<p>Understood.<br>
But please, I’m not talking about putting good students in a holding pattern and filling their hours with busy work. I’m talking about the student genuinely more interested in breadth than depth at the undergraduate level. Such people still exist. Some fields (environmental science for example) naturally lend themselves to this treatment. </p>
<p>LACs, by the way, have an excellent record for on-time graduation. And again, they have an excellent record in preparing students for professional and doctoral degrees.</p>
<p>My apologies. My sarcasm comment was directed to a portion of my previous comment regarding the parents and students who equate well-off suburban public and private/boarding schools as “superior” than urban/“inner-city” public schools. </p>
<p>Not to yours. Didn’t see your posting right after that one until it was too late. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This problem is not exclusive to LACs. Plenty of high school classmates and colleagues who attended large state flagship university honors programs and Ivy universities/peers have encountered similar issues. </p>
<p>Sometimes, it may also be a Prof’s “polite” way of saying he/she’s not interested or that he/she doesn’t feel you’re serious…whether that is actually true or a figment of the Prof’s own imaginations from a crumb of rotting cheese. :(</p>
<p>The friends and colleagues who encountered this just kept seeking opportunities with other Profs or even went outside their institutions for them. </p>
<p>Out of curiosity, what are her academic interests?</p>
<p>First of all, it’s not even a problem, so it’s definitely the “biggest problem.” Top LACs already ARE flooded with AP scholars.</p>
<p>Cobrat is right. I don’t know of any top LAC that allows you to skip Intro to Gov, for example, with an AP Gov exam score. At Carnegie-Mellon, they cover the entire AP Bio course in 7 weeks- less than half the semester of their “Intro to Bio” course. And the way they cover it is far more in depth and difficult than what happens in high school. A relative got a 5 on AP Bio and then got a B- in the CMU Bio class, and she worked a lot harder. But yes, she learned a good 5 times the material covered in an AP class. In fact, she was doing an assignment in that class and asked a friend from a Cal state school to help her. The students from the state school was a bio major in her senior year, and she couldn’t help her. If someone wants to cut corners and graduate earlier, they do NOT go to a top university or LAC. Cobrat isn’t inventing stories about top students. Top schools are harder and teach you more. You probably never went to one. In many cases, they allow you to place into a more advanced course through a placement test. Sometimes, AP courses are accepted as prerequisites. The anti-intellectual comment makes NO sense. Anti pre-professional, perhaps. </p>
<p>I also don’t know of any top American university that does the “traditional fourth year of college” as a pre-professional year (I may be wrong here- but certainly LACs never do that). You do your research and thesis. At some LACs, such as Bard or Hampshire, you do a very specialized research project with several faculty. American education does not and will not convert to the European method. Its purpose is to educate. And American universities/degrees are clearly more respected than European degrees for that reason. </p>
<p>As for parents paying, LACs attract a different set of people and parents than do universities. Students go to get a very good education, and not necessarily a high paying job right out of college. And any good LAC will provide that- and you will not “run out” of things to do, particularly in the fourth year. The senior year at an LAC is when you do research of your own. Students at LACs go on to grad school or to get phd’s. If you want a job 2 years after high school, you might as well go to a state school. You won’t be as educated or successful in the long run, though. </p>
<p>And the “guaranteed law/medical school admissions the big universities are equipped to offer”? What does that even mean? Universities don’t guarantee anything, but the amount they help with is certainly not any different from LACs. Getting into grad school depends on what you have done, and grad schools respect universities as much as LACs, and perhaps more so.</p>
<p>Most LACs don’t even have engineering (or architecture?). And most don’t offer 5 year programs because there are no grad departments. There are exceptions, of course. Claremont McKenna offers a 5 year masters program in economics. I know another CMC student who is going to the Claremont Grad School for a 5th year masters in public policy. If you’re very interested in a 5-year program, though, an LAC is usually not an option.</p>
<p>3-2 programs are offered by many LACs in partnership with universities.
They entail 3 years at the LAC, then 2 at the university for engineering/other, with two degrees at the end. WUSTL and Columbia seem to have engineering partnerships with many LACs.</p>
<p>Oberlin has 3-2 engineering agreements with CWRU, Caltech, WUSTL, and Columbia SEAS. Knew a few classmates who took advantage and got engineering degrees alongside their BA/BS degrees. </p>
<p>Also, have an uncle who did his BA in physics at Beloit and his Civil engineering bachelors from Columbia U in the late '50s. He ended up working as a professional engineer for several decades until retiring a few years ago.</p>
<p>Also know several classmate who ended up at top schools for science Phds, law, MBAs, etc. Supposed LAC limitations weren’t an issue.</p>
<p>monydad, I can assure you that any good LAC will offer more than enough of a challenge in their intro courses. My friend received 5s on both AP Calculus and AP Physics and has been quite challenged in both Mathematics 111 and Physics 100. In addition, Spanish 110 has already covered more than Spanish 1-3 in high school, and will surpass the curriculum of AP Spanish by the end of the second semester. My fourth year will also not be wasted, as I will be writing my senior thesis over that time. LACs also strongly support taking courses in a wide variety of disciplines, so there is yet another aspect to occupy one’s time.</p>
<p>3-2 programs arent that good. You end up with an extra BA or BS that you dont need, and an engineering degree. So it takes 1extra year for really no reason.</p>
<p>"I don’t know of any top LAC that allows you to skip Intro to Gov, for example, with an AP Gov exam score. "</p>
<p>I recall D2 got credit for it at Barnard with a 5 on the AP, FWIW.</p>
<p>“monydad, I can assure you that any good LAC will offer more than enough of a challenge in their intro courses.”</p>
<p>Why are you assuring me? I couldn’t care less. It was D1 who didn’t want to repeat, and she didn’t. That was a choice she made. I didn’t make it for her. </p>
<p>“Out of curiosity, what are her academic interests?”
it doesn’t matter, she’s been graduated a few years already.</p>
<p>“I’m talking about the student genuinely more interested in breadth than depth at the undergraduate level.”</p>
<p>Then such student is free to explore such depth, but more fully, at a university which offers several times the course selection in terms of breadth as well as depth. And multiple sections of many courses to help minimize scheduling conflicts. But at the outset many people cannot predict what they will wind up being intersted in, whether something may leave them wanting to go further may be something that happens along the way. And if that should happen,then it’s nice to be able to pursue it, whatever it is, if you want to. Though it was not predicted prior to matriculation that such interest would develop.</p>
<p>“Then such student is free to explore such depth, but more fully, at a university which offers several times the course selection in terms of breadth as well as depth.”</p>
<p>LACs are meant for undergraduate education while most universities offer professional degrees, so of course they would have a higher overall course selection. It would be absurd for a university offering many, many, many more years worth of degrees to have a smaller course selection than an undergraduate facility. As far as those courses that are generally available to undergraduates, I highly doubt that many universities offers the same depth as the curriculum for the same course at a top LACs.</p>
<p>I’m male so I never looked at Barnard in my college search. The schools I did look up- Pomona, Amherst, Claremont McKenna, Swat, etc- seemed to not accept it, or they did it tentatively. CMC (which probably has the top LAC government program) specifically states that they will not accept an AP gov credit because they do not think that it is a college level course. And they’re right. You don’t read any books in AP Gov. At CMC, you have to read 4 or 5, I believe. These schools aren’t “anti-intellectual.” Their courses are simply much better than any AP course.</p>
<p>And yes, universities offer more courses- there are more people. But the classes are bigger, the professor doesn’t know your name, and no one cares about your progress. You most likely won’t learn the material as well as you could have. But at Barnard, you can take classes at Columbia, so that’s not even an issue. At Pomona/CMC/Mudd/etc, you can take classes at the other four colleges. At Swat/Amherst/etc, you can take classes at other schools or universities. Partly the reason I consider the Claremont Colleges (with the Amherst consortium behind it) as the best schools to go to in the country for an education.</p>
<p>The Amherst consortium was what convinced me to apply to Hampshire (I didn’t have the GPA to get into Amherst because I slacked off my first two years of high school).</p>
<p>The intro bio, chem, and physics courses at Reed covered the AP bio, chem, and physics material and more the first 6-8 weeks of school. My first year spanish course has covered more than the curriculum of a Spanish III high school course and will be at the same level as that of an AP Spanish course by the end of the second semester. AP Economics and Government? As santeria said, you don’t even read any texts besides the appropriate AP textbook throughout the course. My Humanities, which is required for all freshmen, course has already gone through 16 or 17 primary sources of classics, as well as countless secondary sources. You simply can not equate a high school course, AP or not, to what a college level course should be.</p>
<p>bzva74, as a high school junior, you just have a different perspective than the top schools on each side of the 3/2 programs, and the students utilizing them who see the value.</p>
<p>I actually love Hampshire’s academic system (no grades, divisions, no preset majors, senior project). If the student body had fit my interests more, I would have seriously considered it. Definitely a great school for those who would have trouble getting into top LACs.</p>
<p>I also applied to New College of Florida due to it having the same academic model, but with a $5,000 in-state tuition. It is a great system until you have to apply to graduate school and only have reviews and recommendations rather than a GPA. A good friend of mine was screwed out of financial aid due to this.</p>
<p>I actually don’t think it matters that much if you have something to talk about other than grades. Grad schools tend to not care about grades if you have a Hampshire research project that’s really good. I think if you take advantage of what Hampshire has to offer, the evaluations do fine. Hampshire has a released stat that says that >95% of their students got into their first, second, or third choice med school. And yeah, I liked New College too. It’s easily the best school in Florida. I could have gone there for free with Bright Futures, but was pretty desperate to get out of Fl. Bard also has an interesting curriculum.</p>
is the convention here for sarcasm. I sometimes take things the wrong way when it’s missing. :(</p>