<p>I would imagine that you could describe WPI or Case or RPI as elitist as well… it would be hard to argue that kids who had taken Calc BC or multivariate wouldn’t show up at one of those schools significantly better prepared to tackle their curriculum than a kid from an average public HS (or a disadvantaged HS) where those classes are just not offered and unavailable.</p>
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<p>A fair point, perhaps, but the lack of such broad historical survey courses is hardly unique to Brown. Look at the course listings at places like Columbia, renowned for its core, or Yale, with its distribution requirements. You won’t find that kind of broad comprehensive survey course in European History or U.S. History at either of those schools, either. In fact, most elite schools with reputable history departments abandoned those kinds of courses decades ago in favor of more specialized offerings. I think there are several reasons for this. First, many historians now think the grand survey/synthesis course is simultaneously pretentious and shallow, and not the kind of history they want to do or to teach their students. Second, while there is perhaps some value in familiarizing oneself with historical timelines of major events and eras, I think most elite colleges now think that kind of basic fact-acquisition is appropriately done in high school as preparation for college where more serious work in history can be done. Granted, some students may miss it in high school, but the colleges don’t seem to see it as their job to do that remedial work. Brown is no exception in this regard; it is well within the mainstream.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings on the broader question of an open curriculum. I guess bottom line, it depends on the student. My own D is very much attracted to schools with an open curriculum, but she’s not averse to schools with reasonable distribution requirements, and she’s planning to apply to some of each. She is more skeptical of schools with heavily prescriptive cores. I think for her that all makes sense. She has broad-ranging intellectual interests, and she will end up taking courses across a diverse array of subject areas wherever she ends up. But she doesn’t want to be too tied down by someone else’s ideas as to what the content of her education should be. In her case, the fewer and/or more flexible the requirements, the more I think she’ll get out of her college education. Most schools’ distribution requirements are quite flexible, allowing students such a wide range of choice that for a student like my D, the end result probably won’t look very different from what she’d get at an open curriculum school like Brown or, say, Wesleyan where technically the curriculum is open but academic advising tries to steer students in the direction of breadth of distribution.</p>
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<p>Well then, I would have to admit that I am still immature. I still need external motivators, deadlines and mandates to accomplish certain tasks, even when I really want to accomplish them. For example, safe driving is very important for me but I need to see posted speed limits and I need to know that a police officer might give me a ticket if I drive too fast. I know I should pay my taxes and don’t mind paying them but I need that deadline and the threat of the IRS. Even for the most creative and exciting parts of my work, I need those deadlines to accomplish what I want to accomplish. </p>
<p>Brown’s open curriculum, the satisfactory/no credit option and the absence of “F” grades is the equivalent of a traffic law that says “here’s a map of all the roads and there’s a car, there are no speed limits, we suggest you drive on the right side of the road and we trust you to stay safe, but if you get into a crash, that is not going to be a problem because you can just exercise your no-credit option and pretend you were not driving at all”. </p>
<p>Sure, some people might flourish in a system like that, but I know with my immature thought process I might develop some bad driving habits and I’d be pretty worried about how everyone else around me would drive. I would probably prefer a system with speed limits, one-way signs, some no-parking zones, and most importantly an enforcement system. </p>
<p>Fortunately the real world seems to be built for my immaturity. I trust all those mature Brown students will be able to adapt to the real world when they graduate.</p>
<p>How’s that for calling a spade a spade?</p>
<p>You too are free to prohibit your D from applying from Brown. However, let me tell you what happens in the “real world” of other colleges. It’s already been pointed out in this thread by two student posters. Students who think they might want to go on to med, law, or business school avoid taking any difficult courses or courses with tough-grading profs outside their areas of strength because they don’t want to bring down their GPA’s. </p>
<p>Additionally, a fair number of the pre-meds will take organic chem and other difficult pre-med requirements during summer school, often at less competitive colleges. This will cost their families additional tuition. </p>
<p>I was shell-shocked to meet a young woman who was then a pre-med student at a top college who was spending the summer at the U of Houston taking organic chem. She was living in a house with 8 other students from the same top college who were also taking organic chem at the U of Houston. Now, I do not wish to insult the U of Houston–I know nothing about it. It is not, however, as highly regarded as the college the young woman was attending. But according to this young woman, the collective wisdom at her college was that it was better to take organic chem as the only course you took during one summer at U of Houston and get an A than to take it at the college she attended where the best grade she thought she could get would be a B if she took it during the summer term or risk doing even worse if she took it during the regular term along with other courses. </p>
<p>Brown pre-meds take organic chem at Brown. They may drop down to 3 courses that semester. They may even take some or all of the other courses they take that semester S/NC. However, they will take organic chem at Brown.</p>
<p>And most of the pre-meds will take interesting courses outside of math and science. Again, they may take them S/NC while they focus their energy on organic chem. They will NOT however load up on courses like “Clapping for Credit” or other guts to meet their distribution requirements because they want to achieve the highest possible GPA. </p>
<p>My own kid wanted to go to law school–and did. I blew up when I saw the final for the science course taken to satisfy distribution requirements. It was a LOT easier than the final for the course in the same subject kid had taken in 7th grade. I asked why on earth kid was taking such a silly, easy course. The answer? Kid didn’t want to risk getting a lousy grade in a science course. In translation, for my kid, that meant avoiding any science class which was actually created for science majors or pre-meds. </p>
<p>Now, some posters will say to me “Well, XYZ college will let you take a certain # of courses pass/fail, so there’s no need to take the guts.” Yeah right. At the college my kid attended, profs had the option of offering courses pass/fail. The number of courses that could be taken pass/fail was limited. None of the science courses designed for science majors or pre-meds was offered on a p/F basis. Ironically the “Rocks for Jocks” type courses ARE offered on a p/F basis. To add insult to injury, for purposes of determinining eligibility for Phi Beta Kappa, any courses taken P/F count as Cs. Now, I’m sure there are kids who are altruistic enough that they don’t care and take them P/F anyway. However, the vast majority of the high-achieving humanities types do what I hate to admit my own kid did–take a gut, near worthless science course for a grade. </p>
<p>Now please don’t think my kid took 4 years of guts. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, kid did take a gut to meet part of the science distribution requirement because science is an area in which my kid is weak. </p>
<p>So, if you think your kid “needs” the “discipline” of having to take each and every course for a grade, then send your kid off to a college that requires that. If she chooses to take guts to meet the distibution requirements in areas of academic weakness, don’t say you weren’t forewarned. You should be SO proud of her maturity in learning to play the game.</p>
<p>Vicarious, for the vast majority of students at Brown who plan to attend grad school, interview with employers for whom the first question is “what is your GPA”, or just function in the real world, those social constructs act as traffic cops.</p>
<p>Nobody at Brown deludes themselves into thinking they can get into a top law school or get hired at Microsoft or win a Fulbright with a string of “no credits” on their transcript and four years worth of underwater basket-weaving classes.</p>
<p>I was hardly mature when I arrived at Brown- but was realistic enough to realize what I needed to do to get myself launched into an adult profession by the time I graduated. Which meant taking full advantage of the open curriculum but still taking a wide array of classes in a full range of disciplines, getting mostly A’s in progressively harder courses, etc.</p>
<p>What a bunch of cynics you are! As if no college kid would work hard and do well were it not for the “threat” of that core curriculum and distribution requirements!</p>
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<p>It reminds me very much of when we were homeschooling during the middle school year. We decided on what is called unschooling or child-led learning. In otherwords, we let the kid decide what he wanted to do with his time. </p>
<p>Without going into detail on that issue, I believe the broader issue is that too often formal schooling crushes the child’s instinct to explore and be productive. Learning becomes associated with negatives. </p>
<p>I don’t know the answer but I do know that my son’s middle school years were wildly productive ones and that I anticipate the same experience for him in college, regardless of the framework or lack thereof.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that will be necessary. It would take a lot of arm-twisting to convince her to apply to Brown! She and I are in agreement that Brown is a great school for certain types of students- and she believes that she is not such a student. Luckily there are other great schools that are more in alignment with her personality and philosophy. I guess she is mature enough to know that she is immature.</p>
<p>For the record: Neither my daughter nor I think that Brown is a weak school or a bad school. I admire those who can flourish in such an environment. But it is IMHO a mistake to go to the other extreme and say that every mature student should be able to do well in that environment and that someone who wants more structure is automatically unqualified to be at any top school.</p>
<p>Vicarious, none of my kids applied to Brown and in no way did I assume that it reflected a lack of maturity. Different strokes for different folks. But your implied value judgement is what gets people’s goat.</p>
<p>My kids didn’t apply to hundreds of schools. I don’t think kids who want to go to Duke are drunken frat boys, nor do I think that kids who want to go to JHU are mindless pre-med grade grubbers. How about just “my kid isn’t interested in Brown” and leave out the arm-twisting?</p>
<p>And while I don’t think any of my kids ended up in colleges that aligned with their personalities and philosophies (that’s a lot to ask an 18 year old- to have a well crafted educational philosophy in addition to just being academically prepared for a rigorous institution) they all ended up working hard, being challenged, having tons of opportunities- intellectual, artisitic, political, professional, etc.</p>
<p>What more could you ask for? I doubt the presence or absence of a core curriculum, distribution requirements, or any other element of the college’s “philosophy” was terribly relevant to their experience- and certainly not part of the selection criteria when it came time to make a choice. One of mine was thrilled to test out of the foreign language requirement; one of mine ended up at a school with no foreign language requirement; one required a thesis, one only required a thesis for “honors”, one allowed double majoring while another strongly discouraged it… at the end of the day, these were very minor elements in how a kid chooses a college. (And the kid who wanted the college which would give maximum credits for the AP’s so he could graduate early ended up staying 8 semesters anyway… so go figure.)</p>
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<li><p>The traffic analogy is cute, but ultimately unsatisfactory. Your local highway is far less selective than Brown. It is far less selective than your local DMV – a valid driver’s license is not even required for admission. And one person’s traffic-law compliance choices have real consequences for everyone else on the road. People driving on I-95 have a large personal stake in other people’s compliance (or near-compliance) with speed limits, lane restrictions, and DUI rules. People taking classes at Brown are not much affected by whether some of their classmates don’t take any math classes.</p></li>
<li><p>Vicariousparent is conflating open curriculum with a policy of not reporting Fs on transcripts (and offering a C/NC option). Most of the problems s/he identifies are linked to the grading policy, not the lack of gen ed requirements. Now, as a matter of history and of policy, the two things are surely linked. I think the intent of C/NC and suppression of NCs was to encourage students to take classes outside their comfort zones, since that was not going to be required. I can certainly see how that could have a negative effect on some students, but I don’t think it is necessarily a function of open curriculum.</p></li>
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<p>I note that my college had a very similar policy – if one did not pass a course, it did not appear on one’s transcript, and was not included in GPA. As a practical matter, this made Ds optional. It was common practice for professors to offer a student in line to receive a D the option of taking an F, so that usually only graduating seniors received Ds. (This was not mandatory, however, and professors would sometimes express their anger and frustration at a student by passing him with a D rather than giving him an F.) I don’t remember this having any terrible effect on responsible course selection.</p>
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<li> Re: guts. One of the most important, valuable classes I took in college was a total gut, that I took in large part because it was a total gut. (I walked into the room, and saw half the football team, a dozen trustafarian English majors, and their girlfriends, and I knew I had died and gone to heaven.) It had a great, jock-friendly structure: A problem set was due at the end of every class. Class consisted of going over the problem set. If you handed in completed problem sets on time for 90% of the classes (you could skip 3), you were guaranteed at least a C in the course even if you failed the exam (or didn’t bother to show up for it), and a B if you passed the exam. If you didn’t hand in enough problem sets, your exam grade was your grade. An A on the exam required actually doing well. So, essentially, everyone had four options: (1) Do the work, but don’t bother coming to class (and have someone else hand in your problem sets). (2) Come to class and do the problem sets there (although by the end of the semester the p-sets were too difficult to complete just in class time, so some preparation was required, but not more than 45-minutes-worth). (3) Study for the exam. (4) Actually take the class seriously.</li>
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<p>It was a great, great class. The materials were great, the p-sets were great, the teachers were great. (It was taught from an unpublished textbook draft the teachers had written. At the end of the course, they asked for suggestions on how to improve it, and I said that I couldn’t think of a way it could be any better, but that some pictures of naked women would make anything more enjoyable. And I was just as critical then as I am now, just not as PC.) I took the more advanced (and more traditional) classes offered in that area, and what I learned in those courses became a big part of the skill set I still use.</p>
<p>My best friend, at the same time, took Rocks for Jocks and was so turned on he switched his major from History to Geophysics. He later became an environmental policy wonk. That is THE #1 distributional-requirements success story that I know.</p>
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<p>What a strawman! Nobody said that.</p>
<p>blossom: I was simply reacting to another poster calling it a sign of immaturity that someone would decide that they needed more structure and that an open curriculum was not for them. I am in total agreement with you: different strokes for different folks. </p>
<p>In the same vein, different people use different criteria in choosing colleges. For my daughter, an open curriculum is a big negative and a core curriculum is a big positive. If there was a college with Brown’s location and campus with Columbia’s core curriculum, it would be her top choice!</p>
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<p>I disagree. You learn from your classmates. It does matter if a significant number of them are ‘lopsided’- this may be good in some ways and bad in others- but it does matter.</p>
<p>This is completely false and a theoretical situation that doesn’t really play out in real life.</p>
<p>The Open Curriculum doesn’t work for every college. But certain colleges that attract particular students can have this kind of flexibility and not really suffer consequences.</p>
<p>My engineering friend is taking an Italian course, my BioChem friend is taking Arabic and French courses, my PolySci friend is taking a CS course, a Pre-Med friend is taking Religious Studies and Chinese courses, another Pre-Med friend is taking an Art course, I’m Pre-Med at the moment and I’m taking Classics courses (although I suppose that will be my concentration). This is all just in the first semester of the first year.</p>
<p>I know it’s a small sample size, but really, I haven’t met too many kids who say “I’m just taking Physics and Chemistry.” </p>
<p>You will still get a well-rounded education here, you just get to have a greater control over shaping that well-rounded education.</p>
<p>jonri, that is not a strawman. Here is the quote (not yours) that I was referring to:</p>
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<p>In other words, “If Brown’s open curriculum is not right for you then you do not belong in ANY elite research university and admissions departments should work hard to keep people like you out”.</p>
<p>I (who provoked mathmom to start this thread) said several times that a student who believed that a broad education was a good idea, but who without distributional requirements couldn’t trust herself to register for a few courses outside her comfort zone, didn’t belong at an elite college. That sounds a little extreme, sure, but I really think it describes an absurd, null set, among students with any kind of legitimate shot at a college like Brown. I do think there are students who need rules like that, but they are not on Brown’s accepted-student list, or waitlist either.</p>
<p>EDIT: Cross-posted with vicariousparent, who was quoting (and then grossly mischaracterizing) what I said.</p>
<p>Fine, JHS, you have the right to clarify your own words. They seemed unduly harsh to me.</p>
<p>“But I don’t know why you think the Brown student body is more “entitled” and less likely to look for employment immediately post-employment than the student body at other top private colleges and universities.”</p>
<p>Perhaps this is because so many Brown undergrads choose to attend grad school. I think this is because they value education, as opposed to wanting to escape having to go to work. I do agree that Brown tends to place a higher than average number of grads in non-profits. Again, I’m not sure that’s because they can afford the low-pay, but rather they have a strong sense of “doing the right thing, of helping where they can, of giving back”. Maybe that’s the hippie rep they get but “making one’s life count for something” seems like a common goal… Many, many undergrads do volunteer work in Providence because they care - and not as a resume padding EC.</p>
<p>Well I’m sorry mathson didn’t apply to Brown just so we could see if he would have been on Brown’s accepted student list. On paper he looked pretty well-rounded - 800s twice in CR, 5’s on AP’s in US History, Latin and Econ as well as math and science, 800 on the US History SAT, A’s in everything except English. In reality his interests are pretty narrow, and he has chosen to take the minimal distribution requirements his college requires. He’s required to have a minor, but physics is not exactly outside his comfort zone. I’m sure if he’d ended up at Brown, he’d have ditched the few non-math, non-physics, non-cs courses he was forced to take. On the one hand, I feel like my son’s college education is a bit one sided, on the other hand, he did cover the bases with APs in high school and if he ever gets interested in other fields (say via a girlfriend? the only scenario I can imagine!) I’m pretty sure he knows how to educate himself.</p>
<p>At anyrate he didn’t apply and perhaps wouldn’t have gotten in.</p>
<p>In what respect to you disagree with what I said? There is NO elite research university – not Columbia, with its rock-hard core, not Cornell, with its various schools, not MIT or Chicago, with their own softer cores, and certainly not the modal institutions with modest distributional requirements – that does not make students ultimately responsible for making course choices that are rational from the student’s own perspective. And none, as far as I know, that provides advising so intensive as to be able to save a self-destructive student from himself, at least not before the student takes a bounce or two off the bottom. </p>
<p>A student who really truly (a) has no confidence in his own judgment or executive capacity, and (b) thinks that distributional or core curriculum requirements are going to ensure that he makes good choices, is headed for awful trouble, and needs a lot more structure and a lot more handholding than any of these schools provides.</p>
<p>Can we at least agree that it is great to have plenty of really nice schools with different types of options and that people need to educate themselves about these options, and make choices that suit them the most?</p>
<p>I think vicariousp has distorted what JHS said, but even if she hasn’t, I don’t think that it’s necessary to attack Brown U. --or the idea of an open curriculum, for that matter–in order to disagree with JHS’s statement. </p>
<p>Additionally, JHS went to a college with distribution requirements and sent two kids to a college with a limited core, i.e., he has no connection whatever with Brown or any other open curriculum college. So, bashing Brown because you disagree with him is totally unjustified. </p>
<p>Now, I may be out of date, but last time I checked, the core at Columbia College did not require a single math course to graduate. Maybe CC hasn’t updated its website? [The</a> Core Curriculum | Columbia College](<a href=“http://www.college.columbia.edu/core]The”>The Core Curriculum | Columbia College) So, it’s pretty silly to disagree with JHS"s argument that the fact that other students haven’t taken any math classes won’t affect the quality of one’s education and then sing the praises of Columbia College. And, neither Columbia SEAS students nor Barnard students are required to take the core and it’s probable that vp’s D enrolls in Columbia, she will have some of these students in a class along the way.</p>
<p>While I admit I’m out of date at this point, I know one heck of a lot of former Columbia College students and one current one and without exception each and every one of them is “well lopsided.” Columbia College–as opposed to SEAS–doesn’t attract math/science kids. Yes, the core requires a fair # of science courses–but my understanding is that the science courses most CC students take don’t include SEAS students.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean I see no benefit to the Columbia core. I definitely do. But to me the benefit is that it everyone is reading and discussing the same books–and with luck that means outside the classroom too. This helps to build an academic community in a very special, and IMO, good way. You don’t get that with distribution requirements. The problem is that kids who went to top, rigorous secondary schools sometimes find the work in these classes to be a repeat of high school.and Sometimes it is a less rigorous repeat, since some of their new classmates have weaker educational backgrounds–NOT abilities, just backgrounds–than their classmates at top private and public secondary schools. </p>
<p>As for CMU, my own kid took it out of contention early on because unless you are a university scholar–and it’s noteworthy that way back then, at least, CMU waived all distribution requirements for its university scholars–you have to choose which college within CMU you will enroll in before you enroll. My kid was interested in two fields which were in two different schools within CMU, so that eliminated CMU. CMU may have forced distribution requirements, but it forces all students except the university scholars to choose a general field at the outset. My kid couldn’t do that. </p>
<p>Reality is that most of the kids who win the “Glittering Prizes” at any top U are well-lopsided. A few are “pointy”–they may excel in art history and engineering, but have no interest in philosophy, linguistics or foreign language. I think my own kid’s college eduction was much too narrow—but said kid met distribution requirements. I actually think the requirements made matters worse–kid would have chosen courses more wisely if they didn’t exist, IMO. YMMV. </p>
<p>So, yes, I think it’s valid to compare the different approaches and which may be right/wrong for yourself (if your are the student) or your child. But I don’t think that it’s necessary to bash colleges to do that. To the extent that my remarks might be seen as bashing Columbia College, please believe that’s not my intent. I think it’s a great college. (My kid wasn’t interested because we live in NYC and kid didn’t want to be that close. )</p>