So I’ve had a few side discussions on other school threads, and am trying to get my head around what a weeder/weed-out class is, how bad they are for the students (or not), and how to identify which schools are rife with them.
As a dinosaur who grew up in the 80’s, I recall hearing about them with regard to pre-med classes, and more recently also with computer science, nursing and other STEM classes. My daughter currently intends to major in CS, but is also interested in other STEM fields and I have other nieces soon applying to colleges soon so I’m trying to educate myself and them.
Are weeder classes really an intentional institutional effort to reduce the number of students in a particular major, or are they just informally termed “weeders” by students who make their decisions to pursue or not pursue medical school or a particular major based on how they fared in those courses?
For schools like UC/CSU’s with serious competition for admission to highly impacted majors (CS, nursing, etc), why do they still need weeder classes if they have already limited the number of students admitted to the department? Is it to screen out students trying to transfer into those majors? I understand the need to ensure students have mastered basic prerequisites, but isn’t that true of all majors? Is this only a STEM thing?
If, assuming weeder classes are bad and students who want a less competitive/cutthroat environment should try to avoid them, how do you identify the schools that have them? Are secondary admission requirements to declare a major the red flag? We are already looking to avoid schools that are known to have a “stress culture” but are there any other helpful indicators? TIA!
The sequentialness of prerequisites in STEM fields means that there is a minimum level of rigor which may be too high for some students (more commonly at less selective colleges). There may be a perception of “weeding” simply because of the rigor of the courses.
Where “active weeding” can occur are situations where (a) there is secondary admission to majors, usually due to capacity limitations, or (b) where more frosh are directly admitted than the department has capacity to teach. Situation (a) is somewhat common with popular majors, although many popular majors at UCs and CSUs are direct admission, so that does not really apply. Situation (b) is most common in direct admit nursing majors, where direct admits may need to keep a GPA as high as 3.5 (depending on the college) to stay in the major.
Of course, regardless of what the college actually does, pre-med is inherently a “weeding” process because medical schools require a high college GPA just to avoid automatic rejection.
It depends on how high or competitive they are. A secondary admission process that requires only a 2.5 GPA to get into the major automatically is obviously less stressful than one where a 3.75 GPA is needed as a base requirement but admission is competitive among those who meet that GPA.
Three of my kids’ universities had them, all large public schools. They were early courses/labs like chemistry, biology, calculus, really poorly taught, with TA’s who were as equally as frustrated as the students. They were passable (usually a significant curve), but many didn’t pass, and those that did spent a significant amount of time preparing for them (practice exams, office hours, study groups, tutors…) Once my daughter got through her first one with a B (she was thrilled), it made it easier to know how to prepare for the others. When signing up for classes, students can get an idea from rate my professor.
The other thing to note is that many new frosh stumble in the transition from the highly supervised environment of high school to the less supervised environment of college that requires more self motivation and time management skills. Stumbling here may make the first year college courses seem harder than they would be if the same material were presented in a high school environment.
I don’t have an opinion on whether there really are weed-out classes or if they are just perceived that way. However I would strongly advise preferring schools without school secondary requirements to enter a major.
The hardest AP class according to many is BC Calculus, and yet it is a slowed-down version of the equivalent classes in college. And in HS comes with many more hours of instruction. The point being that many HS students are surprised by the pace and workload of math/science/engineering classes in college. If it takes them a semester or two to find their footing then by the time they graduate that is water long under the bridge. But if they are at a school where they have to apply to that major then they may not get that chance.
Being a slowed down version is only really the case for high schools that force a two year AB to BC sequence, rather than those where BC is done in one year including the AB material. Also, BC is probably not considered a difficult AP course by the students who choose to take it, since those students self-select as the strongest-in-math students in high school.
UCLA gives credit for 2 quarters of calculus. A quarter is 3 hr/wk plus a discussion section for 10 weeks. So 2 quarters is 80 hours of instruction in 20 weeks. A one-year sequence in HS may be 35 weeks, 5 hr/wk so a total of 175 hours of instruction.
At freshman engineering orientation, Purdue told students that gone were the days of “look left, look right and those students won’t be here at graduation”. My D didn’t feel that any of her classes were weed outs.
That said, I do agree that some students find out freshman year that what they expected to major in doesn’t align with their strengths.
It was definitely not my D’s experience that freshman year profs and TAs were subpar. If anything, some of her favorite profs taught those classes.
A rule of thumb we were told for math, science, engineering classes was to spend 2-3 hours outside of class for every class hour doing the things you mention. So that’s 6-9 hours per week per class, you take 2 or 3 of these classes and it’s a heavy commitment of time. It was like that all the way thru graduation, if anything it got harder as classes built on ideas and tools taught a previous year.
Many students aren’t prepared for this workload. Or don’t believe you when you tell them, as one of my nephews who majored in engineering later told me. He thought I was pulling his leg, but he said it really turned out that way. And bright kids can be the most surprised since their native smarts may have done a lot to get them thru HS.
UCLA and many of the other UCs do cover single variable calculus faster (without the courses being higher in credit value) – usually two quarters for 8 quarter credit units = 5+1/3 semester credit units. It looks like most other universities and community colleges cover the BC material over a whole year for 8 semester credit units (sometimes more credit units for community colleges).
A “credit hour” is supposed to represent 3 hours of work per week, so a typical 4 credit math (or other) course is supposed to represent 12 hours of work per week, and a 15 credit course load is supposed to represent 45 hours of work per week on school.
However, in reality, courses with labs, big term projects, and computer programming assignments tend to be more work than other courses with the same credit value.
One of the changes from high school to college is that college has less in-class time but expects more out-of-class work.
What we told our kids was to expect it to be a reverse of high school, the time is class I’ll be about equal to high school regular homework time, and now homework is about the amount of time they spent in high school classes per day. Both combined is a full time job at the very least. Plus don’t expect to be hand fed content, it’s learning to teach yourself.
OChem is definitely a dream killer. But I really don’t think that there has been a widespread conspiracy for the last 70 years to have the worst people teaching it. Maybe it is just not in many students capacity to learn.
This was my daughter’s chem professor first and second semester freshman year. She was my only science major (other four business), but I found similar descriptions of other chemistry professors on he other college parent Facebook pages, with students spending way more time on the class than their others combined. This guy retired right after my daughter’s last class. James Wingrave at University of Delaware | Rate My Professors
Rate my professor was pretty horrendous. I am in finance so have no idea - but people seem to say that people can do really well in Chem but are terrible in ochem- and vice versa. No idea if that is true.
“Weed-out” in many schools is more like ‘shaking out’ the people who don’t really get just how hard the work is for medicine/etc.* So, there is no ‘ramping up’ period from HS to college- students go straight into full-on fast paced, sink or swim, college material. Students who come from strong HSs, with a good foundation, strong work habits, and a lot of self-discipline tend to manage it reasonably well. Another invisible hurdle for students whose academic backgrounds are not as strong.
*(imo, the current system makes it harder than necessary, and you would never guess how much of a Dr shortage there is by how high they keep the barriers to entry, but that’s a soapbox for another day!)
In this case hundreds of parents signed a petition for at least a year (which I find ridiculous). My daughter (34 act, 9 ap’s, 1 B freshman year), was mad, this class was taking so much time away from her other studies. I asked her if it was this professor, she was like how did you know?! Fortunately parents of btdt students gave good advice on how to get through and not fail. It was pretty smooth sailing after she was done with this professor. I agree take RMP with a grain of salt, but when the majority rate 1 with the same comments… Many times he ended class after 10 minutes or gave the exact same lecture 2 classes in a row. My dad (brilliant man) had Alzheimer’s and my daughter suspected a bit of dementia with this man.
My youngest son is in the honor’s engineering program at a top 30 University as a freshman this year. He was told Calculus 3 is a weed out class. The average class grade was right at the B/C borderline. Half the kids in the class, who all had normally made straight As their entire lives, had to go home at Winter break and tell their parents they got a C, D or F.