect world what would matter would be how hard you worked or what you actually do/did. Unfortunatley that's not the case. Worked with a real slacker who was a blowhard, but some of the management thought he was the greatest - because he went to Harvard. Worked at a law firm and witnessed some very good, hard working individuals having to take on temp assignments because they couldn't catch on at a firm because they had graduated from an inferior school. Michael Dell and Bill Gates didnt' graduate from their respective schools (Texas and Harvard) - I believe, and they've accomplished tons, but for the rest of us the better your pedigree the more opportunities that will be available. Not saying I agree with this, but it certainly helps to have graduated from a "good" school.

I can only speak for my organization. We do have pockets in our company where people pay fealty to Harvard B and K school graduates. I have to say I am not impressed with their work product. One of my favorite stories is from a former boss (Annapolis Graduate) who had a Columbia MBA consultant ask him why he was spending so much overtime on labor for snow removal operations. He asked her a simple question "When does it snow?". Our company had an obsession with performance metrics for a while. The vast majority of the product of that effort was useless. Good managers manage based upon experience and applying common sense. We had a group of Harvard MBA candidates do business process analysis several years ago. It was 90% useless piffle. There is no substitute for experience.

[Cujo]

Post of the month....We have a winner!!! ^^^^

Agreed, the valedictorian of my HS class scored nearly 1600 on his SATS had a 4.0 and graduated from Harvard. He is a supervisor at a boxmaking factory and lives with a woman who has 3 kids from 3 different marriages. The most successful classmate went to Bowdoin, is a venture capitalist and is worth $20M.

Evidently your valedictorian classmate didn't have his heart set on a career in finance. It's hard to believe, but there was a brief time in the 1960s and 1970s when amassing wealth wasn't the universal index of success. Today I don't know why college students would major in anything but business, law, or economics, given our reflexive genuflection to the wealthy. (Of course, a PhD in math or science might also be useful to those who want to become a wealthy VC.)

He got thrust into a job immediately after graduating as GM for a paper mill in the Berkshires. He was totally unprepared and unequipped for the demands of the job. He got the job because of his Harvard education but that ultimately was his downfall. Too much too soon and in over his head. There are obviously other factors but it has really scarred him for life.

[Cujo]

Which is the better investment for helping a kid get to play soccer in College?

Money for extra training and a top soccer camp, and a lots of top tournaments and being in the highest flights.

or

Money for a top SAT Prep program, a little extra tutoring, with a little less spent on tournaments and not making the top flights.

Education education education education



soccer

....nobody really cares what your grades are or what school you went to. Most employers want graduates who did the work and got their degrees. In that respect a degree from Salem State is worth almost as much as one from Bentley or Babson.

So whether you go to BU or Salem State, it's about the same. I guess I agree with at least that much. :P :P :P

Well, at BU you get taught by some of the brightest minds in the world (Levin, Zinn, etc). At Harvard you get taught by introverted inartciulate TA's who put their pants on backwards.

Right, BU provides a much better education than either Harvard or Columbia.

BTW, both Zinn and Levin have been gone since that late 80's. Zinn is now one of those 9/11 whack jobs that believed we did the 9/11 attack on ourselves, and Levin was a Marxist who did his undergrad at Harvard and took his grad degrees from Columbia.

[beentheredonethat]

Cujo .. Couple of points to make about your views on business

• * there no longer is any "experience" in today's workplace, that is unless you call some 27 year old kid with 36 months of work history experienced
  * ego is not confined the Ivy's, I've worked for plenty of self appointed geniuses that graduated from BU.
  * any company that relies upon someone from the outside to tell them how to run their business has no appreciation for the talent that exists within and deserves what they get
  * management consultants are only good for placing blame upon
  
  and my personal favorite
  
  * the accounting department is only good for bayoneting the dead after the battle

[Cujo]

Cujo .. Couple of points to make about your views on business

• * there no longer is any "experience" in today's workplace, that is unless you call some 27 year old kid with 36 months of work history experienced
  * ego is not confined the Ivy's, I've worked for plenty of self appointed geniuses that graduated from BU.
  * any company that relies upon someone from the outside to tell them how to run their business has no appreciation for the talent that exists within and deserves what they get
  * management consultants are only good for placing blame upon
  
  and my personal favorite
  
  * the accounting department is only good for bayoneting the dead after the battle

I agree with you for the most part about consultants. Some are there to supplement staff, others are there to do things that sr mgmt mistrusts staff to do, others perform specialized periodic functions that do not warrant hiring full time staff, others are there to serve as a buffer between an organization and its adversaries. We also hire contractors to do work that is not part of our core business. It is cost effective for many reasons. My experience with Gen Y and X MBA's has not been good. They have not learned that what happens in the classroom does not usually reflect reality. Good MBA's understand that their education teaches them how to think and not what to think.

The turnover rate for my organization is very low. Less than 4% per year. I have been there for nearly 20 and I am a relative newbie. I am fortunate to work for a company that by and large values tenure and experience. That is increasingly rare these days.

And yes BU produces its share of smug consultants too.