Overview
College guides written by students for students.
Your ultimate source for honest, unbiased information, College Prowler delivers an inside look at the top colleges and universities in the United States. While writing our series of college guides, we felt it was critical that our content was unbiased and unaffiliated with any college or university.
We think it’s important that our readers get honest information and a realistic impression of the student opinions on any college campus—that’s why we intend to publish information about all aspects of a particular college, even the terrible parts you wouldn’t find in a campus brochure. While we do keep an eye out for the occasional extremist—the cheerleader or the cynic—we take pride in letting the college students tell it like it is. We strive to create a college guide that’s as representative as possible of each particular campus. Our guides cover both the good and the bad, and whether the survey responses point to recurring trends or a variation in opinion, these sentiments are directly and proportionally expressed through our guides.
College Prowler guides are in the hands of students throughout the entire process of their creation. Because you can’t make student-written guides without the students, we have students at each college campus who help write, randomly survey their peers, edit, and perform accuracy checks for every college guide that we publish. From the very beginning, student writers gather the most up-to-date stats, facts, and inside information on their colleges. They fill each section with student quotes and summarize the findings in editorial reviews. In addition, each college oruniversity receives a collection of letter grades (A through F) that reflect student opinion and help to represent contentment, prominence, or satisfaction in each of our 20 specific categories. Just as in grade school, the higher the mark the more content, more prominent, or more satisfied the students are with the particular category.
Once a college guide is written, additional college students serve as editors and check for accuracy even more extensively. Our bounce-back team—a group of randomly selected students who have no involvement with the project—are asked to read over the material in order to help ensure that the guide accurately expresses every aspect of the university and its students. This same process is applied to the nearly 300 colleges and universities College Prowler currently covers. Each guide is the result of endless student contributions, hundreds of pages of research and writing, and countless hours of hard work. All of this has led to the creation of a student information network that stretches across the nation to every college that we cover. It’s no easy accomplishment, but it’s the reason that our college guides are such a great resource.
When reading our guides and looking at our college rankings, keep in mind that every college is different and that the students who make up each college are not uniform—as a result, it is important to assess colleges on a case-by-case basis. Because it’s impossible to summarize an entire college with a single number or description, each guide provides a dialogue, not a decision, that’s made up of 20 different topics and hundreds of student quotes. In the end, we hope that this guide will serve as a valuable tool in your college selection process. Enjoy!
Synopsis
College guides written by students for students.
Georgia Tech Students
Tell It Like It Is
Forget about being a freshman. RATS are the fresh meat here at Georgia Tech. As the Recently-Acquired Tech Students, incoming students have RAT caps, and there are rules for the upkeep of the hats. Freshman cheers are also a part of this tradition. Upperclassmen settle for the freshmen to wear their caps during football games, rather than the entire quarter.
"There are three things students here want: a social life, good grades, and sleep. You can only have two." This quote has been spoken to many freshmen, and most feel it is true.
Good grades: You will be expected to learn things without supervision, and you will be held to very high standards.
Social life: Tech is known as a research institute, and consequently, the social scene might seem a little lame for people who expect to find a party on every corner on any given night.
Sleep: Well, good luck squeezing that in.
It is true that many Tech students might sometimes wish that they had chosen another, less demanding school for college. But in the end, everyone seems to be happy with their choice. Working your butt off has its rewards. Many see the school as a sort of "proving ground" for professional life.
"I'll be proud of my five-year degree! And yes, it usually takes five years to get out."
"I truly enjoy Georgia Tech, but I work really hard. You get your money's worth, but you really have to try your hardest. I really love all the people I've met so far."
Just make sure you figure out what D-Day, Dead Week, the Word, and Pink Slips are.They aren't quite what you think. Find out if Georgia Tech truly has something for you, straight from the students' mouths.
Visiting campus isn't enough.
Read our Georgia Tech insider's guide and discover what it feels like to be on campus for 4 years.
Discover if Georgia Tech is Right For You.
The Boston Globe
The prospective college student's antidote to the Princeton Review doldrums.