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Lawrence calls for aid!
Dear SPN-ers: I'm just working on the Super-canon site, and I'm writing up a brief thing about Stanford and the college system in the states, with the main intention of helping out authors.
However, I don't know much about the structure of US tertiary education, myself. How long is it? Where do you live? what's the structure of the learning? etc.
If anyone feels up to me picking their brains over AIM, ping me right now: wheeeeelijah
eta: Thanks, y'all. *GIANT HEARTS*
However, I don't know much about the structure of US tertiary education, myself. How long is it? Where do you live? what's the structure of the learning? etc.
If anyone feels up to me picking their brains over AIM, ping me right now: wheeeeelijah
eta: Thanks, y'all. *GIANT HEARTS*
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My main questions are:
- what is the structure? do you do general/broad coursework for a couple of years before narrowing focus? do you have a major? Do you get a degree then go on to do postgraduate study, like here? is that what you call grad school?
- how long is it? 3 years, 4 years...?
- You have to stay in dorms/live on campus, yeah? for how long?
- How does the structure/degrees of 'freshman', 'senior', etc work?
- and what the hell are LSATs?
... the things I do for my fandoms, honestly *grins*
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Once you graduate from college (Typically 4 years), you can go on to graduate school. Must take the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) the standardized test. If you want to go to law school, you take the LSAT (Law School Aptitude Test). There are such test for med school and business school.
Graduate school varies in length, but humanities students generally take longer than science students. Average length for a science student is 5 years for a graduate degree (Ph.D.). Average for humanities is 8. A masters degree usually only takes two years. It's the ph.d. that drags on forever.
Funding varies significantly according to school and program. Graduate students typically teach lower level intro courses and are paid a stipend that they are expected to live on. Graduate students are extremely poor. Most have tuition waivers.
My impression of Stanford, just from listening to Herve, is that it is not a great place to live. It is in Palo Alto, which is a soulless bedroom community. If you don't have a car(which Herve does not) you are stuck in the middle of a very sterile boring suburbian city environment. Herve has lived in graduate student housing the entire time he has been at Stanford (4 or 5 years, except for last year when he spent the entire year in Paris--the bastard). Graduate student housing is fairly grim, even at very expensive schools such as Stanford. My mpressin is that Stanford takes much better care of undergrads than grad students, but that is fairly common throughout the top-tier higher edcuation institutions.
For us, post graduate study is the study you do once you have completed your Ph.D. Graduate study is just what you do after you finish the standard 4 year undergraduate college program. You get a bachelors. Then a masters. Then a doctorate. Then, rarely and almost alwasys only in the sciences, a post-doc.
Hope this helped.
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Thanks so much ♥
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Stanford is a four year university, which means after four years you graduate with a bachelors degree in whatever you decided to major in. Stanford is also a really frickin' expensive private school that does not give merit-based scholarships, so Sam probably got scholarships from other sources or need-based grants or loans through the school. Considering that his father is basically unemployed with zero income, Sam was a pretty good candidate for need-based financial aid.
As far as the living situation... It may have changed since my brother was there years ago, but I think that most students live on campus in dorms in the first couple of years, and only juniors or seniors are likely to live in off-campus apartments. That's not necessarily the way housing works as most US universities, though it does tend to be common for the expensive private ones.
The way most US colleges work is that undergrads are required to take some number of classes in different fields -- like they have to take a certain number of humanities classes, a certain number of science classes, etc. I don't know exactly how it works at Stanford, though, because every school does it differently. I think Stanford has a humanities requirement and a writing requirement, but I don't know what else.
In addition to these required classes, sometime around their second year, students declare a major to make it official what they're going to study. And then they change it. Well, okay, not always, but it's very normal for US college students to change their minds about what they're majoring in at least once. (I've had friends from other countries express tremendous shock at just how easy and common it is for someone to go from studying English to studying chemistry (for example) without too much difficulty.)
There probably isn't an actual major for pre-law, so Sam would probably have been majoring in something like political science or economics, though he could have been majoring in anything and still been planning to go to law school. There are guidelines for areas of study for people who want to go to law school (pre-law programs or the like), but it's not usually something you officially declare. Not exactly sure how it works at Stanford, though.
Any other questions? Not sure how helpful this is... :)
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The LSATs are the Law School Admission Council exams, the standardized test required by law schools for its applicants.
And the names for the years of students:
1st year = freshman
2nd year = sophomore
3rd year = junior
4th year = senior
At a lot of US universities, it can take longer than four years for people to graduate, but that's a lot less common at a school like Stanford.
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Do you mind if I like, just paraphrase this and drop in other bits of info here and there for the site? I shall credit you, o'course.
Can't think of any other specific questions at this instant, but I'll get back to you.
THANK YOU!
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I bet most of the Stanford-specific info is on the school's website, so if people really want to know about the course structure and housing and such, it shouldn't be too hard for them to find out.
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Staying in the on-campus student housing is common, but the housing at Stanford has been horrendously short for as long as I can remember (since at least the late 1970's). Therefore, many students, both undergraduate and graduate, are forced to live in off-campus housing. Some are houseshares like the HoS of 2004. Some folks rent a tiny studio apartment. Some live in the on-campus Sorority and Fraternity houses. And some (remember, this is a REALLY EXPENSIVE SCHOOL) have their parents BUY THEM A HOME IN THE AREA. After all, real estate this close to San Francisco has historically been an eeeeeeeexcellent investment. One family I know managed to recoup the costs of 4 years of tuition in the appreciation on their child's university housing. O.O
Getting a Bachelor's out of Stanford in less than 4 years is rare enough to be quite remarkable. Staying for more than 5 borders on financial suicide, unless you're independently wealthy or plan to grow up to be Bill Gates.
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Should I send you a stanford sweatshirt? *grin*
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Mary and I are planning on sending you a Willy teeshirt, by the way; one with a tallship on it.
Thanks for your help, love ♥
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I shall sendie teh sweatshirt asap. I had no idea the Big S was somehow connected with SPN until this post.
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PS. if the sweatshirt has a hood? I will declare you my Pirate God and worship you regularly. And also, be the nerdiest-dressed person this side of the equator.
No idea what ship it is. Though, now I'm tempted to knit you one that says "my willy is bigger than yours..."
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DUDE.
knit me one WHAT???
I didn't know you could knit one of THOSE!!!no subject
Um, I don't know? I think I was thinking teeshirt, but seeing as all I can knit is scarves... anyway. *brain melt*
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no, I meant "knit me a willy"; kinda like a very short scarf, but more ... flaccid?
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undergrads usually take five classes a semester. most schools will let you take up to seven, but everyone i know who has taken more than six has had to do a little bit of wheedling to get the last class. most schools will also count three or four courses a semester as a full course load. it just takes longer if you do it that way. some us schools are on a semester system, and some do quaters (i think that's what they're called, at least). your average undergrad degree is 20 credits, but some schools offer a 15 credit programme. (er, i guess they would say 'program'.)
if you want to go into law right away, liek graduate and boom, welcome to law school, you need to get your lsats done early in your fourth year. people make a big deal about them, and you can take prep courses and mockups and stuff, but, judging from an old one my roommate was studying from, they're not that hard. mostly a lot of problem solving questions. "if tom and jenny have five zebras each, and tom has two zebras with blue stripes and one zebra with red stripes lalalala how many oranges do the orang-utans eat each day?" sort of thing.
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