<p>Yeah quantmech, whats your point? :p</p>
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Did he struggle in calculus or some advanced math class not normally taken by freshmen? In my own experience at Stanford and Penn, advanced math students are very competitive and have a tendency to take higher level math courses than their advisers recommend. Some of them will excel and some will crash and burn. Most of them got warned.</p>
<p>I wish my own college had made an effort to curb back on blatant “under-enrollment.” I met too many advanced science majors boasting about the easy As they are getting in “physics for poets” or “rocks for jocks.” Language classes were another area where students take too low a level on purpose. Students who place into advanced literature and culture classes based on an essay and interview with a faculty member shouldn’t be allowed to retake 1st year intro courses for credit. </p>
<p>It’s one thing to be cautious and repeat one course to fill gaps. It’s another to go several years back in the sequence and take courses whose material you know in your sleep.</p>
<p>I think it’s one thing to care what other people think in the sense of being interested … Cobrat’s posts, however, always seem to me to have an excessive focus on how one set of cohorts of his seem to know very definitively and have very strong reactions to how another set of cohorts thinks on pretty much every topic. </p>
<p>It’s one thing for me to say on CC - hey, my kids are checking out xyz school, what do you guys think of it? I’m interested in building opinions.</p>
<p>It’s quite another thing for me to say - my kids are checking out xyz school, but some other parents of their classmates, or the administration, or their elderly aunts think xyz school is quite a comedown and not as good as abc school, and not just DONE, and they’ll allegedly be quite vocal about it, to the point of making my kids reconsider or abandon looking at xyz. That’s where I’d say - who cares what other people think?</p>
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<p>Glad you liked it too. Harris Hall 107, amirite? 
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<p>But oh, no, it was actually enjoyable and didn’t lead to major stress before exams – bad, bad things! This is CC, where it’s a point of honor to always stretch oneself to the limit because (heavy sigh) we’re all just so BORED with what the masses take, even if they are reasonably smart masses.</p>
<p>Valid point, Pizzagirl #223, and good advice that people should not become overly entangled in the opinions of others. </p>
<p>If one grew up in a setting where people were quite judgmental of others, it takes a while to free oneself from worrying excessively about how people will react. That having been accomplished, occasionally it is interesting to think about old experiences with adult discernment.</p>
<p>On the other hand, post #193 by cobrat seems to be arguing something different–about the wisdom of announcing that a course is a “gut,” when that’s true for the speaker, but not for others in the class. It reminds me of my German 101 class. I took it as a total novice, but that year for the first time, students were permitted to enroll in a beginning language class regardless of their previous course backgrounds in the language. When we came to tricky spots, the professor several times remarked, "Ok, all of you students with five years of German . . . "</p>
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<p>While some schools have instituted mandatory placement exams and/or “heritage classes” to discourage this, I’ve also heard about the pitfalls from some parents of current/recent undergrads. </p>
<p>Sometimes an undergrad may be placed into an advanced “heritage course” on the mere basis of his/her racial/ethnic background without much/any accounting of his/her actual language background. </p>
<p>If this happens…especially to those students who were adopted into a family of a different racial/ethnic background where the language in question was never used/taught, then such policies may end up setting up such students to fail unless they are corrected to account for this issue. </p>
<p>Moreover, the level of language proficiency from “heritage” students could be all over the map which furthers the likelihood some of these students may be set up to fail.</p>
<p>cobrat - why does this need to be heritage class? My kid has fulfilled the language requirement based on AP/IB credit at the college she will be attending but is it appropriate for her to take beginner 101 in the language to get an A when she has absolutely no need to even take the class?</p>
<p>I want to add that I, two, thought that two famous guts were among the very best courses I took in college – a college not so less prestigious than Harvard.</p>
<p>One was Introduction to Financial Accounting. When I walked into the room, I thought I had died and gone to Valhalla. Half the football team was there (and their girlfriends), as were several trustafarian English majors (and their boyfriends). The course was intentionally designed to let you pass (with a C, thus remaining athletically eligible) by doing one of the following three things: doing almost all of the homework reasonably well, coming to class almost all the time and paying attention (which was really the same thing as doing the homework, since class consisted of going over the homework, which was due at the END of class), or taking and passing a final exam. If you passed the exam and did one of the other two, you would get a B. Getting an A required getting an A on the exam, no matter what else you did, and getting the A required that you understand things pretty thoroughly. It was a fabulous course. It sparked an interest in accounting, and an understanding of accounting theory, that led me to take several other classes (which were NOT guts) and has kept me sophisticated about accounting for the rest of my career. If any course changed my life – I was pretty much slated to being an comparative lit professor – it was that one. </p>
<p>The other was Bio for Poets, taught by a Nobel laureate. Great course, not demanding. Good thing, too, because almost everyone in it needed the distributional credit to graduate.</p>
<p>A course really doesn’t have to be hard to be great.</p>
<p>On the other hand, those were two of 37 courses I took in college, and the latter course was one I took my senior year. The fact that I could take it a little easy in about 6% of my college courses doesn’t make me ashamed of my degree.</p>
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<p>No, but by all accounts, “Introduction to Congress” is really crappy.
(Read the student reviews on the NYT site.)</p>
<p>The OP made this about Harvard being a “diploma mill” (with the evidence consisting of one gut course). What made it newsworthy, of course, was the cheating (which isn’t getting all that much attention here).</p>
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<p>Unless your kid grew up with using that language from birth or is assumed to have done so by the college, I’m not sure the situation I wrote above applies to your kid. </p>
<p>However, this concern did come to life for some parents I’ve encountered as their kids did end up getting placed in a heritage class solely on the basis of their perceived race/ethnicity despite the fact they second generation or later Americans or adoptees who grew up using only American English. In a few cases, they’ve had to fight with the university’s bureaucracy to get their kid placed appropriately in the 101 course of that language…or switch to another language altogether. </p>
<p>And that’s not taking into account the fact that even if one is a “heritage student” by using the language at home…the level of proficiency may be all over the map. Unfortunately, at some universities it seems anyone who is even perceived as a “heritage student” is placed in a heritage type language class…regardless of whether the student concerned has the language skills to cope.</p>
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<p>Same here. The course I have probably made the most use of in real life was Humanities 101 - an overview gut course. One semester spent in an overview of Art, Music, Architecture, Literature, etc. It was great. Still to this day I might look at an office high-rise and think “Hmm…the International Style of architecture - popularized by Le Corbusier.” </p>
<p>I think I correctly got more clues on Jeopardy from stuff I learned in that one course than from all the rest of my college courses combined.</p>
<p>Station break here:
We’re well past this point, but since there was some critique, let me say, I’m not an adcom. Never have said I was. Don’t generally mention it or even allude to more than working for a top school. But, I do occasionally have a perspective based on my own experiences or observations. Same as we all do. Not much different than other posters relating their experiences at or with particular universities.</p>
<p>So, I’m a seasonal admissions reviewer (as well as another role) for an Ivy. BFD. That’s all. I don’t name the school because I only speak as one CC member. If it occasionally rubs someone wrong or I actively disclaim beloved hearsay, my apologies. We can all get rankled on a public forum. I don’t need any response to this post.</p>
<p>I so remember the one gut class I took in college. Was taught in the drama department by a somewhat, fading rose (shall we say) but reasonably well known actress/visiting professor, Jean Arthur. Turns out I learned a lot of very useful skills in that class that I use to this day when I give presentations, as well as breathing techniques that I have used in my professional work. Loved that class. </p>
<p>Someone in another thread made a great comment that I can’t quote exactly, but it spoke to certain bright students who rise above the rest by their true passion for learning . Can someone help me find that post? It was beautifully written and spoke to why some students really rise above the others, whether at an “elite” or other school.</p>
<p>Jean Arthur! Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The More the Merrier, Only Angels Have Wings, Shane. Gut course or no, that was a genuine American icon teaching it. I’m not kidding, I’m consumed with envy. Lucky jym! :)</p>
<p>Bingo, frazzled1! Thats her! I wasn’t sure, in this day and age, who would know who she was. Apparently she developed a bit of stage fright and associated physical ailments that all but killed her career, so she went into teaching. It was a divine class. A definitely memorable experience that stays with me many decades later.</p>
<p>Since you are back, lookingforward, I’d like to ask one of my earlier questions again: Could you provide any general (unidentifiable) examples of elements in the applications that make “top performers” look like nincompoops, as you remarked?</p>
<p>On the one hand, I realize that this could make your job harder, because revealing the give-aways would tend to reduce the number of applications you could just disregard (assuming that applicants avoided falling into the identified nincompoop-traps). And you would run the risk of giving some cagey nincompoops higher ratings than otherwise.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I am a great believer in equalizing opportunity by equalizing access to information. Also, it seems to me that local cultures differ enough across the US that some applicants who are not nincompoops at all appear to be so when viewed through a quite different lens.</p>
<p>All of the current generation of my family (including cousins’ kids) have already started college, so I’m raising this question on behalf of people on CC for whom it’s relevant.</p>
<p>Quant- yes, but not tonight. I’ll say this, for now: the CA is their one shot to sell themselves. The process is daunting for most hs kids.</p>
<p>Wow, Jean Arthur! I am so, so impressed. So many wonderful movies. Billy Wilder’s Foreign Affair, with Marlene Dietrich, was one of her later movies that I particularly liked. </p>
<p>Did she still have that famous voice of hers when she taught?</p>
<p>This Wikipedia article has a lot of information on her stage fright and anxiety issues: [Jean</a> Arthur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Arthur]Jean”>Jean Arthur - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Apparently, Meryl Streep was one of her students.</p>
<p>I can’t remember her voice per se, but she did teach us to “raise your E’s and softer your R’s” (and I can still “hear” her saying that, and just how she did so,with her voice, in my head.) Funny how that still sticks with me 40 years later! And yes, we heard a lot about Meryl, who graduated the spring before I started. She was the darling of the Drama Department. There were a large stack of extrasof her classes yearbook (which came in a box with assorted stuff in it) in the basement of her dorm, so one is now here with me. I take it wit me when I do alum interviews. Jane Smiley was in that class as well, though she’s not in the yearbook for some reason.</p>
<p>Would not have had the opportunity to take this class with the artist in residence if I’d attended a different school. So yes, there are opportunities at some schools that don’t exist at others. While yes, I am sure I’d have gotten a fine education at another school had I chosen to attend elsewhere, its these small gems of opportunities that make attending some schools worthwhile.</p>
<p>I see some clarification for my last post (#183) is in order.</p>
<p>1) QuantMech, the quote was from The Economist. It was, if I remember correctly, a review of Jerome Karabels The Chosen. It was titled Merit in Motion and has nothing to do with siserune. Perhaps I did not phrase it properly, thus the confusion?</p>
<p>2) Using somebodys work as a jump-off point for further studies is an accepted method of investigation. Unless someone can find something wrong with the analysis, which was based on public data and has been posted on CC for years without being challenged, I would go with it. Why not?</p>
<p>I think siserune was not trying to snow anyone with “wall of words”, lookingforward. He was arguing with certain cc members using statistics. Unless he wanted to write it up like a math text, he had no other choice but be wordy. Personally, I find his posts slow going, but are intellectually hard to refute.</p>
<p>3) frazzled1, the difference is that you are responding to one of PGs posts while I was responding to her posting behaviour over at least the last year. During my working years, I kept mental profiles of those I had to deal with on a regular basis. Over time and with enough data points, I have a set of mental prototypes (incomplete puzzles if you will) at my finger tip that I can utilize when needed. Knowing how to deal with certain behavioral types gave me an edge in tricky situations, making it possible to swim with sharks without being eaten. This type of behavioural profiling has served me well. For example, it has helped me to zero in where the real story is in the recent Ye-Ledecky controversy(#221):</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1372900-olympic-cheating-double-standard-15.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1372900-olympic-cheating-double-standard-15.html</a></p>
<p>When a poster talks like a relativist, I expect the person to behave like a relativist. When the person does not, I suspect somebody is not being fully honest with me, and not that my hypothesis needs adjustment although that do happen sometimes. (PG also claims to be a math major, BTW, but there is nothing in her behaviour that resembles any math major I have ever seen.) More postings and thus more data points hopefully will resolve the issue in one way or the other. In short, my post can be treated as no more than a call for further clarification from PG. The pieces of info she gave over time just do not hang together.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>