<p>Re 39. #I did NOT say it doesn’t exist at ANY other college. I said it doesn’t exist at " many other colleges."</p>
<p>Having checked the rules…Berkeley’s rules are more restrictive than you suggest:</p>
<p>Guidelines for Passed/Not Passed Grades</p>
<p>To change a grading option during the enrollment period, use Tele-BEARS before the end of the tenth week of the term.
Students on term or overall academic probation may not use the P/NP option.
Passed grades may account for no more than one third of the total completed units taken on the Berkeley campus at the time of graduation (includes Passed grades earned through the Education Abroad Program, UCDC, the University of California Intercampus Exchange Program, and University Extension).
For the following requirements, letter grades are required, and the P/NP option is not appropriate: Entry Level Writing, Reading & Composition, Foreign Language, Quantitative Reasoning, and most major requirements (check with department for possible exceptions).
Courses taken to fulfill the American Cultures requirement and the L&S Seven Course Breadth requirement may be taken P/NP.
Courses previously taken on a letter-graded basis may not be repeated on a P/NP basis.
Passed units cannot be applied toward the minimum 13 letter-graded units required for the L&S Dean’s Honors List each semester.
Note: The Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS) converts NP grades to F’s and calculates them into the GPA as a zero. LSDAS does not count P grades in the GPA.</p>
<p>As far as I know, no Brown prof includes S/NC non-majors in setting curves. Maybe you know of one that does, but it certainly isn’t the usual practice.</p>
<p>You do NOT need a dean’s or a prof’s permission to take courses at Brown S/NC. There is NO limit on the number of courses you can take S/NC at Brown. That’s unusual.</p>
<p>My daughter is a Brown graduate in a top 10 PhD program in computer science.</p>
<p>I haven’t read or listen enough to the Gladwell talks to comment on his thesis, but I likely will as I find his writings stimulating and entertaining. I’m not sure if he is really talking about Ivys or just Harvard. Also just what is this 2nd choice or state college?</p>
<p>But for grad school prospects…</p>
<p>At Brown 25% go directly to grad or professional school. That number is much larger for grads within 5-10 years, something like 80% (take with grain of salt as I can’t find the citation.) So I don’t really know that it is so hard to get into grad school from Ivy’s, or Brown more specifically, if you want to.</p>
<p>I can’t say I know her gpa, and Brown doesn’t calculate it, but I would be very surprised if she was at the top of her class. She did not graduate with honors or anything.</p>
<p>Grad school isn’t just a matter of gpa. Research is extremely important, more important than a top gpa. bluebayou made an excellent point. Research experiences at these schools are widely available and so is financial support for it. Working alongside professors and grad students gave my daughter enough confidence in her abilities and enough experience to go directly to a PhD program. And you can be aspirational in that environment. And I’m sure at least 2 of her references were pretty good ‘names’.</p>
<p>I know that she enjoyed her time there, and ‘found’ her major. Loved her department. Hard work and stress? Yes. Feeling crushed by competition/people better than her? Not so much. Maybe it is a matter of personality. She had a healthy competitive streak in HS, and contenders to compete against. </p>
<p>So no regrets. But we didn’t have to pay for it, financial aid did. </p>
<p>To open up a can of worms about whether you can do better, same or worse for yourself at your state college is more than I can bite off right now. I will say that kids should not be asking their parents to go into big amounts of debt for what is really a luxury item. If you want to go to grad school, there are many ways to do that.</p>
<p>My son graduated from Yale last year and is now a graduate school at Juilliard. In my opinion, he would not have achieved as much if he had gone to the state flagship, because he’s the kind of person who “plays up” to the people around him. So far, I have no regrets at all about sending him to Yale, and neither does he. My daughter is a sophomore at Yale now, and so far no regrets, although she is more susceptible to stress than my son. They both have had opportunities in the arts (in particular) that I think would be hard to match elsewhere.
Most of the other kids we know who have gone to Ivies (and similar schools) have also liked them, but there have been a few who suffered from bad fit (i.e., one at MIT, for example) or other issues.</p>
<p>Edited to add: my son does have one regret: if he’d gone to a music conservatory instead of Yale, he wouldn’t be getting his behind kicked on a daily basis in ear training class. But that’s only a small quibble, and he wouldn’t change the decision in retrospect because of it.</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t the higher grades at the Ivy’s or any other high ranking private be attributable simply to the over all quality of the entering classes? It seems to me if your entire class of students represents students in the top 5% of their HS classes and probably the upper echelon of high schools that they would more likely do well in their class work than students from colleges with a more normal distribution of students. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that those in the Honors Colleges of state flagships would likely have higher GPA’s then the general college population. Would we claim grade inflation among the honors students? My guess is that they would compare academically more favorably to those who were accepted to a top tier University</p>
As you can imagine, this has been hashed out lots of times before, but I think it boils down to philosophical disagreements about what grades are for. If, like me, you think grades are primarily to demonstrate the degree of mastery of the material, then you don’t worry about “grade inflation”–it’s OK to give mostly As, if most of the students have mastered the material. If, on the other hand, you primarily see grades as a way of sorting out the performance of students in a particular classroom, then you don’t like grade inflation because it makes it difficult to rank the performance of the students.</p>
<p>It may be that the two approaches may make sense in different settings. Thus, it may be that at highly selective colleges, there just is not that much difference in performance between the top performers and the middle performers. The opposite may be true in large classes at a flagship that has relatively open admissions but also a “weeding out” process.</p>
<p>I don’t get it? What’s the problem with every body earning A’s? If a student does the required and masters the concepts and proves it via test paper project, then why not. I can see low grades, if the student slacks or doesn’t learn the material… </p>
<p>I can remember examines with trick questions. I never understood why some profs designed tests so kids would do poorly. I always felt ripped-off by these teachers. I put in time, I did everything required (and then some) I paid my bill. Wasn’t the teachers job to design an evaluation based on the material presented. If school has a curve in place , doesn’t that allow the proof to target only a top percentage of class. Rather than presenting materials and evaluations to target the entire class? </p>
<p>I never cared if my classmate did well. In fact, I was happy for them. I liked having study partners who were not competive. I think I learned more by collaborating with peers. Curving just sets up a weird vibe.</p>
<p>These threads are depressing. I wish I’d insisted my D attend a less competitive school.</p>
<p>I also agree with your point that assessments should be designed to test mastery of the material, not to set traps for the unwary. If the course is insufficiently challenging for the majority of the students, alter the course to include more material or require more sophisticated analysis/manipulation of the material, don’t curve the results and pretend that students did not in fact master the material. (This assumes that the original course covered what it “ought” to in the first place.)</p>
<p>I have never understood the impulse to impose curves and rankings. It isn’t a game, for doG’s sake.</p>
<p>No regrets attending. I wanted to be challenged and I was. I had to up my game. A diploma from an Ivy opened many doors for me, and I did reap economic benefits. I do not have debt from school. </p>
<p>Now that I am older, my college doesn’t come up much. That’s okay. I have always run in a variety of circles, some where an Ivy education is an everyday thing, some where it is extraordinary. I know that getting an Ivy League education had a profound effect on me. </p>
<p>If you were to ask my folks, my mom would say it was 100 percent worth it. My dad would disagree, but I think some of that stems from the fact that once I left the farm, I never came back, so to speak. He would rather have kept me closer to home, and my college education was the first big step away. </p>
<p>For my own kids? Son chose Big State U. He applied to two Ivies, but not the ones he could have got in (yeah, I know he might have been rejected at all of them, but suspect he would have been admitted at a couple he didn’t want to apply to.) He is happy as can be where he is. Would his life be different at an Ivy? And how? Well, I think he would be homesick. I think he would have to work harder. His adjustment period would take longer, but he would adjust, and he would be happy. I think he was able to settle in more quickly at nearby Big State U. </p>
<p>I don’t regret his choosing a different path. I did ask him to consider applying to more Ivies, since I had such a good experience. I wanted him to be challenged and have a big away from home experience like I did. In hindsight, it looks like he made the perfect choice for him.</p>
<p>I’m not sure any parent would be able to admit regretting sending their kid to an Ivy, even if the experience wasn’t all roses.</p>
<p>In my case, I have a daughter who had her heart set on attending an Ivy, but it didn’t happen. She is thriving at her current school, and has had many wonderful opportunities that she would not have had, if she would be competing with the best of the best. She now realizes this is a better place for her.</p>
<p>I sometimes wonder what we as parents would have thought of her experience if she had actually attended an Ivy. My guess is we would have found a way to put a positive spin on it regardless of what our deepest thoughts were.</p>
<p>True no matter where our children end up going to college if they have a remotely positive outcome. </p>
<p>A parent once told me how delighted she was with her son’s high school education. He’d attended a well-regarded private high school charging around $25k/year. Single mom who worked as a hairdresser, there may have been some grandparental help with school bills in addition to some financial aid from the school. The son didn’t continue on to college immediately after graduation. You could spin that as a failure, since the son didn’t build on his educational foundation after K-12. Or you could spin it as a success, because the private school gave him a better education than he’d have received at their local public school.</p>
In an earlier post, I mentioned that the MD Applicants data showed no significant difference between the average GPA of accepted med school apps and the average GPA of the overall class at highly selective colleges with notable grade inflation, such as Stanford and Harvard. And there was a huge difference at less selective colleges, such as Texas and Arizona. A response questioned whether this was due to med schools accepting primarily on the high MCAT score of ~34 I chose and not GPA. The high MCAT is expected occur more frequently with lower GPAs at selective colleges than at less selective ones. I said I’d review that case when the site came online. To review I compared acceptance rate at a MCAT range of 32-25 with varying GPAs. To increase sample size I compared Stanford + Harvard to Texas + Arizona.</p>
<p>Stanford+Harvard Acceptance Rate by Distance from Average GPA of Class With 32-35 MCAT
Average GPA or greater – 86%
0 to 0.25 below average – 76%
0.25 to 0.5 below average – 86% (only 7 in group)</p>
<p>Texas+Arizona Acceptance Rate by Distance from Average GPA of Class With 32-35 MCAT
0.5 above average GPA or greater – 78%
0.25 to 0.5 above average – 59%
0 to 0.25 above average – 30%
0 to 0.25 below average – 14% (only 7 in group)</p>
<p>Stanford/Harvard showed little decrease in acceptance rate as GPA decreased, even when well below the overall average for Stanford/Harvard students; yet Texas/Arizona showed a huge decrease in acceptance rate as GPA decreased.</p>
<p>This points to a belief that going to an Ivy is a positive and that’s just not true. There are even posts above from parents who seem to regret sending their child to an Ivy. Getting admitted to a Ivy is a positive; attending is not an outcome, it’s a process where the outcome may be tragic.</p>
<p>My HS best friend went to an Ivy (Penn), floundered, and then took her life. Her parents probably regretted pushing Penn as the norm and having her attend. She was not a fragile girl; she was a strong student and person who was not afraid to be different. What no one caught was the effect non-success (she had always been a top student) would have on her.</p>
<p>At that time, Penn was also not a supportive environment; it was more sink or swim with a type A, determined student stereotype. Freshman year was all about weeding out, especially among the pre-meds, the “weak”. Professors did not necessarily connect with freshmen or even sophomore students taking the large surveys/intro classes with 75+ students (my bio I class had 250+).</p>
<p>Would she lived had she gone elsewhere? I think she would have if she went to a LAC where the academic and social environments are set up to help students work toward a goal without setting them against each other.</p>
<p>SlackerMom, sorry about your friend. You should watch or read Malcolm Gladwell’s speech at Google that is linked above. It explores something called relative deprivation theory, which essentially says that people compare themselves to those in their immediate surroundings (i.e., even if a student was a standout in high school he/she may not feel so superior at a college like Penn). He advocates for students finding schools where they can be “big fish in a small pond”–so an LAC might have been better for your friend, as you suggest. The LAC environment is certainly a good fit for my son, who does not respond well to intense competition.</p>
I get a preference for LAC vs Research U … I get a preference for big fish small pond versus getting thrown in the deep end … I get the relative deprivation theory (check out the definition of middle class on CC). That said I do not get the implication that a LAC is less competitive than a research U … I would expect LACs, in general to more supportive and easier to make connections. But wouldn’t a LAC with a 5% acceptance rate and students with top 1-2% stats tend to be just as competitive as a research U with a 5% acceptance rate and students with top 1-2% stats.</p>
<p>PS - full disclosure, I attended highly selective research Us and don’t really agree with the competitive complaint … to me the sense of competitiveness is typically self-generated … essentially the self deprivation thing coming to life … students used to being on top not being able to handle being average in the environment in which they find themselves. When I was at Cornell was at the height of the grad deflation and as an engineering student, where about 1/3 of the students switched out of engineering, I didn’t feel competitiveness and most of my classmates didn’t either … it as more like us against the mean calc or physics profs (who weren’t really mean but had really high expectations) … with groups of students working together helping each other work through tough assignments. I had the same experience in B-school at MIT.</p>
<p>I know 9763 parents regretting to send their kids to Harvard and 7451 parents regretting to send their kids to Stanford. 12463 of them got divorced because of that.</p>
<p>"When I was at Cornell was at the height of the grad deflation and as an engineering student, where about 1/3 of the students switched out of engineering, I didn’t feel competitiveness and most of my classmates didn’t either … it as more like us against the mean calc or physics profs (who weren’t really mean but had really high expectations) … with groups of students working together helping each other work through tough assignments. I had the same experience in B-school at MIT. "</p>
<p>============================================
I think it’s program-dependent. From what I remember, engineering students didn’t need to graduate with stellar grades (>3.75) to get jobs. In fact, within some engineering majors, it seemed near impossible to get such high GPA - ChemE and at the time, CSE come to mind. I had a friend who got a well paying job out of undergrad as a CSE major with a GPA of under 3.0. Kids dropped out because they found that they didn’t like engineering or the classes were too difficult. Competition among the students was rarely mentioned as a reason.</p>
<p>Pre-meds needed the high grades to move onto medical school. Graduating with less than a 3.75 usually meant no medical school. That meant they were in competitition with each other even in some not so difficult courses. So what happened was the curve was brutal; an 85 could be a C. My sense (I didn’t take these classes) was that organic chemistry was truly competitive in a not so nice way. </p>
<p>As for Sloan, at that point all the weeding has been done, either in undergrad, work experience or the application process. There’s no point for students to compete except ego.</p>
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