I think one of the drawbacks of using O-Chem as the weeder is that chemistry, in general, is better understood by highly visual thinkers. It unfairly punishes the linear thinkers. D, luckily, is highly visual and had no problems with O-Chem despite only having AP Chem and skipping Chem 2 and 3. She had to sign up for it against the wishes of the professor.
I have no suggestion for a course that might be better utilized as a weeder.
http://www.gradeinflation.com/Virginiatech.html says that the average GPA at VT was 3.150 in 2015. So it is likely that a significant number of general engineering students fail to meet the 3.0 GPA threshold and are at risk of being “weeded out” of their preferred engineering majors. (Frosh GPAs are usually the lowest, since some have adjustment-to-college issues, and upperclass student GPAs do not include those who previously flunked out.)
Due to the extremely high GPA requirements to get into medical school, isn’t pre-med inherently a “weed out” program, so any courses that pre-meds commonly take will have this kind of competitive / cutthroat environment? (Is this perhaps-unintended type of selection of future physicians what we really want?)
Not necessarily getting your first choice major is different than being at a school with a “weed out” culture. For the 2015 engineering cohort at Virginia Tech, the average freshman GPA was 3.19 (the average HS GPA was 4.13). In the engineering department, 1631 freshman were “retained.” Only 110 students were not retained and those students had an average 2.41 GPA . Who knows why they did not advance in engineering (could be lack of studying, partying, lack of interest, etc.) but that does not seem out of line to have only 110 students out of 1731 initial engineering freshman not advance. There is a good support system there if a student needs it and wants help. Not everyone that starts in engineering is going to finish in engineering That is nothing new.
I don’t think this is true in general, because a lot of other majors are also taking those same courses.
As to whether “intentional weed out” courses exist, I was a TA for a Calculus-based Physics course at research U. The fall sections totaled about 360 students, mostly Pharm D wanna-bees. Apparently they were oversubscribed and could not accept that many students into upper-levels program, so it was decided that all candidates had to take two semesters of calc-based physics (now they apparently don’t have to take ANY). The exams were so difficult that even the TA’s had difficulty getting them done correctly in the time allowed. Of course, the students pretty much hated all of us, TA’s and professors alike.
To the extent that some posters have students who have not encountered one of these situations, they may not have been in such an “oversubscribed” course, or they may have found the material tractable enough so as not to realize what was happening to others in the course.
“I don’t think this is true in general, because a lot of other majors are also taking those same courses”.
Premed is not a major
“isn’t pre-med inherently a “weed out” program”
yes, it has to be as there are only so many med school slots each year. There has to be a way to thin out the herd (eg in last cycle George Washington Med school had +15K applicants, 177 applicants started)…And the +15K is only the number that got to the point of actually applying. Can you imagine if all the eager young minds who were dreaming of their future as a MD on day 1 of freshman year applied, the blowback at the college when those med school rejections showed up in the mail after 4 years of college would be deafening. It’s better for student and college if kids find out early on where they stand.
“Is this perhaps-unintended type of selection of future physicians what we really want?”
Yes this is an unintended consequence as sadly kids who would be great doctors but just are not competitive GPA wise get left behind, or even worse, have the academics, but because med schools with only so many slots have to make hard decisions, it comes to more subjective aspects of an application.
Easy way to weed out somebody like me from engineering. I can’t do simple math. Thinking 1631 + 110 = 1731 is not going to cut it. 
Several older relatives who studied in accounting and worked as CPAs had a hard time fathoming how anyone in their accounting classes at their American Universities(i.e. Rutgers) were “weeded out” or failed the CPA exam multiple times after graduating. They regarded accounting courses at their U to be on the easy side…and most were humanities/social science oriented students in college-prep high schools/college back in their societies of origin.*
You would have hated some of the college orientation programs held at some universities which had relatively lax admissions, but compensated by weeding out most of those students.
Several older friends who attended NEU in the late '80s/early '90s recounted an orientation where they were told a variant of "look to your left, look to your right, at least one of you won’t make it to graduation. Except in one friend’s case, the university weedout rate turned out to be much higher when he looked up the stats for his incoming freshman class some years after his graduation. Incidentally, said friend was initially admitted under the “Alternative Freshman Year” program because despite having a decent HS GPA, his SATs and public HS rep was on the lower side in the estimation of the adcoms.
It’s not only lower-tiered universities which have intro STEM courses which serve as effective weedout courses. An older cousin’s intro to chem course in the '80s and a former older post-college roommate’s intro to bio course at Tufts in the early '90s, both recounted effective weedout rates of 50-60%(meaning those who received Ds/Fs at the end of the year-long course).
And in the account of the post-college roommate, the Prof and chair of the department made it a point to frankly tell the students weeded out that they seriously needed to reassess whether they could redouble their academic efforts or be better off switching to another major. Both the cousin and the post-college roommate were among the 40-50% of the “survivors” who ended up graduating as majors in those respective fields.
I don’t think this is true in general, because a lot of other students who are not hoping to get into med school are also taking those same courses.
I’m at UCLA studying nursing so I take a lot of the weeder pre-med classes, and I honestly don’t think they’re too horrible. I was SO worried about them coming in, but now I think it’s good because it helps all the kids who watched Grey’s Anatomy and deluded themselves into thinking that they wanted to be a doctor when really that was not the profession for them. At the same time, it can be frustrating to work that hard for something that doesn’t seem to relate to your field almost at all (ie general chemistry). Overall, I think that it builds the kind of work ethic we will need for upper division classes and helps develop study habits for the classes that matter later. Also, there is an added benefit, at least at UCLA, of banding students together - we all work really hard and support each other and collaborate to raise above the curve which I think is really special in your freshman year.
Being a doctor is not like being on Grey’s Anatomy?
Who knew?
Just using the grade distribution as criteria for determining whether a class is a “weeder” is too narrow in definition. A lot of kids change majors with B’s and C’s in these classes - thinking that if it was that difficult for them to get a C, there’s no way they will be able to - or want to - struggle through upper level courses. In other cases, some high achievers who breezed through HS without ever getting a B freak out when they get anything less than that, and consider themselves failures (or their parents hold that view).
I think the concept of weed out courses is as much emotional as anything else…
JustGraduate–again, obviously you’ve never been in a weeder class. The object is to fail students out by making a subject MUCH more difficult than it need be. Post 44 about the physics course sums it up.
It seems unfortunate that one wrong turn into a weed-out course (and a potential failing grade) could jeopardize honors, scholarships, major, grad school, etc.
Wouldn’t it be nice if communication were more open among students, faculty, and administration? (referring to post #44)
Looks like #44 describes a case where a specific program added a required course that was more difficult than ordinarily required for that kind of program:
I.e. the program had a “weed out” policy to reduce enrollment to stay within its capacity, so it added the requirement of that course, even though the course may just be a routine course for physics or engineering majors (but considered difficult for those more into biological sciences and derived fields).
That the exams had very difficult problems does not inherently make the course a “weeder”, since they are often grade-curved to produce the expected grade distribution similar to sections with less difficult exams.
General Chemistry is not related to nursing???
The more this gets repeated, the more I’m convinced that they’re very, very rare, if they exist at all. Look at all the people who have “obviously” never experienced one! And I’m in a prime position to have taken multiple, if they were as common as everyone says.
@gouf78 son is in a top 10 engineering program and has had many courses that are generally considered weeders. But the grade distributions (which are published by the school) don’t show a tremendous number of D’s and F’s for those classes. Many kids close to that line drop before the final and try it again next semester (yes my son did that once). I do hear antidotally that a good number of students are discouraged by C’s in these weeders and thus voluntarily transfer rather than take the risk that the major is more difficult than they want or can handle.
Weed out classes for engineers and premeds are often the same classes.
I think schools are actually doing many a favor by early weeding…and getting the weaker students to move onto other career paths better suited to their strengths.
Engineering is tough, and med school is tough…it makes sense that there’s an agenda to weed.
Also, there are only about 21k first year med school seats, and recently there were 60k of applicants…after heavy weeding. Without heavy weeding, who knows how many applicants there would be…$100k? More? Yikes!
Thank you Grey’s Anatomy!