Funds and Roses
I've finally gotten myself situated at Rose-Hulman. It is truly refreshing to be a grad student at a school that actually supports its students.
At ISU, I received a stipend for teaching classes and a tuition waiver to allow me to take classes. However, they also charged a per-credit hour fee, a "technology fee" and often this or that other extra fee, such that the first $1000 of my stipend each semester would go right back to the school. Here at Rose, I'm not getting a stipend because they have only about 2 per department, but my tuition scholarship covers everything. There's no fees I have to pay, no extra charges for the services on campus, and no hassles! I do have to pay $108/quarter for the mandatory student health insurance, but hey, I now have health insurance!
As for the quality of education, so far so good. The professors all seem to be genuinely concerned with education, and they all have light-hearted, friendly way of bombarding me with information that is not quite (but almost) over my head. Compare that to classes at ISU, where I routinely fell asleep in any lecture after 12:00. Maybe it's just that subject matter is actually new and interesting, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.
As for Rose itself, well, geeks are geeks, wherever you go. This place basically feels just like WPI. I haven't managed to locate an equivalent to the Wedge just yet, but I'm sure it exists. (I'll have to ask the folks at the Anime Club tonight.) Rose students are indistinguishable from WPI students, and the campus is engineered in the same way, with odd architecture plenty of greenery and hills on campus. Instead of secret underground tunnels, however, we have skybridges. Most of the academic buildings are connected through some hallway or another, such that I don't actually have to go outside to get to any of my classes!
Another interesting parallel: where Worcester has the Turtle Boy Love Statue, Rose-Hulman has what I'd call a "Fish Girl Love Statue" (sorry, no photo). It's a little marble statue of a naked girl holding onto the upper lip of a very large fish between her legs. I wonder if it's supposed to be an analogy, or just some sort of activity they'd like to promote here.
EDIT: Like the good engineering school it is, everything is a little bit quirky here at Rose. I had no ones, so I put a five in the change machine. I instantly got back two Presidential dollar coins, a Susan B. Anthony, 6 quarters, and 10 nickels!
At ISU, I received a stipend for teaching classes and a tuition waiver to allow me to take classes. However, they also charged a per-credit hour fee, a "technology fee" and often this or that other extra fee, such that the first $1000 of my stipend each semester would go right back to the school. Here at Rose, I'm not getting a stipend because they have only about 2 per department, but my tuition scholarship covers everything. There's no fees I have to pay, no extra charges for the services on campus, and no hassles! I do have to pay $108/quarter for the mandatory student health insurance, but hey, I now have health insurance!
As for the quality of education, so far so good. The professors all seem to be genuinely concerned with education, and they all have light-hearted, friendly way of bombarding me with information that is not quite (but almost) over my head. Compare that to classes at ISU, where I routinely fell asleep in any lecture after 12:00. Maybe it's just that subject matter is actually new and interesting, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.
As for Rose itself, well, geeks are geeks, wherever you go. This place basically feels just like WPI. I haven't managed to locate an equivalent to the Wedge just yet, but I'm sure it exists. (I'll have to ask the folks at the Anime Club tonight.) Rose students are indistinguishable from WPI students, and the campus is engineered in the same way, with odd architecture plenty of greenery and hills on campus. Instead of secret underground tunnels, however, we have skybridges. Most of the academic buildings are connected through some hallway or another, such that I don't actually have to go outside to get to any of my classes!
Another interesting parallel: where Worcester has the Turtle Boy Love Statue, Rose-Hulman has what I'd call a "Fish Girl Love Statue" (sorry, no photo). It's a little marble statue of a naked girl holding onto the upper lip of a very large fish between her legs. I wonder if it's supposed to be an analogy, or just some sort of activity they'd like to promote here.
EDIT: Like the good engineering school it is, everything is a little bit quirky here at Rose. I had no ones, so I put a five in the change machine. I instantly got back two Presidential dollar coins, a Susan B. Anthony, 6 quarters, and 10 nickels!