• Amy Laskowski

    Senior Writer Twitter Profile

    Photo of Amy Laskowski. A white woman with long brown hair pulled into a half up, half down style and wearing a burgundy top, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey backdrop.

    Amy Laskowski is a senior writer at Boston University. She is always hunting for interesting, quirky stories around BU and helps manage and edit the work of BU Today’s interns. She did her undergrad at Syracuse University and earned a master’s in journalism at the College of Communication in 2015. Profile

Comments & Discussion

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There are 19 comments on Getting in: A Little Tougher Every Year

  1. As long as MIT, BC, and Harvard stay across the river or down the B line, BU will continue to be a safety school. I will never understand the rush to become an elite institution.

    1. I don’t think BC should be mentioned in the same sentence as MIT and Harvard. That’s just disrespectful towards those institutions.

    2. I’m really disappointed to hear uneducated comments based on social media, statistics and brand names. I’m a BU student and I could care less whether BU becomes elite or not. I believe one’s capabilities are not based on a school brand. I believe one’s capabilities are masured upon the individual. At this “safety school” as you refer to @huh? I learned the value of working with a global community. I have learned the meaning of being a decent human being and respect others for whom they are. Students here come from different backgrounds just like the institutions across the river. We are all students and yes we are all different, but that’s life and that’s okay too. However, I would not label any of our peer’s institutions based on statistics or what others say..because I know that not the real deal.
      Best,
      BU senior
      Have a wonderful day everyone and be kind.. It cost zero money.

    3. How do you define “elite”? There are over 2,500 4 year institutions in the US. Are only the top 20 “elite”? If so, that’s a very small percent.

      Regardless, BU and BC are now very competitive with each other. Maybe you’re a bit behind on current higher education demographics

    4. The biggest reason BU continues to become more competitive and “elite” is because the quality of education, and the university experience has improved tremendously.

      When I was a student in 2003, the student to faculty ratio was 16:1, education programs were weaker, the facilities were much worse, students were pretty unhappy with the administration (this was before Brown), and major research wasn’t as strong. Also, fianancial aid for students with needs was worse (it’s still not ideal, but better than it used to be). Just in the four years I was there, the university experience improved remarkably.

      Because of all of these changes, more students want to attend BU, and the dropout rate has fallen (which lowers the freshman class size while keeping the overal student population constant). If you care about the university, and the students at BU, then you should want the university to improve. If the university improves, more students will want to attend – it’s as simple as that

  2. It’s just difficult to hear that even more people are kept out of the education system for colleges are so focused on needing to be the best. Why can’t we just offer quality education for everyone? This should not be a business, education should not be a commodity. Rankings don’t mean anything when most people don’t even have the chance to really succeed. This is just glorifying the rich and wealthy for being rich and wealthy while not letting the poor get the chance. The ironic part is, I learned this at BU.

    1. Exactly, applicants are more than their GPA and SAT scores. Which repeatedly favor wealthier students. Very disappointed that BU is just continuing the status quo. Also for a school the size of BU, that percentage of unrepresented students is very disappointing.

      1. What do you propose? BU can only accommodate a certain number of students from a facilities and staffing standpoint. If the number of applicants increases, inherently the acceptance rate will fall. Admitting everyone only waters down the quality of student who is admitted to BU. At some level, the onus is on the student to achieve both in and out of the classroom prior to applying to college. Where BU can improve is seeking out quality applicants from minority high schools and better targeting financial aid to those minority students who’ve proved they meet the admission requirements. But to unilaterally allow everyone into college regardless of merit is a fast track to making a bachelor’s degree irrelevant. Students have to prove their academic merit, while BU and other colleges must do better to close the financial restriction gap.

  3. The rankings are a total sham because they don’t count transfers or freshmen who enter in the January term. The whole push to get BU to an “elite” status is simply to justify the ever increasing tuition and fees that have reached a ludicrous level. But, hey, if you want to charge $65,000 – $70,000 to students annually, then you better be “elite” or how can you possibly justify that amount of money? At the same time that Brown is playing the numbers game to increase the school’s ranking, he is also slowing chipping away at the liberal arts and at general education by creating a task force to redefine what courses provided “critical thinking skills” (all, pretty much in his task force’s definition). It’s a shame people and it is sad that you are all falling for it. The flim flam man is earning 1.8 million in salary and pulling off the greatest show on earth by making you think that BU is becoming an elite school where you should be happy to drop $65,000 or more a year for what will eventually be simply a technical education rather than a university education. Right now BU is a GOOD school and some of its colleges are truly excellent. It has its advantages in being an intercity university and also its disadvantages (in being large) — but ultimately students get out of their university experience what they are willing to put into it, no matter what the cost or what the rankings are.

  4. Students from the Middle Class find it difficult to apply Early Decision to ANY institution. Sticker price is out of our range, and we don’t know what kind of financial awards we will get. Even if we get into BU, we may not be able to go (> $150K in student loans may not be the best path). So, we apply Early Action to our alternate schools and apply Regular Decision here….so even though BU is one of our top choices, we must wait.

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