Do you hafta graduate from a school to be considered an alumni or is simply attending at some time in the past count?
Just wondering.
I think you actually have to graduate.
BTW, alumni is plural. You can be an alumnus or an alumna, but you can’t be an alumni.
If you become famous or have a lot of money to give away, the graduation requirements are relaxed somewhat.
alumnus: “A male graduate or former student of a school, college, or university.” (American Heritage Dictionary)
The 1913 Webster’s defines alumnus as “A pupil; especially, a graduate of a college or other seminary of learning”, so there seems to have been some leeway about whether or not one has actually graduated for some time now. Certainly fundraising departments prefer it that way: “Billionaire entrepreneur gives big bucks to Whassamatta U., which he attended for a year back in the ‘70’s before dropping out to found a Fortune 100 company in his parents’ garage.”
I had always assumed you had to graduate from a university to be considered an alumnus. However, a university I never graduated from has me on it’s alumni mailing list. I was put on the list shortly after a bookkeeping error turned a fee payment I had made for a continuing education class into a donation. So apparently, one time attendance plus a donation made me an alumnus.
The UCLA Alumni Association will take you in if you pay them the dues. They don’t care if you’ve ever been to Westwood, CA.
People will join the Alumni Association because it is a cheaper way to get full library privileges at the university.
Cool, I was thinking about becoming a Univ of Michigan “alum”.
Why? I just love the school even though I’ve never gone to a class there and only saw one football game when I was being recruited to play football.
I always liked UCLA, too. Something about those baby blue uni’s and the wierd font they have on their uni’s was cool.
I’ll agree that most uses of the word require (or at least imply) graduation.
However, the Caltech Alumni Association holds eligible for membership anyone who attended the institute for at least one full year and left “in good standing.” You don’t have to graduate to “leave in good standing”, although I’m having trouble pinning down a reference for just how that term is defined at Caltech.
Clearly, most of those eligible for membership will have degrees, but not all.
As MEBuckner pointed out, the definition of an alumnus/alumuna is former student. One does not have to be a graduate in order to be an alum. That being said, each school has it’s own definition of what it considers an alum. Some schools consider anyone who took even one class an alum. Others, like Caltech, have a definition based on length of time attended or number of credits completed. Others base the status on graduation.
While I don’t doubt that the UCLA Alumni Association will give anyone a membership, that membership will not make you an alum of UCLA.
Anyone can get on the mailing list. Most schools have thousands of non-alumni on their mailing lists. A continuing education class or program will not make you an alum of a university – only academic courses.
Well certainly if you give us lots of money, we’ll put you on our mailing list and give you recognition as a donor, but you will not be an alum. Even people who are given honorary degree are not considered alumni. Sometimes people are made “honorary alumni,” but even these are not counted as true alumni.
I got my Masters degree, so now my university considers me an alumna even though I’m still enrolled in the PhD program, so they keep hitting me up from money. I presume the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, because the university sents me that paltry pay check every two weeks–they should know how poor I am.
Interesting trivia: The plural of alumna is alumnae, so a girl’s school celebrates its alumnae, not its alumni.
It’s entirely possible that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing; it’s also entirely possible that they do. Alumni participation rates (the percentage of alumni who donate) are very important to schools, so they’ll ask everyone for money.
You’ve touched on one of those controversial topics, particularly for formerly all-women’s colleges. Alumni has come to be gender-neutral to most people. Alumnae is still used by some schools. Others will use alumnae/i or some variation, which I can’t stand.
However the UCLA Alumni Association’s casual membership standards means that their really is no particular benefit associated with joining the Alumni Association that you couldn’t get by joining some other type of social organization that had $45 a year dues.
In theory saying your an alum is also supposed to help with business connections and other career-related matters. Not that being an actual graduate of UCLA is a small and exclusive club.
I was an undergrad at UCLA and a grad student (Masters) at UC Berkeley. Both alumni associations ask me to join. A couple of weeks ago, I got credit card solicitations from both schools on the same day.
In sporting events, I root for UCLA over Cal four out of every five years unless one school is having a particularly bad year and then I bail out and root for the other one.
How did you arrive at the 4:1 ratio? Length of time doesn’t work since you probably were at UCLA 4-5 years and UC Berkley 2-3 years. Number of courses/credits might be close. Value of the degree? Tuition costs? The fact that UCLA has a better athletic program?
It only took one year for me to get my master’s degree. That’s just the way the program was set up.
So for four years I root for UCLA and in one year I root for Cal.
That usually works out to about how often Cal has a better year than UCLA in athletics.