<p>It makes me extremely unhappy that we're <em>not</em> all required to demonstrate the same depth of reflection in order to earn the same grade.</p>
<p>Science, engineering, math... yeah As in those courses are totally different from the rest; it requires real brain and effort alone would get you no A! I very much agree with you on that point byul... are you a science major too?</p>
<p>thanks a lot cardinalfocused = )</p>
<p>Nope, not at all; my main degree is French.</p>
<p>And I also disagree with what you said, kevin. The sciences are not intrinsically more difficult than the humanities on any level. Once you come to Berkeley and take some serious humanities courses, you'll see the level one has to achieve to become a professor at a Top 3 grad school. The mastery of language and literature that English and French professors have astounds me on a daily basis. Example: a few months ago, I found out, in a period of 30 seconds, that one of my French profs knows ancient Greek, ancient Hebrew, and Latin fluently in addition to having incredible phenomenological insight. (As I later found out, she was a student at *</p>
<p>Wow... hey, I really appreciate your comment there! I learned something new regarding UCB from you... from what you have said, I would assume you are a current student in UCB, how are your classes and everything in UCB?</p>
<p>Besides, you mentioned about the second calculus... UCB students average with 50%, that is insane; I took that class last year but of course in a community college and I aced the class (I have A and B on all tests and final) it was tough but not too tough comparing to physics or my current differential equation class (tough like hell--we started out with 28 students but only 7 are still in the class because everyone else dropped). </p>
<p>By the way, do you have any tips for new transfers students who enter as a Junior level?</p>
<p>"At selective science schools, effort has very little to do with how one performs -- it's largely intelligence that counts."</p>
<p>No doubt. Thats why I made the distinction between comprehension and work commitment. I'm no psychology major, but intelligence (the ability to recall and store information) is a prerequisite to challenging academic study, it's the foundation on which we build further knowledge.</p>
<p>But even intelligent people can fail miserably if they're not familiar with the subject. Perhaps by work I don't mean the sheer time spent studying but rather the effort put in to get to know all parts of a subject, which depending on their comprehension skills (which in my mind are secondary to the learning process) defines how easily this info is acquired.</p>
<p>I have to say I agree with you on the point that the humanities and arts can be just as difficult/important as the sciences. But I don't think that the trend to make the social sciences easier to pass is limited to public schools. I read a few papers written by a few harvard students (one of them who happens to be a friend) who addressed this same topic. It seems as if our society can handle having a few mediocre arts & science graduates (politicians) rather than mediocre scientists and engineers (New Orleans levy designers).</p>