For my wife, who wants to apply for a masters in history
1 - Her mamoos got their Phd and MBA from UCLA and Columbia. She wants to apply to both these places. Since some schools give you more preference when you are related to their alumni, should she mention this and how ? Even though her mamoons studied in different areas.
2 - should she explain her grades in instances when they have been low? or is this just useless? Should she send her undergraduate thesis with her application even though it is not in history, in addition to sending history writing samples?
3- she has attended classes she was not registered in and wants to do it in the interim between masters and BA as well. How easy is it to do this at universities? if she is able to attend those classes, can she, at the end of the semester, get a statement from the professor that she was in the class even though it’s not allowed since she won’t be registered in the university?
1) In her application, essays, and interviews (if they do it for her dept) she has more than enough opportunity to simply state it. they want ti know why are u interested in this university, and as she is talking about the strengtj of programs or how some research there is of personal interest t her, she can also mention that she had family that attended the university and that she is impressed with how the university keeps alumni involved and the sense of community etc that your uncles talk about etc etc
2) she should explain them, I would not go into extremely detailed explanations or they start lookign like excuses. she should note what she learnt from that experience. for the second part, I dont know about history admissions so dont know if they would want writing samples and thesis.
3) you can audit classes as a non degree student at pretty much any university. she would have to look at university policies on whether those classes can later be applied towards er degree program. it would depend heavily on whether she registred as an audit student, and if teh audit students have to do everything that degree students have to do in the class.
The Auditing Program provides adults not currently enrolled in college with the opportunity to attend **selected **lectures drawn from the University's offerings in the Arts and Sciences during the academic year.
Auditors are encouraged to attend class and to keep up with the reading. No examinations or papers are required and no grade is assigned.
Is it possible to just go into a class at a university and just sit in it and do the assignments on her own? She has already done this and she didn't have problems in her university. Can she do it at Columbia or will they definitely notice?
it depends on the university, the dept and the professor.
some unis have kicked ppl out and even charged them with trespassing
others dont care
it is less noticable in large udergrad seminar type classes where yo have hundreds of students sitting but for masters classes, it can be an issue because there are fewer people ..students know one another better and profs know students as well. so to go and sneak in may not work, and they are not too cool wit unpaying folks just hanging in their classes.
I dont know about Columbia, but at Kellogg, even Northwestern University students who were not part of the program but snuck in were booted out.
By the way, which universities kicked the people out / charged them with trespassing?
Anybody else on the undergraduate thesis question ? Can she send in her non-history thesis with the application?
*She needs to know several languages for the history program she wants to do. Anybody know about national tests / championships for French, Arabic, Persian for English speakers? Someone she went to high school participated in Greek and Latin translation competitions. In America, or NA in general. Any competitions like this in Pakistan? for college students.
*
University of Kansas (routinely kicked students out)
Kellogg/Northwestern (kicked people out and charged with trespassing)
University of Pennsylvania
Temple University (kicked people out and charged with trespassing)
Villanova University
Drexel University
Swarthmore College
Princeton University
Bryn Mawr College
University of Missouri
almost every university has rules about unauthorized entry into buildings. and if you are not an official student or going to a building for specific purposes e.g. to meet a prof or attend a seminar you are trespassing.
The rule is enforced more in urban universities, because people can get in buildings and steal university property or student property, but it does extend to people entering classes they are not authorized to be in.
Thank you all :) The more we look into this, the more worried we are. A lot of universities seem to have their libraries on a partially open access system that require university IDs. I am talking about even only going to the library to read, obviously restricting signing out of books makes sense. This means she is limited since she needs first-hand sources to study and write, before she applies for her phd. if the libraries have first hand materials limited to access by either students of that particular faculty or students in general, then that means she will be forced to work with second hand sources to write papers that are supposed to include first hand sources. Her alma mater does not have the the first hand sources she needs.
Are there others facing this problem? are there ways to get around it? it seems absurd to limit something that should be public. I know, with proper security and survellance, theft of library books, manuscripts can be prevented, but by shutting them off to everyone else, and forcing them to work with a limited data set means only certain students can excel, and only certain universities can produce the "scholars". some schools are restricting the auditing option to students as well.
We found something! Alhumdolillah. Here is the link for auditing courses at Princeton if anyone else is in the same boat. We are waiting for more details but this seems very promising.
they do have inter library loan services between many universities, but yes Princeton may not send rare manuscripts to lake walla walla tech A&M college.
