<p>There are several profs at my kids’ undergrad that deduct points for missing more than 2 or 3 classes…</p>
<p>I think that’s becoming more common.</p>
<p>Even if you can do well in a course by not showing up, you’ll have missed the opportunity to network with both your peers and professors. Forget about getting a letter of recommendation. Engineering is not a solo activity, and if you can’t be a team player, it doesn’t matter how smart you [think you] are.</p>
<p>Thanks again for your answers. I didn’t mean to sound like I thought I was smart enough not to go to class, because I realize that I’m not, and even though I do miss my fair share of classes, I do attend about 2/3 of them, certainly do not miss lab classes since I love lab stuff, and eventually do all the homework and required reading.
The really smart people just go to class and understand things there, but unfortunately for me, I need to see it on paper to get it, and since I can’t take notes properly…
Anyway, it seems the bottom line is that if I were to seek an engineering degree and attend all classes, I would not have time for part-time work and research, so I could neither afford it, nor get the research experience needed for grad school. Great.</p>
<p>Cooper, if no one mentioned this, many times, you can schedule a lot of your classes late in the day. </p>
<p>Also, I took two accounting classes at Wharton Grad many years ago, over the summer. They collected homework every day.</p>
<p>I was looking at Cooper U class schedule and it looked like it would actually be possible to have no morning class, but I was just wondering if in reality one could really expect to be able to only have afternoon classes, specially since I would have something around 15-18 credits (4-5 classes) and if some issues might turn up such as a afternoon classes being usually the very first ones to fill up, or all finals being scheduled in the morning, other things that I haven’t considered. Does anyone have experience about an all-afternoon schedule?</p>
<p>Many engineering students are able to schedule their classes so they can work P/T and still attend their classes. My S had a hard time with morning courses and was able to schedule most of his to be afternoon & evening courses. He worked his JR & SR years while maintaining a full engineering courseload.</p>
<p>One of the Us S applied to told us that he would be asked to withdraw from their U entirely if he missed the equivalent of 2 weeks of classes in any term, even if it was for known & documented medical condition & he was able to keep up with all the coursework. We all decided that school would not work for him because at the time we weren’t sure he would be medically capable of not missing at least that much school. Fortunately, his health improved and he did not miss classes for medical reasons.</p>
<p>I don’t know any engineering students who work 3 jobs and are able to take 20-25 credits/term all at the same time. Most stick with 18 credits or fewer, though I do know at least one who prefers to take more–not sure if he also is working.</p>
<p>If you are missing 1/3 of class, that is too much. I don’t understand why the OP is so intent on justifying skipping class. As many prior posters have said, it’s not a good idea and there is no benefit to it. The vast majority of professors see spotty attendance as a sign of lack of commitment and respect (for the class, the professor, the material). Whether that’s objectively true or not doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t fly. Just accept that you need to go to class, period.</p>
<p>
You know in your heart that this is a lame excuse. You can learn to take better notes. Of course, if you stay up all night, it may very well be difficult to concentrate in class. Clearly, you’ve been able to be serious about other things that matter to you; you need to do the same for this if you want to succeed.</p>
<p>Cooper, as with many other college/major specific questions…perhaps your best bet is to contact Cooper Union (and any other places where you plan to apply) and ask them your question. Just ask “Is it alright for me to enroll as a student at your college and only attend about 2/3 of the classes for which I am enrolled? Will my attendance be a factor in my grades?” See what they say:)</p>
<p>Might ask the question a different way. If you were in a job interview, would you ask the company if it was OK to only show up to work 2/3 of the time???</p>
<p>Even though it’s still just the middle of February, I just withdrew two students from my class for missing two many classes. This school has a strict attendance policy. Even if it didn’t, at this point I’d counsel them that they were not liable to pass, as it’s a very participation-based class.</p>
<p>Thanks. It seems that my best shot at transferring to engineering and completing the degree in good standing with good grades would be to do more summer work and participate in summer REU or just through the school, or maybe combine both and find a paid position, and save up for the year. I should also improve my notetaking skills (maybe it sounded like a lame excuse but I really cannot take notes. I rely uniquely on multiple textbooks, psets, mock midterms and finals, and when the teacher leave them on their websites, past exams pdfs). I’m glad you helped me come to this conclusion, but I’m a little surprised at how hostile some of the answers were. Sure, my question was stupid and immature according to your standards, but I for some reason, I always thought that the point of the parent forum, besides allowing parents to discuss between them, was also to provide younger people a safe and nice place to ask awkward or embarrassing questions they wouldn’t want to voice out.</p>
<p>As others have said, it depends.</p>
<p>I’m a professor. I could not care less if a student attends a class, unless it in some way impacts his or her classmates or team (if it’s relevant). If one can succeed in my class without attending, all the more power to them (unlikely but I believe some very smart students can know what they need and do not need and choose accordingly). Every student has different needs and ways by which they learn.</p>
<p>I’m the provider of knowledge (hopefully), and one’s final grade in my class will only reflect one’s understanding of the course material and what one has learned. Period. It will not be based upon how well a student can follow rules, how obedient they are, their nice work habits or how much effort they put in. It is about outcomes and performance. </p>
<p>Participation is a different matter. If participating is critical to the educational value of the class, I will build that into the grade. But they get some part of their final grade based on their contributions to that, not credit just for showing up.</p>
<p>Grading class attendance seems so highschool to me. And I think it is a growing trend for all the wrong reasons. Obviously if the professor has anything of value to offer, then not attending should <em>already</em> impact one’s grade. Why on earth would you double up by giving credit to ‘showing up’ AND to ‘learning the material’? </p>
<p>It also sends the wrong message- that somehow one should get a certain grade just for warming up a seat, or ‘trying’. Moreover, what will I accomplish if they show up because they ‘have to’ but then really are ‘not there’ (with their head elsewhere, or texting or whatever)? </p>
<p>I teach adults. I’m there to provide all the help they want, within and outside of class. And while I do get to know my students, and I will personally contact them if they go missing (because I’m worried they are falling between the cracks), I’m not a truant officer and I have far better things to do than take attendance.</p>
<p>I’m starting to swing the other way. Currently, I don’t grade attendance. Fin aid will often ask about attendance, so I take it. I often have graded activities in class, like quizzes, that I will not allow students to make-up if they miss. But I have never graded on attendance.</p>
<p>Then, dh got a temporary promotion at work (he doesn’t want the job permanently). He’s overseeing all staff, including some farily recent college grads who work with the youth. Can you imagine how shocked he was when one of these employees announced that he’d already put in 45 hours by Wednesday so he wasn’t going to come in on Thursday or Friday. I think it may have rendered dh speechless. His response? Offices are open, and you DO have to be here. The public we serve will be looking for you. The other staff may need your area of expertise. You may not just go home because you feel you’ve done your time and now don’t want to do anything else. Dream up your next project and get going on it. Show me that you are, in fact, difficult to replace.</p>
<p>When he told me the story, I thought, “Yeah, sounds right.” Anyway, it has me wondering if these “adults” in my classroom really do need some basic lessons in how the workplace works. Mostly, you do have to show up around some kind of set schedule.</p>
<p>OP, on the Parents’ forum you will get frank answers to questions like this. Hopefully, they won’t seem too hostile–but if we don’t think it’s OK to miss class, we’re not going to tell you that it’s OK.</p>
<p>For real hostility, though, you can look at some of the threads on the (now closed) Politics subforum.</p>
<p>I am NOT suggesting that professors “grade” attendance, or even that they should take attendance. I am saying that I find it odd that an undergrad student taking lower level classes would feel that missing 1/3 of classes is a good thing to be doing. It’s like saying that he really doesn’t need to learn the material in the classes but just needs the credits. Maybe that is true. If it is, perhaps the OP might consider a school that offers significant online classes and/or independent study to complete his engineering degree.</p>
<p>I forgot to add my usual line on this topic: “Of course you should go to class–otherwise you’ll have to do the reading.” I don’t know how this applies to engineering, though.</p>
<p>Why do you want to go to Cooper Union if you don’t want to work hard?
Haven’t you heard that the curriculum and workload at Cooper is among the most rigorous in the country?</p>
<p>I was merely asking about scheduling late classes and the possibility of missing some of the morning lectures and self-studying them, in order to do part-time work and research. Workind hard =/= attending all the classes. Anyway, I think my questions have all been answered by now. Thanks.</p>
<p>CooperUApplicant,</p>
<p>Presumably you have had difficulty taking notes your entire academic career up to this point, otherwise you would not have developed the set of skills that have made it possible to get through your classes without taking notes. However, you do need to master note-taking in however primitive a form you can, if for no other reason than that sooner or later someone somewhere is going to give you verbal instructions on how to get to the pizza place that you are looking for. Perhaps you need to record the lectures and then go home and work through the recordings at your own pace.</p>
<p>In order to get permission to record your professor’s lectures, you probably need to go through the college/university disability services. Start there. Ask for screening for processing disorders. There are many, many steps between when sound hits your ears, and when your pencil frames the words on the paper (or your fingers type the words on the keyboard). One minor slow-down at any of those individual steps can cause difficulty in the note-taking process. If there are two or three, the difficulties increase dramatically.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best!</p>