<p>Some of D1’s freshman year classes had enormous amounts of reading. The students dealt with it by forming study groups and dividing up the reading load. Then everyone shared summaries. Very much like law school. :)</p>
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<p>Out of curiosity, how can you be sure your classmates doing the summaries were diligent enough to do a thorough/helpful job and/or weren’t attempting to make “crap outlines” to increase their own chances of making it into the top 1/5 or better of the class? </p>
<p>Just wondering as I heard far too many law school horror stories from law school alum relatives and friends about law school classmates who did crappy outlines because they were incompetent, overwhelmed, lazy, or quite often…because they wanted every advantage at the expense of other classmates due to the mandated class curve.</p>
<p>A couple of points:</p>
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<li><p>You can study more efficiently if you stay off the Internet and don’t text while you’re doing it. Many of today’s young people are accustomed to using electronic communications at the same time that they’re doing academic work, but this slows you down. At times when the workload is heavy, it may be something to avoid.</p></li>
<li><p>College schedules often have gaps in them during the day. Sometimes you can make use of this time to do errands or complete a short, discrete piece of academic work, thus freeing up some time later in the day. If you need to go to the campus store to pick up some toothpaste, for example, or if you need to call the campus clinic to make an appointment, try to do it during the hour between your biology lecture and your psychology lecture. You’ll be glad you did.</p></li>
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<p>I suppose this is more of a problem at some schools and in some majors than at/in others. If there’s not a curve, it’s also not an issue. Seems to me that if you poison the well then you might get some immediate benefit, but then your reputation is going to keep you out of any future study groups.</p>
<p>^^Yeah, that is probably only more of a problem at uber competitive schools (ivies). Normal people at normal schools don’t purposefully screw with other’s study materials so that they can be in the top 20% of the class.</p>
<p>That’s definitely unsavory behavior. I wouldn’t even think of doing something like that.</p>
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<p>I was only referring to law schools because the entire system places all students on a class-wide curve and where you ranked determined whether you got plum law jobs/clerkships at graduation in the past…or any law job nowadays especially if your law school is lower ranked. Also, nearly every lawyer who’s taught law school classes and law school graduate has mentioned the level of cutthroat competition tends to get more intense on average as you go down the law school rankings…especially in this economy. </p>
<p>As for undergrad schools, the level of cutthroat competition depends more on one’s major(i.e. pre-meds) and sometimes the school. </p>
<p>It’s weird you associate Ivies with uber competitive in the academic realm. With only 2-3 exceptions(i.e. Cornell), the impression I’ve gotten from most Ivy grads is that it ranges from being balanced to being almost the exact opposite…especially at HYPS.</p>
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Where is your data source? If you were to ask D1 about any school other than Cornell, she probably would say that she didn’t know. Yes, she has many friends who went to other schools, but it’s hard to know without first hand experience.</p>
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<p>Dozens of HS classmates who are Cornell alums and a few cousins…including a younger one who’s a current student there.</p>
<p>So they are all saying Cornell is very competitive? Do people talk about how difficult (easy) their schools are when they get together? I know D1 didn’t because I’ve asked her and she always said they had better things to talk about.</p>
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<p>Common themes I kept hearing from Cornell alum friends/relatives from Arts & Science and Engineering include heavy academic workloads/pressure, extremely high competition/obsessiveness about grades…especially among pre-meds, classmates transferring out/taking leaves of absences because of the heavy competitive academic pressure/workloads, partying a lot to relieve the tension, etc. </p>
<p>An older cousin who attended Cornell around the same time I was in college mentioned being concerned about several classmates who were “on the edge” because of all those pressures and felt a bit guilty she may have contributed to it by virtue of her being a pre-med. </p>
<p>A younger cousin reports feeling overwhelmed at times by the workload and report not much seems to have changed from the older cousins’ account of her experiences 10+ years before.</p>
<p>In my experience as a Cornell parent, it seemed to me that Cornell students were more aware of the differences in intensity of various programs within their university, rather than in differences between Cornell and other schools.</p>
<p>I agree with Marian. D1 was aware of amount of work relative to other Cornell students, but she didn’t know how it was relative to other students at Haverford, NU, Harvard, Gerogetown…Unless they all have same major, it is hard to compare.</p>
<p>According to my D. she ended up practically not reading text books at all. It does not mean that she was not busy. She said that it depends on major and Business people definitely had much more time on hands than kids in her major. The adjustment from her private prep. HS to public state university in terms of requirments was huge, she did not expect that gap. Not all classes were hard though. The correct balance is what makes it a success. D. made sure that she does not have more than 2 - 3 very hard classes, the others needed to be much easier. She learned to go over material in her head walking from class to class. Very useful skill that she still uses while walking to her Med. School. However, all in her major including my D. were working, voluneering, doing Research and she even ended up in sorority (very time consuming). Most graduated with combo of major(s)/minor(s). </p>
<p>So, hang on, adjustment time is hard, but everybody who works hard enough adjusts. Besides working hard, living balanced live and having balanced schedule, frankly I do not know any other approach.</p>
<p>…D. took 16 hrs only in senior year, when she had to go to interviews and frankly did not have much left to take. With the right balance of classes, 16 hrs is not big load at all. But I am not familiar with philosophy/history/economics as D. always made sure to stay clear of these classes, the History class was her hardest one in HS, this type of material is hard for her to absorb. This sounds like it might be tons of reading and not well balanced schedule. On the other hand, Spanish was an easier class, but again it depends on school program and individual ability.</p>
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It’s called an active-learning class. My class is 24 students, but larger classes can use it as well. We do lots of things - I might ask them to describe or define things to me. We lay out the formalities from what they have read. I might do an example problem and then have them work in groups or individually to try a similar one, while I walk around discussing with the groups what it is they are having problems with. It’s very participatory.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s funny how people diss each other’s majors !!!</p>
<p>All majors can be challenging…just in different ways.</p>
<p>Most STEM majors run in horror from the reading and writing loads common in most humanities/liberal arts majors. My sons who majored in political science/ philosophy/ middle eastern studies had brutal reading loads…reading a lot of original source material, reading many books on same topics but different viewpoints, etc., all with the understanding that lectures generally would not track with the readings, and that exams would cover all of the lectures and readings. (e.g., what would X, who wrote something not covered in class, have considered ABC hypothetical situation; and what about Z, who
was mentioned in class, …similarities and difference, etc)</p>
<p>On the other hand, humanities kids hate the idea of the endless problem sets and lab projects.</p>
<p>It’s all a lot of work, and hopefully students choose majors that play to their strengths, while taking enough courses in other areas to also develop their areas of weakness somewhat.</p>
<p>Cornell is a bit different. It has 7 schools, same course could be taught at multiple schools, and the level of difficulty varies. Prob & Stats is taught in A&S, AEM (business school), Hotel (probably at other schools too), and focus is different.</p>
<p>My child, the first week, said things were really uneventful and he didn’t feel challenged. I told him to wait a week. The following week he said the amount of reading he was assigned by a single humanities course was “ridiculous,” to which I responded with an abrupt and unintended snarfing sound. Since this is someone who can burn through a 500 page book in a day, I assume this means >750 pages between class sessions, which is about right.</p>
<p>Good luck, Freshmen. You made your bed asking to be top tier.</p>
<p>I personally never did the reading in my science classes, only in my political science/history/humanities classes. It’s not particularly beneficial, at least at my school, to read because that same material is covered in lecture.</p>
<p>Is he reading “smart” - that is, keeping the big picture and general outline of the chapter in mind or is he trying to memorize each little detail as it comes along (forest vs trees approach)?</p>
<p>This [How</a> Is College Different From High School? - - SMU](<a href=“http://smu.edu/alec/transition.asp]How”>http://smu.edu/alec/transition.asp) is a nice summary of the differences between high school and college - if he’s trying to reproduce the strategies for success that worked in high school, he’s likely to burn out.</p>