<p>I am a mom and my son is awaiting his decision at GTech. We have read so much on CC on how tough GTech really is etc etc that I am actually scared. But my son is not.</p>
<p>OP, reading your posts - I feel for you as a parent. i would want my child to be happy overall no matter where he ends up (at least not be miserable!). If engineering is not your thing then it is better that you change tracks now and go into something else that you will enjoy. </p>
<p>Going to another school that would provide more of a Campus feel like U of Arizona, Alabama…will make your college life more rewarding. Your 2.7 at Gtech is pretty good to get a transfer out. You are not quitting, you are just changing your environment which is in your own hands. Your dad might understand your plight and be willing to help you out. You can work-study to offset some expenses. </p>
<p>sounds like you have decided that Gtech is not the place for you.</p>
<p>And I admit I’m most definitely in that bottom 50%. But academics is kind of a subset of my generally negative opinion of the entire school.</p>
<p>Saying, “People who don’t do well academically at Tech don’t have a good time at Tech” is wrong, because there are certainly people who don’t do well academically, because they aren’t having a good time. Overall I’d say the amount of work contributes to the problem of not being happy at tech.</p>
<p>But the amount of work isn’t really that much more than at other engineering schools, especially in the first two years when most schools have nearly identical course requirements for engineering.</p>
<p>In general, you see students that aren’t happy at college. For the vast majority of freshman, it’s the first time living on their own, many students leave their friends, it’s a new city that they don’t know, etc. This unhappiness impacts performance.</p>
<p>But when psychologists studied the college students as a whole, they’ve found that it’s more often the other way around: students that self-identified as being “smart” and “the top of the class” compared to the general population were suddenly average at a top school leading to an identity crisis. Some students respond by working harder, and some give up. </p>
<p>I know it’s been tossed around, but I think Tech would be better off adopting the MIT model for grades: the first year (or at least first semester) is entire pass/fail. It would increase GPAs, transition students into college life, and at least delay the personality crisis until the person is older (there’s a big difference in the maturity of a 19 year old over an 18 year old). The only negative I could see is that it would hurt internship chances between freshman and sophomore year - companies would bias towards rising juniors and seniors where there is less uncertainty.</p>
<p>That’s certainly an interesting proposal, which I don’t know would be better or worse. One good thing I think they’re doing is creating that student learning center, so people might have a better idea of what they want to do.</p>
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<p>I think what you just said explained the academic mindset of the university, if not carrying onto people’s mindsets out of the classroom as well. I know what you’re referring to - 75% or so of students believed they were ahead of the pack in terms of academics, then a year later the percent was closer to 30%. It’s why there is so much competition and a cut-throat approach to learning. Georgia Tech creates almost an artificial natural selection process for academics- you either adapt to an increased workload or you fail out. Am I to say this is a bad thing? Of course not, because Georgia Tech has consistently proven to pump out self-driven, motivated, smart engineers and is most likely why the co-op program employers keep coming back. But like all things in life it’s really a matter of what you want and I don’t see anything I want here besides being able to say “I survived this place”.</p>
<p>I was an MIT undergrad. IMO, pass/fail should be abolished. It is the stigma of poor grades that should be removed. The university culture should promote thorough learning over academic credentialism. If you didn’t do well in a class, it means you need more work, not that you are stupid or don’t belong there.</p>
<p>There was an entirely different attitude at a ballroom dance studio I took lessons at some time ago. The teachers encouraged the students to retake dance classes, even if they had scored high on tests. Not only did repeating classes allow for more focus on different parts of the stages of learning dance, learning from different teachers exposed them to different but useful approaches. Interestingly enough, the students who retook classes often tended to have the highest test scores.</p>
<p>I’ve never been a found of the grading system. I think that every professor should be able to use whatever system they want to determine whether a student passes or fails the course - including assigning grades the traditional way if they so choose - but that this must be translated into a simple pass/fail score by the end.</p>
<p>It’s not because I feel like the system is flawed because it isn’t a useful indicator of ability… I disagree with it because it is fundamentally at odds with the goal of education, which is to learn something. You’d be surprised how well some people can do on tests and then not remember anything a week later… and why not? Once you have the grade, you have it, and it’s time to rest on your laurels. That’s really what assigning grades does… it cheapens the college experience.</p>
<p>Oh well. You’d think there are better ways of judging performance than a GPA, and that college life would be better for everybody if grades weren’t really involved. Naturally, I don’t feel like the transcript should show you fail a course that you eventually pass, because that’s just a change to the grading system. I think there are a lot of ways the educational system could be improved…</p>