I’m not sure I agree, calimami. Particularly in some difficult majors, a substantial commitment of time and self is required. If the student is so easily turned away as to drop because of a single course, maybe they don’t have that level of commitment. As for being weeded out, the most committed can always regroup and try again, even if it extends the time required to finish (or they have to take summer courses, etc.). Where there is a will (and the ability) there is a way.</p>
<p>When I have had students grouse, I sometimes asked “how badly do you want this?”</p>
<p>My freshman DD is now in a similar situation. She is taking a one sememster consolidated Calc 1 and 2. She took AP Calc BC and did well on the exam. Adcom from Univ. called her to say she actually should be taking a more advaced math but DD has sights set on med. school and wants to keep GPA up. In this class, you take first exam (this monday)and if you do poorly you are forced to move back to a Calc. 1 class. DD called after the exam to say she felt she would be moving as she bombed the test. DD is a great student and not used to doing poorly. She began investigating which sections of Calc 1 would work in her schedule. Add/Drop cut off is Friday. She went to class today and learned she scored a 46. With the curve this WAS AN A!!! Teacher told the students who must move classes to do so. Of course, with the A, my daughter was not one of them. He claims he will not have such a generous curve again. DD is unsure what to do. Stick it out or go??? I advised talking to head of Math Dept. which she has to do anyway for add/drop. I hate for her to move to a class that will be all review, but dont want her to get a terrible grade trying to stick it out. Only 4 tests total in class. DD understands class material but test contained content not related to what they are working on. Majority of class got scores that would have been F’s if not curved.</p>
<p>I had a very wise and very tough math teacher during my (private) HS years. She was fond of saying. . . Ladies, time is money, it’s your time and your parents’ money. Be sure to use both wisely’. So yes, when n education is as expensive as it is these days, it is only wise and good stewardship of funds to make sure the cost/value is appropriate. </p>
<p>As to Barron’s ‘barf’. . . hope there was a bucket handy. . . or maybe you would use this as appropriate test to weed out students with weaker stomachs.</p>
When I took Calc 1, I was SO paranoid that I wouldn’t be able to get it (long story) that I did nearly every problem in the back of whatever section we were working on. Not just the homework problems - all of them. If I didn’t get one of them, I would go the professor and ask for help. I aced the course and never looked back. </p>
<p>Your DD 's class is at a level where it’s as much about practice as anything else. Dropping down is a copout.</p>
<p>She should stick it out. She should be sure to use the resources of the university to get help if she needs it. (Study groups, math help sessions etc.)</p>
<p>"I’m not sure I agree, calimami. Particularly in some difficult majors, a substantial commitment of time and self is required. If the student is so easily turned away as to drop because of a single course, maybe they don’t have that level of commitment. As for being weeded out, the most committed can always regroup and try again, even if it extends the time required to finish (or they have to take summer courses, etc.). Where there is a will (and the ability) there is a way.</p>
<p>When I have had students grouse, I sometimes asked “how badly do you want this?” "</p>
<p>I agree. My experience has been that weeder courses hold students accountable for doing what they need to do in that major/career. Students who lack the necessary work ethic switch majors, and thus don’t waste their time in a major/career that they lack the motivation to succeed in.</p>
<p>It’s really, really common, maybe almost universal, for first-semester freshmen at selective colleges to undergo a rude awakening. Instead of being remarkable, they are mostly just run-of-the-mill in their new environment. The more elite the college, the more invested the incoming students tend to be in their supposedly astonishing abilities, and so the ruder the awakening.</p>
<p>This is a very healthy experience and crucial in helping young people identify where their true abilities lie, and where on the other hand they have been able to excel previously merely because the quality of competition has been so low. Most students adjust emotionally by the end of the first semester. It can be rocky at the end of September, though. When I taught at Princeton and lived in one of the residential colleges for freshmen and sophomores as a faculty advisor, we on the staff knew that we’d have to make room for a lot of counseling and support after the first set of exams.</p>
<p>My son is now a first-year student at UVA and doing, he says, OK except in his language class (he chose to begin a new language instead of taking credit for the common one he already knows). It’s a difficult language for English speakers and the class moves very quickly. It’s supposed to be tough, I tell him. Use this as an opportunity to learn how to study. And if you get a low grade, that’s not the end of the world.</p>
<p>You are paying $50,000 a year for the privilege of having your kid as a student at that school where the total cost of the education is likely double that. There are another 50 or probably 5000 that would glady take his/her place and deal with the pressures of a tough professor.</p>
<p>I’ve been watching a TV series on getting into many of the elite units of the US armed forces. Every one uses a series of insanely hard challenges the first couple days to weed out those without the level of desire the unit seeks. These tests often had only a minimal relationship to the skills needed to succeed in that unit. They were looking for physical/mental toughness.</p>
<p>“If people want to go into programs that weed out the weaker ones, that’s OK with me, as long as they go in with their eyes open.”</p>
<p>There are very many programs that are known nationally. Kids know that if they do not perform, they are out. There are majors like that also. For one, pre-meds everywhere, including lowest ranked school have to meet Med. School application requirements for certain classes and certain GPA (preferrably 3.5+). They know about it way way before their senior year in HS.</p>
<p>Exactly MiamiDap, this is what she is up against. Knowing that on the first exam the entire class failed is frightening to her. His claim that he is not going to curve like that again is what is making her question herself. If she doesnt move there is the chance that she will get a grade that med. schools frown upon. The requirements for med.school loom heavy over those wanting to attend from the very beginning. We have been told that Med. School admission is a game and you have to play it well.</p>
<p>spring162 - I would advise your D to go to RateMyProfessor and talk with upperclassman about this particular class and professor. If she has the nerve, she could also meet with the professor herself and ask questions about the mistakes she made on the exam to see how he reacts. (Is she comfortable with how he answers questions, for example?)</p>
<p>From what my children tell me, sometimes their exams are difficult because professors include material that was not covered either in class OR in prerequisites for the class, not because they are being challenged to take what they have already mastered to the “next level” or to be on top of a large quantity of material. Students who do well in this sort of exam tend to be those who have already seen and learned the material elsewhere. </p>
<p>Other times, they say that the professor is not very good at explaining material, and if this is a required class with one choice of instructor, they benefit from meeting regularly with peers or TA’s and finding supplementary texts. Not optimal, but not a bad skill to learn, either.</p>
<p>OTOH, in both high school and college, my children have had classes in which nearly all the students failed the first exam, and the subsequent exams were not necessarily easier, but the students learned how to better prepare, and so nobody actually failed the course.</p>
<p>No shame in going back to calc 1, either, especially if this is the de facto norm at her school and she is taking other classes that require lots of work.</p>
<p>“Majority of class got scores that would have been F’s if not curved.”</p>
<p>This statement would describe almost every STEM class I took in college. They were all very hard tests, all curved, with the average score nearly always 50% ish.</p>
<p>I’d have far less problem with my D having to deal with rude, confrontational, unprofessional people when she’s being paid $50K a year to put up with it. </p>
<p>When I’M paying $50K a year for it? Uh…not so much.</p>
<p>Are you serious? Are you saying whoever “pays” get’s to make the rules? I’m so glad I teach at a public school so I don’t ever have to deal with entitled parents.</p>
<p>Out in the real world, one is not isolated by the ivory towers of academia, or buffered from reality by having a 'government job. Out here, ones continued ability to support ones self very often requires that one respond to those who pay ones salary (the customer). I agree, teaching in a public school does not require this type of interaction. Whether this has led to good or bad results is obviously a matter of opinion.</p>
<p>Jobs do not exist for the benefit of the employee. But schools – whether colleges or K-12 schools – exist for the benefit of students. </p>
<p>Therefore, it bothers me a lot more when teachers/professors create an atmosphere that discourages students from learning than when supervisors/colleagues/customers make a worker’s life difficult.</p>
<p>Of course, some people on this thread think that the approach described by the OP provides a valuable experience for students. That’s a different matter. But for those of us who think that the professor in question is acting like a jerk, it’s much harder to consider this just an ordinary thing that people have to tolerate than it would be if someone’s boss or client was acting in a similarly unpleasant way.</p>
<p>Had a prof like that my freshman year. His saying was “I’m testing to find out what you don’t know, not what you know”. Never did figure that guy out except that he had a huge ego. The next year some freshman paid for him to be pied in the face during class. Heard about it. Wish I had been there to see it!!</p>
<p>It seems unfair to tar and feather this alleged professor based on one lecture. Having just registered for credit #289, I can honestly say that I’ve experienced pretty much the spectrum of faculty possibilities, good and bad. At least he told them SOMETHING about what to expect, rather than just beginning to drone and leaving them in the dark.</p>
<p>I don’t get it. If you are only getting 8 out of 20 correct; then
the professor is not teaching the material or doing a terrible job of teaching the material;
the professor is not testing the material that he/she taught; or
3; the professor created a terrible testing instrument that does not differentiate the good students from the poor students (with only 8 questions expected to be answered correctly, how can you differentiate)</p>
<p>I thought professors were suppose to engage & teach students and tests were suppose to test in a fair manner the material which was taught</p>