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If that’s a rhetorical question for students at Dartmouth, then Dartmouth’s admissions process is flawed, not its grading system.</p>
<p>Hunt, </p>
<p>It is not a question of admissions, it’s a question of human nature. </p>
<p>Decades ago I had a housemate who was an MIT graduate. At MIT the first year was pass/fail (now it’s only the first semester). He said everyone worked hard the first semester, but then being smart kids, they realized they didn’t have to kill themselves. They could do all other things that call to teens and still get P’s. Even intellectuals need carrots and sticks, ala publish or perish.</p>
<p>The Ivy League and MIT students of today are, in my opinion, different from those of decades ago. Their nature is that of super-achievers. Not all of them, of course, which is why even with grade inflation there are some people with lackluster grades.</p>
<p>I’d be curious to know if anybody has studied what in fact happens when students at selective schools take courses pass-fail. How do what their grades would have been compare to students who are taking it for a grade? My daughter is taking a course pass-fail this semester at Yale, because she’s taking a relatively heavy load. The course is in a subject that interests her. She seems just as stressed about the papers and tests for that course as for the others, even when I remind her that she’s taking it pass-fail.</p>
<p>Doesn’t Brown allow pass/fail for all of the classes and have 25% or more grading themselves this way?</p>
<p>In theory, yes, Brown students can take everything pass/fail. My understanding is that most don’t. Is it really as high as 25%? I wonder if that’s all classes, or if, maybe, that’s how many students take at least one course pass/fail earch year.</p>
<p>I would guess that MIT students haven’t changed to be super-achievers. They were in the 80’s, too. I suspect MIT changed to only the first semester P/F because at some point MIT realized their freshman were taking the second semester too easy.</p>
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<p>Students I’ve had that take my classes pass/fail often slack off in the second half if they’ve been doing well in the first half. Often times if homework is worth, say, 10%, they will hand in maybe two of the eight assignments. Their goal becomes to get a score which will let them pass, not one which will make it look as though they’ve succeeded. I’ve had a student or two I wanted to fail because they hardly turned in anything and did poorly on exams (often the worst in class), but pressure from above keeps them from earning their F.</p>
<p>This is with grad students at a “super-achiever” type school, as well.</p>
<p>Personally, I’ve found the biggest achievers and students that understand the materials are those that aren’t concerned with their grade. If they ace a test, great. If not, they’ll come and try to understand what they didn’t get. No grade grubbing, just trying to understand. I’ve had a number of outstanding students who had far from the highest grade in the class.</p>
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Then where did the superachievers of that period attend? I assume there were some. Otherwise, where did we get all this internet, science-y, medicine stuff since that time?</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s that easy to be average at a place like Darmouth.</p>
<p>"Is it really as high as 25%? "</p>
<p>It is from memory of presentations a long time ago. They mentioned something about people taking 4 classes each semester with one of them being pass/fail (it is their version of a one gut a semester?).</p>
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<p>This is one of areas Brown has in common with Oberlin when I attended in the mid-late '90s.</p>
<p>Theoretically, one can take all their courses…including major/minor ones Pass/Fail and graduate if they were all pass. However, we were warned by older students who were graduating seniors and a few Profs that most potential employers who ask for GPAs and especially grad schools tend to take a dim view of an applicant with no grades and all passes for their undergrad career. </p>
<p>This was confirmed by several supervisors and those who do hiring who said their default assumption is that type of student did the bare minimum for passing grades…whether it’s a C- or even a D. In short, they’d rather take someone with a high 2.x who took most courses for actual grades than someone who took all courses pass/fail and received all passes. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, I didn’t know anyone who took all their classes pass/fail even though one can do so and graduate.</p>
<p>Thanx to Racinreaver for his real world, honest classroom reflections. Its aggravating to hear people claim that engineering majors generally have difficulty with humanities courses. Not sure what they base this on. I do know my son goes to a school that requires all students to take philosophy courses and one of the top philosophy professors purposefully asks for a class of engineering students because he feels they are year in and year out the most engaged and curious kids on campus.</p>
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This is just my opinion, but I don’t think there were as many, and they were more spread out. Just comparing when I went to Yale, and the way it is now, I don’t think a lot of my friends then (or me) would have the kind of credentials you need to get in now. And that’s beyond grades and scores into intense activity in ECs.</p>
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<p>It’s a matter of opinion, but I think there’s some value to encouraging competition.</p>
<p>sm74, I think the reason why people don’t get it is because they’ll hear STEM people complaining about how a humanities class takes so much work, but what a lot of them don’t seem to get is that all of their classes take a ton of work. For me, having a class that took 9-12 hours of homework a week wasn’t an exception, it was the rule. So when I had to write a paper every week for a class, yeah, I was annoyed by it and I had to spend a lot of time on the class, but it was less strenuous work than my other classes. I’d use my humanities homework as a buffer between my mathy stuff, so I wouldn’t wind up burning out.</p>
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<p>Hmmm, I remember that the usual “easy breadth” type of courses were typically social studies courses, not humanities courses. Engineering majors also looked at business courses as “easy breadth” courses, much to the annoyance of hyper-competitive business majors (the business major then and now was competitive admission at the junior level). The science departments had special easier courses for students looking for breadth requirements, but this was not generally true of social studies or humanities departments. But the physics and chemistry departments also had easier versions of courses for biology majors and pre-meds compared to physics and chemistry majors.</p>
<p>Of course, each major or department has its hard courses, although students looking for breadth courses tended to avoid the hard courses.</p>
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<p>Well, let me help you with that last question. What people who have a different opinion from RReaver base their position on could be nothing but … personal experience. How about that? </p>
<p>Since few people attend more than one school, all we have is personal experience. And, fwiw, what we also have are loose definitions of STEM classes and majors. RReaver talked about classes in Physics among others, and that his (probable) peers looked at Intro Classes in the Humanities as grade boosters. But heck, that is exactly what my peers did by taking GenEd requirements in Sciences. Astronomy anyone? Biology anyone? Information Systems anyone? Or the Environmental Sciences? Should I go on with more STEM classes? </p>
<p>Do I think that majoring in a STEM discipline is easy? Nope. I have watched (closely) the load and difficulty of the classes taken by my friends at Harvey Mudd. I would not dream to attempt to pass a number of those subjects. Some of the same friends also came “down” to another 5C school. Some of them aced the class without breaking a sweat, and this thanks to a superior intellect. Others … found the classes pretty hard, and would gladly have exchanged writing about the political unrest in a Stan country for an advanced class in rocket propulsion. Or to draw a fuzzier line, feel free to replace the classes with subjects such as Econometrics and Financial Mathemathics that are … STEM subjects! </p>
<p>As far as “picking” the hardest majors, how would anyone “weigh” the curriculum at Penn’s Wharton against the engineering programs at most State Universities? Wanna try Engineering at UTEP versus … Swarthmore? I do not think so!</p>
<p>So here you have it. One personal experience versus another! No right nor wrong in either case.</p>
<p>It’s definitely easier to reach an ‘adequate, passable’ stage in the humanities than the sciences+engineering. But it’s easier to reach true excellence in the sciences+engineering than in the humanities. Partly because reaching the real top in the humanities requires more original thought.</p>
<p>Many scientists and engineers seem to confuse this with the humanities being easier. I think if it weren’t for grade inflation, you’d see a lot of A’s and a lot of F’s in the sciences+engineering, and mostly B’s in the humanities.</p>
<p>I agree with the above. My engineer friends liked to say that their classes were harder, but had to admit that they could get a solid A in their science courses, but never in the social sciences or humanities. The highest grade they could get in those was an A-. Most of my professors simply didn’t think anyone’s essays or research papers were worthy of an A or A+.</p>
<p>What I find aggravating is this sterotype that STEM majors in general and engineering majors in particular are one-dimensional, uncreative people who are maniacal workers who do the work to get A’s. Not only do I disagree with that-I think in most cases they are the exact opposite of the stereotype-they are multi-dimensional, creative and work hard because they are intellectually curious.
So I promise not to stereotype Sociology majors and would ask that others not stereotype Engineering majors.</p>