Alumni University

Just like staying involved in your high school, staying connected with your college-both while you’re there and after you graduate-is both rewarding and important. And while the two have several things in common, there are different ways in which you can maintain your level of involvement in your college campus. Because of the great differences in how high schools and colleges are run, you’ll have to go about the process a little differently.

One of the more immediately obvious differences is the way in which you’ll find out about opportunities for involvement. Because universities are so much larger than high schools, there’s almost sure to be a volunteer coordinator or another similar person working there. A good way to go about finding this person is to contact your college’s office of alumni affairs or alumni council (both of which you should be able to find on the school’s website fairly easily). Someone in this group will be able to direct you to who you need to talk to.

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We’ve had many students ask us what colleges are the best engineering and computer science schools. Using a weighted average of faculty resources, technology grants, class size, and student ratings, we have developed the following list to help guide students and parents in the admissions process. The list provides a concise summary of these top engineering and tech programs.

(1) California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

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As someone who attended two of the most famous film schools, I often get asked which film program is the best. Historically, NYU and USC have been known as the ‘big two’ of film schools with each trading off over the years for bragging rights as to the school with the more prestigious alumni and pedigree. Following up close behind are UCLA as well as Columbia. In truth, while USC and NYU claim a long list of successful graduates and alumni that have had illustrious careers after attending them, all these programs are worthwhile depending on what you are trying to get out of them.

Before selecting a film school it is important to understand a few things. First, film is an entrepreneurial business. Nobody is going to hand you a job, you have to create opportunities for yourself. Your talent and craft can be worked on and honed but at the end of the day your social and networking skills as well as your ingenuity in getting funding or sponsors for your projects are skills that are just as important as the quality of your filmmaking or writing.

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The most popular and widely used rankings for undergraduate programs is undoubtedly, the US News and World Report rankings. Usually when someone gives an overall ranking to a school in the US, this is the number they are referring to. These rankings do not in fact measure the university as a whole; they measure primarily indicators related to undergraduate education. So that number isn’t as meaningful as you might think it is. In any case, whether you decide that the rankings are a perfectly accurate and useful tool for choosing a university, or not, you should know what the number means. Let’s look at the methodology of the US News and World Report rankings, and some critiques of it.

The Methodology and Critiques

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