Thursday, April 23, 2009
Our project focuses on the reputations of the University of Wisconsin-Madisoin. We look at the student perceptions, the administrative goals, and the national reputations through the lens of academics and social life. Our research plans include student surveys, traditional research, administrative interviews. Our end result will be a website directed at anyone and everyone who is interested in the topic.
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This project is very interesting and definitely relevant to today’s campus life, especially with the premiere of College Life a couple of weeks ago. The show has truly made me think differently about the reputation of our school. The show could have added to your presentation; it is too bad the sound was not working. The show depicts Madison in a completely different light. The characters on the show ruined the Universities reputation in a mere 30 minutes. On that note, it would be really interesting to see what those students thought of the premiere. Maybe you could look into it, but if you had an interview with one of the students I think that it would very enlightening. A lot of times networks like MTV, will do anything to create drama. There is really no way of knowing if the students on the show are as big of airheads as they are portrayed through the media. Having an interview would really give you an original prospective to inform different students about our portrayal in the media.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I think looking at the other media sources that portray Madison will be very interesting to learn more about. The other realms of media that you all presented demonstrate how many different perspectives there are of our school. I cannot believe that Forbes ranked our school 335th in the nation. It is absurd that there would be such a discrepancy between the different magazines. I hope that you guys find some information about why Forbes would have written something like that. There has to be some kind of explanation for the extreme differences between top magazines.
Also, with the two aspects of our school compared side-by-side, I feel like you will be able to present a very strong public argument. It is a lot easier for people who want to know more about our school to be able to access all information on one website. I wish that there had been some kind genre for me to get all the information about this school in one place. However, I do wonder, how are you going to get the word out about your website? I am having the same problem with my website. It is supposed to be a place for students to obtain all the information needed, yet how are they going to know about it?
With regards to your survey, I came to this university because of its reputation for academics. It is ridiculous to think that someone would pay this much money for a good party school. It was not until the premiere of the MTV series that made me think differently about this. I am glad to see that your survey found satisfactory results. Overall, I thought your presentation was very well prepared and I think that creating a website that serves as a place for people to find all information is obviously a good idea. The project seems to be very well organized, and it will be interesting to see the final results.
I feel that your group had a very well organized and interesting project idea. You guys truly did some great research, and I like that you are incorporating the perceptions from so many different realms such as the student body and the administration. I think that once you guys complete your research, your website will truly be beneficial to any person considering the University of Wisconsin-Madison as their college choice.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of your project really made me think when you asked the opening question of what reputation we perceive Madison to have. I remember struggling to answer it, hoping that you guys would not poll the audience because I would not know when to raise my hand. I often feel that Madison consists of all of those reputations rolled into one, possible divided into equal parts, as suggested by the data you collected. I thought that it may be beneficial for your audience if you discussed the different reputations on your website and possible how they all fit together to make up the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As I am sure that the administration would not be too thrilled to incorporate the party school aspect into our reputation, as a potential student, it may be nice to see that this school that excels in academics and research that would be beneficial to you and your future, will also enable you to live a little and not make you go crazy due to stress. Also, for those sports fans, it may be nice to know that you can strive to have a successful academic career, yet once in a while, you can take the time to enjoy watching or even participating in a sports game of their interest. I think that if you interviewed students, you would see that they all have all dabbled into many of the university’s reputations as I am sure you guys have as well.
Also, I think that it may be interesting to look into some of the falsities and/or possible support for the arguments of the different reputations. For example, when I was applying to attend school here, I was informed by many that it was one of the most extreme party schools in the nation. When I arrived, I met many people who helped maintain this reputation, but I also found many that did not quite fit this mold. My experiences were rather split and it made me wonder if we were actually the party school that we were reputed to be (though we very well could be and I had just experienced the depth of it). You could possibly do a little more research on these potential falsities through further polls and interviews with the student body, the administration, or even the police force that may have an idea of the degree of drinking that occurs. Also, when I chose to attend the university, I had no idea about its high reputation in the world of research until I was very easily immersed into it, having opportunities practically fall onto my lap. I feel that you could provide evidence to support this as a possible reputation by talking to students who are actively involved in these aspects of campus, same could go for partying too.
Those are just a few thoughts for you guys. Keep up the good work!
I really like about your group idea on looking into the reputations of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And you guys have done a lot of research into getting different prospective of people in the campus. I believe your website will not only benefit local students, but also international students who want to understand the university better from a student prospective.
ReplyDeleteI remember the time I consider UW-M as my choice among so many universities in the States. Location is not my main concern as I am an international student. I did not even hear any rumor about UW as a party school or sport town. My main consideration is the ranking and academic achievement of UW-M as all these statistics are things that are much easily gathered from the Internet. Internet is basically my only best source of getting anything related to the university, as I can hardly able to talk to people that came to the university at some point back from home. Sometimes, some of the information is not even updated to the most recent one too. I believe the same situation goes for most of the international students. All these information is hardly known by international students as we seldom know people who come to UW-M, which is not one of the popular universities among friends back home. I only found out sports are so popular here when I reached, of course, I also learned about the drinking culture here shortly after.
Also, there is also one more major factor for people who choose to come here, the weather here. I do not remember your group mention about it, sorry if I missed it. But that is one thing you can add in for prospective students’ consideration, as the weather is one of the deciding concerns if one decided to come here and survived in a minimum five-month long winter. And, you can also include what are the sports that go along with the school year, so that students can easily follow the university sports since it is such an important culture here. Other than that, your group might also suggest few different ways to adapt into the university society from a student prospective. Gather suggestions from students themselves is one of the useful resources. This will not only make your website a place for current or future students look for information about the university, but also get advice to live better or adapt easily in this unique culture. You might also add a forum space for students exchanging opinions on certain topics about the university. However, you will want to monitor the forum closely as most of the time, forum will lead to certain undesirable argument among students. Thus, this will make your website more open and updated to ongoing activities in the university and assist the flow of information among students.
With your website, I believe international students will benefit much more from your website and appreciate it. I am pretty sure, by putting myself in their shoe, I will be so much thankful for knowing anything a little bit more about the university from such website before decided to come here, though I never regret coming here. I will definitely willing to help spreading the words about your website among international students if that is fine with your group.