College Questions

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

Does anyone have any first hand experiences of Southern Catholic College, Ave Maria University, The University of St. Thomas in Houston, or Belmont Abbey College? Specifically on how their philosophy/theology courses are in teaching in accordance with Rome, how active they are in living the Catholic Faith, and how well adapted their atmospheres are for discerning a religious vocation? Also, for Benedictine College in KS, does anyone know how demanding their academics are? I'm just starting my college search again after not having the greatest visit at Steubenville and recently coming to wonder if the academics at BC are really good after not being eligible for the presidential scholarship because they unweight grades of everyone in honors/AP courses and my mom couldn't get a straight answer on whether or not my AP credits would be accepted there (the academic dean and headmaster at my high-school are wondering the same thing). Thank you very much for any input you may have.

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe

[goldenchild17]

A good friend of mine goes to UST in Houston and as far as I know she likes it. I don't have any experience personally with any of them though.

[aalpha1989]

[quote name='NazFarmer' post='1454398' date='Feb 2 2008, 12:11 AM']Does anyone have any first hand experiences of Southern Catholic College, Ave Maria University, The University of St. Thomas in Houston, or Belmont Abbey College? Specifically on how their philosophy/theology courses are in teaching in accordance with Rome, how active they are in living the Catholic Faith, and how well adapted their atmospheres are for discerning a religious vocation? Also, for Benedictine College in KS, does anyone know how demanding their academics are? I'm just starting my college search again after not having the greatest visit at Steubenville and recently coming to wonder if the academics at BC are really good after not being eligible for the presidential scholarship because they unweight grades of everyone in honors/AP courses and my mom couldn't get a straight answer on whether or not my AP credits would be accepted there (the academic dean and headmaster at my high-school are wondering the same thing). Thank you very much for any input you may have.

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe[/quote]


I've looked at BC and found the academics extremely lacking. They have no honors program, and the average ACT score is pretty low. I've applied there and wanted to go there for a long time, and am now extremely disappointed. I found, as you have, that they didn't (don't) exactly just answer questions. It is really almost like they hide important aspects of their college. They exaggerate the spirituality on campus, and don't talk much about academics. I'm scared to choose a college.

[Farsight one]

[quote name='NazFarmer' post='1454398' date='Feb 2 2008, 12:11 AM']Also, for Benedictine College in KS, does anyone know how demanding their academics are?[/quote]
It depends very much on the professor. I had one professor who demanded so much of me that I had to drop the class. He was demanding that I skip other classes and lunch and such to get his brainchild of a project going and my other class grades were suffering severely for it. Of course, I had another professor who asked for a page paper a week. I turned in two all semester and still got an A.

Over all, I wouldn't call BC academically demanding, but rather firm in their academic commands. It's certainly not a pushover school and some classes can be quite demanding, but you'll never have to do anything silly like come to your first class of the semester with a 20 pg paper already completed as some professors at other schools will ask.

I would be able to help you a lot better if I knew your area of study and a few other things.

I had eight relatives graduate from there before me(including my grandpa in 1934), I know every resident director(though not all of them will remember me), a relative of mine works there(pretty high up), and I've got a couple dozen friends that are still students there. If you've got more questions about BC, I'm your man.

Edit in - I do think the new dean is really going to hurt BC a lot if they don't get rid of her quick though. She really does remind me of Hilary Clinton, who reminds me of a lobbyist - you know, the people who are hired to ignore the facts and simply promote the cause they were hired to promote. From your comment about not getting a straight answer, I'm gonna say that it was either her your mother talked to, or it was her who taught whomever your mother talked to what to say.

Edited February 2, 2008 by Farsight one

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

[quote name='Farsight one' post='1454422' date='Feb 2 2008, 01:00 AM']It depends very much on the professor. I had one professor who demanded so much of me that I had to drop the class. He was demanding that I skip other classes and lunch and such to get his brainchild of a project going and my other class grades were suffering severely for it. Of course, I had another professor who asked for a page paper a week. I turned in two all semester and still got an A.

Over all, I wouldn't call BC academically demanding, but rather firm in their academic commands. It's certainly not a pushover school and some classes can be quite demanding, but you'll never have to do anything silly like come to your first class of the semester with a 20 pg paper already completed as some professors at other schools will ask.

I would be able to help you a lot better if I knew your area of study and a few other things.

I had eight relatives graduate from there before me(including my grandpa in 1934), I know every resident director(though not all of them will remember me), a relative of mine works there(pretty high up), and I've got a couple dozen friends that are still students there. If you've got more questions about BC, I'm your man.

Edit in - I do think the new dean is really going to hurt BC a lot if they don't get rid of her quick though. She really does remind me of Hilary Clinton, who reminds me of a lobbyist - you know, the people who are hired to ignore the facts and simply promote the cause they were hired to promote. From your comment about not getting a straight answer, I'm gonna say that it was either her your mother talked to, or it was her who taught whomever your mother talked to what to say.[/quote]
I'm planning on majoring in philosophy and theology. The main reason I'm asking about the academics, though, is because I take an all honors/AP track at my high-school, and my grades are weighted. BC unweighted the grades, which makes me ineligible for their presidential scholarship (after telling me before that I would be eligible for it), and they claim that they unweight them to be fair to everyone, which doesn't make much sense to anyone I know because the courses I'm taking are harder than the average courses. Plus, after inquiring farther and getting my headmaster, the Abbot of the Abbey that runs my school, and the academic dean to inquire about it, none of us understand why they unweight the grades. Have you ever heard of anything like this happening at BC before?

Thank you all for your input, as well. Please keep it coming!

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe

[Farsight one]

[quote name='NazFarmer' post='1454426' date='Feb 2 2008, 01:23 AM']I'm planning on majoring in philosophy and theology.[/quote]Ah. Very solid philosophy program, IMO. I am dead serious when I say that I think Dr. Madden is as smart/philosophically wise as some of the great philosophers of history (aquinas, aristotle. y'know. those guys). I would not have anywhere near the debate or deep thinking skills I have today if it were not for him. The others are pretty darn solid too.

As for religion - it's pretty good, but it was a lot stronger a few years ago when Dr. Sri was a professor. He still comes back once a semester to teach a weekend course, but it's not the same. The problem is that the religion program was pretty small there, and it exploded. It something like tripled in size from one year to the next, and then the new size tripled again the next year because of all the students wanting to major in theology. This spread things thin, and put a strain on the school to find good theology professors. They've got some pretty good ones, but they're still playing catch-up from the boom, and it shows. It should all be fixed in the next couple of years unless there's another theology boom(which I doubt will happen). I even heard a rumor that Dr. Sri is coming back, but that is just a rumor.

I will say that most theology students are energetic enough about their faith that they pretty much unintentionally teach themselves everything that went missing because of the "great theology boom of '05"


[quote]The main reason I'm asking about the academics, though, is because I take an all honors/AP track at my high-school, and my grades are weighted. BC unweighted the grades, which makes me ineligible for their presidential scholarship (after telling me before that I would be eligible for it), and they claim that they unweight them to be fair to everyone, which doesn't make much sense to anyone I know because the courses I'm taking are harder than the average courses. Plus, after inquiring farther and getting my headmaster, the Abbot of the Abbey that runs my school, and the academic dean to inquire about it, none of us understand why they unweight the grades. Have you ever heard of anything like this happening at BC before?

Thank you all for your input, as well. Please keep it coming!

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe[/quote]By "unweight the grades" do you mean that an A in an AP class is more than a 4.0 at your high school, but BC brings it back down to a 4.0?

I *think* this is done because different high schools weight ap classes differently. At my high school an A in an ap class was a 4.4, and a B was a 3.3, etc. In some high schools, an A in an ap class goes as high as a 7.?? and a B is still a 5.??. So even if a person that went to my high school got straight A's, they could still have a worse gpa than a straight B student at some other schools. Would it make much sense to give the presidential scholarship to the B student over the A student for no real reason other than that the B student's school weighted ap classes heavier? And then, not all schools HAVE ap courses to take.

I couldn't really tell you for sure. I'll ask a few of my friends for you though. One's even a professor.

I've never personally heard of it before, but the only friend I have that went for the presidential scholarship got it. Very easily. She was a shoe-in.

[missionseeker]

Southern Catholic College student. (second semester sophomore)

Philosophy and Sacred Theology major, actually.

Our humanities department is amazing!~ This is no lie. We really do have some of the smartest people teaching philosophy and theology.

My advisor, Dr. Hartmann- the philosophy head- is from TAC. He is so brilliant. I love him to death. Not only is he brilliant, he really cares about this school and us. He's almost like a grandfather figure. He comes to eat lunch and dinner with us, we sometimes go to his house (he let me cook there once). He's amazing. He also has a facebook group of students who love him from his other schools, something like 200 loyal members. lol. I'm sure that if you wanted you could message him (Herbert Hartmann) and ask him specific questions. He's not always the best at responding, though.

Dr. Urbanczyk teaches the intro courses. I've never actually had him as a phi. professor - only as a lit professor~ he's an AMAZING lit professor- I can't really tell you much about his philosophy glasses.

Theology- we have 3 wonderful theology professors. 1 is the director of liturgy for the archdiocese, 1 is a cannon lawyer and 1is a layman who studied in Rome for his STD. They are all really great and completely orthodox.

Fr. Higgins is an amazing priest. He's our chaplain and we love him so much. We actually never thought we;d love him as much as we do because we loved our last one so much- we were wary of newcomers.He sincerely cares about us. he also used to be the director of vocations for the diocese of Atlanta. We have a seminarian here and one who transfered, so the resources for that are there. We have adoration every morning, Mass every day, confessions scheduled four times a week (for an hour at a time with adoration, however, he'll stay for more than an hour if he needs to- sometimes on the big one (wednesdays 9-10pm) he'll stay for an hour longer or more. I've seen the daily Mass crowd double or tripple at least. There's barely room in the chapel anymore and in fact, our Ash Wednesday Mass will be in the ballroom because the chapel is too small. Holy days we have 2 or 3 Masses. Plus Father is always there to help us and talk to us. He's really great. Completely orthodox, no funny things in the Mass, no weird homilies, ect.

The humanities academic-wise are pretty good. They probably could be tougher, but they aren't breeze through them classes. You do actually have to do the assigned work if you want to do your best.

However, the science department is a little bit lacking, I'm told. I haven't taken a science class yet, though, so I don't know firsthand.

The atmosphere on campus is... interesting. It's a tiny school. You'll live in a very small social enviornment. Things sometimes tend to be blown out of proportion. But it is mostly nice to have such a support. However, like a family, there are times when we can't stand each other lol. We have our groups of partiers, like an school. But generally, it is a Christian attitude that you find in the students.

I would love to say to wonderful things about our administration, but I cannot, really.

If you have anymore questions, feel free to PM.

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

missionseeker, thank you for your reply: I sent a pm with more questions for you.

Farsightone, I see where you're coming from with not all schools weight grades (and yes, by weighting grades I mean A's are worth more than a 4: A=5, B=4, C=3, D=2, F=0), and while this does make it more fair to those who are not in honors/AP courses, the fact remains that those courses are harder and more demanding than the regular courses. That's what I'm struggling to understand: while unweighting the grades makes it fairer to those who are not in AP/honors courses, it makes it unfair to those who are in those courses. I could have taken the regular courses and gotten a 4.0 and been eligible for the presidential scholarship, but decided to challenge myself instead, and I'm suffering for it. That's what makes no sense to me.

Does anyone have any info on AMU, STU, or Belmont Abbey? Thank you again!

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe

[missionseeker]

my sister is at AMU- I can forward questions to her, if you'd like.

I will answer your PM soon.

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

Please do! Just the same questions as I have above, and also on if she knows if AMU unweights grades, which is another thing, does SCC do that? Thank you very much!

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe

[missionseeker]

I don't know about SCC, my sister works in Admissions, though, so she may be able to asnwer that better than I could...

[filiusInFilio]

2nd Semester Freshman at AMU

As far as the weighted grade question, i'm not sure but i will PM you the number of the admissions counselor who talked me into AMU.

Class experience is very nice if you enjoy small classes. Your core classes are going to have the most people (17-25) people. The closer you get to graduating, you can be in a class with 3 or 4 other people. Some people really don't like this idea but I love it. My professors are very very VERY willing to work with me if I have any questions.

Spiritual life on campus is great too. Mass 3 times a day Mon-Fri. 2 on Sat (one is a vigil) and 4 on Sunday. daily confession. frequent Holy hours. Chapels in every dorm (only one has the Blessed Sacrament, we are waiting on the Bishop's approval to have Jesus in the other dorms).

As far as scholarships and what not. AMU was pretty generous with me. I was planning on going to a state school back home in TX and so AMU just didn't cross my mind too much but through Providence I applied one night in May and I received a call from an admissions counselor telling me what I still need to do to see how much scholarship money I could receive. He got back with me a week or so later to tell me I received a $10,000 scholarship every year for 4 yrs, and a 3,500 scholarship. ( all of this was on top of Federal scholarships btw) Anyways, I'm only paying about 1000 out of pocket so i think i'm in pretty good shape, and this happened a couple of weeks before graduation so i'm sure they'll hook you up with scholarships. But then again nothing is certain.

anyway, PM if you have more questions

[missionarybelle]

a friend of mine goes to belmont abbey. she's majoring in business management. if you have specific questions, i can get them to her or i can ask her if she knows anyone majoring in philosophy/theology who could answer your questions.

[CrossCuT]

[size=1]What about St. Thomas in Minnesota?

They have an amazing seminary!
[/size]

[Fr. Antony Maria OSB]

[quote name='missionarybelle' post='1454648' date='Feb 2 2008, 05:49 PM']a friend of mine goes to belmont abbey. she's majoring in business management. if you have specific questions, i can get them to her or i can ask her if she knows anyone majoring in philosophy/theology who could answer your questions.[/quote]
Missionarybelle, if you could ask your friend some questions that would be awesome! Really the questions that I have are how are the philosophy/theology courses in teaching in accordance with Rome? How active is the community in living the Catholic Faith? How well adapted is the atmosphere are for discerning a religious vocation? And overall how welcoming is the community? Thank you very much!

CrossCut, right now I'm trying to keep my search for colleges within the colleges which hold the Mandatum, and while I am discerning the priesthood, I don't feel as though God is calling me to college seminary. Thank you, though.'

May God bless and protect you always in all of your endeavors!

Your Brother in Christ,

Joe