Ivy League... be prepared

Parents Forum
161

I’ve stated this before.

I went to Community College, and it was absolutely the right choice for me. I was an honors student, I went to class, did my homework, then went to work 4 or 5 nights a week and graduated with honors. I’m one of 5 siblings, and dad paid our way to CC.

BUT-- it’s not the right choice for everyone. It would not have been the right choice for my son.

Instead, he spent a year at a small Catholic LAC in PA. He learned to make friends, to do his laundry, to take Amtrak to Penn Station and then find the LIRR and get home. He learned how to deal with a very difficult suite-mate, how to go through channels to report issues.

He would have gotten lost at the same CC where I flourished. There wouldn’t have been the same support system. He wouldn’t have seen the incredible growth he got from that one year away.

He came home last summer, having really enjoyed that year away. But he decided he wanted to join the fire department, and that we couldn’t afford $40,000 a year.

So now he’s going to that same CC, and making a success of himself there. And the county is paying for it, since he’s in the first department. I don’t think the same move straight out of high school would have yielded the same results.

Realistically, here on College Confidential, the suggestion to attend Community College is usually code for “you’re not smart enough for ‘real college’.” And it’s typically given by 17 year old kids who have absolutely no idea of what “real college” – or “real anything”-- is like. It’s a putdown, not a piece of advice.

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I think that there are multiple reasons why a student might need the advice to “be prepared” for an Ivy League college, and some of the reasons are connected with information promulgated on CC. Here are things that you find fairly commonly on CC:

  1. It is much harder to get into an Ivy League school (or S, M, etc.) than to graduate from one. This is probably true, but somewhat misleading. It does not guarantee that one can graduate in one’s original choice of major.

  2. Grades are heavily inflated at the Ivies. The average GPA is very high. Of these two statements, the second is true, but it is not clear that the first is true. There are multiple reasons for the high GPAs:

First, the students at the Ivies typically have extremely high GPAs from high school, along with very high test scores and (usually) a strong work ethic.

Second, the proliferation of APs in high school (compared with a generation ago) is tending to boost college GPAs. Students with usable AP credit outside their majors can substantially reduce the number of courses they take that are outside of their strengths. APs may count toward distribution requirements, and even when they do not, the distribution requirements can often be fulfilled with “lite” courses outside the major. Some students repeat the material in the AP course, even though they have credit for the class (especially in the sciences). Anything is easier the second time through than it was for students who had their first exposure to the topics in the college course. (This also explains why students who have not taken the AP course have a harder time in Calc classes in college, if many of their classmates are effectively repeating the course, or segments of it.)

Third, students may take “hard” classes (e.g. organic chemistry) in the summer, at a less-competitive school. Stanford has advised some of its pre-med students to do this, in writing, in the past.

Fourth, I have seen transcripts of Ivy League students who have started at the very beginning level in a language, despite having lived and worked in the country where that language is spoken for at least a year. There are other students who are heritage speakers of a language, who enroll in the beginning course. One of my acquaintances was the only student in his beginning Russian course at an Ivy who had not studied Russian in high school.

Fifth, relative to my experience teaching at a large public research university, there seems to be more dropping of classes than I typically encounter, even in a STEM field. Some of this is due to over-placement in the course initially, but I think that some of it is sheer GPA-protectionism.

Sixth, for some of the small seminar classes, it is necessary for a student to be hand-picked by the professor, based on an application and one or multiple short essays, just to get into a class or ten or twelve. Grades in these classes tend to be very high.

Seventh, some students will either audit a course elsewhere before taking it “for real,” or they will purchase books ahead of time, and read them over the summer, then enroll in the course.

Eighth, in most cases where high GPAs are required, the recipient organizations are not very discerning about the transcripts, if they even consider them. For med school, there are certain required courses, but there are often multiple levels of those courses, and the courses outside the major could be challenging ones, or not. Often it is not that easy to tell, even from reading the transcript.

My own comments:

Expectations by the faculty about student performance are really very high. I recall a CC poster, DBate, being incredulous that his 94% average in a science lab at Yale was an A- rather than an A. I have read some A- papers by my daughter that seemed pretty impressive to me.

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One of the things I’ve noticed at Princeton in the sciences is the relatively ease to drop down to an easier version of the class if the student feels the need to do so. Math is the most straightforward as my D was taking the proof-based version of Calc 3 in the Fall but knew should could drop down to the regular version at just about any time as a section was taught at the same time (in the same building). I think the same scheduling is done with honors physics/regular physics, etc. She is taking the Integrated Sciences Curriculum which is General Chemistry, General Physics, Intro to Bio and Intro to CS all taught integrated as 2 classes a semester. It’s an intense workload and many students drop out. Out of the 60ish that started the program there are only 18 left that finished. The students know they can easily drop down to the regular classes if they need to do so.

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Engineering is hard. Doing well or even just getting through requires focus and effort, at almost any accredited school. The core classes are not all that interesting (statics or fluid mechanics for example ) and sometimes require brute force to learn the material. Many kids are not that motivated or prepared at how difficult it can be. Kids think engineering is designing things, which it is, but you have to get through the slog of the coursework first.

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Mom, every discipline has this phenomenon.

In order to do cool stuff in Classics you have to slog through the early foundational classes which involve a ton of memorization, translation of obscure passages, and basic language construction (in both Latin and Greek). In order to get to the interesting stuff in Urban Planning or Poli Sci or Econ or Linguistics you need to do the “brute force” classes. Kids who want to become archaeologists have to take field method classes where they suffer through carbon dating formulae; their counterparts in anthropology are learning how to measure primate jaws and doing the brute force thing on bone composition and hominid anatomy.

Nobody advances in their field without mastering the foundations. Would you want an surgeon operating on you who didn’t pass Freshman bio?

166

Not disagreeing, just commenting on my experiences relative to the excellent points made.

“1) It is much harder to get into an Ivy League school (or S, M, etc.) than to graduate from one. This is probably true, but somewhat misleading. It does not guarantee that one can graduate in one’s original choice of major.”

I tend to agree with this, but attribute it to imposter syndrome as much as to GPA. I personally felt that I wasn’t strong enough in math or science to major in anything mathy or science-y, despite those being my initial preferences. I ended up taking 9 credit hours of social science statistics, including two classes that were crosslisted as graduate-level, so in retrospect I don’t think it would have been a problem had I had more faith in myself.

“2) Grades are heavily inflated at the Ivies. The average GPA is very high. Of these two statements, the second is true, but it is not clear that the first is true.”

My second time around, I took some career-related classes at a local public directional. The material was entirely sufficient to prepare me for the CPA exam, and the teaching quality was great. But reading the chapter, doing the homework, and showing up to class (where I mostly listened with one ear and browsed the internet with the other) was sufficient for me to get top scores. I worked a lot harder for an A at Yale.

“Fourth, I have seen transcripts of Ivy League students who have started at the very beginning level in a language, despite having lived and worked in the country where that language is spoken for at least a year. There are other students who are heritage speakers of a language, who enroll in the beginning course.”

My classmates in first-year Chinese were mostly heritage speakers with 5-10 years of Saturday school. My friend who was previously the DUS for East Asian Languages said that a kid with 4 years of high school Chinese and a 5 on the AP would almost certainly place into first-semester first-year Chinese. Despite that, I didn’t feel particularly disadvantaged, and they had been put there by placement test.

“Fifth, relative to my experience teaching at a large public research university, there seems to be more dropping of classes than I typically encounter, even in a STEM field. Some of this is due to over-placement in the course initially, but I think that some of it is sheer GPA-protectionism.”

The ability to drop without a W at midterm or later is the best thing ever. It means you can overload (6 classes instead of the normal 4-5) and just drop if that course load is way too much. Because of the “4 years and out” policy, overloading and dropping down to a standard load is really the only thing you can do routinely.

Really, the only things about my experience that I don’t think my kid could get elsewhere, and I’m sad about her missing out on (because she has no Ivy desires), are shopping period and late drops.

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And no one mentioned that fact that many high schools are not that difficult so the transition from general high school where the student is #1 to a major university where they are amongst their real peers is going to be rocky. So many on CC think that getting good grades/decent SATS at some local school is the key. It’s not. Major Universities (Ivies and many more) attract the best candidates. So the newly college student is suddenly swimming with much bigger fish than from little pond high. I think another reason for the difficult transition is the way many students learn via rote memorization. When they are asked to abstract what the information means, they hit a wall. For me, the best high schools will be teaching students to think and write well. The underlying knowledge is assumed but what you can do with the knowledge is what sets you apart ( or not). The great high schools ( and teachers) teach kids to be great thinkers not just information gatherers. It’s a pretty rare person who can study and then discern what’s important.

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@blossom , great post, #164. Everyone should read it. There is a consistent message on CC and in the real world that really smart people only study STEM, and that simply is false.

@bjkmom , I also went to CC and transferred to a commuter college. I grew up on the West Coast, and most of my classmates did the same. No one “went away” to college. After a couple of decades living abroad, I moved to the East Coast, where there definitely seems to be a bias against CC. I actually know people here whose children will commute to a four year uni rather than go to the local CC, which seems crazy to me.

I know the OP isn’t trying to convey snobbery, but the original post conveys a sense that ony students at Ivy colleges are in for a bumpy ride in terms of course rigor, etc…, but that just isn’t the case. CC courses can be very difficult. Directionals can have very difficult courses. Profs at any college can be tough graders, students can struggle with weed-out courses in any discipline, at any school.

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That viewpoint seems to be stronger or weaker depending on the region. It seems to be strongest in the northeast, where general disdain for public schools is the strongest.

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Seems odd that such a wealthy university would not offer heritage speaker versions of foreign language courses in languages that have a significant number of heritage speakers. Even public universities, which some claim are in crisis due to budget issues, offer them.

http://guide.berkeley.edu/courses/chinese/ (CHINESE 10A, 10B, 100XA, 100XB, 10X, 10Y, 100YA, 100YB)
http://guide.berkeley.edu/courses/russian/ (RUSSIAN 6A, 6B)
http://guide.berkeley.edu/courses/spanish/ (SPANISH 21, 22)

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“Grades are heavily inflated at the Ivies.”

One other reason is what Deresiewicz (Yale prof) in his book ,Excellent Sheep, says is a mutual non-aggression pact between professors and students. I give you good grades, you give me good evaluations so the teaching part of my work is rated well when I’m evaluated for tenure (or promotion) and I can focus on my research. Higher marks for shoddier work (his conclusion).

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I’ve been skimming this thread with interest as our son is an EE in a tough program. @Happytimes2001 said in #166 what I would have posted. His high school taught him to think about, understand, and discuss a problem with the goal of framing it properly before attempting any solution as the proper setup is more than half the battle. Once a problem is fully understood, the solution often becomes trivial. All math and science classes at his high school are taught this way. After four years of learning how to think about problems before selecting the right wrench from his mental toolkit, he hit the ground running in his program. His high school also understands what selective colleges expect of their students and duplicate accordingly. He was astonished at the lack of preparation of most of the students around him at his college. His words, “They only know how to get As; they don’t know how to solve problems and that doesn’t work here.” He says the academics at his college are definitely easier than his high school. He just completed his junior year and is at the top of his EE class.

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@ChoatieMom, that is really cool. I wish I had gone to your son’s high school!

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As I’ve harped on forever the majority of high schools with AP curriculum fixate on convergent thinking needed to select the one answer from a multiple choice standard exam. It’s the reason we sent my D to a high school with a specialized project-based curriculum with no APs available. They get the foundation but then have to use divergent thinking to solve problems. My spouse the college professor see’s it constantly with her students that can’t apply simple math to write CS programs. So many get irate with her because she doesn’t give them the specific formula they need to use when writing their programs instead of determining what they need to do by reading the problem.

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+1000 to #173. We need to stop teaching to tests and chasing scores. Wrong paradigm.

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What’s distinct at selective colleges is the cohort at the school. My impression is that this well prepared, very smart group of students is part of what makes my daughter’s experience special. She works with study groups that teach her as much as she teaches them and really enjoys the preparation and intelligence of her peers. She enjoys her small discussion classes because the level of discussion is so high.

When you ask students at schools like this (and by no means do I limit this to Ivies) what they appreciate most about their school, they often answer that it’s the other students. It does mean that the bar is higher but the rewards are great.

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167 There is no snobbery on my part. My original question was very specific to my D. I have no basis to say anything about other college experiences, degrees or programs except what has happened for my kiddos. For sure there are thousands of colleges, universities and CC that probably also have class structures/difficulty that she has encountered. I will say this her high school probably did not prepare her for the rigors of her University. Other students/friends of hers going to the public university (same degree) seem to be having a much easier time transitioning. Their classes (as explained to me by my D) did not cover the same types of problems on the tests... definitely more of the plug/chug variety in her opinion... but who knows.

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@blossom Not sure where you think I was saying that ONLY engineering is hard, because I never said or implied that.

This thread has focused on engineering and STEM and why kids drop to other majors so that is what I was commenting on. Why do kids decide they want to be engineers and then become “former engineering majors”? Obviously, every discipline requires foundational classes. IME, however, it certainly seemed like the history and psych majors found those classes much less of a slog than differential equations or organic chemistry.

Not every kid that studies engineering is super smart and not every smart kid chooses to study engineering or other STEM discipline. One of my very smart kids studied international relations. Brilliant kids find their way to every single field.

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^^agree with your statement @cheetahgirl121

“Other students/friends of hers going to the public university (same degree) seem to be having a much easier time transitioning. Their classes (as explained to me by my D) did not cover the same types of problems on the tests”

My S outperformed his peers in HS and was academically ranked higher. His peers are at high ranked UCs and Big 12 schools and most of them are on deans list or have higher GPAs. The rigor and pace is definitely more intense at his Ivy compared his peers’ school.

I also agree with @3girls3cats post #175 regarding the quality of the cohort. The bar is higher and the learning and growing has stretched my son on top of the high expectations of the faculty.

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@sevmom, we also have one at VT and one at UVA (and two others). VT is an ME. Our experience and observations are that there is a woeful lack of support. Students are constantly in search of tutors which don’t exist. The student support services office did not have enough tutors and the ones they did have had limited availability. Professors were frequently not accessible. Courses were taught by graduate students who may have had a command of a subject but not of how to teach it effectively. Many math courses students self teach at the dreaded math emporium. Weed at may not be the goal but it is certainly an outcome of the VT engineering program. FWIW.