What can you tell me about the University of Massachusetts?

Factual Questions
1

This is the only school I’ve been able to find so far that offers a major in Chinese Language.

I’m trying to find some more info about the school. So, do we have any graduates? Anybody heard anything on the news about it? Anything at all you can tell me?

I’ve never heard of this place before a search engine turned it up, so anything might be helpful.

On a related note, anybody know of a good search engine for sorting colleges by major?

Thanks,

–John

'Twis brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

2

Which UMass? UMass Amherst is by far the best known. They have a pretty good basketball team (D-1, usually make it into the final 64 or so, IIRC). My father went there. It’s a pretty big school in western Mass. in a town that’s pretty much known only for colleges (UMass and Amherst College, among others). As such they have a pretty good cross-town registration program (Amherst College is one of the top small liberal arts colleges in the country).

3

Yeah, UMass Amherst.

Shoulda been clearer.

–John

'Twis brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

4

John, here’s a list of other schools I could find that offer a BA in Chinese (I’m presently doing a lot of research on where to go to grad school - this was pretty easy to obtain):

I hope all these links work right.

-Washington University in St. Louis (good school, my friend goes there).
[/urlhttp://artsci.wustl.edu/~chinese/overview.html

-BYU. You’re not a Mormon, are you? For a private school, BYU is very inexpensive, and Provo is lovely.
http://humanities.byu.edu/AsiaNE/department.html

-Ohio State. Doesn’t Libby go there? I’m sure she could give you some info.
http://deall.ohio-state.edu/webdoc/ChMaProg.htm

-Stanford. Expeeeeensive!
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/asianlang/info/asnlangbul.html#undergrad

-Indiana. Be cheap for you, yes?
http://www.indiana.edu/~ealc/UG.html

-UCLA. I hate LA, but I understand some people like it, for some reason.
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/ealc/chinba.html

-UC Berkeley. A very strange place.
http://central.itp.berkeley.edu/~eal/undergrad.html

-University of Hawai’i. Sounds like fun.
http://www.hawaii.edu/eall/degree.html

-University of Oregon.
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~eall/undergrad.html

-Harvard.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~clp/

This isn’t a complete list, I’m sure, but it’s long enough to let you know that you don’t need to get locked into the idea of attending the UMass. (Although I’ve heard only good things about it and the town of Amherst.)

5

You’re a goddess, Kyla. Thanks so much.

[rant] I wish more schools put their major lists on their brochures. I get 400 of these things a month and I can never tell what they offer. [/rant]

–John

6

I took a Chinese course at the University of Texas at Austin, so I know that they have a major in Chinese. There’s probably a couple dozen universities in the U.S. that offer a major in Chinese. Since you live in Indiana, if you can’t find any other way to find a list of all the schools that offer programs in Chinese, why don’t you just go to the University of Indiana and talk to some faculty member there and ask them for other places that do Chinese?

7

You get 400 brochures a month? Huh? Let me try to understand this. You’re a senior in high school and you have 400 different schools writing you every month sending you a brochure. How does that happen?

8

I was a senior in high school not so long ago and I can tell you Yue Han is only slightly exaggerating. :slight_smile:

TMR
You will buy the ukulele, and touch every place.

9

What Trout Mask Replica said. The schools usually get your name and address, and the fact that you’re looking to attend college, from when you take the SAT, ACT, PSAT, etc.

10

When I was in high school a long time ago, er, not very long ago, I got a whole helluva lot of those brochures. The College Board sells your information to these schools so that they can recruit - it seems just like junk mail to me, but to the best of my knowledge there’s no way to stop it.

The higher you score on your tests, the more of those damn brochures you receive. But you know, if I score high on my tests, don’t they realize that actually decreases my chances of deciding to attend Bubba Gump University in Nowhereville, Ohio?

11

Yue Han: It’s been seven years since I did this myself, but your local library’s reference section should have a couple of books put out yearly (Barron’s, IIRC) that list what colleges offer degrees in the discipline you wish to pursue, and that rank those colleges’ programs as to how “good” they are. (I honestly don’t remember what their criteria were). Give that a try, let us know what you find!

All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…

12

I agree you shouldn’t tie yourself down to UMass without doing more research, but just want to add that it is situated in the Pioneer Valley, or 5-college area. The colleges are UMass/Amherst, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Smith College, and Mt. Holyoke College. Yes, the last two are women’s colleges, but all five colleges have an arrangement where students of any of the five can take classes at any of the five and get credit. They are all within a dozen miles of each other.

13

John, I guess they don’t think anyone cares about such small majors. They’re goofballs. I found most of those programs under East Asian Studies, so look for that. (I’m planning on going to grad school in Near Eastern Studies, and too often find that for many schools, NES = program only in NE languages. While this is frustrating for me, in your case, it would be a plus.)

14

Actually, I’m a junior in high school. But I took the SAT & ACT in Jr. High through the Midwest Talent Search, which got me a lot of mailing list. And then I took the SAT to get admitted of my current school, which got me on some more mailing lists. Then, I’m at this school, which in and of itself gets me on mailing lists. Plus the usual stuff anybody gets in high school.

Until recently, the mail went to my home instead of my dorm, and I would come home on extended weekends (every 4-5 weeks) to a 4 inch stack of college letters.

–John

15

McGill University offers a major in East Asian Studies which includes language classes.

16

I don’t know nuthin’ about East Asian programs, but I would be happy to tell you a bit about the Amherst area.

First of all, as others have said, the Pioneer Valley is a wonderful area. Just fabulous. If you are involved in any outdoor sports, you will love it. You get the beautiful rural scenery, but you are also not far from big towns and cities. Northampton, the biggest town in the five-college area, is great fun. UMass at Amherst is only about 2 hours from Boston and 3 from NYC.

Second, you get the benefits of the five-college consortium. As you probably know, UMass is a fairly typical huge state school. So you get a lot of advantages there (like a Chinese major and a reasonable tuition) but you can take advantage of the particular and sometimes peculiar offerings of the other four colleges.

In the interest of full disclosure, the UMass campus is not a bucolic ivy-covered haven. It is sort of, well, big. A lot of the buildings are sort of widely-spaced and impersonal. But, like anything else, that is a trade-off.

If you can, please try to visit any of the schools that you are interested in. Sometimes, a short campus visit can tell you more than an infinite number of brochures and/or people’s opinions.

But I heartily second the suggestion of talking to a faculty member at Indiana. You are obviously seriously interested in Chinese. Therefore, you might want to weigh the prestige of the various programs into your decision. The sad fact is, you will have an easier time getting into a good graduate program if you come from a good undergraduate program. The only way to find out which programs are respected in the field is to talk to people in that field. U.S. News, Barrons, and other publications that rate colleges don’t know their asses from their elbows when it comes to that kind of stuff. Also, don’t rely on what your dear Aunt Sally has to say. “Princeton” may sound impressive to the general public, but the program at XYZ State might be far more highly regarded among Chinese scholars.

Another point, perhaps obvious: make sure that the school you apply to has a good study abroad program. You will likely want to take a semester or a year in China. Make sure your potential school has good connections with programs in non-European countries.

Good luck, and please keep us posted.

P.S. how do you say Green Bean in Chinese?