TRANSCRIPT:

We are now on the campus of Wake Forest University. A beautiful park-like campus completely fenced in located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Architecturally harmonious with kind of a soft, tan brick, you can see the library behind me.

A few things to know about Wake Forest

It is one of the top universities in the South. It has Division I sports. One of the smaller Division I sports universities in the United States, and very, very competitive athletically; solid academics all around; it has just about under 5,000 students; and a variety of really strong departments including a business school.

Facilities

Also, I think a few things that I am really impressed with are the facilities. They everywhere they took us on the tour. Of course, they take us to the nicest buildings, the nicest dorm, the nicest classroom buildings. But clearly they invest money in the facilities. I also have to notice the landscaping is absolutely phenomenal. Housing here, the dormitories are required for students for the first three years and then guaranteed for four.

Greek Life

In addition Fraternities and sororities are big here. About 40% of the students belong to fraternities and sororities, but they are integrated into the housing system. They do not have a separate Greek row or Greek houses. The Greek organizations are actually based in the dormitories themselves in college-owned space. So, that probably helps ensure that the parties do not get too wild because the college can keep an eye on things, at least the facilities here (who knows what happens off-campus, of course), and a strong performing arts that even the non-major can be involved with.

This is really a nice-sized university, academically challenging, in a beautiful location, and a nice city. I have been really impressed with it. I had a great tour here. The one thing I will say, too, that I was interested in was listening to the information session. They really personalized it.

The guy who was giving it personalized it very much and gave a lot of examples from his own experience as a student here, and that really helped I think make it much more of a compelling presentation rather than just ripping off a gazillion facts and figures, so it is interesting to take these information sessions and see what different colleges do, and they make it more personal by not just a spewing of the facts, so that was cool.

A very impressive place, I enjoyed my visit here very much, and I am going to take another quick look around, and talk to a librarian, and see what else I can learn. If you are looking for a medium-sized university in the South with great academic opportunities, as well Division I sports, Wake Forest is a great place to check out.
 
Mark Montgomery
Expert Educational Consultant

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• Share and revise documents in our group’s online binder.
• Assign tasks and deadlines to keep projects on track.
• Create events where we can share meeting minutes, files and discussions pertaining to the event.
• View our group calendar to see all upcoming tasks and events.
• Meet virtually through GroupTable’s live chat, allowing us to communicate without having to be in one location.
• Communicate through the group discussion board—enabling us to contribute on our own time, while organizing all our discussions in one spot. No more filtering through multiple email threads to find that file or comment from a group member.
• Receive alerts via email each time an update was made.

GroupTable immediately improved the quality of life for each one of us. No longer was my Saturdays spent wasting time gathering multiple variations of papers, meeting in a distant location, or cleaning up the mess after a miscommunication over who was supposed to write what and when.
I loved GroupTable so much that I used its e-vite feature to invite my friends from undergrad to a group specifically for us, for our “Clown-cations” (inside joke). Now we’re able to coordinate all of our schedules—there are ten of us—to determine our next vacation! We’ve even placed this year’s football schedule into the calendar, and are commenting on the event “wall” to determine who is going to which game this year, and who will be responsible for what at the tailgate!
Not only has GroupTable allowed me to find organization among my school life, but it’s coordinating my social life as well. My group has already set up our classes for next semester, and my girlfriends and I have already determined who’s in charge of the air mattress and beer for the Oklahoma vs FSU game. The only thing that is frustrating about GroupTable is that I didn’t know about it in undergrad.
As someone who is getting a second round of practice on organizing multiple elements in life, my only advice is to utilize the tools around you—and for me, that tool is GroupTable.
 
You can learn more about Alexandra Gramatikas in the following ways:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandragramatikas
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/AlexGramatikas
 
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
 

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I’m here right now on the campus of the University of Delaware.  It’s in the far north of the state of Delaware, not too far from Philadelphia but also close to Baltimore.  This is a wonderful public university, sort of a hidden gem, really, partly because Delaware is a small state.
I think about this school a lot when I talk to my Chinese students because it’s a large public university.  There’s a lot going on.  The DuPont building is right across the way, so, Chemistry is kind of big, certainly a comprehensive university.
The other thing that I like about it, it’s not so large.  It’s also close to several different urban areas, but not right in them, so, you can feel a part in sort of the Ivory Tower, if you will, but certainly can get into some of the major metropolitan areas in the United States by train.
It’s just not as well known as the Universities of Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, Berkley, UCLA, the usual suspects when it comes to public universities in the United States.  So, if you’re looking for a comprehensive university that’s not overwhelmingly large but has a solid undergraduate education program, this is definitely worth a look.  It’s gorgeous.
Again, I’m here on a nice spring day around the time of finals, but there are students out on the lawn and the downtown area, the little main street with all the funky cafes, lots of people and a lot of people are studying too.  I see people going to the library behind me, so, a lot of people are heading that direction. A very nice university and I’m really glad I had a chance to visit myself.

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• business
• health care related majors
• anything having to do with criminal justice (call it the “CSI factor”)
• hospitality related majors (ski resort management, for example)
• a greater interest in entrepreneurship and small business development

At the same time, philosophy and classics majors have been eliminated at some universities, as demand has dwindled.
This focus on professional orientation is not necessarily a bad thing.  Some students do well to focus in on learning discrete skills and functions. Furthermore, I don’t think it is necessary for every university in the country to offer every possible major:  some universities tend to be more professionally-oriented than others.
But as has been discussed elsewhere on this blog, just because a student is not “professionally oriented” at age 18 does not mean they will never have a profession.  Further, some statistics indicate that each of us will have a variety of professions over their lifetimes.  So while a “relevant” major may prepare a student for their first job or even their first career, no one can predict the ways in which the economy will change, a person’s priorities or interests may change, or whether that major will be any use ten, fifteen, or twenty years later.
Furthermore, employers are not clamoring for graduates with these “relevant” degrees.  For them, just having a degree of any kind is the preliminary qualification for many jobs.  And according to one study, employers are most interested in students who can communicate well.
Read this snippet from the NYT article:

There’s evidence, though, that employers also don’t want students specializing too soon. The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently asked employers who hire at least 25 percent of their workforce from two- or four-year colleges what they want institutions to teach. The answers did not suggest a narrow focus. Instead, 89 percent said they wanted more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing,” 81 percent asked for better “critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” and 70 percent were looking for “the ability to innovate and be creative.”
“It’s not about what you should major in, but that no matter what you major in, you need good writing skills and good speaking skills,” says Debra Humphreys, a vice president at the association.

The organization has conducted focus groups with employers before and heard the same thing. With the recession, she says, they weren’t sure the findings would hold. “But it’s even more intense. Companies are demanding more of employees. They really want them to have a broad set of skills.” She adds that getting employer feedback is the association service that “college leaders find the most valuable, because they can answer the question when parents ask, ‘Is this going to help in getting a job?’ ”

In my view, a student’s major doesn’t really matter in the great scheme of things.  I’m happy to accommodate a student’s particular interests or strengths or predilections.  And I encourage them to pursue the things that interest them, because often those interests will help a student persevere through to graduation.  I know religion majors that are now heart surgeons, history majors who are entrepreneurs, international relations majors who are teachers, education majors who are managers, and engineering majors who are writers.
I also ask parents if they are engaged in the field in which they originally trained.  Most often, they are doing something wildly different (and unexpected and unplanned) than what their college major might have indicated.  That’s as it should be.  People grow and change and evolve over their lifetimes.
I make a living helping students (and their families) map out their college plans.  I’m happy to help them construct those plans based on current interests and needs.  I do remind folks, however, that interests and needs do change, and that taking the long view can lead to equally good–or even better–outcomes.

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But I wanted to learn a bit more about how this woman made her decision to attend the University of Wyoming.  Below she explains.

I was impressed by two points she makes.  First, accounting is accounting is accounting:  it doesn’t really matter all that much where you study accounting, as long as you learn the principles of accounting and are able to use those skills.  So this woman chose her university based more on location, the price, and the general safety of the campus-factors that were most important to her and her family.

Second, this emphasis on price is especially important for international students, who may be unable to apply for financial aid.  So international students often are keenly aware of the value of their education.  The University of Wyoming offers an outstanding value in this respect, as another Wyoming student pointed out to me in an interview.

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