Studying at RPI.

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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<p>Having been here for nearly a week, I already know about the learning assistants. I am a freshmen. People seem to be fairly intelligent and fairly polite.</p>

<p>What makes RPI's academics so hard? Are people not understanding the material? Is it typical college problems like poor time managment, bad work ethics, poor note taking skiills, etc?</p>

<p>Its apparently very hard to get As in RPI. So I'm guessing a lot of people get Cs or Ds .I know about the ridiculous grading.</p>

<p>Whats the average GPA for the first semester of freshmen year? What is the average GPA of any other year?</p>

<p>I read around that it takes some dedicated slacking to actually fail a class. and this DEPENDS on the class. But it takes a lot of hard work to get an A? Do you generally agree with this?</p>

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<p>I was a TA here (mostly in the sciences) for a handful of semesters, so perhaps I can give a bit of insight regarding what types of things I saw most commonly lead to bad grades. I don’t necessarily know what <em>caused</em> these problems (did the student take really bad notes? sleep in class? misunderstand some fundamental result?), but can list what I saw on the tests/quizzes/assignments that ended up hurting the student.</p>

<p>In approximate decreasing order of prevalence…</p>

<p>1) Misapplication of a method (in math, at least, though I’m guessing this is also a major problem in engineering classes). If you’re going to use some technique, say Green’s Theorem (something from Multivariable Calculus), you’re going to need to make sure that your functions “P” and “Q” have continuous partial derivatives (which is often, but not always, the case). If the conditions aren’t met, you can’t always plug things in to the formula and hope it will still work.</p>

<p>2) Misunderstanding of a method. The Taylor expansion (calc II material) of sin(x) is </p>

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<p>so the expansion of sin(2x^2) must be</p>

<p><a href=“2x%5E2”>quote</a> - (2x^2)^3/3! + (2x^2)^5/5! - (2x^2)^7/7! + …

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<p>as opposed to the incorrect</p>

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<p>3) Simply not knowing the material. There are occasionally people who just don’t know what they’re doing, and try to come up with their own method last minute. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this lead to calculations concluding that there’s a negative probability of a five-card-flush being dealt in a standard poker hand.</p>

<p>4) Not being prepared. The most obvious case of this is when students do not complete their homework assignments. Further, some Computer Science classes have lab blocks in which students need to complete various programming assignments relating to the course material (implement a basic spell checker using “Levenshtein distance”, for instance). Some students are fast programmers and can code up the entire assignment during lab. Others sometimes need a little more time, which is perfectly fine as long as they remember to start the assignment beforehand. Consistently not finishing the lab assignment, though, is going to hurt.</p>

<p>5) Sloppiness. For some reason, there are a bunch of very smart students who simply cannot go two problems without making some silly arithmetic/copying error. It’s painful to see a student solving a difficult problem correctly, save for the intermixed 2x9 = 16 and d/dx x = 0. Isolated cases generally don’t hurt grades, but the point deductions do pile up!</p>

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<p>Out of these, cases (3) and (4) are the ones I’d most attribute as needing some attitude change, whereas (1), (2), and (5) just require a some additional effort from the students to identify and fix (perhaps doing some odd-numbered textbook problems and checking one’s answer before any tests). </p>

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<p>Now on to some other parts of your post…</p>

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<p>According to this PDF, <a href=“http://www.rpi.edu/dept/cct/apps/reslife/images/Spring%202011%20GLC%20Overview%20RPI.pdf[/url]”>http://www.rpi.edu/dept/cct/apps/reslife/images/Spring%202011%20GLC%20Overview%20RPI.pdf&lt;/a&gt; , the average campuswide GPA of last semester was a mildly amusing 3.14.</p>

<p>I don’t know of any sources that can give you the information by class year.</p>

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<p>Again, depends on the class. If you’re keeping up with the material, getting an A in classes like Gen Psych is not a problem. Getting that A in one (or two!) of Professor Kramer’s classes, though, is a toughie (I’m sure there are equivalents in other departments as well!).</p>

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<p>I will agree with Cesium on most of his points. For the regular freshmen classes, the low grades are typically only the fault of the students. This may be due to not adjusting to college life, homesickness, not knowing the right strategies to studying, or just going out to too many parties. The material isn’t hard enough that an A is out of range for the average student. </p>

<p>In higher level classes for all majors the workload gets significantly more difficult, however it is still possible to get A’s if you manage your time well, take advantage of any help available (via TA, professor, peers), and maybe a bit of luck. </p>

<p>It is definitely hard to fail a class. It is easy to get a C by just studying enough to get by, but I’d say pretty hard to get a D if you put at least a little bit of effort into it. B’s are not hard to get if you show the professor you are really trying to understand the material and do well.</p>

<p>For freshmen I’d definitely say the biggest hurdle is managing your time. We have a huge Greek life system here at RPI, so a good amount of you and your peers will be enjoying rush for the first two/three weeks of school and then pledging for the first semester. This includes parties that are hosted throughout the week and the inevitable drinking that accompanies it. As long as you can keep yourself in check and get your homework and studying done before going out to drink or your pledging requirements, you should be fine. I pledged Fall of my sophomore year and still managed a 3.72 despite the time commitment being well over 20 hours a week.</p>

<p>What major are you again? Send me over your facebook link via PM if you want some insider tips on classes</p>

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<p>Hi,I know RPI is very good for engineering. I plan to major in chemical engineering and am very interested in RPI. Since you are familiar with it, I hope you can tell me the special about RPI,such as the opportunities,career-planning services, internship,relationship between professors and students,teamwork in research,cooperation in research with other universities or other countries etc…Thank you~~</p>

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<p>I don’t think RPI is that hard. Can’t speak for senior year (though it doesn’t look any different), but the other 3 were pretty straightforward. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t really difficult either. Sit down, shut up, do the work, and you’ll be fine.</p>

<p>The average GPA schoolwide is 3.1, and freshman classes are definitely easier than later ones, so I imagine the average freshman GPA is better. However, Freshman classes typically have a much smaller curve, so you actually have to do well (but the materially is pretty easy too, it just cuts down on the number of stupid mistakes you can make).</p>

<p>It doesn’t take a ridiculous amount of work, just a reasonable amount of dedication. Conveniently for you, lots of people would rather party than do the work… (Work first then party will get you a lot farther in life)</p>