Friday: UGA
On Friday, as planned, radiantbaby and I hopped up to UGA.
The trip took longer than I expected. Traffic around exit 14 (shopping and construction). Traffic around Mall of Georgia. Traffic around Lawrenceville for no apparent reason. Yuck. Fortunately we'd left early. We got to the University and found a parking garage near campus just in time for the weekly 1:00 transfer student Q&A session.
There were about 8 prospective transfer students there -- many more than usual, from the sound of it. Most of them were younger and transferring in from current coursework at other schools; radiantbaby and I were the only ones who'd been away for a while. The rules for permitting transfer are annoyingly arcane and unfortunately bureaucratic. Since at least one other person on my friends list was curious, I'll record them (as I understand them) here:
The arcane bit is that the credits used for "transferable credit hours" (my term; not theirs) and the credits used for GPA are different, and it's quite possible that neither is what you think it is. Here's the spiel as I've arranged it in my head:
After the about-an-hour Q&A session radiantbaby and I had lunch at The Grill, stopped by the classics building to take some pics of the Athena statue, and went back to campus to visit the actual classics department. We found it, but it was pretty inactive since it was the last day of exams before Christmas break. The department head was around, though, so he kindly took some time to chat with us. I was amused to note the Labyrinth Books catalog front-and-center on his desk as we came in, given its recent appearance in my own journal. Speaking with him, I was surprised to learn that the American education is severely understaffed with Latin teachers at the high school level. That's not just an academic's idealistic "There should be more Latin teachers" sentiment, either, but in fact real paying positions people are actively trying to fill. Apparently there just aren't enough degreeholders in classical Latin to fill them all. Not surprisingly, there aren't so many positions for teachers of classical Greek. Still, it was a cozy department to hang around, and I'm quite tempted to double in ancient Greek if and when I do get back to school. We'll see.
It was almost 5 when we got out of there, so any other department offices we otherwise might've liked to visit were pretty much guaranteed to be closed. So instead we just stopped by the library. Architecturally I've seen prettier libraries, but the books... Much droolage. There will be inter-library loan in my future. Oh yes, there will be inter-library loan.
After the library it was getting a little late. It had been a long day, and radiantbaby and I were getting tired, so we sadly declined to stop by The Wuxtry. Much traffic later, we were back home in Cumming, and not too long thereafter we were in bed and asleep.
What's this all mean for me? Well, my admissions prognosis isn't good. I was hopeful going in, since my 70-something hour GPA was 2.6ish. Yeah, not great: I was pretty dumb at 18. Still, it would've been enough to meet their threshold. The problem is that I was a music major for a chunk of my time at FHSU. That means a lot of music classes. Now, private music instruction should theoretically transfer in without issue. Unfortunately the private instruction at FHSU is officially titled "Music performance: private instruction". I'm concerned that the word "performance" in a key place in the title may confuse the admissions gnomes and throw those courses into a bureaucratically-intractable nightmare. After proper music performance courses and other insufficiently-cool-for-UGA courses are removed, though, I'm already down pretty close to 60 hours, and that's best-case. Throw in the confusing private instruction and I'm almost certainly under 60 hours, which throws me up to the higher GPA requirement, which I don't meet.
I do have options, fortunately. If I can take an academic course or two at some cheesy-ass community college -- occupational courses quite rightly don't transfer -- I should be able to break back over the 60 hour mark, maintain my GPA, and transfer in properly after a semester or two. The problem is that I'm honestly not certain anymore that I want to. The education looks like it'd be fabulous, but I'm really worried about the commute and about working while going to school. The commute to school can be addressed by moving closer to Athens, which would suck but is acceptable. I'm open to working while going to school, but I don't think I could maintain my current job while living anywhere near Athens: the commute would be too much of a bitch. I've got an excellent gig right now that I'm quite happy with, so I'm in no rush to leave it for school. Even if I were to leave it, I have doubts about making anything near my current salary around Athens, and I'm a little uncomfortable taking much of a paycut for school.
So what it means for me right now is that I'll probably skip the UGA thing for now. I'm not giving up on school in general, though; just for this current chunk of my life. For now I'm going to continue to focus on making more reading time at home.
(LJ Spellchecker Genius of the trip: Wuxtry -> Vestry)
The trip took longer than I expected. Traffic around exit 14 (shopping and construction). Traffic around Mall of Georgia. Traffic around Lawrenceville for no apparent reason. Yuck. Fortunately we'd left early. We got to the University and found a parking garage near campus just in time for the weekly 1:00 transfer student Q&A session.
There were about 8 prospective transfer students there -- many more than usual, from the sound of it. Most of them were younger and transferring in from current coursework at other schools; radiantbaby and I were the only ones who'd been away for a while. The rules for permitting transfer are annoyingly arcane and unfortunately bureaucratic. Since at least one other person on my friends list was curious, I'll record them (as I understand them) here:
- Students with fewer than 30 credit hours completed are not transfer students. They have some other arcane classification that wasn't discussed on Friday.
- Students with [30-60) transferable credit hours must have a GPA of >= 3.20 to be considered for admission.
- Students with [60...) transferable credit hours must have a GPA of >= 2.50 to be considered for admission.
The arcane bit is that the credits used for "transferable credit hours" (my term; not theirs) and the credits used for GPA are different, and it's quite possible that neither is what you think it is. Here's the spiel as I've arranged it in my head:
- The first important number is the number of credit hours you'll have at UGA if your transfer is accepted. Most classes transfer credit cleanly, but some do not. Many "intro to courses do not transfer at all. Don't include any courses you failed. They'll only transfer up to one credit of PE. They'll only transfer up to four hours of music performance coursework. The precise definition of "music performance coursework" and the selection order when someone has more than four are third-degree secrets known only by the admissions gnomes, and possibly not even by them. Credit hours earned at a university with quarter-based schedules (as opposed to semester-based ones) must be divided by 1.5. The resultant number of credit hours after these calculations and exceptions (and a few others that I've left out for brevity) is the number that I'm calling "transferable credit hours". This number defines which credit-hour-based category (0-30, 30-60, 60+) you fit into. Throw away this number after you've calculated it: after all that work you won't need it again, and it'll only confuse you.
- The second important number is your GPA. This one's a bit clearer than the previous one. Calculate this one from all of your prior coursework at all past universities. This includes all of the things that the previous step didn't. Give a little arbitrary tweaking by the admissions gnomes, and you've got a past GPA. This GPA must at least match the threshold for your credit hour category. They're inflexible bitches about it. Don't make it? Sorry, try again later. Throw away this number after you've calculated it: after all that work it will probably bear little resemblance to your UGA GPA, which is based only on the courses that they actually transfer.
- After that, they'll think about it. Usually you can get in, but they have a nebulous maximum number of new students each semester, so they may just decline you. Then you get to try again (and pay again) next semester. That's only happened one semester our of the last five years, though (right after UGA won some sports championship or another, sadly enough), so it's not likely to be an issue.
After the about-an-hour Q&A session radiantbaby and I had lunch at The Grill, stopped by the classics building to take some pics of the Athena statue, and went back to campus to visit the actual classics department. We found it, but it was pretty inactive since it was the last day of exams before Christmas break. The department head was around, though, so he kindly took some time to chat with us. I was amused to note the Labyrinth Books catalog front-and-center on his desk as we came in, given its recent appearance in my own journal. Speaking with him, I was surprised to learn that the American education is severely understaffed with Latin teachers at the high school level. That's not just an academic's idealistic "There should be more Latin teachers" sentiment, either, but in fact real paying positions people are actively trying to fill. Apparently there just aren't enough degreeholders in classical Latin to fill them all. Not surprisingly, there aren't so many positions for teachers of classical Greek. Still, it was a cozy department to hang around, and I'm quite tempted to double in ancient Greek if and when I do get back to school. We'll see.
It was almost 5 when we got out of there, so any other department offices we otherwise might've liked to visit were pretty much guaranteed to be closed. So instead we just stopped by the library. Architecturally I've seen prettier libraries, but the books... Much droolage. There will be inter-library loan in my future. Oh yes, there will be inter-library loan.
After the library it was getting a little late. It had been a long day, and radiantbaby and I were getting tired, so we sadly declined to stop by The Wuxtry. Much traffic later, we were back home in Cumming, and not too long thereafter we were in bed and asleep.
What's this all mean for me? Well, my admissions prognosis isn't good. I was hopeful going in, since my 70-something hour GPA was 2.6ish. Yeah, not great: I was pretty dumb at 18. Still, it would've been enough to meet their threshold. The problem is that I was a music major for a chunk of my time at FHSU. That means a lot of music classes. Now, private music instruction should theoretically transfer in without issue. Unfortunately the private instruction at FHSU is officially titled "Music performance: private instruction". I'm concerned that the word "performance" in a key place in the title may confuse the admissions gnomes and throw those courses into a bureaucratically-intractable nightmare. After proper music performance courses and other insufficiently-cool-for-UGA courses are removed, though, I'm already down pretty close to 60 hours, and that's best-case. Throw in the confusing private instruction and I'm almost certainly under 60 hours, which throws me up to the higher GPA requirement, which I don't meet.
I do have options, fortunately. If I can take an academic course or two at some cheesy-ass community college -- occupational courses quite rightly don't transfer -- I should be able to break back over the 60 hour mark, maintain my GPA, and transfer in properly after a semester or two. The problem is that I'm honestly not certain anymore that I want to. The education looks like it'd be fabulous, but I'm really worried about the commute and about working while going to school. The commute to school can be addressed by moving closer to Athens, which would suck but is acceptable. I'm open to working while going to school, but I don't think I could maintain my current job while living anywhere near Athens: the commute would be too much of a bitch. I've got an excellent gig right now that I'm quite happy with, so I'm in no rush to leave it for school. Even if I were to leave it, I have doubts about making anything near my current salary around Athens, and I'm a little uncomfortable taking much of a paycut for school.
So what it means for me right now is that I'll probably skip the UGA thing for now. I'm not giving up on school in general, though; just for this current chunk of my life. For now I'm going to continue to focus on making more reading time at home.
(LJ Spellchecker Genius of the trip: Wuxtry -> Vestry)