EDIT: I went back and added the People section.
This could very well be one of those posts I look back on in a few years and just laugh (for one reason or another). I’ve been doing a lot of planning for my future during the last few weeks. Last night and today I spent some time studying for the GRE’s, and I also spent some time researching grad schools. The biggest question I seem to face is whether or not I really want to stay at RPI for grad school, or if I would be happier elsewhere. I have to come to a decision very soon, because I want to get my applications in before school starts (even though I don’t graduate until May, 2004).
So here’s my attempt to break this discussion down for myself. I know I have some incoming freshmen on my friends list… this might be kind of a hard look at the school you’re about to attend so hang on!
Location
Whenever people say that there is nothing to do in Troy/Albany, I really just want to haul off and slap them. In the past few years I have found quite a bit to do in the area, a lot of it on a shoestring budget. I must say though that I have always been a bit bothered by the fact that Troy isn’t a real college town in terms of services or attitudes. The area around RPI is mostly residential, with a few scattered shops/restaurants. That leaves students at campus a captive audience to the overpriced services on campus.
Last year I got involved with the Troy Business Association (TBA) to try to rectify that situation. I was working with a group at RPI that wants to bring businesses from downtown Troy up the hill to 15th Street, forming a more classic “college town” area right around the campus. That way a student could walk to a local cafe for lunch, have some good ice cream for dessert, and see a live show at a local pub. This type of scene isn’t at all uncommon at most schools (in fact, since I know this is something I miss here, I’m looking for it at other schools and have found that many of them foster these types of environments).
Unfortunately the TBA was more interested in why students weren’t coming into downtown Troy and frequenting the shops down there. Local business owners didn’t seem interested in moving their failing business to the location of potential business, they wanted to try to bring business to them. Unfortunately students at RPI aren’t going for that – students with cars are going to go to Crossgates and students w/o cars are going to hang out around campus. I remember giving a small speech to that effect to the Deputy Mayor and company who were all in attendence at a dinner meeting I attended. Again, uninterested.
The point is that Troy isn’t a college town, and their attitude is such that they would rather not become one for whatever reason. They seem to halt all development attempts, and push delay after delay on any project that does get off the ground. I hate having to drive several miles to get to anything.
Weather
This past winter was a harsh reminder that the northeast has some pretty nasty winters, and this summer a reminder that heat and humidity are equally as unforgiving. It’s an interesting imbalance of extremes in this region – the winters are cold, and the summers hot. Last winter I averaged $130/mo on heat alone for my 1BR apartment, and I went around cold half the time. I think I would rather live in a more temperate climate, perhaps something warmer in the summers in exchange for milder winters. At least that way you know that everyone will have air conditioning if it’s normally hot in the summer!
Academics
I must say that in terms of an undergraduate program, RPI seems to have things figured out. After comparing notes with friends at other schools, I have to say that by far I have it best here in terms of the types of stuff that I’m doing in class, the contact I have with my professors, and the quality of their teaching staff (TA’s). I can only assume that since these same professors are mentors to grad students that the graduate programs, at least academically, are competitive with those at other institutions.
Activities
RPI is one of the few schools that has a student activity fee model of funding its student activites. We have so many great opportunities at our disposal, I think it’s a shame when I see students overwork themselves or sitting in their rooms doing nothing, either way not taking advantage of the fruits of their activity fee. This is definitely a plus for RPI.
Research
In this area RPI seems to be coming up dry. I hate to admit it, but RPI is falling far behind a lot of other schools out there with comparable enrollments and average GRE scores. A lot of the professors seem to be “lifers” here at RPI… they’ve been here for a long time, they sit in their offices responding to e-mail all day, working to find grant money, coming up with rediculous research ideas, getting no research dollars, but still taking home a paycheck from RPI. They are pretty easy to spot because on their website all of their research is either missing or pretty outdated.
RPI’s homepage (http://www.rpi.edu) often highlights some of their research milestones, and there are some impressive faculty members here doing some good things. The facilities are here, there is a lot of brain power. I’m not sure what’s missing. RPI just isn’t getting the grant dollars (only $30 million last year).
That segues nicely into our next topic….
Tuition
Last year RPI raised the graduate tuition to try to jumpstart the research program. They limited the number of hours that TA’s could teach, set minimums for salaries for students, etc. The problem was that grad students were taking 8-10 years to finish their PhD’s because they were teaching deadbeat professors’ classes, or doing the deadbeat’s research. There was a rather large uproar, mostly because of the tuition increase. Before, grad students could pay by the credit for their coursework, but now they pay just like undergrads, despite the number of credits they take. This is a fairly common policy at most grad schools, it was just a surprise to hit RPI, that’s all.
So my concern with RPI is that it does cost $27,700 (and that’s for the upcoming year, add 5% to that for what the tuition will likely be for my first year of grad school). I’m hoping that I will do well enough on my GRE’s and letters of recommendation to get a position as an RA or TA, or some other form of grant so that my tution will be waived. Thanks to the new graduate tuition policy, however, they have limited the number of semesters that a student can take advantage of such benefits. It’s unlikely that I could get my entire education paid for here at RPI. So one of my criteria is to either find a cheaper school (i.e. a state school with an excellent reputation), or a private school with better tution benefits. This by far is probably one of the biggest deciding factors.
Cost/Style of Living
Troy doesn’t have any rent control, meaning that landlords are free to raise the rent as they wish. Likewise, the on campus housing prices increase the steady 5% along with the tuition (sometimes a bit more). By the way, 5% is much, much higher than the current rate of inflation, which is now less than 2%/yr. However, the quality of both on and off-campus housing doesn’t improve noticibly for the increase in rent each year. Essentially, many of the apartments in Troy are dumps because landlords don’t really keep them up, and the nice places go for far more than any college student can afford. For the past few years I’ve been the only person at RPI officially working on Off-Campus housing (we have a website: http://offcampus.union.rpi.edu). We are making some improvements by helping to teach students how to judge value in an apartment, etc, and training landlords how to be more effective.
See my comments above about attitudes in Troy, but if the Troy City Council wanted to cater to college students (think of it as RPI-friendly), they would enact some form of rent control, and also enforce building codes by conducting regular inspections. Both of these are common practices in many other college towns in the US.
The dorms are way overpriced for what you get: a bed and a desk (essentially). Many students quickly learn that it’s a bad value and take the plunge into off-campus life. That’s how I meet most of them, and honestly it’s a good choice. It’s too bad RPI doesn’t cater more housing to upperclassmen and grad students. BTW, the married student housing is provides look like absolute slums… I toured last year. It’s like the RAHPS, but there are kids running around. Quite a sad sight.
People
I have made a few good friends here at RPI in the few years that I’ve been around the place. I never really got into the frat scene, so I never formed the close bonds that some people around here have with others, but I do have some close friends that I hang out with.
I must say though it is hard to break people away from their schoolwork and laptops around here. It’s a really busy school, but people choose to fill their time with AIM rather than getting out and spending time in the real world with tangible friends. That has always bothered me. It’s like some sort of anti-social gene. That makes it hard to get to know people very well because you can’t spend time with them. Chatting with them just isn’t the same as true interaction.
For those who speak Meyers-Briggs, the dominant male type on campus is by far ENTJ. That means essentially that they tend to be intelligent, somewhat outspoken, driven/motivated, and they tend to plan their time/lives rather than live on the edge. Those aren’t bad things, but compounded with a certain amount of arrogance, and you have the annoying, stereotypical RPI guy. Unfortunately I don’t get along with many of them very well – I like intelligent discussions as much as the next ENTJ, but some people just don’t know when enough is enough. There are kids in class who will tell a professor he is wrong and will stubbornly fight their point with no real intelligent evidence until the prof finally has to bring in some outside info, explain it to them, or just tell them to be quiet.
A lot of guys complain about “the ratio” at RPI. I’m not sure it’s as big of a problem that many make it out to be. It’s just that the girls here aren’t really the type that most guys go for – they are independent, intelligent, etc. It seems that a lot of guys are intimidated by that. Again, not really a problem for me – not very many schools in the country feature motivated, intelligent women. It’s great to be sitting in class next to a female who is equal if not better than you (except when they fit into the arrogant guy thing above).
But what does seem to be a problem is the fact that many people here (boys and girls alike) suffer from what I call the “boyfriend/girlfriend back home syndrome”. They come to RPI with a bf/gf, stay together long distance, but don’t get out and do much while they’re here. They spend most of their free time chatting it up with their significant other on AIM or the phone. Perhaps the lack of singles at RPI contributes to guys somewhat overinflated view of “the ratio”. Either way, that really kills the dating scene, and makes it really tough to just hang out with people even in a non-dating sort of way.
Summary
So after proofreading my entry, it seems that I may have become an old, bitter RPI student just like all the rest… maybe that above all else is the indicator that I should move on and find something else? Perhaps tomorrow I will post another entry about one of the top schools I’m considering: UT Austin. Until then… your comments are welcome!
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Interestingly enough, most of the problems have an easy to explain reason behind them, just a hard to explain solution, especially in your position.
I’m not sure how much of this you’re aware of being that you’re an international student, but to put it bluntly: the city of Troy has long been a political mess. Budgeting is awful, both for the city and the public schools. Having been born in the capital region, and lived not too far from it, I’ve been able to keep up with a good deal of the local news. In short, there always seems to be news that they want to downsize the fire department and other services or some other cut. There’s never any money because the taxes are already high and no one wants to raise them any higher. The actual money doesn’t seem to be used too efficiently, as the cycle rarely improves. Until the rest of the politics of the city changes, finding an atmosphere willing to accomodate colleges is a far fetch. Easy problem for me to spot, not a clue on how to fix it.
As far as TAs getting tuition waved, I never realized that
.Just a thought … have you thought about trying to find a company to pay for your grad school? I know that it often happens and it’s an alternative to just looking for TA/RA positions and it might free you up as far as which schools you can pick.
Oh … and someday you should answer ims
(even if just for a few minutes :-d) -
I’m not actually an international student, I’m an American who just lived overseas for several years!
I’ve been following Troy’s fiscal crisis since I first got here, which is one of the reasons why I initially got involved with the TBA. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have talked to several area “lifers”, and have done my own research, and here is how I see things from the perspective of my aforementioned theory of Troy’s attitude toward RPI, and wanting to be a college town.
Everyone knows that Troy used to be a bustling industrial center, home of Uncle Sam, and all the rest. A lot of those businesses left town 3-4 decades ago. But I believe Troy’s fate was sealed when they diverted inbound traffic from Congress (Route 2) to the new Alternate 7 (Hoosick St). They took what remained of their visitors to downtown Troy and diverted them away from Troy. You can see all of the closed shops along Congress, and even downtown along Route 2 that just couldn’t survive.
Now in doing so, they did create a rich environment along Route 7. You just need the right places to move in, and they could do quite a business. The problem is that many of the richest areas along Route 7 are covered with condemned houses and zoned as residential, relics of the pre-Route 7 days.
The City of Troy makes it very tough to re-zone and demolish condemned property. For some reason they talk about renewal, but they don’t like development. Recently Troy was able to attract Wendy’s to move into the corner of 15th and Hoosick (replacing 3 old houses that have been abandoned for at least 3 years). However the houses remain, and the City Council has presented dozens of hoops that the buyer will have to jump through in order to actually proceed with development.
That takes me to the subject of RPI. A lot of Troy residents think all of their fiscal problems are caused by the fact that RPI doesn’t pay property taxes. This came to light again last year when the fire department wanted to charge every student in the dorms an activity fee of sorts so they could offset the costs of responding to fire emergencies. Every time there is a school levy vote, both the concerned parents and the cheap old people point their fingers at RPI (apparently they forget that our students volunteer at many of Troy’s schools, teaching classes and leading after-school programs).
I’m not sure that if you replaced the square footage of RPI with houses that it would generate enough revenue to keep Troy alive, or solve all of the funding issues with the schools, local services, code enforcement, etc. I think RPI is just an easy place to put the blame. Unfortunately, that also means that when RPI wants to do some development (like build a biotech center, or a parking garage), they have to jump through twice as many hoops as a person who wants to build a Wendy’s. First local residents were worried about construction noise (which led to an impact study at RPI expense), and then ecological impacts (another study conducted at RPI expense), and then they found an old vase in the basement of a condemned house they were tearing down, so they spent 4 months excavating that basement for other “artifacts” to find nothing.
It’s interesting to me that Troy residents complain about property taxes and how high they are. They are high because there is very little sustained business in Troy. If you think about it, all of the big business is in Brunswick, Albany, Latham, etc (i.e. not in Troy). I grew up in a college town, and have lived in one since. Property taxes are generally low because of all of the business growth and development which helps to offset the costs to the homeowner. If I were a resident of Troy, I would open my arms to both the RPI student and to any businesses who wanted to capitalize on any expendable income they might have!
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A few more responses to your comment:
Only grad TA’s get tuition waivers, and as I mentioned, thanks to the new policy they can only take those benefits for a certain number of semesters (it depends on lots of things, but you have to be earning your PhD in order to be a TA). Otherwise, the TA’s are just paid hourly (I think the going rate of pay is now $10/hr). Undergrad TA’s are just paid hourly, and for one of my courses the rate of pay was $10/hr. Not sure if that’s true for all of them, but that’s not bad money for 10 hrs/week!
I’ve thought about finding a company to pay for grad school. However, thanks to the new tuition policy, companies can no longer pay for part-time classes. I would have to be a full-time student, and some of the companies I talked to last summer said that I would have to work with them for a while first. I think that’s too risky… I want to make sure I fit grad school in before I get too old, start a family, etc. Even Microsoft said it would be 3-5 years before I would set foot in grad school, and even then it would only be an ME program (I’d really like to consider doing an MS).
We’ll chat again someday soon! See you’re not online now when I have a few minutes to chat
Life is busy busy this past week, and will be the same for the first part of the coming week I’m afraid 
Soon we shall catch up! -
But Leeeee if you leave, what about me?
haha, no I’m just joking.
After reading your entry, I think it would be best to try to find another school, I think you might be happier. Maybe you have just spent enough time here?
I think you will also find complaints at any other school you go to though, but the thing that bothers me most about RPI is the students. The reason is, like you said, all they ever do is complain that there is nothing to do except go to frat parties. And I have to say that’s not true. I have had some of the best times of my life in Troy. Like you said, there are so many things to go and do, and kids need to learn how to make a good time for themselves. This can make things bad for freshmen, because all they here is there’s nothign to do…and blah blah blah…
Anyway, it sounds like to me you have a tough decision to make. I know whatever one you make will work out to be the right one for you. Just don’t forget to have fun in the process. Fun is something people forget about!
good luck!!
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OMG, I completely forgot to mention the people at RPI… I wanted to do that because I had some good and bad talking points there… I might go back and add that.
I’m trying to be objective about this decision when it comes to friends. I have so many good friends here, but the problem is that they will really only be around for my first year of grad school, and then many of them will be gone. Not saying I wouldn’t make more if I stayed, but I’ve found in life that friends aren’t always the best reason to stick around a place. Although I dunno Marie! You do make RPI pretty cool
Right now I’m working on an entry for UT Austin
Stay tuned! -
the decision of course is yours, but here’s my two cents.
everything i have read says that you definitely should go to a different school for grad. after four years, you kinda learn all there is to know about the professors, the classes. yes, as a grad student you’ll be doing different work, but nothing extraordinarily new. learning is not only the classes you are in – its the people you’re with, the environment. rpi is a wonderful school, but i am of the opinion that it would do you (and every grad student) good to go somewhere new. (this is backed up even more by the fact that i know a rpi grad student who is just stagnating in the minds and machines dept.; he hates it).
yes, you’ll miss the people. but like you said, try to be objective. my boyfriend goes to RPI. i struggled for months over whether to send in an application for that reason. after much deliberation, i did. i feel like RPI is a good school for me and a place i will thrive, and NOT solely because my boyfriend is there. yes, its a big plus, but not the reason i chose. if the reason you choose a place is friends or lack of friends, you are basically saying you don’t care about your education, but you care about your social life more. having a social life is great – but your future and career and life is overwhelmingly more important. i know you know that, but still.
just look at your options. i know you know a lot more about RPI than you can know about any other school, sheerly because you attended it. but do the same write-up about any other schools you’re looking at. when i was looking at schools i knew i wanted to be in the NE region, pretty much. so i looked at schools with a biotech/bioinfo major in that area. then i took the ones i found and basically did a lot of research and wrote a huge pros/cons list. take a huge piece of paper or an excel spreadsheet and head each column w/ a school name. then: tuition, location, weather, major, quality of social life, political activity, food, dorms, on and on, anything you can name that was important to you at RPI. rate them 1-10 and/or write little notes about it. this takes some time but in the end was true deciding factor.
good luck!
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“There are kids in class who will tell a professor he is wrong and will stubbornly fight their point with no real intelligent evidence until the prof finally has to bring in some outside info, explain it to them, or just tell them to be quiet.”
I had a similar situation at ARML last year. At the math lecture at the national math meet on the Eastern Site (Penn State), there was someone who was probably in eighth grade who spent the entire time trying to argue with the professor (who was of course a guest lecturer who lectures every year for the League). It was exceedingly annoying to sit there and watch him be so mean and arrogant – so yeah, I know that feeling. That might not be the prevailing attitude of the grads, though, so you never know.
As far as Microsoft, I thought I had seen something along the lines … but then I found this:
”
Q: Do you offer scholarships for graduate students?
A: No, we do not offer scholarships for graduate students at this time.
”Yeah, so sorry that suggestion didn’t quite work. As far as locally, I know that I’ve heard that General Electric (GE) has lots of programs – they’re based in Schenectady. Have you looked into them at all?
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I agree wholeheartedly that you shouldn’t stay in a place because of your friends. That was one of the toughest decisions I had to make when I came to RPI. I could have stayed with almost all my friends or at least been really close if I went to Oregon State. But just because you leave some place doesn’t mean that you have to lose your friends too. It can sometimes show you who really cares about you and wants to stay in contact. which maybe you have also found out since your highschool friends were in Egypt.
Anyway, you should check out OSU! haha! then you’d be in a cool state and I’m moving back there! haha. No, I’m just joking again.
Good luck in everything Lee! and have fun!
(and yay for remembering the ! in my name!)
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So, I just read your thing about the people at RPI and decided I wanted to make a comment. (i’m at work, but I’m waiting for the soldering iron to heat up, that’s why I’m not working! hah)
I agree with everything you said about the people at RPI, BUT you can go out and find great people to hang around with. I have found some of the best friends at RPI, and I know any one of us would rather be out doing something than on AIM.
There’s also the problem of people like me: I love to hang out with people, but I always am scared to ask people if they wanna hang out. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s like i don’t want to bother people, I figure if they wanna hang out, they will ask me. But then comes the problem of for example you and me. We never hang out because we both never ask others to hang out. which is sad.
So, fun can be had at RPI and great people can be found, you just gotta look.
But I do agree with everything you wrote, I just thought I’d add some thoughts.
and now my soldering iron is hot. let’s hope I don’t burn myself like I did an hour ago…eek!
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