<p>For what it’s worth, I personally don’t think airbag is a disgrace. I think he should learn to avoid some useless Bill O’Reilly/Keith Olbermann-type avoiding-the-real-issue arguments, and I think that he has that classic conservative suspicion of his fellow man (or, I should say, fellow students - and obviously, he thinks he has good evidence for it) that drives so much bad policy, but by all appearances he is a loyal rep for Brown here. He just happens to disagree with something that you and I - but not quite all Brown students - see as fundamental to the curriculum. Disagreement probably shouldn’t be condemned.</p>
<p>The Open Curriculum is why I came to Brown. I don’t think it’s perfect - I have concerns that upon graduation my transcript will be looked upon with suspicion. The lack of GPA and class rank don’t bother me except so far as it makes it significantly harder for me to get a discount as a student through my current auto insurance provider, and I wonder if having a class rank would push me to work harder, because I personally thrive in a high stress environment. It’s not perfect for me, but I don’t have a problem with it in general, and the Open Curriculum is, as a whole, preferable for me to the curricula of most other schools. So I do believe it’s important for potential students to see both sides of the debate, simply because Brown is not perfect for everyone, and the system does work best when the students are the sorts who agree with the system and use it well.</p>
<p>Concerning written course evaluations, what are people’s experiences with those? What sorts of classes have you asked for them in? Only courses taken S/NC? Only smaller discussion classes? I will be coming up on the classes that are most important to me within the context of my program next year, and I would be interested in a more thorough evaluation in them, both for the sake of graduate admissions and for my own information.</p>
<p>Uroogla -</p>
<p>I would drop any concerns about being looked at with suspicion - there are some situations where this might be the case, but they are off the beaten track. In grad school admissions, Brown’s gonna carry you far. If you’re applying to big, national companies, they likely know Brown - Brown grads do very well applying to major financial companies, consulting companies, etc. Elsewhere, you can choose to calculate your GPA, which is likely high compared to those coming from other schools. There are Brown alums everywhere, and (a) they’ve demonstrated their talents to employers, who will then want to hire other Brown alums, and (b) they are often the ones doing the hiring. You’ll be fine.</p>
<p>CPR’s (written evals) are great. I attribute a chunk of my success in the law school admissions process to a CPR that said, basically, that I should go to law school and that any law school would be lucky to have me. They can be kind of hit-or-miss - I had one that was extremely dry and gave me a bad taste in my mouth about a professor who I had liked. But, you get to choose which ones to send out with your transcript or to give to employers, so it’s alright. I would highly recommend getting them wherever you feel they would be useful - even in a graded class, if you’re doing particularly well. The eval is considerably less work for a professor than a traditional letter of recommendation, so so far as I’m concerned, professors should be glad to do them for you.</p>
<p>I personally would be happy without grades, and probably would be stressing a lot less right now if I wasn’t thinking about getting a PhD. I hope an employer will care more about what I did in school, than what grades I got. Is it more important for me to get As in all my MCM/English classes, or to do real reporting, develop my own films, etc. if I want to write for the New York Times? Do you think GPA matters more to employers than the fact that someone is already developing money-making programs, or intensely involved in research? I want to take the math classes that challenge me to excel, not the ones that I can be above the curve in because they’re filled mostly with concentrators in the social sciences who only ever want to take one math class. Far more important to me than a competitive grade is the incredible amount of learning I’m accomplishing, and I want to be able to push myself into situations where I might fail, without the fear that this will negatively affect my future if I do. I realize the “real world” isn’t like that, and failures matter, but I’m going to push myself harder now, so I’m more prepared for the world out there, if I don’t have that worry.</p>
<p>Letters of recommendation are probably more important for getting into a PhD program.
Grades certainly count and in particular a collection of low grades looks bad. However
many of us do not really trust high grades from Brown or Harvard or Princeton. We do trust the letters from people we may know. Of course if they send us a weak student they will lose our trust.</p>
<p>^ Princeton? They have a very strict grading system involving quotas and intentional deflation. Weird that you threw that one out there.</p>
<p>Anyways, I’m with airbag for the most part, but I don’t think there’s a “right” answer. The ideal system would maintain rigor and have clear (to external observers) standards for success, but not at the expense of encouraging academic exploration. But those two things are in inherent conflict–to maximize one area, you have to make sacrifices in the other. Airbag’s (and my) ideal system favors the first category, while you guys weigh other factors more heavily, perhaps at the expense of this category.</p>
<p>Whateva.</p>
<p>Again, there is absolutely no reason that rigor and clear standards are at odds with exploration, unless by rigor and clear standards you mean distinguishing among Brown students, which again should not be Brown’s job.</p>
<p>By allowing last-minute dropping and off-of-transcript NC’s, Brown’s grading system encourages exploration while maintaining standards for those courses that a student stays in and passes.</p>
<p>There’s no reason to set up false dichotomies.</p>
<p>I didn’t set up a false dichotomy–I didn’t say that there could only be one or another. I said that you couldn’t maximize both at once.</p>
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Weird example, considering that most schools’ grading systems maintain standards for ALL COURSES that a student enrolls in and doesn’t drop by a certain point. You know as well as I do that plenty of kids drop classes at the last second so as not to get a ‘B’ or ‘C’ that’ll tarnish their record… students at most schools can’t do that. IMO that is a classic example of how a policy that encourages exploration simultaneously lowers standards. “Sure, take this class! But don’t worry about it too much–if you think you’re gonna get a ‘B’, just don’t take the final!”</p>
<p>But at the same time, that same encouragement of exploration could in fact raise standards, if more people are willing to take a harder class because they know they can drop it if they aren’t doing well. This means more people should be taking the hardest class they’re prepared for, and thus learning and developing more, rather than taking an easier class because they’re afraid of a C. Not saying that doesn’t happen here, but from what I’ve seen most people are willing to take classes that are harder, but officially cover the same material, just because they’ll get more out of it more.</p>
<p>chs: Walk into your building through the 1st-floor entrance, make a sharp right, and read the pink sheet of paper on that door. I can’t shake that image from my mind as representative of how several Brown students choose to use their educational opportunities.</p>
<p>Airbag, I am not going to give you lopsided remarks here - I think I understand what you’re saying, but there is some criticism I have.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe percentages should be fixed. The professor should assess based on what kind of class it is, and the level of performance. In the higher level classes, as you said, at times the whole class can be very sharp, and encouraging them to compete against each other is dumb. On the other hand, in a basic course, it’s likely most people are not going to know what they are doing, and there will be more distribution.</p>
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<p>I think this is unnecessary - I think the best way is to require classes used to fulfill major requirements to be taken for a grade. The freedom to do some of the work but not slog at a class is a great incentive for a student to take a diverse schedule, and a part of what Brown embodies.</p>
<p>Again, Brown maintains high standards for every course - you don’t get to pass the course if you don’t do passing work. The difference is in what happens if you don’t end up succeeding - other schools indicate that with a black mark on your transcript, while Brown leaves it off your transcript. There’s no difference in terms of standard; in both cases, the transcript will say “here are all the things that we have taught this student.” The only difference is that other schools say “oh, and by the way, here are the things that this student couldn’t do.” I think schools should be in the business of teaching and indicating what has been successfully taught, not indicating what hasn’t been.</p>
<p>I think it would be okay for Brown to drop a grading system. I don’t know of too many, any, really-- kids that took major classes on a pass/fail basis, but then why would I? My daughter took it a few times, but not for her major. I think twice she didn’t pass, because of overloading on other classes. One, I think, was Russian language. But it was still helpful for her to know enough to speak to people when she was travelling alone on a train for a few days in former USSR. She also did a year of Mandarin S/NC which she passed. That was something she always wanted to know and she is fluent enough to speak with people. Her cousin at Princeton didn’t take any languages at all because of gpa concerns and now his company is egging him on to have more languages. The other one she didn’t pass was just an interest and taken as an extra class. She said she got what she wanted out of it. But because of overloading, she ended up devoting more time to her major. If she had to worry about gpa, she would have skipped it and not done that reading at all.</p>
<p>Grad schools didn’t think her education was less rigourous. She was accepted to 3 top Computer Science grad schools for Phd programs.</p>
<p>I don’t get why some say Brown should do as if it were some other school. I really think it is a pretty special environment, in the most positive way. There definitely is a peer to peer relation and a student-faculty relation and interdepartmental relation that is special.</p>