<p>white-washing Williams’ faults. I am debunking facially ridiculous claims from Mini, based on nothing more than a pre-existing disposition to trash Williams (over, and over, and over) rather than rely on any facts whatsoever. </p>
<p>We are comparing the opportunities presented by Williams vs. other schools. There was a claim made that Williams, generally speaking, is needlessly harsh to its students relative to other schools. I’ve seen nothing to support that claim. What happened to your son Mythmom, is a shame. It should not have happened. But if you think there aren’t parents and kids at EVERY school in the country who will have similar stories to tell, well, you are kidding yourself. The fact is that Williams’ median gpa, graduation rates, and grad school success rates speak for themselves. Will some kids fall through the cracks, or be treated unfairly by a particular prof, class, course of study? Sure. And that is a shame. But again, there is no basis for anyone here to claim that this is a bigger problem at Williams than at peer institutions. It’s just not. So while your and Mini’s kids had great experiences at Smith and Barnard, for example, I promise you some did not, and regretted choosing those school based on what they would claim is unfair treatment.</p>
<p>Those examples just aren’t sufficient to draw a conclusion, in particular, when empiracle data, to the extent it exists, shows Williams doing a tremendous job in graduating students, getting them into top grad programs, and students not being unfairly (in the aggregate) penalized by unduly harsh averages GPA’s. Again, that doesn’t mean that Williams will serve EVERY student well. But NO college or university could make that claim, because if they could, every student who enterred would graduate within four years, and every student would get into their top choice job or grad school.</p>
<p>Even more egregious are the claims that Mini is making comparing Williams to larger univrsities, with vastly lower levels of resources, and far, far less personal attention, and yes, substantially fewer research opportunities and chances for faculty interaction, even for top students, than Williams affords. Mini pulls, frankly, out of his butt a claim that anyone who was “weeded out” (and again, I maintain that FAR more students than he is claiming just decided on their own that they didn’t want to be pre-med because, let’s face it, being pre-med is not a lot of fun anywhere, and “doctor” sounds really great to a lot of uber-achieving high schoolers until they learn from experience what becoming a doctor actually enatils) unwillingly at Williams would simply cruise to the 3.8 or higher GPA needed at a second tier university to get into med school (or hekc, I’ll even go lower than 3.8 for argument’s sake). This does a TREMENDOUS disservice to the caliber of the top pre-med students (and yes, in pre-med virtually anywhere respectable you are competing against smart, hard working kids, no different from Williams kids) you will find at virtually ANY university, who believe me, are just as smart and work just as hard as Williams students. </p>
<p>Just because you go to Williams won’t mean that you would cruise through a lesser school … especially if you struggle in science classes at Williams. You might or might not. But some people just realize they, for example, aren’t cut out (whether by sheer lack or interest, or mismatch of abilities, or unwillingness to devote sufficient hours of study, or just being exposed to something they enjoy more) for organic chemistry or physics, and would more than likely encounter the exact same issues at larger universities … the difference being, at Williams, it is far easier to switch course, decide later in your college career to embark on a totally different major, and still end up where you’d like to be. </p>
<p>Will it work out in every case? Of course not. But to suggest that just because someone is smart enough to get into Williams, yet gets weeded out of pre-med at Williams, they’d cruise to the front of the class among a far larger group of pre-med students at a big university, who don’t have the same level of personal attention or undergraduate teaching focus as a Williams, is simply farcical and, of course, completely and totally unsupported.</p>
<p>One last thing: the only basis Mini has supported for ANY of his claims about weeding out relate to his own personal experience, which I believe was many decades ago, when Williams as an institution was unrecognizable from what it is today. The students at Williams today are FAR more accomplished, savvy, and prepared than students were even in my day, which is far more proximate to today than Mini’s era. So take any supposedly empiracle statistical claims that he makes based on his own personal experience with a grain of salt. The truth is, Mini has no basis whatsoever for opining (1) what percentage of entering Williams students intent to be pre-med, (2) of those that leave the pre-med track, what percentage do so because they are “weeded out” by grades vs. what percentage choose to do so for other reasons, and (3) of those that are “weeded out” by Williams, what percentage would, at some less competitive school, perform at the elite level (A or A minus) in pre-med classes that they would need to gain admission to med school. My guess is that, by the time you get to three, you are talking about a VERY small number. But unlike Mini, I’ll admit that I am merely speculating. </p>
<p>I can speak from my OWN experience that none of my friends who were pre-med failed to go to med school. Two in fact attended med school despite earning fairly average (3.3-3.5) grades at Williams. Which, by the way, I did as well, so I’m not someone who just cruised through college with a 3.9 or anything close to that.</p>