<p>Nonsense. This wasn’t my experience at an elite (though not Ivy) school. Due dates were due dates. The only excuses were truly extenuating circumstances, such as illness landing you in the hospital. And in Medill (j-school) - deadlines were firm even if you did land in the hospital, because they were impressing on you that newspapers have deadlines and that’s the end of the subject. (The infamous Medill F)</p>
<p>Annasdad, it seems as though you swallowed D’s narrative - that students at Yale (etc) walk around saying, “Well, my assignment WAS due on Tuesday, but I don’t particularly feel like turning it in til Friday, so I’ll just la-di-da my way around it and come up with a sob story, and anyway, I’m a Big Important Yale Student and Future Master of the Universe, so <em>I</em> determine when my paper gets turned in.” Hook, line and sinker. It doesn’t resonate with reality.</p>
<p>“mundane things like getting work done on time should not figure into a student’s grades.”</p>
<p>And other people with experience at top schools (including some of us whose identity is public and can be verified) say that this idea is a fantasy. There are lots of second chances at HYP, yes. But if you take that route to graduation, you will wreck your transcript along the way. You get third and fourth chances to GRADUATE, not to get A’s. Speaking as an A student, we had our butts in gear, or we ceased to be A students.</p>
<p>Sure, but it doesn’t make sense to work-so-hard to get into Yale et al, and then “not be bothered” to complete assignments. Those who are truly out of the box go do whatever their out of the box thing is from the get-go.</p>
<p>S got an F on his first paper as a first year student at an elite school (not Yale or Caltech, but top 10 in both USNWR and NewTimes). The reason: he uploaded it to the on-line submission system before the deadline, but didn’t realize he needed to click another button to actually submit it to the prof, who treated it as late. I think a bit more coddling in this situation would have been perfectly appropriate.</p>
<p>ROFL - many of the people on this board are themselves graduates of these kinds of schools and / or have children at them, and know that D’s assertion that elite college students just blithely ignore deadlines is complete nonsense.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Looks like elite colleges can’t win for losing, can they? Either their graduation rates are too low or too high. Is there a just right? What is it? </p>
<p>BTW, medical school graduation rates tend to be very, very high overall. Once you’ve taken a spot in medical school, they’ve invested a lot in you and help you to succeed if you are not doing well. Is that a good or a bad thing, IYO?</p>
<p>And now that they’ve survived the weeding out, they can kick back and spend four years on somebody else’s dime waiting for the piece of paper to which they are entitled?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Let’s rotate it right back: I think it is an indication that students are not being challenged and stretched when no one ever flunks out.</p>
<p>Perhaps - but at that elite (not Ivy) school, at least one student (a STEM major yet) told her father that the courses were less challenging that those she had in high school.</p>
<p>Here’s another article that, in my opinion, is a much more accurate picture of what today’s Ivy students are like:
[Super-active</a> students are over-scheduled | Harvard Magazine Mar-Apr 2010](<a href=“http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/03/nonstop?page=0,1]Super-active”>http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/03/nonstop?page=0,1)
It galls me a little to have to point to Harvard students, but I will at least claim that students at Yale are like this, too. Getting them to slow down, and to consider alternatives to their predetermined course, is a bigger problem than getting them to work.
This is something that has changed since I was at Yale. Back then, everybody was a good student, and generally quite accomplished in multiple areas, but there weren’t as many of the “super-achievers” as described in the article above.</p>
<p>By itself, neutral. But if a long-time medical school professor were to write an article talking about the lowered standards at top medical schools, then the two pieces of evidence would align and make me nervous the next time I went to a doctor.</p>
<p>Whoop-de-doo for her. Seriously. Unlike you, I wouldn’t take that to conclude, “And therefore, every single STEM class at NU (or other elite university) is just as easy-as-pie.”</p>
<p>You’ve got some kind of chip on your shoulder about elite schools, the level of rigor of their coursework, and the students who attend them. None of these places are perfect, but generally speaking, it IS a fair thing to say that the majority of the kids there are hard-working, smart and deserving and that the education is top-notch.</p>
<p>D is at an elite. She had to complete an online survey for one class. This was nothing long or difficult, so no reason to shirk it. She did do it, but saw that she had been given a 0 for that assignment. It turned out that for some reason (might have been something D did wrong, or merely a systems glitch) there was no record that she had completed the survey. The prof asked her if she had a screen shot which proved she completed it. D didn’t, and voila the big fat 0 stayed. Seems to me if you have a smart and motivated student body, and a student insists she did a basic task, which was likely true since it did not require any research or a lot of time, then if one wished to coddle students this would have been a good time to do it. She was not allowed to submit it late either. Just one teacher and one class, but so far she hasn’t seen evidence of special privileges at her university.</p>
<p>Oops, cross-posted with motherbear–similar story</p>
<p>Thank you, Hunt. You’ve made my point much better than I ever could. Giant helpings of extracurricular activities, constant use of their Crackberries. No wonder they don’t have time to do mundane things like write papers - or spend time reflecting on what they are supposed to be learning, or discussing academic issues with each other or their professors.</p>
<p>At many elite schools students who want to be challenged and stretched are doing independent research projects with professors. Sometimes these aren’t even being graded. </p>
<p>There is a threshold that is necessary to do well in college and elite college admissions weeds out those who can’t work at this threshold. In my opinion it is very high at elite schools. There is the possibility to go way beyond that basic threshold. This is why I think your analysis is somewhat faulty. Following your analysis the future Nobel Prize winners would get As and some future MDs would flunk out?</p>
<p>What do you mean by “somebody else’s dime”? Are you talking about full-pay students whose parents pay for them – are you suggesting that is a bad, lazy thing? Or are you talking about students receiving financial aid (“someone else’s dime”)?</p>
<p>You are confusing correlation with causation. Schools like Yale admit lots of academically able students. They’re well prepared for college, and overall are highly likely to not flunk out. If virtually none of them flunk out, you can’t assume that it’s because no one wants to throw them out.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Deresiewicz’s friend essentially flunked her course because she turned in a paper late. When I think of college challenging and stretching students, I like to think that it’s mostly academic challenge and stretch, not just time management.</p>
<p>Deresiewicz was not a “long-time” professor at Yale. He was a junior professor at Yale for nine years. Before that he was a graduate student at Columbia. He didn’t get tenure at Yale, and apparently couldn’t get an academic position anywhere after that. He may be a pretty smart guy, but gee whiz, he obviously has an axe to grind. But if his version of things fits in better with what you’d prefer to believe, then believe it.</p>
<p>
This proves that there is at least one obnoxious prof at that elite school and at Cleveland State. I suppose they are alike in that respect.</p>
<p>Annasdad, if you think the Harvard Magazine article proves your point, then I don’t think you are really getting my point.</p>
<p>You haven’t been reading the thread. That accusation has already been hurled and denied. Can’t we please come up with some original ad hominem arguments for once?</p>