"Cutthroat"

Parents' Social Lounge
1

Sometimes, there are posts suggesting that a given school has a “cutthroat” environment.

Wouldn’t it largely depend on specific majors and goals? Specifically, if getting into or staying in the major or goal is competitive by grades/GPA, and the prerequisite courses are graded on a curve, that encourages “cutthroat” behavior. But if the students are secure in the major or goal at entry, or the prerequisite courses are not graded on a curve, there should be no incentive to engage in “cutthroat” behavior.

For example:

A. It should not be surprising if there were more “cutthroat” behavior in courses filled with pre-meds.

B. Where a given major is capacity limited, and there is a competitive admission process for entering frosh to get into the major, the prerequisite courses may be expected to see more “cutthroat” behavior. Examples include first year pre-engineering programs at several midwestern flagships and some other schools.

2

Yes, and no. At some competitive high schools (maybe all high schools?), there are ambitious kids who engage in brinksmanship as a way to establish prominence or dominance in a graduating class. I think this behavior extends into college, no matter what major the student chooses, because this social/cultural behavior is so entrenched. DD is not in a STEM major, but there’s still a surprising level of competition on her college campus, in general. For example, she was surprised to find out that even an extra curricular activity (a community volunteer role with no pay) required an interview as part of the selection process. Students who get the highly coveted role are going to act snobby around the kids who didn’t get it, which creates an environment where well-intentioned kids are pitted against other well-intentioned kids for bragging rights. It’s not just in STEM, and it’s not just in class. It’s all over campus. In the top 25, you’re going to run into thousands of kids who are just as ambitious as you, and who are also used to “winning.”

Not winning, with grace, is one of the hardest lessons freshman at elite schools have to learn.

3

How do you define cutthroat. If you mean cheating, that is never acceptable. In addition to violating other students, cheaters have less knowledge of required content needed later. What was meaningful to me and my sister, we didn’t know why we would consider other students more prepared than we were. By cheating, could earn a lower score. Yipes!

Some classes are inherently difficult to the extreme. Students seemed not to cheat because of the level of difficulty and complicated testing of content. Competitive, but not kiler, because a level of academic proficiency was required and grades were not allocated by letter grade.

Cheating was a problem when students did not contribute to group projects equivalently. If faculty seems unaware. Notify. On individual projects with presentation, faculty may be upset by lack of rigor.

In general then, cutthroat seems ok as long as students don’t cheat, criticize or gangup…In the case of classes with very competitive students, that is ok. Students are never guaranteed a grade, even when overmatched by classmates. Students in high school seem very competitive and take pride in glad to the third decimal point in gpas. Silly.

However, if lots of students earn high grades in very difficult classes, they should earn the grade corresponding to grade standards and not number of particular grades. Had a large class with As and several Fs. Graded that way and explained to department chair who wanted grades distributed. No. Fs who had sabotaged had to take class again and did well after apologizing and doing their own stuff.

So some classes are very challenging and students work hard to master and demonstrate content. They should get the grades they deserve. Some students who usually get high grades may find it impossible to match the grade of those who excel. They change sections of wait until next time to take the class and earn an A. Faculty has no obligation and students should have no expectation of a particular grade. Students should get the grade they earned and not one based on class ranking. Classes are not always comparable in student proficiency.

Cheaters and drains on group efforts should be reported and receive sanctions.

University faculty as faculty aren’t known for mercy, extra credit, do overs, sympathy with students saying class notes differ from presentation, whatever. Faculty are trained in a discipline that they treasured enough to study extensively and work thoughtfully to teach to students an area about which they care. That does not mean that some students aren’t preferred somehow, but they shouldn’t be traded accordingly. Cute students do earn As in advanced statistics because they learned proficiently.

4

Wouldn’t high school “cutthroat” behavior be increased in environments where class rank is more important (e.g. Texas)?

5

Cutthroat to me means an environment where students compete against each other, vs helping. Examples might including not being willing to share class notes, not being willing to participate in study groups, not being willing to discuss homework. More extreme examples might include hiding reference books from the library, or purposely misleading fellow classmates on things like test dates and required reading, etc.

I think classes that grade on a strict curve greatly contribute to the cutthroat environment since it creates a zero-sum environment where you can only do well at the expense of your peers.

6

That type of cutthroat environment was rampant when I was in school 30 years ago but I didn’t see that anywhere we tour - Cornell, CMU, Northwestern included. Especially in engineering, the name of the game now is collaboration and the stress seems to be on group projects and design. We heard over and over that the weed out happens at admission time, not after you’ve been accepted, and most schools touted how many first years stayed in engineering. The statistics were super high, well into the 90%+ range. I realize that may be different for other majors but it was a nice thing for us to see for our daughter.

7

I think the last thing employers want is cutthroat employees. If you have that instinct built in over years of high school and college, it’s going to be hard to separate yourself from that attitude. So many companies/positions require collaborative work now and that cutthroat attitude is not going to lend itself to collaboration in the workplace. Being competitive is one thing actively sabotaging other people is another. I would recommend termination if I discovered an employee actively sabotaged another employee to gain rewards for themselves.

8

Watch the show “Community”, season 3, episode 17. It’s a spoof on Law and Order.

9

@momofsenior1 I’m glad to hear you didn’t see a cutthroat environment at CMU. It was certainly very friendly and collaborative when I was there back in the stone ages. We never actually knew if grades were curved or not, which probably helped. There was a general sense that if everyone did bad that profs would curve up, but I absolutely never heard about anybody getting curved down. Profs were always vague on the subject when asked directly, though.

10

With my child having witnessed this first hand in high school and been the target of some of this cutthroat behavior during the college admissions process, I was concerned that she’d end up at a school with one of these kids. She was shocked and upset by it for quite some time. Luckily(?) my daughter and the offender were both rejected from their same first choice college and will go their separate ways, but I have a hard time believing that these types of tigers change their stripes once they step foot on campus.