<p>I spoke to my son over the weekend and we were both surprised that when we went thru the advising he didn't consider classes where papers were required because he thought it would be a lot of work. What he has discovered is that in his composition class (which are students that are predominantly from Wisconsin) the students are bad writers as a group. I assume that the Wisconsin's school system as a whole is not very good because the student admitted are the best the state has to offer. As a result my son is going to take multiple classes that require term papers, he feels that he has to put in much more work studying for Math and science classes where the students are much better. My son is above average English student in his high school, the students in his composition class are below the average in his high school (easy A for him). This observation will allow my son to spend more time studying for midterms are finals. I am sure parents from Wisconsin will disagree with me, but its one students observation from Connecticut.</p>
<p>My freshman received credit for CommA through a college credit class taken in high school, a Wisconsin high school. Be careful on what generalizations are being made about the quality of students’ writing. Colleges are filled with students of varying strengths and weaknesses. I would caution you on advising your child to take whatever classes will be easy and have your student concentrate on working toward a degree.</p>
<p>My son is taking a balanced schedule. He is going to apply to the business school this term so there aren’t many business related classes that he can take, he has AP credits for most of the requirements. My son could have taken AP English in HS, but elected classes geared to his business requirements.</p>
<p>I think most of the good writers who go to UW bypass the Comm A requirement through AP classes or by taking the placement test, leaving the average writers in the Comm A/freshman composition courses.</p>
<p>Roxsox you said in another tread that you were from Florida. Just because you opted out of the writing doesn’t mean that you are a good writer. Maybe I am 100 wrong but I thought that most of the students that goto UW are from Wisconsin’s public schools. If you take about two dozens students and most aren’t up to UW’s high writing standards then I assume the writing at the local public schools aren’t good.</p>
<p>I agree that a lot of students pass through the CommsA classes with the exam or the AP tests. I did and so did a lot of my friends (I’m from Wisconsin). The campus is very large and contains a diverse group of students, each excelling in their own field. Obviously you are going to get people who are good and bad at writing. I don’t think your son has a very clear view of the writing ability of all students of Madison. Once he gets out of the introductory class and moves on to more advanced classes, he will be “competing” with students who have much more advanced writing skills, thus resulting in an equal work load to math/science classes</p>
<p>Would I be wrong to say people in the wealthy part of CT are broke greedy often crooked spendthrifts based on my limited information?</p>
<p>[Greenwich</a> lean time: Hedgies’ exodus hits Conn. house sales - NYPOST.com](<a href=“http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/greenwich_lean_time_iyRIfUjMbc2yt3dV96rHcK]Greenwich”>Greenwich lean time)</p>
<p>I didn’t note where I went to high school because I don’t think it’s relevant. The reason there are so many people from Wisconsin in your son’s class is because there are so many people from Wisconsin at UW…freshman composition classes are huge and there is no way he can know where everyone in the class is from. The class’s geographic diversity is probably similar to the geographic makeup of the student body, which would have a majority from Wisconsin or other Midwestern states. A similar proportion probably bypassed the Comm A requirement. I don’t think it has much to do with where students are from. I did go to high school in Florida, whose public schools (mine especially) are infamously bad, but I have always been a good writer so that was never an issue for me.</p>
<p>It is not hard to pass the Comm A requirements. You can do it with AP classes, which most college-bound students take (you do need a 4, but there are multiple classes that can give you the Comm A requirement), or if not you can take the placement test, which is very easy. I know very few people who had to take a Comm A class, and I would say that I know people with all different GPAs, skills, etc. And I know people from all different places as well, both in and out of state. Perhaps there are many students from Wisconsin in freshman composition classes, but there are also many students from Wisconsin that do not have to take them. Same for out of state, though since there are less of them overall there would of course be smaller percentages.</p>
<p>Another factor to consider is that many kids who apply OOS are applying to many different schools, probably all similar to UW or better. They’ll have been filling out apps, practicing SATs with writing, writing multiple essays. Those kids are obviously going to have better writing skills than the kids from small-town Wisconsin who apply to UW because it’s the only school on their radar, simply because they’ve practiced more and been in a more competitive mindset all through high school.</p>
<p>Although Barrons’ statement might be a ‘bit’ hyperbolic… 
which offsets justwaiting’s blanket statement about the WI school system, I will say that there are fewer and fewer HS graduates that are even decent writers, nationwide. It’s a natural progression from less English grammar & creative writing being taught in the primary grades. By the time these kids get to high school, it’s too late. Even editing (not re-writing) my med school daughter’s college essays was torturous. I’m glad those days are over!</p>
<p>I always thought the composition class was for the below average students. Back in my day they had “sophomore lit” requirements as AP classes were unheard of here- my impression then was most took the lit as freshmen and passed out of “freshman composition” (they also had an Honors lit 2 semester sequence some of us placed into, now defunct because the best students will have taken AP courses in HS). Never heard about anyone taking a composition course in the current era, but then so many Wisconsin residents who choose UW-Madison will have had the AP course(s), or at least pass the placement test. You can get significant numbers of students needing composition when you count nearly 6000 new freshmen every fall, not everyone will do well on the placement test. Of course with 2/3 or more of the freshmen being from Wisconsin there will be mainly instate students. Someone could do a UW website check for fall and spring semesters to see how many places are available in the composition course sections to see how common a course it is.</p>
<p>I did a course check. Many lectures with many 16-19 capacity sections, not all full. Perhaps the students I knew about are well above average.</p>
<p>My son took 2 classes with papers and 2 classes with tests. In the classes that have tests he has to spend a lot of time studying in order to get 'A’s, but the other classes are easy 'A’s. I hope the business school doesn’t hold the composition class ‘A’ against him.</p>
<p>That’s a lot of generalizations from a freshman not even through one semester at UW. Both the Comm A and Comm B classes are typically pretty low level and are almost always taken by freshmen and sophomores, and as others have mentioned a lot of people bypass both Comm A and Comm B through AP credit or something similar, so of course the classes aren’t going to be overflowing with superb writers. And, as someone else stated, obviously they are going to be mostly filled with Wisconsinites, this is the University of Wisconsin and the majority of the undergraduate population naturally hails from the state.</p>
<p>Writing should be a requirement for every student at UW. If someone has AP English then give them credit for an elective class. When I went to NYU 33 years ago they required a year of writing no matter which school you enrolled and still do. I would put my son up against any of the UW students that didn’t take the writing. From reading this board it sounds like only bad writers take the class.</p>
<p>Responding to justwaiting1 about the writing requirement… I don’t agree with your idea to not count the AP English credits. A writing class is required… CommA. AP credits is just taking CommA beforehand so one does not need to waste time in college taking it. If you have already show proficiency in the AP series, what is the point in requiring that students showing it again, wasting their time and money? If AP English credit only counted as elective credit then nobody would take the time and energy to study for the AP class and exam. High school AP English is just as rigorous as the intro college comp class, that’s the reasoning behind AP. AP credits are designed to give students more flexibility and time to pursue more advanced courses other than the basic university requirements.
Like I said before, once your son moves into the upper level courses, he will have plenty of opportunities to be challenged in his writing ability, and working with students with much more advanced writing skills. No need to be concerned about him not being challenged enough.</p>
<p>I am not an expert on the UW curriculum, but its not a requirement for anyone to take writing. My son could have taken a speech class to for fill the requirement. I am sure that the students entering UW are very smart, but there are some that receive low grades. AP English has little to do with college writing. My son received 5’s in AP economics, I am positive that the Micro and Macro are much harder at UW (there isn’t Calculus as a prerequisite for the AP). In my College there were hundreds of students that scored over 700 on their verbal SAT’s and had 5’s on the AP English examination, they took a year of writing and so should all of the students body of UW.</p>
<p>A year of writing about what though? Aside from getting the basics out of the way, most college English classes are frankly a waste of time as far as developing writing skills. English professors are much more interested in spending time discussing literary theory than honing grammatical, stylistic and communicative skills, and in fact they often don’t even bother talking about them. </p>
<p>And in a way, it makes sense. When you finally reach college, you’re beyond the point of just writing about subjects in a general sense. In order to really communicate something deeper and more worthwhile, you have to know more about a topic. English classes don’t really teach you about something you can write extensively about – reading a book and discussing literary theory is pretty much the same thing over and over again. In a lot of ways, “English” classes are more like “Reading” classes. That’s why I don’t see any problem with the current setup, as the majors that do need to do serious writing have plenty of it. For example, every history major has to take a senior capstone class that has a final 20+ page paper, and if you want honors in the major you have to write a thesis that’s 40+ pages.</p>
<p>I totally disagree with you also. Some students have had excellent instruction in/learned writing/grammar while in many of our good state public schools- why should they have to sit through material they already know? Boredom leads to not doing the work, grades are not always the indicator of skills. Times change, HS students have a different curriculum than was available decades ago. Once you have learned the mechanics of writing there is no need to do the remedial work. Not everyone enjoys writing just for the sake of producing papers, I don’t. Good way to disengage some of the smartest student from learning. There is a reason for the English placement test and UW must have figured those that can write well enough to do well on an AP exam don’t need to sit throught the test.</p>
<p>Oringinally US colleges required knowledge of Greek and/or Latin. Today there is so much more to learn that spending time with those languages would mean less time for so much else. Different fields have different needs. The last papers I wrote were for a sci fi lit course I took P/F- wanted the reading/interpretative skills but not the writing part. Not having a compostion course did not hold me back in my Honors Lit courses (very few allowed in)- I only got B’s but hated to interpret the literature…</p>
<p>Enough discussion from me.</p>
<p>I think UW-Madison is fairly pro-active in realizing that their students aren’t the best writers right out of the box. Thus, the UW Writing Center:</p>
<p>[UW</a> Madison Writing Center](<a href=“http://writing.wisc.edu/]UW”>http://writing.wisc.edu/)</p>
<p>D2, who is presently a junior at UW-Madison, is a decent writer in her own right, but nevertheless utilizes the Writing Center quite a bit, to get a different perspective as well as to clean up syntax errors she might not find on her own. I would assume this place would be a godsend for writing-challenged students, and wonder how many take advantage of this great, free help.</p>
<p>Though I’ve never used it myself, I’ve heard great things about the writing center. I should have mentioned it in one of my previous posts, as it allows students to bring papers about any subject (be it science, history, or whatever) and get help on the mechanics of writing. Much more useful than a generic English class in my opinion. I actually briefly considered working at the center as one of my English instructors who works there said she’d recommend me, but unfortunately I didn’t have the time.</p>