<p>As a future ILR-er, I was a bit offended by Cornellian2011’s comments. </p>
<p>ILR/AEM/Econ/Hotel kids are NOT of lower quality. Just because you are good at science doesn’t mean everyone else sucks. ILR/Econ are social science based, AEM is business oriented, and Hotel is special. Each of these programs are unique in their own ways, and the students in these programs are best at what they do. </p>
<p>I suggest you stop posting on CC - your arrogance is going to single-handedly destroy the reputation of Cornell science kids.</p>
<p>Like when I switched into high school, I found it easier overall because I didn’t have teachers sending me to homework club every time I didn’t do my homework. So in high school, I didn’t have to waste time doing tedious math problems (just so I don’t have to go to homework club) and I worked on other stuff instead. The material in high school is definitely harder, but the freedom and the independence I gained definitely balanced it off. </p>
<p>Maybe Cornell may seem easier to some because it has better resources. Or maybe Cornell has a better academic environment, so it seems easier. After all, it is 10x easier when giving/getting help is mutual instead of you giving out all the help to other people (like what happens in high school when the nerd has to learn the material on his/her own and then everybody comes to him/her for help and take the easy way out).</p>
<p>I’ll second roneald. I think when you’re immersed in school, it’s easy to fall into the trap that people who regurgitate hard science and math have it harder than people who analyze literature or social systems.</p>
<p>In many ways, that’s true from the perspective of how hard a test is. But the beauty of Cornell is it serves many different types of minds and to say that the philosophical, intellectual mind is inferior to the regurgitative science mind is rather misleading.</p>
<p>science is not regurgitation at all. It is the application of known facts to solve unknown problems. Scientific problem solving, especially at the higher levels often requires a high degree of creativity in order to apply what is known to discover what is unknown.</p>
<p>I am econ major, junior at cornell. Econ core classes are filled with Wall-street wannabes who are obsessed with earning top grades. Granted, it isn’t too difficult to pull Bs given you work, but to obtain As you will have to beat the harsh curves. I know several of engineering friends who took some of the econ classes with me this past 2 semesters. Before they enrolled, they thought mistakenly that Econ should be easy for them because of their math and science skills. But, they later found out that having strong math backgrounds only helped them just a bit in understanding the basic theoretical concepts (which other students understand anyway), not necessarily helping them perform better on tests. Econ is a joke of a major? What weed are you smoking?</p>
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<p>This is applicable not only to Cornell, but to pretty much to any other school. Hard science majors tend to suffer form grade deflations compared to other majors at pretty much all U.S. schools.</p>
<p>uhm… Id think you can’t make such a objective statement regarding all Cornell courses and all professors? The undeniable fact that a student’s grade in the course can differ by more than a letter grade for taking the same course in the same major, but just with two different professors demonstrate the point that grading is subjective and has errors.</p>
<p>I consider econ to be one of the less rigorous majors not due to the curves or whatnot, but rather because there are very few requirements. Correct me if I am wrong, but an econ major has one of the smallest credit hour requirements of any major (24 credit hrs/8 classes). As a chemical engineer, I have a bare minimum requirement of 129 credit hrs to graduate. Granted, my requirements include general/intro classes and yours do not. Regardless, I will be required to pull a few 19+ credit hr semesters by default and you will not. I believe that makes chemical engineering more difficult than econ.</p>
<p>I realized after I wrote that that it was the wrong word to use. I didn’t mean it in a disparaging way. I studied hard science and social science at Cornell. </p>
<p>Whatever word you want to use, the hard sciences are much more rooted in knowing equations, structures, identifications, etc… It’s like doctors have to memorize a whole lot of information in order to make proper diagnoses on the spot. It’s an important skill to have; I didn’t mean it in a bad way. </p>
<p>It’s just different from the more socially oriented studies that focus on analysis and cater to more of a philosophical mind. </p>
<p>Just two different ways of using the noggin - my point being that neither is inherently inferior to the other, even though hard sciences seem to get a lot more respect on these forums.</p>
<p>lol maybe that’s because Sciences/Maths tend to be the hardest subjects in high school… and then there’s everything else. At least that’s how it is at my high school. </p>
<p>I think a lot of people seem to respect Sciences/Maths more because you don’t really see Sciences/Maths people suck at Humanities (actually suck as in getting C’s) but then you see a lot of Humanities people suck at Sciences/Maths (as in they can’t even survive in a regular Gr. 12 course).</p>
<p>^I wonder if that is good for me then. I’m actually a math and science person because I take my classes in those areas. I’m only average in the Humanities area, but I’m gonna go to ILR. </p>
<p>Why does ILR stress taking extra math classes in the pdf file?</p>
<p>Science does utilize philosophical thinking, especially in math; hence why philosophy andmath are so often intertwined via logic, proofs, puzzles, etc. math and physics is anything but regurgitation/memorizationl; you can derive most equations just from a conceptual understanding of what’s going on.
More often than not, solving a very difficult math/science problem requires a lot of creativity which in turn opens new connections in the brain, allowing for different perspectives for many other problems.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is really that much grade deflation here. I have friends at other Ivy’s in similar majors with similar GPA’s, and we were all about the same in high school. </p>
<p>“Also, students in such majors tend to be of lower quality than those of other majors”
Maybe you just don’t know them well enough. Take a legit reading/writing intensive class and see how far you get. Regardless, not a very polite thing to say. </p>
<p>“regurgitative science mind” I know you didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I think a lot of people still have this notion that anything technical is regurgitation/memorization. Maybe because it’s taught that way in high schools. Anyone who’s done math outside of class (math team for example) would realize that no amount of memorization will get you an elegant solution.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about the work if you apply yourself. It is difficult, yes, especially for pre-med and Cornell’s other competitive programs. But you’ll probably meet the same problems that students from other top colleges face. But one thing you should keep in mind is that the first semester is sometimes the hardest because you are, most likely, not used to this kind of environment. So don’t worry if your grades don’t seem that great in first semester. Congratulations on being accepted and good luck!</p>
<p>I agree with LOLhere, many current social science majors I know were absolutely horrendous (as in mostly B-/C range grades) in STEM courses during high school, but I can’t say the same for the hard science or engineering majors. I think society in general is more forgiving of not being able to do higher math/science than it is of not being able to write well. A job application will rarely ask you to perform calculus, but it’s very likely it might ask you to write an essay.</p>
<p>^One of the reasons for that is simply the curving. A science major who is only average at English will get an A- in the class while an English major who is only average in a science class would end up with a B. </p>
<p>The second thing is that humanities courses tend to be more forgiving. I took an upper div history course with Professor Norton (widely regarded as one of the hardest humanities professors; 1.5 “ease” rating on ratemyprofessors.com; in fact, she is only one of 10 professors in the entire school with 8 or more ratings and an easiness rating of 1.5 or lower) and literally only read every other book. Yet, I was still able to craft essays good enough to earn an A- for the class (my only grade that wasn’t an A in the 40+ credits of non-science I took at Cornell). There is no way I can study 50% of the lectures in a science course and get remotely close to an A. </p>
<p>So, while there are certainly hard humanities courses, I think they tend to be more forgiving if you miss a lecture/discussion or two.</p>