<p>I can’t figure it out and I’m having a mid-academic crisis: I’m an APMA-ECON major going into my junior year, but I don’t know if I want to pursue:</p>
<p>1) A pHD in economics, which would require me to take harder requirements and do research, but risk getting a lower GPA
2)A profession right after college in finance (I have a finance internship rn in the summer), and have the chance of having a higher GPA (by taking easier requirements, no research)</p>
<p>I currently have a 3.9 GPA, and don’t want to lose it and will have better shots of getting a better internship/job. But I also don’t want to sell my self short, and regret never pursuing an advanced degree. </p>
<p>Can anyone help me out???</p>
<p>Try aiming for an education! Why the big focus on the GPA? First of all, a GPA at Brown lacks the meaning it has in almost any other school because there are no requirements outside the major, anything can be dropped or taken P/F. So using concern about GPA to guide your future makes zero sense. It would anywhere but particularly at Brown. Take harder requirements because you should be getting a college education. Fluff does not cut it. Are you squandering a 60K/year experience because you don’t want to see a B? Do research because it will give you valuable experience and you may actually contribute to the world that way. Hey, what a thought-it’s not all about how you dress yourself up in a 4.0 but what you have developed inside. Hope Brown isn’t filled with students with this mentality although I have heard it is. What do you think? I think you should not have a shot at an internship or job because you don’t seem to have any drive beyond that focused on the GPA.</p>
<p>I agree with lostaccount. Your focus on GPA and grades – which has been a theme with your questions about your experience at Brown – is disappointing to me as a Brown alum. If grades/GPA were not an issue, what would you do? </p>
<p>^To be honest, I’ve ALWAYS obsessed about getting the highest grades possible-- all the way since middle school. When I don’t…well…I feel stupid and lacking. I feel mediocre and substandard. If grades/GPA didn’t matter, I would definitely pursue a pHD. However, that’s not the case in the real world… </p>
<p>Also, you would be surprised about the number of students who are just like me–they will obsess over a B in certain classes.</p>
<p>You are asking in the wrong place and I think you have some really poor answers. This forum is for HS kids applying to college. There is also a grad school forum you might be better off in. I find your concerns valid because the PhD for econ is particularly competitive and so are a lot of the finance jobs .GPA is meaningful and it is no less meaningful at Brown than anywhere else. Of course, being overly grade obsessed isn’t ideal and will backfire if you aren’t active in research. It seems that you need to do some research to see if that is something you are going to be interested in. </p>
<p>Actually, as a different point of reference, my kid at brown has never protected his GPA by taking the easier classes for med/grad school and it has cost him grade wise. But he wouldn’t want it any other way bc the challenge brings him joy. We’ll see what that means to grad/med schools. Honestly, I think the whole med school application process is screwed up bc the emphasis is on GPA and not rigor. All over this website, you’ll see advice about trying to angle for the best GPA by either going to an undergrad where the competition won’t be tough, by repeating AP classes, or taking the easier versions of the math/ science classes required by med schools. For better or worse, even after I discussed what I read here about protecting GPA w my kid who’s interested in a PhD/MD, he opted for the math, physics classes intended for the engineers at brown. He took some grade hits but he’s learned an awful lot and it’s helped in the lab. This is his sixth summer doing research.</p>
<p>He feels you go to college only once, and he wants to make it matter. Without a doubt, he’s taking advantage of the spectacular depts/faculty at brown. Interestingly enough, a brilliant guy, who concentrated in bio in my husband’s class year at brown, didn’t graduate with any honors but went on to win the Nobel in medicine: Craig mello. There’s a brown video of ken miller, a brown bio prof, who discusses how brown is different from other universities and why he loves teaching there. In the video, he mentions Mello and tells how when Mello first began researching in labs, he’d break equipment but man, he went on to win the Nobel. I think risk taking in education, pushing yourself beyond your perceived boundaries, is critical. And it’s a shame that kids are too afraid to do that in order to protect their GPAs for grad school. It’s so limiting, and when the hell are they going to do it if not when they’re young, especially as emerging scientists who have to learn how to deal with failed experiments and then pick themselves up to begin again. </p>
<p>^thank you for that. Really helped inspire me </p>
<p>This is a rant so skip it if you are opposed to rants! It adds to points made by the previous poster (Ren mom). If you need a Spark note to the central point it is this: students with the most potential are being punished when they choose rigorous courses of study and those that nurse GPAs instead of stretching their intellectual capabilities are being rewarded. The result is damaging to society.</p>
<p>It is disappointing but not surprising that a college student can’t shake a focus on GPA. The focus reflects a fundamental problem in our educational system. Instead of being motivated to get the best education possible students are motivated to get the best grades and scores possible. Grades and scores are mistaken for education. Admissions officers at med, law and finance graduate programs are equally misguided. Don’t we want a society that is as educated as possible? Don’t we want our students taking the most rigorous and thorough courses as possible. And isn’t it sick (in the old fashioned way of using that term) that admissions officials at these programs, including those from so-called best programs, can’t uphold better values? For ease of selection, they reward those students who selected the curriculum that gave them perfect GPAs rather than those that took the most rigorous curriculum possible. Isn’t it pathetic that they missed so much in their own education that they don’t understand decision making well enough to construct methods to choose the most outstanding students rather than simply the students best at gaming systems? Why should our best students be avoiding the most rigorous curriculums possible in order to get into the best professional schools-shouldn’t that actually eliminate them from consideration instead?</p>
<p>To say the tail is wagging the dog is an under-statement The overarching goal of educators is to produce an educated civilized society. And no schools have more responsibility to do that than do the Ivy+ schools.Why? Because they can (and do) attract the very best students in the world. And so what happens with these best is very important to society. It is everyone’s business to ensure that they don’t screw it up. There is no other place our best go–there is not an alternative planet where the most competent people in the world are being groomed to take the most influential positions/jobs in the world. So, it behooves these schools to take that role seriously. If students in these schools are mining for As instead of learning at the highest level possible they are doing disservice to the world. Yes, it is that serious and that important! The days of the Ivy League schools being baby sitting services for adolescents should have ended in the 1880s! The focus should be on ensuring that they get the most rigorous education available not that they are able to select the weakest classes possible to enable them to nurse a 4.0 for 4 years!</p>
<p>It’s not all the fault of the colleges. They get students who have been corrupted by a decade of confusion about what tests are all about. So they focus on the test scores instead of learning the material. Those particularly good at taking tests, who are often those that view the tests as most important, are rewarded again and again. Those that learn material but don’t focus on the tests are punished. A decade of this shapes what students focus on. By 12th grade, some students are outstanding test takers and they are plucked out of the pool by certain colleges who will give them another 4 years of the same-plus a prestigious sounding certificate for their wall. But that’s not all…there’s more! The very best test takers and the students who took the weakest curriculum (usually humanities where As are ensured) are selected by graduate and professional schools-some of which continue the focus on grades. Students who take the most rigorous programs are punished for doing so. </p>
<p>The current way tests are used adds to the problem. Students with money and educated parents have found ways to bypass the substance of learning by focusing on gaming the tests. That has corrupted the test which now does not measure what it was designed to measure. In general, tests in class and standardized tests are intended to sample a small part of what someone knows. College entrance exams, for example, are supposed to provide an indication of how well someone has learned in the preceding 10 years. But that is not true any more. Students are skipping the learning part and focusing on how to improve on the outcome measure (get a good score) by studying just for the outcome measure. Now the score does not reflect a sample of what the student knows-it reflects all of what the student knows. That is a corruption of the test which is no longer a valid measure of what it was designed to measure. The current system rewards those students who have a keen ability to zoom in on the outcome measure without ever bothering to think about the entire endeavor we call “education”. </p>
<p>So what is the outcome? We end up with a society that places weak students in the most influential positions and we lose the opportunity to have our most capable students learn at the highest level possible. Can we be surprised that the finance industry is filled with people without an ethical compass? Universities, even the best of them, have provided training opportunities to those most able to play the system rather than to those students with values and experiences that would ensure more honorable priorities. The student who gave up a difficult major for a simplistic one, and who spent their time studying for the admissions tests rather than studying course content, is the student accepted over the student who stuck out the difficult major and devoted the most time and effort to course content not admissions tests. So why be surprised by an entire industry of people in their 30’s (on wall street and in finance) who take advantage of every loop hole they can to make money-and then when things tank scream they are too great to fail. They were selected on the basis of their ability to go for the short cuts-and play the system-why would we expect that stop that once awarded with lucrative jobs? </p>
<p>@renaissancemom, thank you for that. I will show it to my son who begins at Yale next year (in spite of having made course selections in high school that dinged his GPA slightly, but obviously not fatally). He tends to do the right thing naturally, but reinforcing his choices is not a bad plan. </p>
<p>@lostaccount, I agree with what you say, but I don’t think we should leave out the effects of recruited athletes and other hooks. It strikes me that the only sensible hook is lower SES, in that those applicants have shown great character and fortitude. I can’t count how many kids I know who would be at a directional college rather than the top tier they were accepted to if not for their athletic ability (often aided by the kind of private lessons available only to the wealthy). I am reminded of my older daughter’s roommate who asked her, in the middle of her semester taking Astronomy at a top 25 school, to remind her if the sun went around the Earth or v.v. – she was an athlete. </p>