That’s Hot

Queens College “One of 25 Hottest Schools in America” says 2008 Kaplan/Newsweek College Guide.

Hottest for First-Generation Students
Queens College (City University of New York),
Queens, N.Y.

Although its families are becoming more affluent, Queens College (QC) remains a likely choice for students whose parents never went to college (38 percent of the student body). Its most celebrated recent fictional graduate is Ugly Betty—Betty Suarez—the working-class character played by America Ferrera on the ABC comedy.The school's biggest claim to fame is the several generations of lawyers, doctors and other professionals who could not afford the Ivies and say Queens changed their lives. It's still a bargain with tuition of $4,000. It looks nothing like the big city campuses of Manhattan. It has 77 acres of rolling lawns and a tree-lined Quad. To see the entire or not, go to http://www.newsweek.com/id/32225/page/1.

QC also houses the Louis Armstrong Archives in the Rosenthal Library, Room 332 which has been open to the public since 1994.After Lucille Armstrong passed away in 1983, the Armstrong house in Corona, Queens, was discovered to be filled with Louis’s personal belongings. As a result of this discovery, the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, which manages Louis’s estate, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs chose Queens College to be caretakers of this treasure trove.

Arranging, preserving, and cataloguing the contents of the Armstrong House took three years. Today, the Louis Armstrong Archives is the first stop for hundreds of researchers from all over the world. Besides individuals doing personal or academic research, hundreds of record companies, publishers, and TV/film productions have used material from the Archives.

A few famous or infamous Queens College graduates: Comediennes/Actors, Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Musicians, Carole King, Paul Simon, Marvin Hamlisch, writer, Susan Isaacs, Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Ofshe, Dorothy Rabinowitz, and Lloyd Schwartz . TV Anchor Mary Murphy, Scholar Nellie Y. McKay, former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, and The View's host, Joy Behar.