<p>Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science was quite upfront about the fact that 75% or more of the applicants thought they'd be in the top 25% of the class. Highly unlikely! But they also showed up that even their students with the lowest GPAs were getting good jobs. I felt very comfortable that even if my son didn't end up being a top student there, he'd still have a good outcome. I know that no one has ever ever asked me about my GPA - not even for my very first job outside of grad school (since Columbia's architecture school is completely pass/fail not much to see there anyway!), it was all about skills and experience. The only kids who had any problems finding great jobs out of Carnegie Mellon were ones who wanted to do things like return to their small town in Idaho.</p>
<p>Just entering the thread...I've heard alot about CalTech here, but what about Hopkins?? They also are reputed to be very difficult with with grade deflation...my D is at the top of her class at a good suburban HS without killing herself, but has had only one B in her life. She is choosing between Hopkins and American Honors...the prestige of Hopkins is a draw, and she wants a seriously academic place, but I think she also does not want to go from a straight A student to an A/B/C student. Don't really know for sure, as she doesn't like to say much. But she does say she also wants to have fun in college...She is doing overnights at both places which should help her decide. I don't know if she has any fear of failing issues but it has crossed my mind. Any thoughts out there about these two choices and this issue??</p>
<p>caruth, p.m. jmmom. You'll get what you need. ;)</p>
<p>jaybee and curmudgeon -- I picked up on your interesting dialogue.</p>
<p>While searching this past year, I came upon Ithaca College's department of history, and noticed that they had a special offering for "History Education" to train secondary school history teachers, rather than pre-PhD history candidates. </p>
<p>So, reading your discussion, I checked in to Ithaca again for math, to see if they distinguish there. </p>
<p>They have a B.A. in Math Education <a href="http://www.ithaca.edu/hs/programs/math/%5B/url%5D">http://www.ithaca.edu/hs/programs/math/</a></p>
<p>or a B.S. in Math/Computer Science Education </p>
<p>In fact, they write more convincingly about the difference on their page about the History department, but perhaps it's worth getting past the webpage on their math ed departments, by corresponding with that department, in order to see if they approach it more the way Jaybee's kid sees the subject.</p>
<p>Yep. That's exactly what I was thinking about, paying3tuitions. Sounds like the kind of program that would be very appealing to some kids.</p>
<p>I do recognize that my kid and kids like her make life miserable for the non-gunners in those intro science courses. I have to assume the same is true in the upperlevel courses in the popular pre-med majors , too. I have to think a school filled with math majors set on top grad programs couldn't be that much fun either.</p>
<p>3 tuitions and curmudgeon</p>
<p>My son has restricted distance from home too much to do a lot of this kind of research, but I find the topic fascinating for other kids. </p>
<p>Marian spoke earlier on the thread about picking majors based on courses you DONT want to take. Another person talked about botany majors in pre-med weedouts. My kid doesn't want to major in Math with a bunch of pre-PhD candidates.</p>
<p>It is almost a topic for another thread--what majors do you need to be careful about getting stuck in weed-out courses that don't quite apply to you? (and thus would be a reason for choosing a slightly less selective school than matches you)</p>
<p>I'll probably insult someone with this, but since it describes my older son, I think lots of communications majors are business majors that didn't want to take calculus!</p>
<p>At my school (eons ago), the nursing majors (me) had to take the same Anatomy and Physiology class with the pre-med students. They ruined the curve for us every time,lol.</p>
<p>I think it is quite normal for young students to get anxious about possible failure when facing unknown. But realistically, they shall be all right so long as they are careful and plan well ahead.</p>
<p>
I can assure you, your daughter will not have to "die trying" to keep up at the top colleges that admitted her, as long as she has good work habits and is not going to freak out over a B. My d does not have straight A's, but she is getting all A's and B's including some very high A's/A+'s on specific assignments or tests. So certainly she knows she is capable of doing well. The only real stumbling block was that she had to get used to the higher expectations for college level writing, and that really only was an issue because she opted to take some advanced-level classes her first semester, including one where she was the only freshman - so obviously my d. had some catching up to do there. </p>
<p>The main thing is that my d. made a point of being disciplined from the start -- she didn't overcommit herself to EC's, and she did all her reading when it was assigned. She complained to me early her first semester that she felt like she was spending a lot more time studying than her roommate, who was always going out -- she wondered how her roommate could possibly do it all -- and I told her to wait until after the first semester grades were in before assuming that her roommate was so brilliant. (I have no clue how the roommie did on exams, but d. isn't complaining). </p>
<p>At the same time, my d. is NOT studying all the time -- she has been working two jobs and is active in various EC's, and certainly has taken advantage of many opportunities for entertainment in NYC. She is simply studying regularly. </p>
<p>So tell your daughter to choose the college that she feels she would like the best and not to worry -- she will be able to keep up.</p>
<p>caruth, yes JHU is a very great university with great students but I would not be overly concerned. A friends son got a 4.0 freshman year. That summer he took a Physics 1 course at our state flagship university and got a B. </p>
<p>BTW he is now in first year med school but I have no idea how he did in the dreaded ochem.</p>
<p>Packmom, your comment reminds me of the organic lab I TA'd back when I was in grad school at a large Midwestern university. This was a section of organic chemistry specifically targeted to women majoring in home economics, so the content was less rigorous than that for the premed majors (but still no slouch class!) And the labs themselves were focused on issues more relevant to the students: titrating the citric acid in orange juice, measuring the amount of cholesterol in gallstones, etc.</p>
<p>I always thought it was a great way to teach organic to a subset of students who needed the requirement but didn't need to sweat it out among the more competitive.</p>
<p>I value Calmom's point above about studying regularly. There are kids who can count on their brilliance, flash and creativity to swoop in last minute with all-nighters and caffeine, still manage to make B's because of the way they slice/dice their way through reading assignments, then write extremely well.</p>
<p>Others begin with the syllabus from the very first week, and make B's. It's a tortoise and hare thing. </p>
<p>I wish I could see grade comparisons between these two vastly different learning styles. </p>
<p>Perhaps there are subjects where the last-minute-swoop is even impossible.</p>
<p>The "swoopers" are legendary around a campus but the slow-and-steady practitioners, less so. Yet sometimes the "swoopers" intimidate the practitioners. And in freshman year, some swoopers are simply fooling themselves; they get renamed "dropouts." In particular, bright students who coasted through weak high schools get a big wake-up call freshman year and must develop study habits then -- or die. </p>
<p>(just reread my post -- from my metaphors, can't you tell the birds and backyard animals have re-emerged in the Northeast!)</p>
<p>p3t, first "swooping" may be a grade attainment style but I do not consider it to be a learning style. Secondly I am not sure how "legendary" this is. I teach no freshmen engineering classes and relatively few sophmore classes. By the time I get students in the classroom, almost all of them follow the syllabus and keep up with the class/lab assignments. Students who miss more than a class/week are also rare and they usually don't fare to well grade wise.
Students who miss labs(they cannot be made up) always do quite poorly.</p>
<p>LOL. "Swoopers". I've always called "us" "wingers" as in "wingin' it", or "on a wing and a prayer". And yes there is a wall for all of us, and I hit mine in "code courses" in Law School. Pretty hard to wing it when you don't know the code sections .......or the numbering system.....or any of the buzzwords. But I did know where the best happy hours were each night of the week. I could recite that. :(</p>
<p>Am I dreaming, or do the above 2 posts (#53 and #54) not personify the difference between studying science vs. humanities? I know that my senior D, a Religion major, will be up again all finals week for "exams and papers" while her friend in Computer Science brings her coffee, his work long finished in "labs and projects."
-- oops, was interrupted, a bird just flew at our window, must've hit a wall</p>
<p>paying3tuitions, if they gave me a crack, any slight opening where I could reason and contort my way into an answer (like giving me enough data points in the questions themselves) ....I was golden. Math and science or foreign language? Not my "style". LOL. I once wrote 26 pages on a final in a History class where I had read one of the 5 required books and knew the title and back cover of another. I made a B. It was pretty good "stuff".</p>
<p>But, like everyone - I got found out. D has had all of this explained to her many times. It's best to have both "styles" of arrows in your quiver. ;)</p>
<p>Calmom - thank you - your words are such a balm to my frazzled nerves. I have copied them off to share with D when she gets home from school. </p>
<p>On the selfish side, I had so hoped that I would be faxing NMSC today with her decision, but it was not to be. I know the NMSC office will be flooded on Monday and I had hoped to avoid the rush.</p>
<p>We had another session of D sitting on the end of the bed with tears running down her face last night, still unable to commit as to what she wants to do. She says she gets her confidence up and then a bolt of fear will strike, sending her crashing down into that pit of doubt. I know that she is strongly leaning towards one of the upper schools, but can't bring herself to just DO IT. We told her to try to look at all the positives of this decision she needs to make, not anything she perceives as negative. I also think that ALL of the work involved in her last four weeks of school (orchestra concerts and competitions-and making up the work you miss, lunches with every civic group in town due to NMF, NHS president obligations, general school work, work with an art professor at our localU, etc.etc.) have just worn her out and fatigue is making her more emotionally labile!</p>
<p>We reminded her that teachers, neighbors, friends, etc. in this small town on the tall grass prairie where we live have been telling us she is something special since she began to speak. Teachers say they have never seen anything like her, she often 'shocks' them with her understanding of subjects and her beautifully crafted work. Now if she would only believe in herself.</p>
<p>Thank you again, I truly appreciate it.</p>
<p>p3t, my compsci DS is taking existentialism, ethics and comp religion in addition to two comp sci courses this semester so I guess the concern is who will be bringing him coffee during finals week!!! Awk!</p>
<p>Most in my department give comprehensive finals so don't think they are in goffer mode either.</p>
<p>The Op asked "did anyone's kid just say, I'm afraid I'll fail if I go there?"</p>
<p>For my D it was exactly the opposite. She opted for her reach school because (and I quote) "I want to push myself academically. I know if I work hard, I can do it." That was a year ago, and she's doing fine.</p>
<p>Back when I took comp sci. I was up till the wee hours the last week trying to get my &^( project to work. Perri Klass wrote a very funny book, *A Not Entirely Benign Procedure, about her time at Harvard med school. She mentions that she thought she would finally have to give up her cram at the last minute style of studying, but no... it worked fine in med school too.</p>