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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I know it doesn't help with DS's experience of rejection, but here's an additional perspective. I have been teaching at UMD in recent years after having gone to a top SLAC and taught at an Ivy and a top UC and I am SO IMPRESSED with the kids at UMD. Everything about the experience of teaching there has been a pleasant surprise to me. The faculty will be delighted to have him in class and he will be plenty stimulated by his peers. [/quote]

If you see this: Are you in your 40s to 60s?

If so: In the real world, does it seem as if the incoming students at the top UC and UMD are a lot better than the incoming students would have been at those places in the 1980s; a little better; worse; or roughly the same?

In other words: When we see that Super Duper School X has a 5% admissions rate, and even UMD is getting to be snooty, is that mostly a mirage, because the kids are using the internet to apply to more schools; mainly because the current cohorts are, say, 40% bigger, due to the Echo Boom and an  increase in the number of international students; or mainly due to the fact that there are really a lot more spectacularly brilliant, accomplished students?[/quote]

I'm the PP who's taught recently at UMD. I'm in my 50s. I don't have enough perspective on how UC undergrads have changed over the long haul, but for UMD, I'm speaking from the perspective of having grown up in this area. UMD was on nobody's radar even as a safety when I was applying to college, and when I taught at an Ivy I never, ever saw an application to our grad programs from UMD grads. They just weren't competitive. Of course, I wasn't on the ground teaching at UMD back then (80s-early 2000s), so I can't compare today's students to UMD's students then. But I can definitely say that I do not dumb down my curriculum or expectations at all when I teach at UMD, and the students completely rise to the occasion. The very, very top might not be as ostentatiously brilliant at at Berkeley or an Ivy, but the general standard is as high as you could wish.

From my experience in academe more generally, I would say that both larger cohorts of students applying and a dismal job market for professors have pushed really, really excellent people, student and teachers, way, way down the rankings lists. From a teacher's perspective, I can't imagine that there's anything to choose between the kid you'd get in class at UVA vs. UMD.[/quote]

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