Can anyone associated with F&M speak to the presence of a stress culture, grade deflation, and the difficulty of getting the classes you desire?
The school is rigorous and, like any demanding college curriculum, can stress students out. There is a lot of support, including a fully staffed writing center and math center where kids who need it can go for help. As far as grade deflation, the honors and deans lists are pretty extensive, so kids who earn them are getting good grades. Professors are largely excellent and accessible. There is some difficulty getting into the classes you want. However, my student has managed to get into the classes he wanted by reaching out the to professors who teach those classes. One of the most difficult classes to get into is Statistics for humanities majors, which is a pre-requisite for many upper-level humanities courses. Most don’t get into that class until their junior year, or they take it during the summer at another institution. Registration is top-down – seniors have first choice, then juniors . . . however, there are certain courses for which freshmen and sophomores have priority and in any event, many students take a lot of their core requirements in the first year. It’s a great school and only getting better as time passes. The kids compete with themselves rather than each other and often form study groups. Students are also often assigned to work on collaborative projects and learn a lot from each other as well as from their professors. The student-teacher ratio is incredible and the professors are largely excellent. Short answer then – Yes, it can be stressful, but it’s not a “stress culture”, As are hard to get, but not impossible, and sometimes it can be difficult to get the classes you want, but if you persist or wait to take them in your Junior or Senior year – you will be able to take the courses you want.
Thank you! @Harvard85
My son if finishing up his second year. He just declared his majors of chemistry and BMB(biochemistry and molecular biology) with a minor in theater(??), He loves it there. Classes are hard and you earn your grades. But he likes it and doesn’t think it is unfair. There is free tutoring and a lot of supplemental help if you need it. He likes that the teachers are all accessable, classes are small and he has had opportunity to do real research each summer. He did have some problems getting into courses, but if you really need a course they will make sure you get it at some point.
My daughter is graduating this May. Our experience has been that F&M is hard, but she is a hard worker and has excellent grades, so it’s certainly possible to do well, just not easy. She has gotten an excellent education as well as research and other opportunities, which set her up to have great grad school choices for next year. She has liked most of her professors and has not had any problems with class sizes or teacher accessibility. Overall, she really likes it and it was a great choice for her. Our biggest complaint has been class selection. It is not easy anywhere, but it is pretty awful at F&M, and it doesn’t really get better as the students get older (I thought it would). My daughter has everything she needs to graduate and to fulfill her grad school requirements, but her original plan to get a double major or a minor was unattainable due to the difficulty of getting in to courses she wanted to take. I honestly don’t know if this is a collegewide problem or is specific to her major.
@robincorn @collegemom777 thank you both!
@collegemom777: Why do students have difficulty in being able to enroll in classes at F&M ?
Thank you in advance for your response !
A variety of reasons. Students can only register for 4 classes. After the first semester or 2 they can do more if their GPA is high enough, but they can still only register for 4 initially and can add more after everyone registers. Since nothing good is available at that point, this is only useful for things like independent research.
My daughter could not register for the first real class in her major or another important class that went with it until fall of junior year, because those classes always fill up with juniors and seniors, which meant there were a lot of other classes she couldn’t take either because they had those 2 as prereqs.
Because it’s a small school, there are often only one or two sections of a class and classes my daughter wanted or needed interfered with each other.
All that said, she did get what she needed eventually - it was just stressful. And she was a science major - because labs take all afternoon I imagine scheduling around them is not fun no matter what school you go to. As I said, we have been very happy with F&M overall - registration is really the only thing we found stressful.
Just to add, my daughter has had minimal difficulty getting the classes she needs. She’s pretty strategic planning her schedule (she’s also on a sports team and has to be aware of her team’s schedule), but she manages to get online the minute registration opens.
Recently I didn’t even know it was the day to register for classes for next fall. She texted me at 11:01PM to say she was done and got all of her requests.
The difficulty in getting the classes you need cannot be understated. My son is about to graduate but is short a class because the class he needs is hardly offered. It is important to know that F&M will only accept 3/4 credit transfer from another institution. What this means is that my son will need to take two classes elsewhere (very $$$) to make up for the class that F&M requires but does not offer over the summer.