Ivy Rigor

Parents Forum
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<p>I am in a lecture class right now for economics. I wish I could be in a smaller class, but so far the class is looking good because the professor is an amazing and engaging lecturer. No, I wouldn’t like all of my classes to be this big. But I think having one lecture isn’t going to kill me, and I have plenty of office hours available to me too.</p>

<p>Also, I have a graduate student as my professor for my language class. End of the world, right? But I think having a genuine desire to help students will do so much more to make a good teacher than having a PhD ever will. That’s just my lowly opinion.</p>

<p>Anyways, I don’t think Harvard is the hardest school ever, and I don’t think its quality of education compares to its #1 ranking. But I think it’s likely that Harvard has a pretty high standard of rigor compared to the average school.</p>

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<p>I think there is a lot of hyperbole on both sides of the debate. No, Harvard is not a diploma mill. Her reputation is build on the very fact that it is hard to get into, and the fact that it is so hard to get into makes it even more desirable as a destination for those who aim high. Supply and demand and all that. </p>

<p>Nor do I believe social science research is robust enough to give us a good inkling of how much we really learned in college. For example, can anyone explain to me why sociology and business students seem to learn more than let say communication and economics students after 4 years of college? This is what CLA seems to be suggesting:</p>

<p>[Do</a> Majors Matter? | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/16/connor_essay_on_why_majors_matter_in_how_much_college_students_learn]Do”>http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/16/connor_essay_on_why_majors_matter_in_how_much_college_students_learn)</p>

<p>OTOH, Harvard is not a meritocracy either. One poster whose opinion is always worthy of my time was able to show that only 10 to 15% of students at the elites (with the exception of Caltech) are admitted on purely academics criteria, (using terms like “academic stars” or “potential summa cum laude graduates”), and another 40% are taken by URMs, athletes and legacies. Then what about children of foreign dignitaries, entertainers, politicians, clothing designers, professors and so forth? What %tage of the class are they?</p>

<p>To call such a class highly connected or lucky sperms is appropriate. Calling it smart, accomplished and motivated as some posters were doing, is hyperbole at best. (It also goes a long way in explaining to me why fully 25% of Harvard acceptances score less than 1390 on the SAT (M+CR), as another poster has noted on an older thread). </p>

<p>If I am an employer and I am looking for employees, how do I separate the best from the rest? Thankfully, research has given me the answer:</p>

<p><a href=“http://seaphe.org/pdf/whathappensafter.pdf[/url]”>http://seaphe.org/pdf/whathappensafter.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Sobering, isn’t it? In short, if I am looking for the best of the best, I would look at the major; if I am looking for the best of the best connected, I would look at the school.</p>

<p>As I see it anyway.</p>

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<p>The student evaluations for this course have been posted to the NY Times site:
[Student</a> Reviews of Introduction to Congress - Document - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Student Reviews of Introduction to Congress - Document - NYTimes.com”>Student Reviews of Introduction to Congress - Document - NYTimes.com)</p>

<p>They describe a disorganized course that formerly had the reputation for being an easy A. Apparently, Harvard students share a concept of the easy “fourth class” taken to pad out an otherwise demanding schedule. I don’t think we can conclude that this one represents the average course rigor. Nor do I think this case is good evidence that many Harvard students are just skating through. For the future Masters of the Universe, busily burning the candle at both ends, inventing the next Microsoft in late night poker games, an occasional gut course may be excusable. This one blind-sided many of the young Masters because the professor suddenly added 4 time-consuming take-home exams (timed to coincide with busy campus-wide weekend events). They required combing through the readings for detailed information to satisfy poorly-framed questions. So apparently, half the class got fed up and copied each others’ answers. </p>

<p>I don’t know about this confirming all the claims of Pirandello & Tetrazzini or William Deresiewicz. A fair-minded person would hesitate to exploit this one event to paint all the Ivies with the same broad brush. However, several aspects of this incident (the 279-student enrollment; the disengaged professor; the take home, look-up-and-regurgitate test design; the TA role; and of course the cheating) ought to at least raise red flags to watch out for in looking at colleges.</p>

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<p>The deification of the small seminar really misses the big picture in my opinion. Back in ancient times when I went to college, there were classes which routinely packed 700 students into a lectures which were capped at 600 enrolled students- just because the kids who were not able to enroll wanted to hear the professor. There are classes at every large university in the country where the same phenomenon exists. I’ve heard that the fire department used to chastise Vincent Scully at Yale for not abiding by the building codes and allowing students to cram the doorways when he taught. And the stories of Nobel laureates at MIT whose classes were already oversubscribed… and then the week after the Nobel announcements, it was a daily scrum for seats.</p>

<p>These students were lining up at the door because believe it or not, there are actually professors lecturing at college campuses who have something to say. And they do so in a way that is compelling and can’t be communicated by reading their books (as prolific as they are). And there are students who believe that for 55K per year they want to hear what the professor has to say about Russian literature or Renaissance Art or Materials Science and not what their 18 year old dorm mate has to say… at least not yet or all the time. There’s a time and a place for a seminar- but perhaps Freshman year is not the time or the place.</p>

<p>I recall Sears Jayne at Brown ( a Shakespeare scholar) whose classes kept getting moved to bigger and bigger venues until there were no more lecture halls left… who routinely had students stagger out of his class in tears. He was an actor and a showman for sure-- a brilliant performer— but his insights into the plays and the sonnets were so powerful and so powerfully communicated. Did I care what my seat mate had to say about parental authority and aging and King Lear and what it means to be a sibling? For sure. But first I wanted to hear the great professor (who was truly great) give his insights into the text. And it was worth sitting on the radiator of the lecture hall, crammed in like sardines to hear him.</p>

<p>Evaluating a college which has outstanding professors by the size of the classes has exactly the wrong model IMHO. Great professors attract huge enrollments (all things being equal) precisely because they are great. </p>

<p>On the subject of the ever popular debate of Truman vs. the Ivy League, I am once again rendered mute.</p>

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<p>I don’t see how one can extrapolate a larger truth about ANY school based on a cluster[…] in one poorly run course.</p>

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<p>^^ O.K., there is a place for large lectures by brilliant professors at elite colleges. They create a buzz in the atmosphere. They can be inspiring. </p>

<p>On the other hand, there is no substitute for an experienced mentor engaging with young students as they struggle to interpret difficult material. In the beginning you’ll get lots of bloviating by alpha males eager to hear themselves talk. You get wallflowers. You drift off topic. All that is part of the process. The process really cannot happen, or can happen only very sporadically for a few, in a room with 279 students. </p>

<p>Not all material calls for that process, but it deserves to be an important element of Core (/ General Education) courses.</p>

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<p>Me too…</p>

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<p>Thumper, I’ll meet you for an espresso after our Gut course on “sociological implications of the 1% vs. everyone else”. Or since we’re getting A’s without attending class, maybe just have our coffee date?</p>

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<p>Blossom…let’s sign up for a class…then go to coffee instead! Agreed. We’re both in that top achiever group…we’d get A’s anyway :)</p>

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<p>Really? Well that explains a LOT.</p>

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<p>Well Deresciewicz was quite peeved at Yale for denying him tenure. He’d probably compare it to a dogpile.</p>

<p>** and Deresciewicz uses Cleveland State as an analogy, not Truman <a href=“http://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/[/url]”>http://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>There is another similarity-- writings by cranky men with a case of sour grapes and a chip on their shoulder …</p>

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<p>Let’s all just agree that Truman State is a better school and a better education than Harvard and call it a day? </p>

<p>I mean, Harvard is not the end all and be all. My kids did not even apply, as Harvard was not a good fit for what they each wanted in a school. </p>

<p>If Harvard is a diploma mill, why are its grads doing well in grad school admissions and employment? Hmmm…</p>

<p>But attending Harvard is not so bad…one could do much worse in life. :D</p>

<p>As a college counselor, I’ll make sure to recommend a school called Harvard as a place to go if one wants to skate through college!</p>

<p>For annasdad’s sake, I hope Truman State moves to the top five in college rankings and then he could really prove, as he seems to want to, that it is the best because we all know how college rankings mean a lot. :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>Rigor is the wrong word. There are colleges other than Harvard where rigor is a stronger descriptor. Those colleges known for rigor might not include Truman state, but I also don’t think Harvard belongs in a “most rigorous” university shortlist for some of the very reasons Canuckguy mentions.</p>

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<p>^ Really, jym and others. Agree.<br>
A little critical thinking is a thing of beauty.</p>

<p>One poster whose opinion is always worthy of my time was able to show that only 10 to 15%<br>
No one can give universal insight into admissions processes. Even the adcoms on CC restrain themselves. Canuck, I don’t kow what qualifications your “source” has… There’s too much mythology on CC already. </p>

<p>Academic criteria are not the “sole factor” because all the top schools are holistic. BUT, you don’t take a kid into an Ivy or any competitive school if he/she isn’t academically competitive in that millieu, among other highly prepared kids. What’s missing in the assumptions is some understanding of the positives many hs kids are truly getting out of their hs years. I certainly do not mean multiple APs or pounding CC for info about how to improve SAT scores.</p>

<p>Harvard isn’t #1 because it has 35k applicants. It’s got the reknown for the “whole picture.” No-Name U can do a great job, sure. But, it starts with lesser resources, different boundaries, different composition in faculty, a whole different pool of freshmen, etc.</p>

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<p>momofthreeboys, Harvard may not be the most rigorous, that’s certainly true. But I have a feeling that annasdad would also put down rigorous schools like MIT and U of Chicago which are quite rigorous too.</p>

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<p>By the way, I don’t think the fact that half the class received an A indicates that a class is easy. My kid has attended what some may consider challenging schools: Brown, MIT, and Berkeley. She has a lot of A’s on her various transcripts. The classes were challenging but she worked her butt off. Getting an A doesn’t mean it was easy. But she, like many of her peers at these institutions, set high standards for their academic achievements and work hard to do well. I would expect at a school of highly motivated learners to see half the students get an A in a course. That would not indicate to me that the course was easy but rather that many students worked very hard to do well.</p>

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<p>If only AD had altered his comments to cover the frenzy about H, it would have been different. Btw, I’d bet H has plenty of “experienced mentor(s) engaging with young students” and word used to be, plenty of support for kids who struggle. (I’d assume this is still true. Someone else would know more.)</p>

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<p>@jym, thanks for posting that article. I hadn’t read it before.</p>

<p>I didn’t pick up on sour grapes at all, though. He says what many others have observed for years, that the Ivies exist to create leaders, not thinkers–“holders of power, not its critics,” as Deresciewicz says. What he describes as the “tyranny of the normal” is similar to what this recent Yale grad (who, sadly, died right after graduation) wrote about her peers early in her time at Yale:</p>

<p>[Even</a> artichokes have doubts | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts/]Even”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts/)</p>

<p>Deresciewicz articulates well the path that leads people to the Ivies, and the expectations that are placed upon them once they are there. He is not saying Cleveland State is “better,” but that the students who are there frame their education and its purpose differently.</p>

<p>And also, it is not everyone’s dream to have tenure at an elite university. I know plenty of academics who have it and wish the system were abolished, as well as others who have turned it down in favor of more flexible options in terms of teaching and consulting.</p>

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<p>

And here is where I always feel compelled to point out that my son got into Harvard perhaps as a legacy, but he had 1570 out of 1600 SAT scores, was in the top 1% of his class, and had state level Science Olympiad medals and professional experience in computer programming. I’d consider him a potential academic superstar (albeit a one-sided one). Most of the legacies I know were equally accomplished and my niece with very similar stats was not accepted. I don’t think there are too many legacies in the happy bottom quarter.</p>

<p>That said, Harvard was never an academic powerhouse. Harvard, I believe, looked for future leaders, some in academia to be sure, but more in government and business. Like Blossom, I really enjoyed the combination of brilliant lecturers with very accomplished TAs. I had seminars and/or small every year, and I’ll admit the best class I took was a graduate seminar that had five students. But it didn’t have any freshmen blowhards in it either. ;)</p>

<p>Crossposted with Sally. And to add, I don’t know why Deresciewicz can’t talk to his plumber. I can talk to mine.</p>

<p>And I kind of like the fact that both the current governor of Massachusetts and Grover Norquist were in my class and I knew them both. :)</p>

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<p>Sally,</p>

<p>It comes across a sour grapes because it was written after he was denied tenure at Yale. Strongly doubt he’d have written such a critique if he’d remained on faculty as a tenured professor.</p>

<p>***edit
maybe if he had been protected by tenure he would have written it! No risk other than the reaction of his peers</p>