One needs to allow them the freedom to care about what they want
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I think it is ridiculous to think that a few more courses in your major vs. courses in other areas makes a huge difference in anybodyās education, career, or life. Even looking for her first job out of college nobody asked my daughter for her resume or a list of the courses she took.
My daughter filled her electives with stuff she wanted to learn, courses that appealed to her. As a math/econ major with a history minor, she took a wide range of stuff including - a class on Film Noir, a class on Japanese Culture, an intro to accounting class, public speaking, and an intro to CS class. She will still today, several years later, talk about these electives and what she learned and how she enjoyed them.
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Yes. However, to do meaningful research, either as an undergrad or as grad student, she needs theoretical preparation in those relevant coursework.
In her case, she probably had strong enough background (including courses) in math as a physics major so the transition was relatively easy.
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If you are going to grad school though that transcript is scrutinized carefully ā eg whether you hit the correct version of the grad statistics course. I have heard a particular grad school wants you to submit all exam assessments in a subset of the courses with your application. I believe this is in Physics.
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I think you meant to direct this to @gwnorth. At any rate, I donāt disagree with you, except that I have my own generalized perceptions, based on heavy representation in my immediate community, about a couple of the same demographics in which it is absolutely the case that the parents steer the kids and the kids fall in line. Thatās at least a high hit rate in my neck of the woods without question. YMMV.
Thereās always some trade-off between depth and breadth. A stronger student can obviously compromise less. Itās a decision every student has to make, assuming s/he has met the minimum criteria set by the college/major.
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I think parents also have nuanced views on this. They have a desire for the kids to have some base level of financial comfort. In addition, if the kid is saying that they donāt care about money, but at the same time taking expensive vacations etc on the parentsā account, that parent is concerned whether this kid is going to be unhappy downstream when it may be a little bit late to fix the situation. I was just hearing a parent worry about this last week.
Although not a tight relationship, I have also found, anecdotally, that kids that have the capacity to make money often have lower financial needs than kids who donāt :-).
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However, a student in a liberal arts (including science) major typically has a substantial amount of free electives if not attending a college with very voluminous core or general education requirements. Such free elective space can be used to increase both depth in major and breadth outside the major beyond the minimum major and general education requirements. If the student came in with advanced placement to skip some lower level courses, that increases the free elective space even more.
Of course, students in more voluminous majors (e.g. engineering, nursing, architecture) may have less free elective space, so the choice of expanding depth or breadth is more limited for such students.
Thatās probably the most balanced place to settle. It certainly isnāt going to make you dumber to take the extra classes in an area of focus; youāre just missing out on an opportunity to juice another variable. Life is full of trade-offs, so they may as well get used to it in college, if not before.
Very fair point. It is very human to get used to what you have as a baseline, and itās the rare person who dips below that baseline without noticing or feeling it.
I hope my posts havenāt confused anybody. I like money and made pretty much all of my career decisions with money as a primary factor. And I donāt apologize for it.
My point of consternation is not with money or anyone wanting to make it. I am a card carrying capitalist ā¦ to the core.
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Depending on how well prepared and strong they are, students still have lots of choices to make, even if theyāre in colleges with voluminous core/gen ed requirements, or in majors with voluminous major requirements. IMO, they should choose based on their interests and strength, not on whether those extra courses can help them meet the requirements for a double-major or dual-degrees.
The same is true of some hiring companies as well, to the point they may prefer the student with a 3.7 GPA student but obvious high rigor curriculum over a considerably higher GPA student with a lower rigor curriculum. I know of students with a nearly 4.0 GPA students not even getting called for the first interview. Note that this winnowing starts before full time employment, and can even affect the internship after sophomore year.
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On my college alum Facebook page, someone had posed a question on what we most wished we had to do over again, the overwhelming response was to take courses outside of our majors with ārock starā professors in areas as diverse as architecture, history of art, music, theater, American history, history of the Peloponnesian War, Chinese history, Renaissance literature ā¦
Yes, college should provide a level of practical/technical education, but it should also be about training the mind to think and to appreciate broader aspects of the world.
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What we wish we took then, and what we wanted to take then when we were in the moment are different things. It just means your FB friends have done well in life, have no basic needs left to fulfill, and have turned towards their self-actualization needs to fulfill. They come from a generation which had no parental pressure that ostensibly current kids have. Also, I remember zero of the history I studied in high school and only a small part of what I studied in college if I did not use it since. So none of the Peloponnesian War they would have studied in college would be useful for your friends now. If they like the Peloponnesian War, this is the time in life to study it.
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The FB page is not just my class, it is all alum, including recent classes. Yes, your thinking on what you should take will change between being in the moment of undergrad and looking back with the benefit of hindsight, but looking back in hindsight is not a bad thing when you advise your kids.
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It is not just hindsight. You have different needs at the different points in time.
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I agree that undergrad would be an advantageous time to explore interests, and absolutely students should. For Physics specifically (and probably CS) itās a matter of being a competitive applicant and for that your transcript is extremely important. Physics grad programs are insanely competitive and applicants from undergrad to PhD as is the norm in the US are competing against students who have taken grad courses in undergrad and international students with masterās degrees.
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I get the point you are trying to make, but pushed to its logical conclusion, itās basically this: what you did at a given point in time is exactly what you wanted to do at that time so thereās never any reason to regret anything. And there are people who live by that code. But a lot of people donāt. It implies that you canāt look back and conclude that you would have been better off doing this or that because youāre a different person today. I donāt subscribe to that view. There are a lot of things Iād do differently if I just knew then what I know now, regardless of the relative differences in my needs today vs. my needs yesterday.
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A physics major at many schools in the US should have plenty of free elective space to take additional upper level and graduate level physics (and math) electives and still have some free elective space to take additional courses in any non-related subject of interest.
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For many, more upper level or graduate level Math and Physics courses.
As a comparison, weāre in Canada and my sās undergrad Physics major requires 23 Physics & Math courses (including 1st year prerequisites) + 3 more breadth Science electives for a total of 27 out of 40 courses or 81.0/120.0 credits. Thatās about 2/3 of the degree.
For students targeting grad school specifically, the department recommends a further 6 courses/18.0 credits of senior level Physics and Math courses. That brings the total to 33 courses/99.0 credits. That then leaves 7 courses/21.0 units for free electives of which 2 are taken in 1st year (along with the science breadth electives).
Edited to add: admission to first year requires grade 12 Calculus and Physics so the first year Physics courses are Calculus based.