<p>how about like the neurobiology pathway when a muscle cell is stimulated by a hormone</p>
<p>I had an organic chem professor who "built in" a curve into his exams - they had 160 to 170 points on them - you got what you got. Very seldom did anyone approach a hundred. I remember inventing a new conversion factor on an engineering exam - I consistently got every problem wrong - thank god for partial credit. A friend of mine and I were exchanging exam stories this weekend - his teenage daughter couldn't believe that they actually offered Calculus 3. That that doesn't kill us makes us stronger I guess.</p>
<p>DMD77-</p>
<p>Your drug-related experience reminds me of the essay by my (as yet unknown to me)H that showed up in a school paper during my freshman year. He was taking narcotics for a broken arm during the 2nd semester physics final exam and described the near hallucinatory experience of sitting next to a girl with bunny shaped erasers, a granola bar and various other accroutements (while he had only a stubby pencil and an eraser he found on the floor). Yes, I am terribly proud of the 17(!). I also remember that the exams were returned to us in manilla envelopes- adding to the drama, and that Kemp wore all black that day...oh my. What a time it was.</p>
<p>With a fear of being redundant - my first test at Cornell was to be my chance to let this University know I had arrived, I studied harder than I ever had before, took the test confident that I had scored somewhere between 99.9 and !00%. I didn't. I went to see the TA and I showed him how some of my answers were directly out of the book but I only got partial credit. He agreed and then showed me a copy of an A exam. It was amazing - quotes from the text, lecture, threaded through original ideas. I was embarrassed and understood, I was in a brave new world. One of Cornell's draws is that it really teachers you how to work. I always tried to get into study groups with graduate students who were taking the course with extra requirements.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that my classes are considered rough, I try not to be brutal. I remember my days at Caltech. </p>
<p>Back in the oolllddd days, nearly 50% of the entire entering class received a final grade of F in at least one class their first two years. This was usually in either physics or math which were required courses for all majors (lit and history included). Lots of exams had averages of about 30/100. This was before Caltech grade inflation set in :) [This is just a little aside for "slackers" like Ben Golub.]</p>
<p>So my advice was targeted to difficult classes where the average is more like 50 to 70 percent on the exam. Obviously redoing a test to perfection if the average is around 25 is less realistic, but the principle still holds. You just have to adjust so you're shooting to maximize partial credit. When confronted with such tests, I learned to abandon the undoable problems and focus on not bombing the "easier" ones. You'd be surprised how many students waste their effort on the most difficult problem and find themselves unable to complete the ones they could handle.</p>
<p>NQO -- I appreciate the ribbing ;-)</p>
<p>Came to this late, sorry.</p>
<p>Been there, done that. Same place. Same situation.</p>
<p>High School science stud. Different story at Cornell, in engineering & the sciences.</p>
<p>Just had dinner with some old college pals. We discussed a number of kids from our dorm who didn't make it through.</p>
<p>There are a few keys to success:
1) Time management & study skills. If you're first studying for your Chem final the night before, you are too late. Huge difference in workload from HS, for me anyway.
2) Contain the social side. But also have a social side. Needs balance.
3)Place out of the big freshman intro science courses, which are curved low and made arbitrarily difficult.</p>
<p>There is life after a few Cs. You can still go on to a rewarding career and life, if you make it through. I've a friend who was actually on academic probation, and never did well there. He now has two master's degrees and is a successful business executive. Even my freshman roommate who flunked out graduated elsewhere and said he was on to good things, when I saw him last.</p>
<p>The kid probably realizes the score and wants to do better anyway, so punishment probably won't motivate. The issue is time management skills 99% of the time. If he can just get to, and complete, work ahead of time he can do so much better. It probably wouldn't hurt to point this out, and maybe find a source to help him with achieving that, in a meaningful way.</p>
<p>I'm stealing my son's name for this one post.
Similar thing happened to my older S two years ago. He had the most incredible study habits and discipline in high school, we were so surprised. He was too.
The one small thing we asked him to do was keep a detailed Franklin Planner for himself. (he had always done this in hs but stopped in college) He was shocked to see how much time he was piddling away and how much less time he was actually spending with his material. After all, he was spending a lot of time thinking about it! And if he went down the hall to talk about math and was there for an hour, he realized he may have only spent 10 minutes on the math, but 40 discussing basketball. He said until he started keeeping track he would have been thinking that he'd spent the whole hour studying for math, which obviously he hadn't.This was just a suggestion on our part, but it was a huge breakthrough. It seems like such a long time ago, but now we kid that he met parts of the alphabet that he didn't even know existed! Obviously from the posts your S is not alone. You know he has the stuff or he wouldn't be there. Give him the confidence to perservere.</p>
<p>Frandg</p>
<p>I sympathize with you and your son. With his AP and SAT II scores he must have felt well prepared to take not only the science and math courses at Cornell, but to place at a higher (sophomore) level. But, two things occur to me. First, as one other poster mentioned your son is now at a college where many other students may well have achieved similar distinctions in their AP and SATII scores and your son may have to learn new and more effective study skills to compete with this highly selective groups of students.</p>
<p>I think, however, that too little attention has been given to the impact of first year adjustment. Yes, the social scene is one factor. But, how about the adjustment of just being away from home, learning where to find things, how to respond to people and/or situations on your own and the challenges that come with this first year of growth? When considering all of these factors, I wonder if it is wise to push to take an extremely challenging first semester course load (two sophomore level courses) even if the AP scores indicate that you can. New environments can have an effect on students' academic outcomes.</p>
<p>The CC forums are full of advice, plans and worries about kids trying to get into the most selective schools. When, or if, they make it into their reach schools, isn't it reasonable to expect a high level of academic challenge and grades that are consistent with those challenges? My D had a B-/A+ going into the calculus final and ended up with a C. I think this will turn out to be a good lesson. She claims she learned the material, but the final and the grading was really hard. I'm betting she does tries even harder next semester. I'd also bet she will have plenty more challenges.</p>
<p>I know this is water under the bridge for you now, but we also struggled with whether or not our son should take sophomore level classes. Some experienced parents with older students advised us that AP credit is not all it's cracked up to be and that it would be better to take the easy A in a freshman course than to struggle for a C in a sophomore level class. I'm sure that some freshmen do well in higher level courses, but it is certainly a dilemma. My own son decided on a combination, taking advanced placement in some classes and freshman level courses in others.</p>
<p>I do not think highly of the AP tests as good indications of preparation for the top schools. I wish our university (anonymous USNews top 20 place) would not give out credit so freely. Many who skip basic classes regret being placed into a higher level class.</p>
<p>In this, I miss the Caltech policy of No credit for AP. Advanced placement only if you do well in a special exam geared to Tech's curriculum. If we had such a policy, our top kids would still get placed out of frosh classes, but the (dare I say) run-of-the-mill AP student would really be forced to buckle down and learn the basics properly.</p>
<p>And there is life after a few (or even many) C's. As another Caltech grad (Sandra Loh) also claimed, my degree like hers was pieced together from partial credit. Yet I made it to a top PhD program and am now tenured in a very good department.</p>
<p>If I have any regrets, it is the foolish undergrad obsession with getting into advanced classes early rather than doing well in the basics first.</p>
<p>Not quite old brings up an interesting point about AP exams not being good indications of preparation for top schools. My D attended a large public high school with a wide array of AP courses. Two of the best were AP European History and U.S. history; the teachers typically achieved a 100% pass rate with their 70 or so students, with at least 50% receiving 5's. Because my D had mastered the material in these classes (and the exam), she did not feel the need to "retake" basic European or U.S. history at her "top 5" university, and instead began as a freshman to take the next level of European history courses; she intends (or intended) to be a history major. However, she pretty quickly discovered that her AP classes had left her rather ill-prepared for the rigor of her college history classes. She had never written a real research paper in the AP courses--one that required (gasp!) actually going to the library and reading books and primary documents. The only writing done for the AP courses was practice free response questions and document-based questions--all of which were timed and in class. This kind of writing, though resulting in success on the AP exams, did absolutely nothing to prepare her for writing analytical, persuasive, research papers--the kind required in all of her history courses. </p>
<p>With much struggle, she has managed to receive A-'s and B+'s in her history courses, but I think that, in hindsight, success in the AP history courses misled her in making her think she was better-prepared than she was for college history. I don't believe that the AP history curriculum and test are worthless, but, as with other AP courses, students should realize that they do not replace the basic courses in college that cover similar material.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Hehehe. How many of us guessed that the school in question was Cornell?<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Yep, I thought it was Cornell. This won't be the first time we've heard that Cornell can be a real GPA killer.</p>
<p>I know Im repeating prior posters, but heres my reaction. </p>
<p>I went to an Ivy, and while I didnt major in engineering/math/science, most of my friends did. Granted, this was many years ago, but I can tell from posts here that some things havent changed. These courses are very tough, and the professors often grade on a rigorous curve. In HS, students are used to meeting the teachers standard, and if every kid does A work, theyll get an A. In college, the teacher decides beforehand that only 1 percent, or 5 percent, or whatever percent, of the class gets an A. So theoretically, you could be doing A work but get a C, thanks to the curve.</p>
<p>My husband, who went to one of the top HS in the country, had a 2.7 average in college thanks to his tough engin classes (and an active social life). He got some mindboggling low grades on tests (organic chem. was the all-time low). But no employer ever asked to look at his transcript or wanted to know his GPA, and hes had an incredibly successful career. </p>
<p>While academics are important, so is the social life. When I look back at college, I think I learned more at 2 a.m. while sitting in the hallway of my dorm than I did at 2 p.m. in my classes. One reason you go to an Ivy is to experience the diversity and wit and experience of your dormmates at 2 a.m.</p>
<p>I think you need to ask why the grades matter. If your son wants to go to a top-notch grad school, then the grades might matter. But out in the real world of employment, they usually dont. </p>
<p>And on a side note: consider yourself lucky to even know his grades. Colleges are not required to tell you.</p>
<p>In response to post #73, I feel that my S's Honors social studies classes in 9th and 10th grades actually prepared them better for college history classes than their AP classes, precisely because they required research and the writing of long essays.</p>
<p>Echoing marite's point, DS had a real aptitude in the social studies arena, per the excellent Dept. head at his hs (even tho DS is abandoning this field in favor of his preferred math/physics/engineering bent!). The teacher specifically recommended <em>against</em> AP Govt or History because he believed they were too oriented toward covering the AP test material, and not appropriate to a "thinker" in these fields, who liked to think/research in depth about the subject matter.</p>
<p>I'm sure this could vary from school to school, teacher to teacher. </p>
<p>AP value can often really be in demonstrating to colleges your desire to challenge yourself, since they use course "levels" as a proxy for that. I think assuming that you have covered college material, by use of an AP course, is presumptuous.</p>
<p>50% of Ivy/MIT students etc. will end up in the bottom half of their classes. For every student who rebounds from their first-year, statistically there is one who declines. Having said that, the average grade at all of the Ivies is between 3.2 and 3.4 (just below and above B+), so this can give one a sense.</p>
<p>I had virtually the same grades as you s. in my entire first year, and ended up as junior PBK (days before grade inflation, though - average grade in 1970 was 2.6) Things do change - it just isn't predictable in which direction.</p>
<p>("Yep, I thought it was Cornell. This won't be the first time we've heard that Cornell can be a real GPA killer."</p>
<p>Over the past 10 years, Cornell has had the highest rate of grade inflation among the Ivies, with avg. GPA now at 3.34. <a href="http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/10436%5B/url%5D">http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/10436</a> But it will differ substantially department to department.)</p>
<p>Beyond the general easiness of getting a 5 on most AP's, the somewhat shameful thing is that "passing the AP" (i.e. getting a 3 or above) is really considered some metric of success by high schools -- I don't blame them, it makes for good PR copy. But really, it's kind of an extreme lie to imply that getting a 3 on any of those exams implies anything much about knowledge or ability. A huge number of students who get into the top 20 schools or so could get a 3 on all but one or two of the AP exams with very basic general (game show) knowledge, moderate skill at multiple guess games, and a day of reading the textbook.</p>
<p>I realize the College Board is pitching to a wide audience, but really, there should be better achievement exams at the top end for places like Caltech, MIT, Ivies to be able to tell how much students actually know.</p>
<p>u guys speak about 50 percent of students ending up below a 3.3-3.4 grade, i just find that incredulous b/c i just don't think a school like princeton or stanford would allow it</p>