Boston College?

[StarvingStudentYeah]

It's official, I'm sending my acceptance and deposit in tomorrow. I'll be in the M.A Mental Health Counseling and will hope to continue onto a PhD in Counseling Psych following that.

Anyone else choosing BC?

[MissingVandyCandy]

I've been admitted to a PhD in the social sciences at BC, however, I am inclined not to go because I'm concerned that the social life within the graduate school is very bare. Do you have any positive views that you might be able to share to quell my anxiety. First, my program is small (5 in the cohort) and current students told me their is little intermingling with other grad students accross Law, Education, and other core disciplines. That is very dissapointing news to me given that the students (probably mostly undergrad seemed cool and social and attractive etc etc)... but I've heard that most grad students treat BC like a commuter school - come to class to their time then go back to their apartments and study - very little sense of social or intellectual community. Maybe its diff from program to program and maybe this is just grad school life in a city in general, but I was hoping there would be more of a social community - that's the whole benefit of academia and a career in a university no?

Please please please tell me if you got a different impression. I love my program at BC, but don't want to spend 6 years with my thumb up my you know what in my apartment or wondering the streets with 2 ppl in my cohort in Boston.

[StarvingStudentYeah]

Yeah, I can definitely confirm that I have a very different idea of how things will be in Boston. As an FYI, my wife did her undergrad at BU, and I'm quite familiarl with Boston.

I can't say how your dept will be, but I can tell you that all of the students in my program have reported that they are a very cohesive and close-knit who go out quite a bit together.

Regardless, Boston is the premier academic location in the US (nowhere else is even close), and Boston is literally a city made up of college students (of all ages) and young professionals. The scene in Boston is an young and educated as you will find anywhere. There are literally over a hundred schools in Boston. In one short bike ride you can pass multiple campuses. What this means socially, is that just about any bar/coffee shop you go into you will be surrounded by engaged and interesting minds having interesting and lively conversations about anything you can think of, and from a very multicultural perspective.

Of the ridiculous number of schools, many of them are HEAVY hitters. Aside from BC (named one of 25 new ivies) you have BU (most nobel laureates on staff in the US), Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, Tufts, Brandeis, Northeaster, etc, etc, etc. In my view, it's a social boon.

Academia and college type realities drip from the walls in Boston.

[lunan3773]

I'm actually also thinking about the Mental Health Counseling program at BC. I am trying to decided between that program and the Mental Health and Behavioral Medicine program at BU. I'm having a tough time making the decision. Hopefully the Accepted Students day at BC will make help me to make the decision. Do you know how many people are in the BC MH Counseling Program or how many people they usually accept?