<p>You can do the course equivalent of a minor, but students in the business school cannot officially complete a minor (though they can complete a major).</p>
<p>Disclaimer: This is not very relevant to the previous posts.</p>
<p>And now… my Bike Rant, as so many of my friends and random strangers have suffered through… </p>
<p>If you decide to go to Emory: GET A BIKE. I’ve listed my arguments in order of magnitude/importance.</p>
<p>1) SCHEDULING
In light of the new schedule for Fall 2013, classes will be 10 min apart. Having a bike means you don’t have to factor your ability to make it to the class on time (very important for classes like chem where there are graded clicker questions at beginning of each class) when you do your scheduling. </p>
<p>2) TIME
The real thing the bike saves you is time. Whether that’s more time to sleep before heading off to a 8:30 class, more time to finish a last minute assignment, or more time to stay in a professor’s office hours before heading of to your next class. Time is priceless in college and you need every second.</p>
<p>Personal Example: I had an essay worth 2/3 of my grade due. In the class right before it, I noticed some stupid grammatical errors. I bike like a madman to the library, fix the errors, bike back and turn the essay 1 minute before it was due and got an A in the class. Now is it possible that the errors wouldn’t have effected my overall grade: yes, but because I had the bike, I had the option to never face that possibility. Shouldn’t I have just checked it before: … yes. In my defence, it was finals week, but in truth there will be times where due to procrastination or other circumstances, you will find yourself in a tight spot and every second will count. I’m not particularly proud of this episode, but my freshmen year was full of these successes stories that could have been failures if I didn’t have my beloved bike. </p>
<p>3) EXPLORING
Simply put, you can get around more with a bike, whether that be going to Clairmont campus without waiting for a shuttle, exploring decatur, or even getting to CVS from your dorm in 5 minutes instead of 12. You can do more, see more, and be more with a bike. </p>
<p>4) Miscellaneous
Having a bike rack with a crate or other container on it is really nice for transporting random stuff, or just keeping 40lbs of college books off your back. Biking is good exercise. Also if you are musical and plan on taking music theory or have an interest in a class in the BRB or North Decatur building it’s supper far away and you will thank yourself for getting a bike. If you get a bike, GET A LOCK! Bike theft is one of the things that is kind of shady about Emory. I’ve seen too many cut chords for my liking. Get a good U-Lock and use it right, and you won’t have any problems. </p>
<p>The End</p>
<p>Just note that Emory’s campus is quite hilly, so biking back and forth might be a huge pain. If you don’t want to continually lock up your bike, you could always get an adult sized penny board which is cheaper than a bike, portable, and easier to use in Emory’s campus.</p>
<p>I feel like one can easily carve routes without as much hills. The only hard part about it is, it’s easy to “descend” into the center of campus (say the quad) without much difficulty. And in that direction, it’s rather easy to avoid steep hills, but going back is another feat (I suppose, if you are coming from say Math and science or WH, you can just take the quad), but if you must travel past the DUC (or even if you want to go to the Woodpec), to say, Woodruff circle, going up a long (but not steep) is kind of unavoidable (ok, the one going from Dickey Drive to Woodpec is indeed kind of steep, but you can just take the quad and swing around via Asbury instead. Even Eagle Row may be easier depending on one’s start destination). Going anywhere along the Clifton Corridor sidewalks (as you are going toward Briarcliff) can be rough. Going to Kroger on Briarcliff can be really challenging for example (It may honestly be better to just go to Publix on Clairmont. The portion of N.Decatur leading to it is relatively flat, but the sidewalks suck even more than most of the sidewalks in Atlanta suburbs).</p>
<p>Disclaimer: the following is a personal opinion and only anecdotal </p>
<p>In my experience the problem of biking and hills was solved ages ago with the invention of gears. I find I can comfortably bike up Emory’s greatest hills with little effort on a low gear. There are tons of bike racks all over emory, I’ve never had problems locking it up, even if it was to a railing. The primary advantage of the bike however is the speed. No other method I daresay will get you from the freshman quad to let’s say the library and back faster than the bike. And its the speed that buys you the precious time. Once I left my chem lab notebook in my dorm (not recommended). I biked to the freshmen quade and back to Atwood in 7 minutes flat. Yeah, I biked up the hill, and yeah my legs burned but that was a lot better than not having the notebook. </p>
<p>5) Exercise. Yeah Emory’s got hills, but their manageable and exercise is good for you, builds cardiovascular endurance. Heck, with the play emory system (the new PE program) you could get credit in your pe class for your bikes in between class. </p>
<p>6) It’s not expensive. There’s Bike Emory (rent for 75 per semester 130 for year), but I recommend Label Discount, a small business in decatur owned by an awesome french guy. He’s got a 5 star rating on yelp and sold me my beloved bike for $100 flat. </p>
<p>here’s the link to the yelp page: [Label</a> Discount - Decatur, GA](<a href=“http://www.yelp.com/biz/label-discount-decatur]Label”>http://www.yelp.com/biz/label-discount-decatur)</p>
<p>7) You don’t have to start right away. If you go to the Clifton road building (I think it’s 1599 Clifton Road) you can borrow a bike for free for a day to see (checkout at 8:30 am return at 5pm same day). *note this may have changed since bike emory changed their bike share program, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. </p>
<p>Extra: almost all of the roads around Emory have bike lanes! </p>
<p>Overall: I like to think of my bike as both a convenience and insurance. I can get around campus fast and easily and when all I need is 5 more minutes, I have them.</p>
<p>Are the classes really tough at Emory ?</p>
<p>Uh…no. It’s the same as the other elites (except the engineering schools and some of the “super” elite schools, and even then, the main difference is only in the rigor of the science programs). Some of the science courses are difficult and are curved to grades below the mean of the rest of the college and some humanities and social science have high workloads, but in general, Emory is not particularly rigorous (of course there are exceptional courses and professors, but these classes are often only taught to students who want a certain background or level of rigor, which is not that many, so these classes are quite small and because of this, have little effect on the Emory atmosphere. As in, you usually won’t get an atmosphere more intense than one where there is mainly just a bunch of pre-health students complaining. This isn’t Chicago or Princeton, or something like that where it’s very challenging even to those not pursuing pre-professions or non-science tracks). I mean it’s more rigorous than most schools in a sense (as in probably more than many of the flagship state schools, except the best ones like UT, Berkeley, Michigan, and UVA, etc), but the work doesn’t really challenge its caliber of students that much and overall grading is generous (upon graduation, the average GPA has been rougly 3.4, in line with most non-Brown, Stanford, and Yale elite schools; as in line with schools that are not super duper grade inflated. High inflation, but not crazy). It’s mainly just moderate rigor, low workload, sometimes very challenging exams (but doesn’t matter because workload is usually low enough so that you can just spend time prepping for exams) and solid levels of competition (not cut-throat or anything, just more grade oriented students that work hard. Because of that and the generous grading it’s hard to stand for many to stand out even if they are doing good work. Hardly no students are literally competing against each other though). Ultimately, it depends on the courses and professors you choose. Given that you asked this question, trust me, you’ll be able to easily choose courses and professors that allow you to “cruise” or not worry about your grade if you desire to do that. This even goes for the sciences. Or if you want to be challenged but worry about sacrificing your EC life, just simply don’t worry about it. The workload just isn’t high enough for it to happen. The only time you’ll generally have to make a sacrifice is exam prep and paper writing time. You, in general aren’t constantly doing p-sets or assignments.</p>
<p>So I am planning to double major in mathematics and philosophy and take a few courses in comparative literature and creative writing. Do you think that “the common student” will manage this workload? Or is it way too irrational? </p>
<p>Also, I wanted to ask about the mathematics and philosophy departments. Are they mediocre or great? And how are the classes within these departments?</p>
<p>I’ve evaluated potential intro to philosophy professors at Oxford and if my experience is any indication, the philosophy program is excellent and very rigorous. It’s also beneficial that Emory students are typically very intelligent which not only allows the professor to assign more difficult work, but also makes classroom conversations more interesting than it might be at less selective institutions. One thing to note, or at least one thing that the evaluating professors noted, is that Emory is extremely weak in non Western philosophy. That means that while Emory will give you a rigorous education in western philosophy, your knowledge of the supposedly very different Eastern philosophical disciplines may be lacking. From what I gleaned from faculty conversations during the hiring period, one of the philosophy department’s strongest subfields is the philosophy of science. </p>
<p>Also, and I’m not sure how relevant this information is to you, but there’s an enormous glut of philosophy phDs. For instance, we had over 200 people apply for just one philosophy position, which indicates that even at schools not known for their philosophy departments (not Emory), the professors may still be outstanding and have high expectations of students.</p>
<p>Yeah When When, but you go to Oxford. It seems Oxford is more serious about the educational side of things. For example, you guys have the ways of inquiry. Having craptons of classes like those with that type of workload and approach is like selling hellfire and brimstone on main. Main campus students are more than capable of it and such an approach on main could have amazing results, but unlike at Oxford, INQ type approach is asking for resistance on main, because you are taking the traditional “sit in class, take notes, leave, do small assignment, take exam/do one big assignment before semester’s end” type of class away and transforming it to something where a student must be significantly more aggressive about learning the material because they are no longer being spoonfed knowledge and ideas. Great teachers at Emory already essentially employ this in humanities and social sciences, but I’m sure many others don’t bother taking it to the INQ type level (unless you are a really good teacher, you’re bound to lower your enrollment that way. Like at Oxford, nearly every prof. in the dept. would have to have a comparable level of rigor or else, students simply will avoid that class. Forget them daring to enroll in a class where the prof. dares to give lots of Bs on assignments/essays. Then they grade “too tough”). Given that Emory is not Oxford, I would not expect the workload to be as high. I would, however, expect really good conversations and discussion in your humanities and social science courses, and they will certainly be better in classes that give assignments (or threaten quizzes) that encourage or force people to prepare. I think that Oxford has been a certain way for such a long time, that students just accept its approach and level of rigor. Also, students attending Oxford are likely to believe that college is supposed to be that rigorous whereas many Emory students probably envision it being fairly easy/moderate given the number of APs and their SAT/ACT scores. If you present them with anything other than something that lives up to this expectation, it will only frustrate a large part of the student body. I believe most selective medium sized private institutions struggle with this. I mean, a significant amount of students choose between the elite schools (if they have that option) based on “quality of life” metrics and lesser so on academics. More rigorous than normal (as compared to peers) academics normally=lower quality of life to many high achieving students. </p>
<p>As for your math/philosophy major and those courses should be very doable. Mathematics at Emory is often kind of a joke up until you get past Diff. Eq or linear algebra, but sometimes you can indeed get a very difficult multivariate teacher (it’s rare that Diff. Eq and Linear Algebra have rigorous profs. or ones that give challenging exams). I also would not expect particularly good teaching from math at Emory (take people like Duffus and Ono if you can). And to tell you how manageable it is. I know some math and chemistry (BS) majors who find it manageable to do several upper and mid-level courses in math along with their chem requirements (such as analytical, organometallic, or biochem). Some of these students are very solid, and some are just normal. I even know some chem/bio double majors who make time for more time intensive humanities courses (English and Comp. lit for example. One student was taking several higher/mid-level sciences while also taking Morey, one of the best, but more demanding profs. It was a challenging semester in general, but this person did well).</p>
<p>BTW When, When: This isn’t to say that if you came to main campus (appears you will not be continuing to it), that Emory would not be solid for the upperlevel coursework in philsophy that an advanced student would take. I’m just sure that the introductory courses probably wouldn’t compare in Emory main’s favor (they’ll be interesting, but probably not small and rigorous). The OP will start by taking the intro. courses.</p>
<p>That was helpful. Thank you, guys. Now I will list random questions in a very untidy order, sorry about that. </p>
<ul>
<li>How is MARTA? I heard that public transportation in Atlanta is abysmal. </li>
<li>Is the campus vibrant?</li>
<li>I also heard that Emory bans smoking on campus. How do smokers manage? </li>
<li>I am a sponsorship by a university in my home country. And one of their terms is to have a minimum GPA of 3.3, is that doable in the first two semesters?</li>
</ul>
<p>1) MARTA=“meh”. I would honestly try to take advantage of Emory’s shuttle system (free, and many options during the weekdays, many of which will get you to popular parts of Atlanta metro or at least near the MARTA train station, which is more the direct than having to wait and pre-plan for MARTA bus which has like a million stops to pick up people before getting there. You can go to midtown and downtown via the EHU/Grady shuttle. During the year, there is also the Georgia Tech shuttle. You can go to N. Dekald Mall, Decatur, Executive park and other stuff. On Weekends, you can go to Buckhead, a popular shopping destination) in conjunction with MARTA (that is if the shuttle services in while you are out). In case of longer trips around town, rent a zipcar or become friends w/upperclassmen
2)Yes, of course.
3)They just smoke. The policy is not enforced well at all.
4) Really manageable (a significant number of freshmen, like 20-25% have 3.75+. I forgot how I learned this, I think it was a really old post from CollegeStu).</p>
<p>What level of math are starting with by the way? That’ll begin to tell me how rigorous your first year will be.</p>
<p>If I’m not mistaken, the Emory Scholars program that recipients maintain a 3.2 or higher college GPA. I haven’t heard of any scholars being disqualified by the GPA requirement, so you should be fine, so long as you work hard, keep up with your homework, and approach the professors for help when you need it. Also the average GPA for graduating seniors was a 3.38 [Profile</a> of Emory University 2012 graduates | Emory University | Atlanta, GA](<a href=“http://news.emory.edu/stories/2012/05/upress_class_of_2012_profile/]Profile”>Profile of Emory University 2012 graduates)
This includes Oxford continuees who, for a variety of reasons, tend to have a lower GPA after their sophomore year than their peers who started at the Atlanta campus. Given that you probably have had to be extremely driven to get the scholarship (I know of two internationals on federally funded government scholarships and they are among the smartest people I’ve ever met), you should be fine so long as you keep up your work ethic. Also when you have an average graduating GPA of 3.38 that means that 50% of the class had that GPA or one slightly/ substantially above it. </p>
<p>You’ll be fine.</p>
<p>We know why Oxford students had a lower GPA, let’s be real. Oxford, in general flat out grades harder than main, and especially in the humanities and social sciences where it counts (one can assume most institutions grade similarly in science). As I suggested, workload is higher as well. One can argue the lower incoming SAT’s, but knowing the actual numbers of main campus students (and them not being too incredibly different from y’alls), that doesn’t really explain it. Main campus wants to emulate its top 20 friends and thus grades like them. It probably shouldn’t be doing that, but it does. The OP will not have a problem on main.</p>
<p>It seems to me that grades are expected to fulfill two contradictory goals. </p>
<p>1) Making people learn more. Harder grading is expected to reflect increased rigor of the class and be an incentive for students to work harder and learn more. </p>
<p>2) Standardization. Provide a way to compare different students (ie for grad school). </p>
<p>It seems to me that main campus needs to keep its grading standards relativily equal to other universities to prevent a disadvantage in applications, scholarships, etc. However doing that very well lessons the challenge for the student body so they learn less which is in itself a disadvantage. </p>
<p>As for Badiou’s GPA question: as previously stated the average GPA was 3.38. So half of the class had a lower GPA. One thing about selective colleges like Emory is that you often find yourself much closer to the average than you’d like to be. And anecdotally, the first year/semester of college is generally the worst. I’m not trying to scare you, just don’t come with the attitude that things will be easy. You just can’t really predict your success on how other people did. Practically everyone initially thinks they’re gonna do well. You’re probably fine, but there’s not really a second chance in college. </p>
<p>*Personal Example </p>
<p>I had a semester stat class that everyone said was super easy the last semester (average test score was 92%), so I didn’t really study for it. Turns out that no one went to class because it was so easy so she made it harder. I got a 86 and the average was an 81. I studied for the next test and got a 102, and I ended up with an A in the class. I was capable of geting the A, but I could have saved myself a lot of stress if I had a better attitude coming in. Prepare like it’s gonna be hard, and if it’s easy enjoy it.</p>
<p>My only concern is that I don’t know if main campus can justify grading like its other private peers when its incoming stats are, in general, significantly lower. It should probably be grading at a 3.25-3.3 (like JHU and Princeton for example) instead of 3.4(like Duke, Northwestern, WashU, Harvard, Penn). From what I hear from faculty members who were around before Emory “blew up” (and the SAT’s went to where they are now), the students then were about as successful at gaining the scholarship and maybe even more successful at getting into top grad./professional schools. These faculty members were around when Emory was grading in the range I mentioned above (like early 2000s?). Also, there seemed to be more interest in the Rhodes and Fullbright Scholarship than now (definitely the case for Rhodes). </p>
<p>I mean, maybe one could claim that Emory students will focus more on their work because of a lack of D-1 sports and a dominating Greek life, and thus the GPA will be higher than expected for a school w/our statistics. But the point is, it appears grading at a 3.4 has not really provided any competitive advantages (pre-med hasn’t been doing well for quite a while and it still isn’t even though there is now an advising office. One reason is simple: there are too many applying. The second likely reason: GPA inflated w/respect to expected MCAT score in particular gpa brackets. So something about the rigor of the coursework or the grading is not right. If Emory is doing stuff right, the admit rate for pre-meds should be about 65-70% as JHU, which has a similar number apply, has this success rate.), though I am sure that is the purpose (I mean, I’m sure that being a harder grading institution will hurt Emory’s main application base, the pre-professionals). The purpose is to either have the competitive advantage (use grades for assessment by 3rd parties) or a perceived one (so that the base isn’t afraid to attend, just as many Emory caliber pre-profs. would fear places like Princeton, JHU, and Chicago). Since grading patterns are difficult to reverse without raising hell, Emory should select programs where it wants to see a certain level of success and re-evaluate the curriculum (for example, the pre-med core classes, or some of the political science courses for pre-laws, etc), either the rigor of it, or how the courses are taught, or both.</p>
<p>I think chemistry is trying to do this, and will take advantage of its rising new facility to do so. Appears they are trying to do a mixture of what many top public and private schools in science are doing. The problem based/roundtable room approach to intro. coursework that comes from the publics, and re-evaluating the content in organic and gen. chem like many of the private schools that have looked at the aamc recommendations for science curriculum (Harvard and Princeton, for example, have made significant changes to their intro. science course offerings), which target pre-med education, but incidentally also help those who may want to pursue science as a career. That’s their plan, but I question what implementation will look like as many profs. aren’t used to teaching using active learning methods like PBL and CBL for example).
But in general, a Harvard model by which they teach at a high level, have rigorous content, but curve generously would work at this point in time (You don’t want to be Yale, where grades hardly mean anything, but you don’t want to be Princeton and upset a decent amount of the student body).</p>
<p>And yes, merrymusicman, I like that general attitude. It makes sense, and in general works.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, what would a PBL versus a CBL approach look like in an intro to science class? I’ve only read about applications of a problems based approach in medicine so I’m curious to how professors could apply it for students just learning the fundamentals of Hess’ Law (to give a random example).</p>
<p>How would it differ from how Bio and Chem 141/142 are currently taught?</p>
<p>It (CBL/PBL) is likely easier to implement in biology (Dr. Passalaucqua fully employs the method, while Gilson and Spell do some during a couple during the semester. Gilson’s are more, “did you read book, then copy answer” oriented though. Everyone else just lectures). I can put some on my google docs and give you access to it. Dr. Eisen is one of the few people that uses it in upperlevel courses (I took his cell bio class where it was heavily employed and coupled with readings of primary literature that occurred before each session). The PBL model was used in my organismal form and fuction and evol. bio course (the two were essentially run by Dr. Beck as he taught organismal, but clearly designed the materials for evol. that semester who was taught by Dr. Gerardo. They would teach a concept and then pass out a problem set for neighbors to work on. And then they would walk around and facilitate). Apparently Passalaucqua’s 141 class is run by having lecture one day and then a case the other day (when Eisen taught 141, his case method was far more rigorous, with a case each session, and there was no lecture and students were expected to read before coming to class, take a quiz, and then begin the case/discussion. Everyday, an individual student would have to do a disease of the week paper which would also function to lead into a discussion of the day’s case assignment. So the student/group writing a paper would become discussion leader/kickoff person for that day. Passalaucqua was trained by Eisen, but employs a less rigorous version. I imagine she wants to maintain popularity, whereas Eisen could care less). </p>
<p>In chemistry, I took Soria’s (he and Eisen seem to have very similar attitudes toward grading, teaching philosophy, etc) class for organic chemistry so I was exposed to a PBL model. His class would kind of emphasize content (but honestly, mostly ideas), but would spend significantly more time than others on asessing more difficult scenarios in class (there was less spoonfeeding of material through beating to death of simple concepts on simple molecules. It was more complex concepts and complex molecules and tying them to more simple concepts learned at an earlier point in time). Also, we would have bonus point activities where you sometimes would work difficult problems with a team member in a short period of time. And some classes, the whole class would be devoted to a competition (say, between male and females) where the two teams would go to the board and figure out very difficult problems (you are seriously more likely to see these in a very advanced or graduate level course at any other institution), and he would grade them and award the side with the better proposals more points than the others (for sessions where he planned to introduce a new concept, he would sometimes start the class with a problem for two individuals to come up and solve. And their answers would launch a discussion on a concept that hasn’t really been emphasized yet, because normally it’ll tie a concept that they recently studied with one they haven’t seen before and are thus the volunteers are required to kind of guess because they know the basics but not what happens in that particular case). So basically more active learning. It works too, because he gives very difficult exams where most of the problems are application based and decently prepared students do quite well on them. Since the other professors rely on lecture much more, even the best lecturer (Dr. Weinschenk) makes half (sometimes more) of his exam memorization/standard level problems and I’m sure the performance (average) is only about as good as Soria’s on most occasions. So I envision the gen. chem teachers familiar with active/interactive learning methods doing something like that where less emphasis is put on teaching a bunch of content in the traditional way (lecturing w/ppt slides) and instead making time for students to actually work problems in class. </p>
<p>Here are the googledoc things: </p>
<p>An example of a cellbio case:
<a href=“https://docs.google.com/document/d/16f7F9LNB03GOi9B6rE7VqTgqGIxxwnTR4N_X5QmAIGM/edit?usp=sharing[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/document/d/16f7F9LNB03GOi9B6rE7VqTgqGIxxwnTR4N_X5QmAIGM/edit?usp=sharing</a>
An example of bio 141 case:
<a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BUVFpYzBUajgzdkE/edit?usp=sharing[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BUVFpYzBUajgzdkE/edit?usp=sharing</a></p>
<p>Eisen’s Syllabus (it explains the philosophy and how the class is run, which is different from everyone else’s):
<a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BMTZiMTU0YzgtZDllYy00MGQ3LWJiMzEtYjc0ZTc2MjFlZWQ2/edit?usp=sharing[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BMTZiMTU0YzgtZDllYy00MGQ3LWJiMzEtYjc0ZTc2MjFlZWQ2/edit?usp=sharing</a></p>
<p>Let me know if they work. Seems like the general idea is to bring what is normally expected to be done outside of the classroom, inside of it, where you can get immediate feedback from the professor and a larger set of peers (you also immediately see how the problems relate to what you read instead of having to scrap together all your lecture notes and readings at the last minute so that you can complete the problem set. It keeps students on track with the material or else they screw over their teammates and risk looking unprepared). Also teambuilding/collaboration and discourse is fostered in a more formal setting. Normally, what happens is, you solve a portion of the problems/case in class and then more difficult questions relating to it are done for homework (optional or graded, in Eisen’s case, they were graded. When Passalaucqua only had one section, she graded them as well). Emory has its advantages of having smaller than normal intro. sections for a top a 20 (most top just through 175-250+ in a lecture hall and that’s it… Emory, except physics is a more cozy 50-125. Low end for biology and organic and high end for gen. chem). The ability of some profs. to implement these models seems to be one such advantage</p>
<p>I have a few questions. </p>
<ul>
<li>Is it hard to get into the business school? What kind of GPA do you think I need to get into the school?</li>
<li>Would it be hard to double major in like business and econ?</li>
<li>Would you say the science classes such as chemistry and biology are weed out classes or is it different?</li>
</ul>
<p>If anybody could answer these questions for me, that would be greatly appreciated!</p>