That looks like a blog post that is mostly one person's opinion, in many cases not supported by facts. I disagree with quite a few of the details. Some examples are below:
This idea was suggested earlier in the thread. I won’t repeat my comments, other than saying it is by no means “impossible” for a student who is not at the top of a STEM field to pass a STEM class at selective colleges. Extremely few students generally fail classes at highly selective privates, including STEM classes. For example, the Stanford engineering school grade distribution as reported by Edusalsa several years ago is below. It would be higher today. Stanford and similar also offers a variety of rigor/acceleration levels in the intro STEM courses that are emphasized in the blog post. For example, instead of having a single freshman math class, Stanford students can repeat HS calculus at a slow pace similar to HS and slower than many classes offered at far less selective colleges. Or they can instead take a fast paced math class that skips HS material and emphasizes rigorous proofs. Or they can take choose a ~half dozen other options in between these extremes. As mentioned, STEM majors are common with recruited athletes, who probably receive a greater admissions boost than any other group. The 4 most common majors among Stanford athletes are all in STEM fields.
A-/A/A+: 66% of grades
B-/B/B+: 29% of grades
C-/C/C+: 5% of grades
Below C-: Negligible.
There are several factors, but a key one is that courses under the STEM acronym tend to emphasize grading based on objective problems where there is a clear right and wrong answer, rather than more subjective grading of papers. This leads to more objective grading standards.
It’s fairly common for liberal arts majors to work in management, consulting, or similar; particularly at the selective colleges we emphasize on this site. For example, Brown has especially good reporting, so I’ll use them as an example. Among all humanities majors at Brown, the most common job titles 5 years after graduating are below: Manager was not only common – it was the most common job title. Consulting is also certainly not lacking among liberal arts majors at Brown.
Andersen’s theory requires empirical evidence for support. I agree with that. But knowing how much difficulty there is with replications in the social sciences, I am not holding my breath. My feeling is that “the international competition in STEM” is also feasible, but I prefer the simpler explanation you gave. Why use a more complicated explanation when a simple one is all that is needed.
This also dovetails with what @Twoin18 was talking about. In the 50s and the 60s, the “British” system gave very few As and students generally write much better than they do today. So it was very hard to be the chosen few. In the STEM areas, however, a correct solution is a correct solution. The exam papers can be made harder, but a right answer is still a right answer.
Since you are talking about grade inflation, here is a Q and A piece by Stuart Rojstaczer, the founder of gradeinflation.com https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/grade-inflation-your-questions-answered/
Timothy Taylor also wrote a fine piece on grade inflation, with many quoted studies that you may want to look into: http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2011/11/grade-inflation-and-choice-of-major.html
“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.”
If you’re point is that there are downturns and the economy is cyclical, I don’t think anyone is going to argue that. I’m not sure what has to do with my general point of people especially more women, being encouraged to take up STEM early on. I agree parents pushing kids into STEM when they’re not interested is an issue.
The list is a based on response from the alumni surveys. The “editor” grouping also includes those who listed their occupation as writer. Full job titles and companies from the almuni survey are listed elsewhere. Some examples are below.
Some “Editor” examples for Comparative Literature majors at Brown 5 years out are below,:
“Assistant Editor” at Mother Jones
“Assistant Editor” at Random House
“Associate Editor” at Scribner, Simon, and Schuster Inc.
“Associate Editor” at Houghton Miflin Harcourt
“Associate Editor” at Redbird Group
“Associate Editor” at Stanford
“Managing Editor” at Harvard
Some “Manager” examples for Classics majors at Brown 5 years out are below:
“Manager” at Google
“Manager of Marketing and Engagement” at Conservation Center for Art & Histo…
“Marketing and Communications Manager” at Prospect Park Alliance
“Project Manager” at The Urban Unit
“Project Manager” at SkyRise
That is why I don’t trust the list. Of course alumni will self report with good titles. While I don’t doubt some end up in publishing, there are very, very few of those jobs, so I seriously doubt it is a major source of employment for Brown students. The editors of various law journals seem included in your list too, which really means that they are students. Humanities majors can end up in great jobs if there is the right set of skills and fit, but it is sad when students with good stem skills default there because their college was a bit too much of a reach in stem for them to stick it out. Hence back to the OP question. Beware of the potential major at a reach school, if that is of interest.
I agree that many liberal arts majors end up with jobs with management level responsibilities – that was definitely my daughter’s most recent job title – but “manager” is a pretty generic title and doesn’t necessarily reflect either a high salary or a high level of prestige or responsibility. My son was an “assistant director” as a 20-year-old college dropout within 6 months of working is first job. And it was a legit job title within a well established organization, but it was a nonprofit organization that generally recruited young people and had high turnover … so pretty much run by people in their 20’s.
So yes, many liberal arts majors do get management level jobs, including at tech firms – but no, alumni surveys are not a good source of data for what those grads are actually doing. In a business setting, “manager” of something can be fairly low on the totem pole (such as “office manager”) – and in publishing, “assistant editors” could be low paid copy editors.
You’d really want to see salary data, not job titles. The easiest thing for an employer to do to increase morale is to give important-sounding job titles to employees who are only a step above entry-level.
In the list, student was then 2nd most common title among humanities majors, after manager – a more common title than editor/writer… Student was the most common title among STEM majors. Many Brown graduates pursue advanced degrees soon after getting their undergrad, among both humanities and STEM majors.
It’s possible the listed Harvard and Stanford editors were students. However, the other listed editor job titles do not appear to have anything to do with students or law school. Random House; Scribner, Simon, and Schuster; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are traditional publishers; Mother Jones is a magazine; and Redbird includes publications on a variety of platforms. I’m not sure where you are getting law journal from?
STEM encompasses a wide variety fields including some which do not have significantly better job prospects than typical humanities majors, with a bachelor’s degree. It’s not as simple as STEM = good jobs, and humanities usually does not. The reasons for STEM attrition are also complex and include far more than matching SAT scores. And these reasons can persist well beyond college, with a higher attrition rate for women in certain STEM careers among successful graduates from college, particularly engineering.
For example, one review of athletes at a DIII selective college, like the OP was looking at, found that athletes were more likely to choose the same major as their teammates for reasons beyond what could be explained by incoming student information. This was particularly true for economics, with 1/3 of all economics majors at the college being members of just 4 teams. Some students are influenced by what the group of students they spend time with do academically. Such students may get pushed to new heights when they see their friends and students around them doing amazing things in and out of the classroom, working in group projects with others who take the project seriously and strive for a good grade, etc. And yes, some students also find it challenging to adjust from being the top student in their HS to not standing out as much in a reachy college and might do better avoiding honors type programs at a state school or accelerated/rigorous intro STEM classes at a reach school, and instead taking less rigorous classes. There is not a simple one size fits all rule, like if you want to major in STEM, avoid reaches.
Actually, I think that for STEM, there’s a significant benefit to attending a small college over a large U, which has to do with the teaching environment rather than the level of selectivity of the school. I’m a STEM drop out because I didn’t make it past first semester Chem, though I’m pretty sure I earned a B+ in the class. But that wasn’t what deterred me. It was the lecture hall with 600 students, the prof who put me to sleep with his monotone, and the fact that my lab TA didn’t speak a word of English. So nothing to engage me. My son didn’t end up as a STEM major, but he took a year of chemistry at a LAC, where there were probably about a dozen kids in the class. He had a conflict with another class for the lab, so the prof told him to enroll later and just come in late - and then the prof stayed with him in the lab as late as needed. So my son ended up with half his lab time being one-on-one with the prof, and sometimes the prof’s research assistant. It was a young prof and my son ended up forming an out-of-class friendship with the prof as well.
I have no clue what a Chemistry class is like at, say, Williams. I am sure that it is rigorous and demanding. But I also think it’s probably a lot harder to fall through the cracks in that environment. Years ago I had signed up for Chem 1B - but ahead of the drop date I just realized that I couldn’t imagine sitting through another quarter, and so I dropped Chem and signed up for a lit class (Shakespeare) instead – which was a class of probably about 25 students and the give-and-take of smaller class group. And that was at a large university – there was no shortage at all of small classes in the humanities, and of no impediment for me to sign up for an upper-level humanities course.
So honestly, I don’t think the average SAT score of the other students has much to do with it. The quality of the teaching is much more significant, and if anything it’s reasonable to expect higher quality teaching at a more selective school. (Though that is by no means guaranteed).
As you have noted, there isn’t necessarily a correlation between the selectivity of the school and the size of the classes.Princeton economics had 650 students in my class. Yale has a study of happiness class with over 1000 enrolled. Stanford has a huge intro to computer SCI class. A reach is not a guarantee of small class size, or teaching quality. Those Ivy professors are hired and tenured for their research, not teaching skills.
But there is a difference in how some schools can deliver quality even in large classes. One of Stanford’s most popular CS classes is Machine Learning (CS229) taught by Andrew Ng (a prominent ML researcher). Its size has grown to over 1000 with mainly upper class men, masters students, and PhD candidates. It is widely reviewed as a superior class with difficult material, challenging psets, and crazy hard tests.
Quite possible it is a wonderful class at Stanford, especially if it has mostly older students enrolled who have already specialized. But that class size may not work for everyone, and the point is that while research products are better at elite universities (hence why they are elite), one can not guarantee class size or even teaching quality necessarily will be. That isn’t what makes them elite.
Some of my large lecture classes also had break out sessions taught by grad students who were on their way to becoming experts in their field. I don’t think I ever had a bad TA, I did have some bad professors! That said my favorite course was a graduate level seminar in Art History - which I got to take even though I’d only audited various art history courses. There were six of us, we had to write short papers on the reading every single week, so we all did the reading. No way to hide!
I guess my point is that small class size at elite universities may mot be guaranteed, but the quality of the teaching remains high. At least that has been the feedback I have received from my S. (Yes. anecdotal, N=1).
It was my experience that large classes at Stanford tend to have a well known professor in the field who wrote the class textbooks and also teaches well. Robert Sapolsky is a good example. I feel really fortunate to have had the chance to hear his incredible lectures in an intro bio class about following baboons in Africa, after seeing a unique social dynamic darting them, then measuring hormones. Some of my friends after graduating read our textbooks from the class for fun, which are popular sellers on Amazon – Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, The Trouble With Testosterone, etc. The intro classes this large get broken down in to sections, which are usually composed of under 10 students (exact size varies with class) and headed by a TA. This gives students more of an opportunity to ask questions, get personalized attention, and not “fall through the cracks.” I had no problem with this system, as I like to work independently and was not big on interaction during lectures such as class participation, interrupting for questions, etc. However, I realize there are plenty of students who favor a personal approach during lectures, as is common at many LACs.
There are also elite universities that make heavy use of TAs for intro level classes. And the TAS may be excellent in their field, but not necessarily at teaching. But this isn’t the question in this thread.
The question is “what experience did you/your kid have if they decided to attend a college that was a reach for them?” It’s sort of “did they end up a small fish in a big pond and if do, how fid it work out?”
@data10 the 229 class I was referring to was fall 2017, single class enrollment 1040. If you look at Ng’s twitter feed for
25 Sept 2017 your’ll see his tweet:
My post mentioned the tweet. The enrollment as listed on the stanford.edu course website I linked is substantially lower in 2017, 2018, and every other available year than the number listed in the Twitter post. Perhaps there was some confusion about enrollment of special groups being “on campus” students, such as Stanford Center for Professional Development students, who are professionals working at companies away from campus, some as far away as HP Barcelona .