The*Empress

Rate Gallaudet from 10 to 0

10 perfect perfect perfect
9 almost perfect
8 I graduated from there, ofc I love it
7 I like it
6 need improvement
5 eh it is okay
4 I rate that college a C minus.
3 heck, NTID is the best!!!!
2 it sucks, give me hard time.
1 horrible horrible horrible
0 I hate it, it deserves a big fat F minus.

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The*Empress

Wow, 12 people looked in here, 3 people voted, and no reply.

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Endymion

I think Gallaudet has its perks and has created some very successful deaf people.

But the most important factor that comes into play here is that I intend to send my future kids (I have to make them first! ) to at least a Tier 1 school. Unfortunately, Gallaudet is not on the Tier 1 list.

The list, if you're so inclined.

In fact, I would much rather send them to a place at the top of the Tier 1 list. I'm thinking of the likes of Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley.

The*Empress

20 people looked in and only 6 people voted and no reply.

More???

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Endymion

Give it a little time? I figure over a day or so you'll get up to the twenties.

The*Empress

Thank endy, I'll give them time.

Yeah, but harvard, yale, princeton are too expensive.

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Catmandu

I have never been to Gally or I visit there before

Endymion

No problem.

And yes, they are expensive. But they're also worth it. If you graduate from a top twenty school, you have huge career opportunities.

Let's put all that in perspective. Let's say you go to Harvard Law School. You graduate with a simple JD degree. It costs you more than a hundred thousand dollars to get that degree.

But now you have a Harvard Law degree. What do you do? You end up with a plethora of job offers. Let's say you work as a simple Associate Lawyer for a major patent firm. How much money do you make? Maybe $250 an hour. Minus a few expenses from the firm (Subtract maybe 50?). What does that mean? If you bill 40 hours a week and take a break here and there, you're approaching $400,000 a year.

What happens if you graduate from a school like the Washburn School of Law in Kansas? Not as much, though you still can make quite some money if you're smart about it.

A top-twenty degree is definitely worth it. Pull out some loans, stick in for the long term if you think you can do it, and do it. But make sure it's something you will enjoy doing first. No point in going to law school and then realizing when you're half done that you want to become a realtor.

As an added bit of information, I don't think DVR will cover tuition for a private school. Fortunately, the University of California at Berkeley is a public institution, and that means DVR will pay for your education if you want to go the DVR route. That's a "free" top-20 education right there!

Cousin Vinny

Well, I wouldn't do just that. A lot of these Tier 1 schools have classrooms of 150+ students on the undergraduate level, being taught by graduate assistants. Really, there are not a lot of benefits in attending a Tier 1 school for undergraduate studies when you can do so cheaply and better in a local publically-funded state university.

However, for graduate-level and doctoral-level degrees, then Tier 1 schools begin to show their superiority and it does pay to study there as opposed to attending a local publically-funded state university.

If you have D/HH children, why not allow them to attend Gally or RIT? After all, on the undergraduate level, these two universities are comparable to Tier 1 schools, and they have a much better social situation.

And yes, it would have been very nice if I could have gone to Harvard Law School! My poor gpa at Gally all but ended my aspirations in attending an Ivy institution for my law school studies.

Teresh

I've never been to Gallaudet... But if I was raising a dhh child, I probably would send them to RIT or CSUN. I've heard a lot of negative things about Gally from anyone who is not an isolationist Deafie who happens to go or have gone there.

My hearing loss is genetic, but since I'm incapable of having children no one will ever inherit that, at least not from me, but either way, I've never heard anything really positive about Gallaudet. The academics are supposedly weak and the social situation for non-Deaf people is nil. The latter reason alone would be a valid reason to not send a kid there, and the former reason is just another reason why it's not worth it.

As much as it would seem fancifully nice to send my child(ren) to a tier 1 school, there's just one problem if they're dhh. Social life would be nil. Hearing people avoid deaf people anyway, and if you need an interpreter to communicate well with them the chances of making more than two or three friends in the four years you spend in university are slim to none as no one wants to talk through an interpreter all the time.

RIT and CSUN are different because a deaf student going there is not the only one (or two) of the sort. At RIT, there's well over 1000 and at CSUN I'm told there's a respectable hundred or so. Not the majority in either case, but still a respectable minority. If I were raising a dhh child, he or she would not be able to make very many friends at Harvard, even if the education is better.

Being a university student is not all about academics. There are strong social reasons to go to university, and RIT, CSUN and Gally are the only ones who provide that for dhh people. It's a limited set of options... But they're the only ones that will benefit both the academics of the student and the social needs of the student.

Dr. Strangelove

Gallaudet is the Deaf Mecca, wether you like it or not. I myself am a student there currently, and while nothing is perfect, I consider this to be a very good school, and the BEST SCHOOL IN THE WORLD for deaf studies and to become an interpreter.
I have vistited RIT and CSUN. While they may be more sophiscated, they are not as socially advanced as Gallaudet.

The*Empress

You may be right Endy,
Cause, my cousin graduated with a master degree in psychology at Gallaudet.

And my friend graduated from all black college with bachelor degree.

And they both worked at food stamp department, same low salary.

I thought with Master degree, they would pay you more, but nope.

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Endymion

I agree with the problem of undergraduate classes at Tier 1 schools. Academic departments also assign their least skilled teaching staff to the lower-division courses. This means not only do you have more undergraduates competing for the same professor's attention, but you also have more undergraduates competing for a generally less qualified teacher than what the department has.

Sometimes I think it's a great strategy to go to a community college to complete core requirements first. Rjr here in AD is doing that, and I think that's a smart decision.

By the way, the Tier 1 list I provided has 120 schools. There are a lot of publically funded state institutions there.

I also agree with you that the social situation is a bit more difficult. I had my challenges. For everyone it's different. I thoroughly support those who want to go to a deaf-centered four-year program and am very glad we have that option available.

Endymion

The secret to getting a great job is first getting a degree and then preparing the right way in advance. Most academic institutions have a career services office. Go visit them. They have a lot of connections and can get you quite a few leads.

For example, at the start of my junior year, the firm Stockamp & Associates came and gave a presentation on my campus about their business. They also were offering interviews for their entry level job. How much? $60,000 for an entry level position with a bachelor's degree! The job also had excellent benefits and involved a lot of travel.

All you had to do was go through Career Services.

How many people attended the Stockamp and Associates presentation? A meager twenty.

That's the problem with most approaches to job finding. Many people wait until after they graduate, and then they start learning about the job finding process. The secret is usually using your career office on campus. I also think alumni can use the career office on most universities.

That's my advice to anyone in college now. Find your career services office, get a counselor, and meet at least once every semester.

The*Empress

My cousin dream was to be vocational rehab. Counselor and she did went to career center at Gallaudet and they helped her get job in Chicago...
But then she was fired.

And my friend, her dream was to be a hairstylist, and she had business degree and license to do hair...
She share a rent to other hairstylists at beauty salon, but she didn't get enough clients and couldn't pay the rent on time, she had to quit.

So my friend and my cousin both work at food stamp department now.

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gnarlydorkette

I voted "5: eh it is okay" because I view Gallaudet as if it is right for me, ONLY.
I rated it while thinking about whether I will want to go there if I can change my schools, whether I can turn back time to my freshman year in college and I can go anywhere I want, et cetera. Gally is NOT for me. The social scene is great, but it is too much for me, a wallflower. I suspect I will end up like Liza did-- "I went to Gallaudet for 4 years, and I thought it had its pros and cons. What doesn't? Serious people tend to study in well hidden places, and I have to say I was one of them. I wasn't very social. Always studied and worked."

I am not rating it as "eh" whether people should or shouldn't go there. People have different reasons for going to colleges/universities. Right now, Gally's Ph.d Program in ASL Linguistics is just RIGHT for my husband to be in a rich Deaf milieu while studying the language in its purest form (and where else is better??) but Gally got nit for me to pursue further education unless I want to become a teacher ( ) so Gally is not the one for me.
Different strokes... people go to universities for different reason.

rjr2006

I never visited gally since I don't consider it a mainstream college.

Mookie

What about NTID? It does not sound like mainstream college to me either...

rjr2006

NTID is there for dhh to get education through RIT and I believe that NTID demands dhh to get better in English, that is the top reason why I want to increase my English level from 10th to college level.

Mookie

What about CSUN? What about community colleges? What about technology college? No big different. Once you graduate college with mainstream programs, you can get any job or any graduate program without mainstream program....

rjr2006

I am from CT and CSUN is all way on the western side of United States and that I would prefer 2,500 mile radius from CT

rjr2006

sry for going off topic

Heath

NTID is mainstream that is for sure !!!!

Cousin Vinny

Believe me, I would easily imagine that Gally's English requirements for graduating with a bachelor's to be just as demanding as RIT's requirements.

I know, Gally is often maligned for its poor English reputation among its student body, as it often admit students with poor English skills. However, such students have to pass a series of English courses in order to graduate or leave the university empty-handed.

Secondly, you said that Gally isn't a 'mainstream' university. You do make a valid point. That said, 'reverse' mainstreaming is now happening, as Gally is admitting a few hearing students for undergraduate studies. Moreover, in a short span of 4-5 years, Gally prepares Deaf students to have productive lives in mainstream society for the rest of their lives, usually 30, 40, or 50 years down the road. A nice trade-off, eh?

That all said, I'm glad there's choices other than Gally for a young Deaf high school graduate such as yourself! I didn't have that luxury back then, as I graduated from FSD way back before the ADA was even a gleam in Congress' eyes. I actually went to a technical trade school, studying electronics engineering, before deciding to junk the whole mainstream experience and went to Gally.

WhisperHorse

I cannt vote. But I do like Gally when I visited there but I dont know abt their education and everything like that. So, I will vote later!

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The*Empress

Mainstream college, you have to compete with hearing people.

I chatted with deaf guy, a student from NTID/RIT... And he was telling me how hard to get interpreters for his classes.

My experience at CSUN, I had to sign up for requests to get interpreters and notetakers. And advisors kept saying tuesday and thursday are best days to get interpreters because they aren't so busy.

And sometimes advisor would be bitching about it.... I had to waste my time argueing with her that I need interpreter.

I should have hire me my own personal interpreter and pay her wages out of my own pocket.

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Mookie

Yeah, same thing happens to community college with deaf programs. Interpreting Serive coordintor tried her best to schedule the hundred deaf students to smooth out in any college courses. It is not very easy task to work out with deaf students. Sometimes it works to ask students to join same college course instead of having different time/day, night courses, and weekend. PIA to have whole deaf students on M W F in mornings.

I attend to the well known business unviersity. Some interpreters would te