It’s actually pretty important to keep more kids in stem, especially minorities and women. First research has shown that the more scientists and engineers a country has, the better it does wrt a lot things, including prosperity.
Second, is that you need some diversity in these product teams, especially more women. The best example I can give is that some health app, I think Apple’s, had nothing that monitored or analyzed things important to women, because guess what, the app was invented by men. I’m disappointed when I see kids drop out of stem, any kid.
OP I think you need to think about what your student’s HS experience is like. Does she stay up until midnight every night to complete HW? Can she write? Really write, not a four paragraph essay. Are you still providing assistance with organization? Those are red flags that a reach college might not be a good fit.
One of our young friends attended a top 25 school that provided guaranteed internships and research opportunities to students on the Dean’s List. He always fell just short of some of the dream opportunities. He had good, but not great opportunities. It took him a couple of years to catch up with his high school peers.
Of course, you never know why some people cannot land jobs. One of my study buddies from a Big Ten university graduated in the top ten percent of our class and was never offered one job in engineering.
My D is a freshman at Harvard and is currently taking Math23 and finds the class challenging. She was a very good math student in high school having taken BC Calc (5) and MV Calc. She is undecided as to major but had considered math upon entrance. Now I think she is reconsidering majoring in math. She does believe that the students who take Math 25 and Math 55 are of a different breed than those who merely “excel” in math.
Harvard Math 23 is the first level honors course for sophomore level math (non honors version is Math 21). Math 25 and 55 are the second and third level honors courses.
So she should not get discouraged from studying math because there are a few students in even harder honors courses than the honors course that she is in. Many students in universities all around the US major in math after taking the equivalent of Harvard Math 21 (the non honors course).
@theloniusmonk Of course, we don’t want good kids to drop out of stem. But the Duke study focused on gpa at senir year and suggested certain categories drop out of stem became they come in with weaker academic prep. It cites references back to 1999, Duke classes entering in 2006/7, and Duke alone.
In the meantime, most top colleges have significantly increased aademic support to the admits they feel are qualified but not perhaps as highly competitive as admitted class peers may be. Pus, this isn’t just a matter of sticking with stem, but sticking well and graduating with good job opps.
Many assume top colleges just bring 'em in for diversity, then forget them, leave the to figure it out or find another major. Not so.
If you look at stem apps, say, engineering, it’s not so hard to figure which kids offer the range of skills it takes and which are dreaming (or unaware of other choices.)
Gladwell was discussed earlier in the thread. His argument has some obvious logic flaws and is not well supported by peer reviewed research.
Also note that what is best for one student is not necessarily best for another. Some students get pushed to new heights when surrounded by exceptional students, as would occur in honors programs at many state colleges. And some students would be better served by choosing a less rigorous/accelerated option, such as one of the slower math sequences at Yale. Yale and most other HYPSM… type colleges have freshman take a math placement exam and have placement advisors to help decide which math sequence and starting point to choose.
We don’t want kids dropping out of STEM who love their particular field, would be good at it, and can be successful at it. If I had a buck for every underemployed bio major I know I could buy you all breakfast. Most of them didn’t love bio; they thought it was a fast-track to get into Med school (wrong) with a solid fall back of career options if they didn’t get into Med school. (partially correct- if they can fall in love with one of the allied health professions and can get into one of those grad programs- it’s a good option. But nobody is hiring a kid with a BS in biology to run an R&D lab at a major pharma company).
Not convinced that CC’s fetish with STEM degrees is realistic in the actual labor markets- you know, the way real people get jobs and paychecks.
The only thing about reach schools are just that. They’re reaches. Reach schools are schools she can’t depend on getting accepted to. She just needs to keep some good target and have a couple of safety schools just in case. Most of the process is out of your control. The school decides whether she gets in.
“Not convinced that CC’s fetish with STEM degrees is realistic in the actual labor markets- you know, the way real people get jobs and paychecks.”
What do you mean by this? There are hundreds of thousands of jobs for computer science graduates and that’s just one piece of stem. I’m familiar with lots of companies that give out real jobs with real paychecks and stock options (maybe worth a little less today). Now this is not just silicon valley but across many industries and also you don’t have to get a stem degree to get a job in stem. There are many humanities, social science majors in stem.
But to say that the demand for programmers, data scientists, computer engineers is not real is not accurate.
People are sloppy here (perhaps intentionally so that they can talk past each other) when using the STEM acronym. STEM includes biology (about a third of the total), which has weak major specific job prospects, as well as CS and various engineering subjects. Chemistry is not great in major specific job prospects either. Biology and chemistry majors should treat job and career prospects at the BA/BS level as if they were most other liberal arts majors.
Of course, CS and engineering job prospects can vary as industries rise and fall.
Better to just drop the STEM acronym because the majors described are so different in many ways (including but not limited to the job prospects).
I think the point is that a lot of young people go into STEM because they or their parents think that’s a ticket to a high paying job — but many aren’t really cut out for the jobs that they are preparing for. So they don’t do well in school, not because they are incapable of doing the work, but because they don’t enjoy their classes and feel disheartened or demotivated; or they do well enough but then find themselves hired for jobs that aren’t a good match for their interests and they don’t last long … basically because they end up hating their jobs.
So it’s one thing to advocate STEM in general, quite another to say that a particular student should go into a STEM field.
In that respect, I’d just remind everyone that the OP did not even hint at a STEM-focused major for her athletic daughter. I don’t have data, but my guess is that in general, college athletes are probably less likely to be STEM majors simply because of the time commitment of their sports. I’m not saying they can’t be STEM majors – just that the OP didn’t specify that, and so think its more reasonable to assume that the daughter has a different major in mind. Certainly, if she was planning on pre-med or engineering, I think that is something the OP would have mentioned.
I’d also expect that the overall average is fewer STEM majors among athletes than non-athletes. However, it’s more complex than that. Athletes at selective “reach” colleges have a wide variety of majors. Some STEM majors are more common among athletes. Some STEM majors are less common. There are noteworthy differences between different colleges, different sports, DIII vs DI, men vs women, etc.
For example, one review found that the 4 most common declared majors among Stanford athletes were all in STEM fields, so I’d expect most Stanford athletes major in a STEM field. However, there were differences in specific majors within the STEM acronym. Compared to the overall student body, athletes were more like to major in Human Biology and less likely to major in Biology. Athletes were more likely to major in Management Sciences Engineering and less likely to major in Computer Science. General engineering was similarly popular among athletes and non-athletes.
Thelonius, show me the job prospects for an average grad from an average college with a BS in Chem or Bio.
Kids hear STEM and think $. Parents hear STEM and think “early retirement”. But the fetishization I was referring to is a lack of understanding about the labor market- supply AND demand. CS is hot right now- but today’s students are too young to remember 2001. Petroleum engineering- some great years (starting salaries of 90K with just a BS) and other years- no hiring, and mid-level folks getting laid off in droves. There are critical nursing shortages except in the years where there is a glut. Some parts of the country, a chem major getting certified to teach HS chem is a no-brainer…and in other parts of the country, the real demand is in special ed.
Not everyone can major in CS… and there are lots of other STEM fields which kids pursue for a golden ticket which have dimmer employment prospects. I remember my company laying off CS folks left and right in 2001/2002- many of whom we had recruited with great difficulty in 1999 and 2000.
People have short memories. Who talks about the downturn in Aerospace in the 1990’s? All those unemployed Aero engineers with incredible experience, and then when the industry came back, the demand was in France, Malaysia, India and Singapore???
If we go to school to learn to think, then we should not be surprised to see students group themselves accordingly. Recently I heard Eric Schmidt said that in his alma mater Princeton, the best students are no longer in physics and math, but in computer science. I think things will not change even after the results of Made in China 2025 is known.
I posted this before, but I think it is worth repeating. It is still the finest piece on this topic I have ever read:
Well that’s rather disheartening as DS19 is leaning towards studying chemistry. He is aware that a masters degree will be required as a minimum if he wishes to do something chemistry based. On the other hand he is also contemplating physics (but I do think his heart is more set on chem). I wonder if he would be better served majoring in physics with a minor in chem or physical chemistry from the physics department.
From those I know who majored in physics, actual physics jobs are not common, but physics majors typically have good math/logic skills that allow them to adapt to work in other in-demand areas like finance and computing (though they would presumably be second-choice applicants compared to those whose studies were more focused in those areas, such as math/statistics/economics and computer science majors, respectively). Some may be able to adapt to some types of engineering work (in situations where a PE license is not needed), though engineering is different from science in that science studies the natural universe, while engineering applies science to solve design problems.
Would he be interested in something like chemical engineering?
That post is very interesting @Canuckguy. When I was in college, it was always harder to get a first in arts subjects than in sciences (hence my wife is cleverer than me). But in the last 25 years it appears there’s been massive grade inflation in arts subjects (http://bernardrivers.com/wp-content/uploads/Chart-3-e1497807103161.png) and hardly any in science subjects.
http://www.gradeinflation.com/ suggests that humanities grades average 0.3 higher than natural science grades, while social science and engineering grades average 0.2 higher than natural science grades, as of the late 2000s.
DH would certainly feel more comfortable if DS19 chose engineering, but he seems to be more interested in the science than the application and not generally inclined towards engineering. Also my understanding is that you don’t actually study a whole lot of chemistry in chemical engineering and that the job prospects are not that great currently (especially as we are located in Canada). There are a couple of engineering science programs he might consider (engineering chemistry or engineering physics) which are in essence double degree programs, but I don’t think he’s really set on them. One of the drawbacks for him with regards to studying engineering is the rigidity of the program structure that doesn’t allow much room for electives. I could see him doing a masters in engineering but then it would be very difficult to become a licensed P.Eng as masters programs are not accredited.
That is a graph for students at Cambridge. Grading in the UK has some key differences between typical grading in US colleges. For example, the site UCB referenced shows the following gap between humanities GPA and natural science GPA. The US university chart suggests the percentage receiving A’s and average GPA are increasing in both humanities and natural sciences at a similar rate. However, humanities classes tend to give out more A’s than other fields. There have been several studies suggesting the when grading is more similar between different fields,fewer students choose humanities.
~1975: Humanities GPA approximately +0.3 higher than Natural Science GPA
~1985: Humanities GPA approximately +0.3 higher than Natural Science GPA
~1995: Humanities GPA approximately +0.27 higher than Natural Science GPA
~2005: Humanities GPA approximately +0.3 higher than Natural Science GPA
