<p>What do students mean when they say intro “premed” classes are really “cutthroat”?</p>
<p>Those classes seem really basic (Intro Chem, Algebra-based Physics, and intro Bio). So why are those classes so intense? How is the curve in those classes?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Hey Sly Si, </p>
<p>Thanks for making this thread. I have a question about Stanford’s foreign language requirement. I plan on completing this requirement with a satisfactory SAT II score. However, the site does not specify if the test should be taken with listening.</p>
<p>There’s SAT II Spanish w/ Listening and Reading
And SAT II Spanish w/ only Reading</p>
<p>Does it matter which one we take?</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.stanford.edu/dept/lc/language/requirement/[/url]”>https://www.stanford.edu/dept/lc/language/requirement/</a></p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
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<p>I’m not a CS major. But my roommate of two years was, and while the guy was sharp as a whip, he still had to bust his ass when he was in the thick of the curriculum. Certain classes were worse than others, but when he had a project due, I wasn’t seeing him until the wee hours for a week at a time.</p>
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<p>MS&E is for the people that can’t hack it in Econ.</p>
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<p>Don’t choose your college based on a major you think you want to study, as I guarantee you it will change.</p>
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<p>Depends. More often than note, while you may have homework, the point of it is not to keep you busy like in high school, but to help you keep pace with the class so that when it comes time to take midterms and finals you’re not starting from scratch, but have done at least a little bit of studying up to that point. Sometimes classes will be more project based, meaning that incremental assignments make up the majority of your grade instead of tests, but the former is far more common.</p>
<p>And yes, there are certainly courses and profs with reputations. But I guarantee you that will be one of the first things you’ll hear about on campus, and everyone you talk to will have their own opinion on the matter, so no need to try and come up with an all inclusive list here.</p>
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<p>People say they’re cutthroat because the classes are hard as hell. The curve is tough, and material is tough, and the pace of the class is going to be faster than anything you’ve dealt with in high school.</p>
<p>The point of those classes is to cut down the throngs of people who think they might want to be premed, and filter out only those people who are willing to put in the necessary work, and accept some of the consequences (lower grades) of, making their ultimate goal a reality.</p>
<p>You may think Chem is basic, but I assure you if you watch people walk out of the first 31X midterm you will see tears. You can bank on it.</p>
<p>how tough is it to get a coterminal degree?
say i really want to get a masters in Computer science after doing electrical engineering undergrad</p>
<p>Introductory language classes vary in difficulty by language. The romance languages are all really easy to get A’s in. Mandarin Chinese is really difficult, grades are calculated very quantitatively and not based on effort. If you have a specific language in mind, I can try to give more specifics.</p>
<p>veggie delight, I was thinking about Japanese so that I can go to Kyoto with the Bing Overseas Studies program. What is your opinion on its difficulty?</p>
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Well, I wanted to still do something along the lines of engineering but also mix business with it, so MS&E looks appealing. But it looks like it doesn’t have much respect on campus? Or is that just your opinion?</p>
<p>nblazer, coterming is a very popular option. I don’t think you’ll have a problem doing EE–>CS.</p>
<p>How is the introductory korean class?</p>
<p>is the coterm degree ultra selective?</p>
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<p>What do you mean when you say business? It’s a really broad term to begin with, and I think a lot of college kids just say they want to “do business” when they see people in a corner office making a ton of scratch and want to have that kind of lifestyle.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem I have with MS&E. First off, none of the classes are very challenging. Now, just because a class is hard does not mean it is valuable, and just because a class is valuable does not mean it has to be hard. But a major with no tough classes at all? I call shenanigans.</p>
<p>Secondly, particularly with their classes geared for undergrads, you’ll take the class, some of the stuff will be kind of cool and thought provoking, but it’s taught so vaguely and generally that it has zero applicability in the real world. This is especially true with the more business-type classes on decision making, management, etc. You can’t really gain any value from that kind of thing until you’ve gone into the real world and experienced the problems first hand their teaching you to solve.</p>
<p>Which leads me to my final point about MS&E. It’s just not the right type of program for college undergrads with little to no work experience. It’s basically an executive MBA program with dumbed down information and more of the basics (e.g. accounting) thrown in for good measure.</p>
<p>Now, you’ve said you’re interested in engineering with a business focus. I think you’ll be putting your time and money to better use doing your engineering in undergrad and then getting business exposure through internships, spare classes, or a graduate degree.</p>
<p>MS&E doesn’t look that bad. It’s definitely not in the same category as sociology or communications.</p>
<p>Japanese is definitely less difficult than Mandarin; you’re supposed to be able to reach a level of proficiency in 3 yrs of classes. Keep in mind that for study abroad in Kyoto, they only require you to have taken 2 quarters, though more might be nice.</p>
<p>docketgold, I understand and agree with your point about business being too broad of a term. Um, the problem is I’m not completely sure what I want to do in the field - I was thinking entrepreneurship or finance, but I don’t know enough about the fields to make a decision. </p>
<p>I want to “do business” not because of the lifestyle, but because of its real world application - much like how people say everyone should take a few Comp Sci classes because of the world’s dependency on computers today. So naturally I wouldn’t want to take classes with little real world application, as you have said about MS&E… I dunno. I’m planning on getting an MBA, I just thought it would be good to start with classes as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>Thanks veggie for your reply. I saw you can take either 3 quarters of 5-credit Japanese or 5 quarters of 3-credit Japanese, if I remember correctly. Do you know the more typical route for students, particularly for people who want to go to Kyoto?</p>
<p>Pretty sure 3 classes at 5 units is more normal.</p>
<p>Computer Science: opinions? hard? time consuming? thought provoking? practical?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure taking the 5-unit Japanese track is a requirement to go to Kyoto. You only need two quarters before you go if you’re an engineer, but you need five if you’re a non-engineer. At any rate, regardless of the requirements, you should try to take as much Japanese as possible before you go – the more you understand the language, the more you’ll get out of your experience.</p>
<p>Does Stanford grad schools have any preference for taking its own undergrads, or is it actually harder for Stanford undergrads to get into Stanford grad schools?</p>
<p>Depends on the field. A <em>lot</em> of people end up coterming–they do five years and get a master’s degree (and are considered a grad student for their last year or so). In that sense, it’s not that hard to do grad school at Stanford, but that’s only for a master’s.</p>
<p>In hard sciences (math and physics, for example), you are strongly discouraged from doing grad school and undergrad at the same institution. I don’t know if this also applies to engineering. When I started looking at schools for a math PhD, I was told flat-out not to apply to Stanford.</p>
<p>I was wondering if it would be an advantage/disadvantage to go to Stanford for pre-med should I want to get into Stanford med school. Same question for engineering, since I don’t think I’ll major in hard sciences.</p>
<p>Stanford med school doesn’t have a preference either way towards admitting its own undergrads.</p>
<p>Just an FYI its strongly discouraged for people to be pre-med and engineering since engineering is much more time consuming than biology/chem and engineering classes tend to have harder curves since they tend to have really crazy smart people.</p>