“I can’t speak for other schools but at Purdue they have specific “weed out” classes for certain programs. For example, the pre-pharmacy program starts with about 300 students in freshman year. By the beginning of Sophomore year they need to “weed out” aprox. 100 kids, eventually leading to a Pharmacy class of 150 students (the rest eliminated by interview, etc) by end of sophmore year.
To do this the intentionally have pre-pharm students take a “weed out” version of organic chemistry freshman year. Organic chem is difficult enough on it’s own and they have one version for other majors and a different more difficult “weed out” version for pre-pharm students.
Purdue also has a strict no grade inflation policy.”
I have a D who is a ChE at Purdue. I sometimes wonder if the courses are indeed weed out classes or are they merely courses that are fundamental to the path chosen and thus the student needs to be proficient in those courses. Does Purdue accept 300 students into their Pre-Pharmacy program with the idea that they have to get rid of half of them regardless of their competency or has experience shown them that about half the students they accept will not meet the required competency in Organic Chemistry? I would expect that Organic Chemistry would be a fundamental course for future Pharmacy students and that competency in that course would be more important than in other majors. My D had 2 semesters of Organic Chemistry for her engineering major. She most likely would be more apt to use this in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals than the understanding of their uses and affects on humans and of course interactions. I would definitely want pharmacy students to be very competent in that subject.
For most engineering students a course that is considered a “weed out” course is Engineering Physics. My D used to joke that it was where GPAs went to die. The thing is Physics is fundamental to many future engineering courses and being proficient is important to being a successful engineering student.
@lvvcsf Purdue indeed accepts 300 students knowing they will have to get rid of them regardless of their competency. They tell you in orientation that they intentionally have weed out classes (organic chem being 1) I agree that Pharmacy students need to be extremely proficient in Organic Chemistry. Like @lookingforward forward said in the pre-pharmacy version of the class they intentionally test on material never taught and not in the text. There are tutors for the other version of organic chemistry on campus who looked at my D’s organic chem for pharmacy homework and had no idea what it was. These are kids who scored all A’s in their version.
Back to the part about them accepting the 300 knowing they will cut some regardless of competency, this is evident when they applied to the PharmD program middle of their sophmore year there were still 200 kids who survived Organic chem and Anatomy/Phys(the other weed out). They were told point blank only about 150 of you will get interview spots and of that 150 only about 100 to 120 of you will get into the program. (the rest of the class comes from other school applicants).
@mom2collegekids I’m not sure if you picked IU/Purdue (they are not same school) examples randomly or you underestimate the level of students at Purdue. I believe they are definetly competitive with University of Michigan. The average GPA at U Mich is 3.83 and at Purdue is 3.72. Not a huge difference and when you are talking pre-med, engineering or pharmacy students you are still talking about very competitive candidates.
@mom2collegekids Yes, GPA is the primary consideration for med school so I would definitely pick a college where I thought I would be able to get a 3.8 or better. For other careers it matters a little bit more where you graduate from. Personally, picking a top public would be the worst idea for maximizing GPA.
I don’t believe schools intentionally structure classes to try to weed students out of programs.Their job is to teach. It’s just that certain subjects, such as organic chemistry, are very difficult. Lots of students naturally can’t get past them.
Simba,: Maybe some schools are like that but I hear plenty of stories to the contrary. Sometimes it is because they probably don’t want to de-value their pre-meds (or whatever the major) by having too many of them. The elites probably do this. What a waste it is that thousands of really bright students, who were smart enough to get in top30 or so colleges , have dropped their medical aspirations due to the brutal competition at their college.
At less-competitive schools it seems they weed out due to a kind of “tough love” motive. They don’t want to see a student get through the undergrad years only to be simply not sharp enough to get into or thrive in med school or beyond.
The field of accounting seems to have a similar pattern. From what I’ve seen, most Intro Accounting classes are tough but manageable. Which makes sense, as they are taken not only by accounting majors but all other business majors as well (and these non-accounting business majors don’t really need weeding). But then comes usually Intermediate Accounting I & Il…which are taken primarily by accounting majors, and this is where the weeding out seems to take place…it’s not too late for the ones who don’t make it to switch to marketing or management, and those that get through are usually smart & tough enough to finish the program & have a decent career.
@Boilermom Because I’m curious. Can those who complete the two year pre-Pharm program at Purdue apply to other Doctor of Pharmacy programs or are they limited to Purdue? Unlike pre-med tracks which require an undergraduate degree it looks like many pre-pharm programs don’t give you a degree. The material only prepares you for a Pharmacy program. Am I correct? If this is correct then I can see where these courses are specifically designed to cull the classes.
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I’m not sure if you picked IU/Purdue (they are not same school) examples randomly or you underestimate the level of students at Purdue. I believe they are definetly competitive with University of Michigan. The average GPA at U Mich is 3.83 and at Purdue is 3.72. Not a huge difference and when you are talking pre-med, engineering or pharmacy students you are still talking about very competitive candidates.
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Yes, I did pick IU/Purdue kind of randomly…those are the two top schools in the OP’s home state. I could have chosen Mizzou or Iowa. I wasn’t really thinking of UMich…more thinking of UChi and NU.
That said, when you give the avg GPA at UMich and Purdue, are you talking overall schools’ GPAs? If so, that’s not really relevant. Many of the non-STEM majors at colleges today hand out A’s like candy because their coursework and exams are subjective…
Another issue at UMich is the sheer number of premeds there. It’s like a UC in that regard. UMich has about 800 students applying to US MD med schools each year. Purdue only has about 180, so i would think the chances are still better.
Some schools have more interested applicants than they have space for in popular majors.
Some of them admit to major, where the popular majors are more selective. One can say that the “weeding” occurs in the admission process, but most people have the expectation that not everyone will be admitted to the school in the first place.
Some of them admit to undeclared, and then have students compete by college grades and perhaps other criteria to get into the popular majors. In this case, those who fail to gain admission to the popular majors are “weeded out” of the popular majors, even though they have enrolled at the school and taken a few semesters’ worth of courses.
In the latter case, the courses may not necessarily be any different, but the atmosphere may be more competitive, cutthroat, or stressful than it would be at a school where students are initially admitted to the major, or where the major has enough capacity to accept all interested students.
@lvvcsf at Purdue it is tough to apply to other Doctor of Pharmacy programs because their pre-pharm program doesn’t require gen ed classes. Most other pre-pharm programs require your basic gen eds like english, etc. although they don’t all require the same gen eds.
It is very common that pre-pharmacy students apply to other programs for the Doctor of pharmacy from all schools because they are cut/ weed out programs. That is why Purdue takes 20 to 50 students a year from other schools in their program
A weedout class can be a class that’s curved to a B- or C+, meaning half the students will get a B- or higher, and the others less. It doesn’t matter what your percentage is - there will not be more than 50% with a grade if B- or higher, with the typical distribution being about 30% at B- to B+ and 20% @ A/A-. And of course in order to remain in contention for med school you need to get a B+ or higher, so basically you need to enter the final in the top 20% of the class no matter what.
In other schools there’s no fixed grade distribution.
I totally forgot about intermediate accounting - a brutal course for sure, at business schools it’s a pre-req for financial statement analysis, which everyone wants to take. There’s no weeding out at b-schools but for sure the class was kept to capacity by having intermediate accounting as the pre-req.
@simba9 - they definitely structure programs to weed out, it doesn’t show up in the glossy brochure of course, but it’s there. Typically in engineering schools, 20% or so will have been weeded out after soph year, maybe freshman as well. At rigorous schools, there will be a curve in intro classes, where 20% will get Ds or Fs, and they’ll figure out they’re in the wrong major.
I think my top school right now is Northwestern, but I plan on only going if I’m accepted into HPME. If I was accepted, would it be better than going to IU/Purdue? With the program you automatically matriculate into NW’s med school.
Like other BA/MD programs, Northwestern HPME has college GPA requirements, currently 3.4 science and 3.6 overall. So you still have to compete for grades in your courses, although you would not have to take the MCAT or do much of the other medical school application activities like travel to interviews all over the place if you retain your admission to Northwestern medical school.
One of my roommates in undergrad graduated in engineering. He said at graduation the engineers booed the business college because that is where all of their flunkies ended up.
My son, who is 1/2 way through engineering says that biomedical engineering (BME) stands for business major eventually.
I don’t recall me asking where I could get into med school or if I would be admitted to undergrad. I just asked what “weeding out” meant and how it works at different schools. I then asked if I got into HPME, which I believe is a good program for ME, if it was a better option that IU or Purdue. I considered those schools because they’re in state for me.
There’s no need or incentive to structure classes so that people fail. Engineering is hard so people drop out naturally,
It’s actually the opposite. At places like Stanford and Harvard, almost nobody gets an F.
Does anyone have a quote from a school administrator or college professor saying they structure their classes with the intention of forcing students out of programs? Because I’ve noticed that it’s usually just students and parents that say that.
For engineering, the curriculum is rigorous enough that many change out of the major. In cases where the major is not capacity-limited (see below), the change-out rate tends to be inversely correlated to the admission selectivity of the school or engineering division.
Where the major is capacity-limited to the point where a GPA higher than 2.0 is needed to enter or stay in the major, the change-out rate may be higher than it would otherwise be for a school or engineering division of the same admission selectivity.
Seems doubtful that a 20% D/F percentage is intended, but less selective schools could have that high a D/F rate because more of their students have trouble handling the work. The stronger students at more selective schools are less likely to earn D/F grades, though the shock of earning a C grade (when they were previously A students in high school) may induce some to change out.