Math: engineering students took a harder calculus sequence and had to take more math beyond that.
Physics: calculus and multivariable calculus based for engineering. Premeds could take a light calculus sequence for biology majors.
Chemistry: same general chemistry, engineering does not take organic chemistry other than chemical or biomedical. Chemical engineering takes harder versions of general and organic chemistry.
Biology: not taken by engineering except biomedical.
However, engineering then and now was not intentionally a “weed out” program, since it admitted directly to the major, rather than admitting more frosh than it had capacity for and making them compete by GPA to get into majors.
Stem–when I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy (not often) all I saw was a bunch of stressed-out. over-worked interns. So I turned it off–already seen that.
The fiction part seemed to be they had time for any socializing at all.
When I was a pharmacy intern on rounds all I saw was a bunch of stressed-out, over-worked medical interns who needed sleep to make coherent decisions. Most had big egos to match their stress level.
Some cared about people, some cared about the money they thought they’d be making, some did both.
I wondered why anybody would want to sign up for the abuse.
@blossom RNs without a BSN (ADN, ASN, and hospital-based diplomas) often do not take any chemistry. They take the same NCLEX as the BSN, so I think the poster who said that gen chem has little to do with nursing may not have been too far off!
Nursing has become significantly more complex over the last 20 years. The idea that any sort of science or quant clas is not relevant to nursing strikes me as a weird observation about the profession. You don’t need to be a statistician to be an oncologist- but I sure don’t want to be treated by one who reads a clinical trial and cannot suss out what has happened from a complex table of outcomes and protocols.
You don’t need to be a chemist to become a nurse- but having a general understanding of chemical properties and how they are measured is SURELY going to make a better nurse-- at least in an environment like a hospital or working with complex medications and compounds. I’d think a nurse getting a BSN would relish a better understanding, not resist it.
While I can’t say for sure how prevalent are weeder classes in pre-med and engineering, I am irritated at the dismissive disdain some adults have for the kids who claim there are. Sure, there are teenagers who are lazy and never took challenging classes in high school. Perhaps they breezed right through with minimal work. No doubt these same students would theoretically find some college STEM courses very, very difficult and might in self-justification label them weeders when their failure to adjust and apply themselves means they perform poorly. But with engineering, CS and sometimes biology admissions rates so competitive at the better schools, I simply don’t believe too many slacker kids like that could have been admitted to begin with. How many slackers do you know who get accepted to MIT, or Carnegie Mellon, or Harvey Mudd or even the state flagship engineering department? Only the top kids at our rigorous high school can get in the state flagship for engineering, and the other top state school requires a 4.2 GPA and very high SAT’s to even be allowed to major in biology (otherwise too many pre-meds). So these students may not all be geniuses, but they sure as heck aren’t lazy or stupid.
Secondly, I’ve seen how our high school has responded to the increased demand for AP classes, especially in STEM. The added requirements to just register, the increasingly burdensome summer homework, and the augmented difficulty of the work for the first few weeks were all designed to weed some of 'em out because there are only so many teachers in those fields, and fewer still who can handle teaching the upper level courses. They make it super tough because that’s much easier on them than having to break it to Mr. Patel his daughter got shut out of AP Bio by the scheduling computer, or Mrs. Matthews her daughter isn’t good enough at math to take AP Calc even though she aced honors pre-calc. Similarly, in the college environment, you have the consideration that there are tenured faculty in a whole range of disciplines, because here in the US we believe in a well-rounded education. Consequently, the school needs to provide those professors with students who will major in the less popular fields. If a college allowed the 1/3 of the incoming class who enter thinking they’re pre-med to actually stay pre-med, it would be a problem. Furthermore, countless kids try to take certain tough classes like Organic Chem back home at the regional state or community college because they allegedly want to avoid the weed-out situation at their own university. So I have no problem believing there are weed-out classes. No problem at all.
" I’d think a nurse getting a BSN would relish a better understanding, not resist it." (post 64)
I’ve never met anyone in the medical field who doesn’t want to understand something better. That is welcome. But as an individual you hate to get cut out of your chosen field because of something that doesn’t affect you on a daily basis in the actual job world.
As to the number of med students between applications and non-acceptances…open up more spots.
Don’t we need more doctors?
Our answer seems to be Physician’s Assistants, nurse practioneers, pharmacists who prescribe, etc.
There are all sorts of professionals- airline pilots, civil engineers, firefighters- who have to “know stuff” which doesn’t impact your daily life or ability to do your job but is part of what being in that job entails.
I get the nurses who object to the mandatory Humanities/examine Tolstoy type classes (although I think Russian Lit is a tremendous way for someone in the helping professions to develop their sense of humanity). But chemistry for someone going into a healthcare field?
How interesting that students have a better chance of earning the GPA needed for med school admission at an easier (likely lower-ranked but not always) school. So apparently the med schools aren’t all that concerned about the possibility of their students having received a watered-down curriculum compared to a student from say, Princeton, with a lower GPA who gets rejected. I’m simply not buying that med school pre-requisite classes at a school like Muhlenberg are as hard as at Princeton, which is why in our region it’s whispered that Muhlenburg is a good place to go for pre-med because it’s not killer hard and therefore a good student is less likely to be weeded out. Maybe that’s partly because the competition is weaker, since on the new SAT the average score is 1310 at Muhlenburg, versus 1540 at Princeton. Last year my friend’s son was considering Tulane and Vanderbilt, and the family physician told him if he wants to go pre-med, it would be safer for him to go to Muhlenburg. That’s also the common wisdom I’ve heard on CC: go easier and cheaper.
No one is advocating that schools pass through students who aren’t capable. The problem with weeder classes is that some very capable and hard-working students who could handle the work are getting weeded out early mostly because of over-enrollment.
Lower ranked (easier) colleges have been recommended forever for pre med students to get a high GPA. Our family didn’t take that route for several reasons, one being if you can’t handle the rigor of a top school, med school may not be for you.
3.65 Harvard
3.63 Brown
3.27 UCLA
3.25 North Carolina - Chapel Hill
3.25 Wisconsin - Madison
3.01 CSULA
2.95 North Carolina - Greensboro
2.92 Wisconsin - Milwaukee
However, a pre-med may want to be careful with schools with less grade inflation than others of similar selectivity (e.g. Princeton, MIT). But some other schools may have more grade inflation than others of similar selectivity.
Comparing schools is very hard to do, but I wonder if anyone else has seen this scenario: Student A, a very strong student, is accepted into the flagship’s engineering school. Student B is from the same high school as A and has been in some of the same classes. While B is also a good student, he is not as strong as A, so he does not get accepted to the flagship for engineering. However, B does get admitted to a directional university’s engineering school. The program at the flagship is very rigorous, and not only are the domestic students strong, but there are a lot of very smart foreign students as well. Regrettably, despite being responsible, A gets weeded out in the second semester of freshman year. Student B also works hard, and he succeeds in becoming an engineer.
@thegfg I saw this exact result first hand. My roommate was HS valedictorian and got into public ivy engineering program. Two semesters of weed out classes and he was out of college totally. 20+ years later he’s still a bartender. Our HS friends who didn’t have the grades for the flagship went directional, did fine, and are enjoying nice engineering (and medical) careers.
He wasn’t stupid or lazy. He was just blown away by too many weed out classes at once. A decent adviser probably could have saved him by suggesting he lighten his load a little freshman year.
This may be more of an issue with how some flagships (Purdue, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, etc.) handle oversubscribed majors. Instead of admitting to the major and assuring students that they can continue if they maintain good academic standing (pass courses, 2.0 GPA minimum), they admit more than they have capacity for and weed them out by setting high GPA thresholds (could be as high as 3.5) or competitive admission to enter or stay in the major.
In other words, it is not necessarily the courses, but how the program (or specifically admission to or progression in the program) is structured.
However, student B at the less selective school’s engineering program still needs to put in the work to successfully complete an ABET accredited engineering degree. ABET accredited engineering sets a relatively high floor on the rigor, so, even in the absence of active weeding as practiced by some flagships described above, less selective schools may have a fairly high attrition rate out of engineering.
@ucbalumnus You continue to use the term “weed out” and " oversubscribed" and lumping in all the engineering programs together-Purdue, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, Texas A & M, Virginia Tech . They are all different and have their own ways of doing things. Unless you have first hand knowledge of how all these programs work (guessing you know about the California schools?) not sure how you really can know how they all work. General Engineering , first year programs are not all that strange these days. Being admitted to the particular engineering major right off the bat is not routine in many programs. How many 17 or 18 year olds really want to or should commit to a particular type of engineering? The rare high school kid that absolutely knows they are CS or bust , aerospace or bust, etc. probably needs to be more careful. But, lots of kids are okay and well served by starting in general engineering and exploring their options.
The need for high GPA or competitive admission to get into the desired major is right on the web sites of those schools. It is not like it is a secret that frosh pre-engineering students are not assured of any particular major and may need to earn GPAs substantially higher than needed to stay in good academic standing (2.0) to get into whatever engineering major they desire. If the majors were not oversubscribed, then passing all of the prerequisites with C grades and 2.0 GPA would be sufficient to get into the majors.
Again, you use terms like “frosh pre-engineering students”. That is school specific. At many schools, you are admitted to engineering first and then move into a major.
However, if you do not meet the GPA or competitive admission requirements for your desired major, you may be stuck in a major you do not really desire, or have to transfer to another school for your desired major. While some state flagships have enough capacity in every major to allow all students in the engineering division in good academic standing free choice of engineering major (e.g. Michigan), that is not true of all of them.
@notveryzen , HS valedictorian to ivy pubic engineering to bartender. Probably lots more going on there than you may ever know. Maybe he just decided at the end of the day that he preferred to be a bartender.