<p>Good luck to you and D rayrick. When do you expect to hear if she’ll be picked for the on-campus review? I see that you and D must have a lot of self-mastery to defer the temptation of an early decision app and hope of side stepping the whole ‘admissions’ experience. I also wonder about my son - 88 slots just seems such a small number. Go Bravery! </p>
<p>smiles,
PS</p>
<p>Well, she actually did apply someplace early action, and thankfully got in. So that takes a lot of the pressure off (but, unfortunately, didn’t decrease the work much, because she still applied a number of other places). If she’s fortunate enough to get into Olin, she’s going to have a tough decision to make.</p>
<p>I was reading another thread about doing Engineering on a University that offers multiple degrees and majors - someone said that Engineering students work superhard and it’s harder to work that hard when friends in other majors are much less engaged in their studies.</p>
<p>What sounds so appealing about Olin is that it’s a diversely-interested group of students all working hard together.</p>
<p>I’ve heard it’s especially bad on campuses where the majority of humanities classes are on Tue-Thurs and the majority of STEM classes are on MWF. Half (or more) of the campus thinks the weekend begins Thursday night, while the rest are still grinding away for their Friday classes.</p>
<p>I do think the esprit de corps that one would find at Olin, where everyone is grappling with similar challenges and teamwork is woven into the fabric of everything they do, would help one stay motivated in the face of a very demanding workload.</p>
<p>This is all very true… and certainly helps students push through the difficult times. I was speaking recently to a friend whose daughter is in her sophomore year at Duke–she is seriously reconsidering an engineering major for (partially) this exact reason. She is frustrated having to work so hard when friends are able to have more free time, and also because she’s worried about her GPA–compared to how she did in HS. At Olin, according to my son, there’s no discussion of grades/scores and students are very supportive of one another.</p>
<p>I actually have NO IDEA what GPA my Olin friends have save for a very few whose resumes I proofread. I doubt there are very few 4.0s and there were LOTS of students with 3.0-3.5 range based on some comments I heard at the time. Grades just are not talked about in general. People with bad grades complain. People with good grades generally kept their mouth shut. Our grades were never curved in such a way that could hurt you (for example if they highest grade was a B, they might all be curved up…). It was such a relief from high school were you are always comparing and competing. When I heard about friends at other schools where the students would sabotage each other (giving wrong answers to homework, etc) so that they could be higher on the curve it made me sad. That’s one thing I LOVED about Olin. Teachers and students really tried to emphasize the learning over the grade. And NO classes were weeder classes designed to try and get you to fail.</p>