Why can't engineering be more relaxed?

College Majors Engineering Majors
41

<p>
[quote]
The real issue is not that alternatives don't exist. The real issue is that the engineering schools DON'T WANT to pursue the alternatives. They WANT it to be hard. They WANT to tag students with bad grades. As for the reasoning, I think it's a matter of 'chronological justice' for the engineering profs. They had to go through hell when they were students in the past, soo now that they are the profs, they want to make sure that today's students go through the same hell. In other words, this is basically hazing. </p>

<p>But this is clearly inappropriate behavior. That's like saying that just because your father beat you when you were a kid, now that you are a father, you should now beat your kid. Instead of trying to obtain 'chronological justice', the engineering community should be trying to determine a way to increase the overall welfare of all parties involved.

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</p>

<p>Look at it from another viewpoint (the one I happen to agree with). Profs DO want it to be hard, but not because it was hell for them and they want some 'chronological justice', but because they think that this 'hell' was affective for helping them learn. I don't think your comparison with beating your kid is applicable. I think a more applicable situation would involve a parent who had to work as a teenager to help his/her family and who now has a fair amount of money. In a lot of cases, they would think that their child should work also. The point wouldn't be to make ends meet or to provide for the family, but to go through an experience that the parent thought was instrumental to their own growth. I'm pretty much done with my undergrad classes and I think that the rigor helped me learn. I see examples almost everyday where the things I learned in undergrd are helping me in grad school.</p>

<p>We can't assume that this rigor isn't needed to get well-trained engineers. I understadn your point about the fact that we shouldn't need to force people to work hard. Well, we shouldn't have to put laws into effect to stop murder, rape, and theft, but we do. I think most student like or even love the subject, but would not put in the necessary work if there were no consequences.</p>

42

<p>''Should every school below the caliber of MIT or Harvard be shut down?''</p>

<p>Harvard isn't even part of the top 20.</p>

43

<p>Nice interjection there, Tom, thanks for that relevant info.</p>

<p>Sakky, my point of contention with you is that you view the grading as PUNITIVE in the first place. That attitude makes all of your argument suspect in my eyes.</p>

<p>What does easier grading accomplish? It makes people feel better?</p>

<p>If I'm reading you correctly, you claim that harsh grading doesn't make students work harder to learn the information. How will easier grading make students work hard to learn the information? If students want an A in a ChemE course, they're going to have to work their butts off. I don't see anything wrong with that.</p>

<p>If you're so concerned that engineering coursework and grading disadvantages students that might want to switch OUT of engineering into some other field, perhaps your target should be the "social" mentality of the people in charge of accepting applicants -- those people who blindly weight a 3.2 in engineering the same as a 3.2 in basket-weaving.</p>

<p>The problem is not the grading methods in engineering, the problem is the interpretation of those grades outside the discipline. Attack the problem.</p>

<p>When determining how to grade students in your department, which weighs more in terms of importance: the students continuing in the discipline, or those few that might decide that they're better off doing something else? The answer is pretty easy.</p>

<p>For one reason or another, engineering is graded as engineering is graded... and it seems to work pretty well, IMHO. You have yet to present an argument that convinces me that it's flawed in any way -- only that life isn't fair in some cases.</p>

44

<p>
[quote]
Nobody gets hurt when a DVD player spits out a pixellated image.

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</p>

<p>Yeah, but I can totally show you the burn marks from where my charger burst into flames. Completely scared the fark out of me.</p>

<p>See, that's the problem with the academic mentality, dude. We can draw up as many grandiose and ornate plans as we'd like, and say that this is the way it really <em>should</em> be, but who's gonna implement 'em? It's not that I disagree with you, I just don't see how, in the reality we live in, your ideas can be put into practice. I see the difficulty of engineering education as being, in part, a failsafe mechanism so that people who <em>won't</em> be able to hack it as engineers can get out while they still have time to fully pursue other career options. Because if you flunk the PE repeatedly, then by that time, you've already invested eight years in engineering! It's kinda too late! (At this point, if I had the time or the energy, I'd go through and address all the titchy little points that sakky's inevitably going to bring up, like how failing a class or two would hurt someone's chances of getting into another field... I would, for example, counter that with the idea that a failing grade is something you can kinda see coming down the avenue, and that students have a responsibility to take advantage of their ability to drop classes before it's too late... but how's about we stick to the big picture here?)</p>

<p>But even more importantly, at the end of the day, like wrprice said (thanks, dude, this is the more immediately relevant point I was looking for), engineering's about attention to detail. In my case, <em>inattention</em> to detail can kill people, and that blows, to put it mildly. The fact that engineering's pretty darned objective allows professors to grade harshly only reflects and promotes good habits in a practicing engineer: attention to detail, and a high level of accuracy. I made an adding error on an exam in a design course and the prof took off 12 points. I squawked, of course, as soon as I got it back, protesting amid my colleagues that 12 points was kind of harsh, and the prof countered, "You should be able to add two one-digit numbers by now, Amy."</p>

<p>Embarrassing... sure... but boy-howdy, did my arithmetic accuracy skyrocket. One simple act of oppressively harsh grading did the trick. </p>

<p>If you watch a really masterful engineer work... and I've had the fortunate pleasure of having done so on numerous occasions, with numerous masterful engineers... They are lightning fast and ridiculously accurate. Click click click click click, bang. Answer.</p>

<p>The engineering process, overall, is pretty long, and is very cumulative. If you make a dumb and careless error back at the beginning, y'know how much time you waste? I can crank out about ten pages of calcs a day, and by the end of the day, those calcs have been copied and handed to colleagues, who will take my numbers and go off and crank out ten pages of calcs of their own. If, two days later, as once unfortunately happened to me, you find that you screwed something up at the beginning, that sets <em>everybody</em> back, by a lot. </p>

<p>Accuracy's so key. Harsh grading promotes accuracy, and I speak from personal experience on that. And it's not just me, I'm not the only one who shaped up from harsh grading... When I started out grading my students' papers as a TA, their work was atrocious. I couldn't read any of their papers, their thoughts weren't presented well, and their answers were invariably waaay off. It was their first design class. I graded harshly*, and told them that I'm their client, and if I can't read it, I'm marking it wrong, because it won't do me any good. Your clients and colleagues have to be able to read your work, because engineering is a collaborative process. Their work improved EXPONENTIALLY. It was fantastic. By the end of the course, their stuff was spotless, and the ones who put in the work aced the final.</p>

<p>So, it promotes healthy engineering habits. It's the nature of the beast. If you don't like having to be accurate, don't major in engineering. If you want to major in engineering, suck it up!</p>

<p>*Say I'm mean if you want to, but then tell me how many of your TAs would go through your work, count off for a mistake at the beginning, then follow through with your incorrect numbers and not count off if your process was correct. I'd handwrite answer keys with full explanations, and at the students' requests, I held copious review sessions, the same session at multiple times during the week, to accomodate everyone's schedules. I'd write up review packets, I'd bring post-it flags so they could mark up their codes, I had a separate IM address so that they could IM me with their questions whenever I was awake, and I gave out my home and cell phone numbers and would stay up until 3 AM the night before problem sets were due... So no more of this crap about "omg aibarr must've been such an awful TA!" =P</p>

45

<p>A lot of cogent discussion. I'll just pick one little thread out of the cloth:</p>

<p>
[quote]
If public safety was really the goal, then we would shut down the lower-tier schools. After all, this is public safety we are talking about, right? So we should be getting rid of all of these schools that produce shoddy graduates, right?

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<p>Is there any empirical evidence that "lower-tier" schools "produce shoddy graduates?" I think you are assuming facts not in evidence here.</p>

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<p>In my experience there was a good deal of difference between engineering education and practice. Some people who probably would have flunked out of my school were actually better practicing engineers than I was. There was a lot more design and pragmatic know-how on the job, and a lot less integral calculus, etc.</p>

<p>The stringent requirements might serve to ward off future bad engineers if they were focused on the classes actually closely relevant to engineering practice. Instead, the harshness is focused on the theoretical courses which are furthest removed from practice. Because those are the courses that are most intrinsically difficult.</p>

<p>So my point is: one can in fact be an effective practicing engineer despite doing poorly in these rough, mostly theoretical courses, which are somewhat divorced in content from actual practice. And the converse is also true.</p>

47

<p>lol aibarr I wasn't denying you were a good ta. From what you've described, you were an excellent one. I just find it a little awkward that you would go out of your way to tell a professor that a student should fail. That is an issue for the professor and the student.</p>

48

<p>(Aside: The professor wasn't actually a professor, and was a PhD student who was finishing up his doctorate. Good guy, but I had sooo much more teaching experience than he did... I kept the gradebook for him, and ran stats on every assignment/quiz/exam for him, and that kid would routinely not show up for class, and didn't do any of the problem sets beyond the first two, the second of which he flunked. We regularly talked about the students, and how they were doing, because I had a lot more direct contact with them than he did, and I gave him a lot of feedback on how his teaching was being received... So normally, I wouldn't be like, 'omg fail him,' but the instructor was completely new to the whole teaching thing, and when he rounded the guy up from an F to a C-, I was like, um...)</p>

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<p>Do you have to be dramatic with the "aside"? ;)</p>

50

<p>(If it weren't parenthetical it'd be considered threadjacking. Anything in parentheses means I can say it without being off-topic! ;) )</p>

51

<p>
[quote]

Harvard isn't even part of the top 20.

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<p>MIT was the engineering example, while Harvard was the general example.</p>

52

<p>its relaxed for some and it isn't for others.</p>

53

<p>This statement might be false.</p>

54

<p>
[quote]
So normally, I wouldn't be like, 'omg fail him,' but the instructor was completely new to the whole teaching thing, and when he rounded the guy up from an F to a C-, I was like, um...)

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</p>

<p>I too am deeply uncomfortable with the notion of a TA deciding what grade a student should get. Like GatorEng23 said, that's something between the prof and the student. Whether the prof was a real prof or not, or whether he was new or not, it doesn't matter. He's the prof, so he gets to make the rules. </p>

<p>But on a larger note, why fail the guy? Like I said, instead of just that, why not simply not give him credit for the class at all, and pretend as if he had never taken the class in the first place? I think not getting credit for a class is punishment enough. There is no need to mark his transcript with an F.</p>

55

<p>TAs grade papers. TAs hold review/study sessions. TAs lead lab sessions. TAs in many cases are very involved in the teaching of a course. What's wrong with a TA expressing his/her views about a student's performance in the class?</p>

<p>If a student warrants a failing grade, the TA has every right to mention their opinion to the professor behind closed doors. The professor still has the final say and, even in this case, the TA's suggestion was noted but ignored. What are you complaining about?</p>

<p>
[quote]
But on a larger note, why fail the guy?

[/quote]
Because, supposedly, he didn't do the work sufficient to pass?</p>

<p>
[quote]
... why not simply not give him credit for the class at all, and pretend as if he had never taken the class in the first place?

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Because most universities don't work that way. If you want to change it, your beef is with the registrar, not the individual professors or even the departments.</p>

<p>
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I think not getting credit for a class is punishment enough. There is no need to mark his transcript with an F.

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On the contrary, the transcript is there to record the outcomes of what was attempted by the student. What you suggest is akin to altering a historical record. If you're going to allow that, you might as well remove "F" from the list of possible grades because it becomes meaningless. The grade of "F" is there for a reason; if you "earn" one, you deserve one.</p>

<p>As was mentioned earlier, if you think it's likely you'll be receiving an F, withdraw from or drop the course before it's too late.</p>

<p>I'm amazed by how little responsibility people are willing to take for the outcomes that result from their decisions. And if these same people are becoming engineers (professionally or academically), we're in for a lot of trouble.</p>

56

<p>
[quote]
Engineering schools do this also at the graduate level. Grading in grad school is significantly easier even for engineers. It's hard to compare graduate school, where people have proven their abilities by getting a degree and where people generally have a great love for a subject, with undergrad programs, where people may have picked the major on a whim and haven't proven that they are capable

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<p>And that's something that should be up for debate. Another way for engineering schools to lighten up on grading is to simply admit a higher quality of student in the first place. Why not pursue this possibility? </p>

<p>Another way would be to simply provide an overarching entrance exam, perhaps between sophomore and junior year. Those who pass it can declare engineering as a major. Those who don't, no skin off them, they can pursue another major with a clean slate. The results of this entrance exam would remain confidential (in the same way that PhD qual exam results are confidential), so the only 'bad' thing that could happen is that you can't get into the major. But your academic record remains unmarred.</p>

<p>And that gets down to part of the problem that I see. I see absolutely nothing to be gained from tormenting people who have been weeded out of the major. Like I said, if a guy isn't going to major in chemical engineering anymore, then who really cares what grades he got in his chemE weeders? What does it matter now? He's not in the major anymore - so what more do you want from him? </p>

<p>From what I see, I believe that engineering departments WANT to hand out pain. They WANT to hurt people's careers, including people who aren't even in the major anymore. I suspect that they actually LIKE it. Basically, I believe they're academic sadists. They seem to want to go out of their way to hurt people. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Look at it from another viewpoint (the one I happen to agree with). Profs DO want it to be hard, but not because it was hell for them and they want some 'chronological justice', but because they think that this 'hell' was affective for helping them learn. I don't think your comparison with beating your kid is applicable. I think a more applicable situation would involve a parent who had to work as a teenager to help his/her family and who now has a fair amount of money. In a lot of cases, they would think that their child should work also. The point wouldn't be to make ends meet or to provide for the family, but to go through an experience that the parent thought was instrumental to their own growth. I'm pretty much done with my undergrad classes and I think that the rigor helped me learn. I see examples almost everyday where the things I learned in undergrd are helping me in grad school.

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<p>That might be somewhat believable until, like I said above, you take into account those students who are no longer in the major. Why do we have to keep persecuting them, if they're no longer even engineering students anymore? Consider a boxing match. If the guy throws in the towel, you don't keep punching him. He's already conceded defeat, so why are you still hitting him? </p>

<p>Also consider the demoralizing aspects of low grading. I can name you a string of engineering classes at MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, and other rough schools where you can work like a dog and STILL end up with a bad grade. This simply leads to students becoming demoralized - they feel that no matter how hard they work, they're going to do poorly anyway. This leads to problems of turning people off from engineering, including plenty of people who would be perfectly serviceable engineers. </p>

<p>I'll give you one example. I know a guy who majored in English at Berkeley, but learned computer programming on the side as a hobby, and ended up becoming a software engineer upon graduation, and ending up with quite a strong career. He told me once that he felt fortunate that he didn't major in CS at Berkeley, specifically because he felt that he probably wouldn't have made it through the weeders, hence getting turned off by computers completely, and as a result, he wouldn't have the career that he has now. Think about that - this is a guy who believes that he has a successful software career precisely because he DIDN'T major in CS. And I can see why he said it, because the CS program at Berkeley (and other top schools) forces you to learn things that, frankly, you don't really need to know to do well on the job. This guy is living proof of that. In fact, this guy later told a bunch of Berkeley CS students who were struggling with their courses and were thinking that the computer profession was not for them that those things that they were struggling with were things that they didn't really need to know for the job. </p>

<p>
[quote]
If I'm reading you correctly, you claim that harsh grading doesn't make students work harder to learn the information. How will easier grading make students work hard to learn the information? If students want an A in a ChemE course, they're going to have to work their butts off. I don't see anything wrong with that.

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<p>I am saying that there are many other ways to approach the issue. Harsh grading is not the ONLY way to get people to work hard. Like I said, perhaps the most straightforward way is to apply more stringent admissions standards into the engineering majors. Why admit people into engineering who are not that good, and then weed them out later? Just don't admit the bad students in the first place. </p>

<p>That's what medical schools do. You don't see huge boatloads of people flunking out of med-school. That's because med-schools use tight admissions requirements such that very few bad students get admitted in the first place. </p>

<p>Other possibilities exist. Like I said, you can use an entrance exam. You can make your weeder courses P/NP with shadow grades (such that a person who gets a C- will still pass, but with a strong signal that if he continues in the major, he will probably do poorly, so he should probably find something else to major in). You can allow students who leave the major to retroactively drop their engineering courses. I said it before, I'll say it again. If you're not going to major in ChemE anyway, then who cares what grades you got in your ChemE weeders? </p>

<p>The fact that engineering departments do not pursue these possibilities indicates to me that what they really want to do is tag people with bad grades.</p>

57

<p>
[quote]
If you're so concerned that engineering coursework and grading disadvantages students that might want to switch OUT of engineering into some other field, perhaps your target should be the "social" mentality of the people in charge of accepting applicants -- those people who blindly weight a 3.2 in engineering the same as a 3.2 in basket-weaving.</p>

<p>The problem is not the grading methods in engineering, the problem is the interpretation of those grades outside the discipline. Attack the problem.

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</p>

<p>Only outside the discipline? Trust me, there are PLENTY of problems WITHIN the discipline as well.</p>

<p>Let me give you some examples. At Berkeley, anybody who winds up with a cumulative GPA below a 2.0 is put on academic probation, from which he is on the road to expulsion. Not just expulsion from engineering, but expulsion from ALL of Berkeley. So not only can you not major in engineering, you can't major in anything else either, because you've been booted from the school completely. Similar rules exist at other schools. These rules have the net effect of disproportionately expelling the engineers. Let's face it. The EE who got a 1.9 probably worked harder than the American Studies guy who got a 2.1. But who's a target for expulsion, not just from his major, but from the entire school? </p>

<p>What engineering department should do is attempt to get the greater administration to lighten the expulsion rules for engineering students. But this doesn't happen. Again, I suspect that it's because the department WANTS to expel students, not just from the major, but from the entire university. They know full well that bad grades can mean complete expulsion, and they do it anyway. </p>

<p>Hence, this is a case of how the university administration misinterprets engineering GPA's, and the engineering department doing nothing about the misinterpretation. I suspect it may be that the department WANTS those GPA's to be misinterpreted. The department could say "Well, the engineering students go through a harder curriculum, so we should have more accomodating rules about them regarding the minimum GPA to avoid expulsion". That doesn't happen. </p>

<p>Let me give you another example. Many engineering firms have hiring GPA cutoffs - a 3.0 cutoff is fairly common. And the engineering departments all know this. But they don't care. In fact, there are many other threads on CC regarding the laments of engineering students who have sub-3.0 GPA's who are having difficulty finding jobs because their grades don't meet the cutoffs. One eng student at Michigan with a sub-3.0 GPA has bitterly stated that he should have gone to an easier engineering school where he would probably have better grades such that he would be more eligible for jobs. I sadly have to agree with him - he probably would have been better off. And that's sad. Going to a better school has probably made him worse off than if he had just gone to a lower-tier no-name school. </p>

<p>So here, the notion of misintepretation outside the discipline does not hold. Engineering firms are clearly "WITHIN" the discipline. Yet they also misintepret low GPA's.</p>

<p>So now you might say that all of these third parties should recalibrate their misinterpretations. However, don't you think it would be far easier for engineering departments to simply change their policies? For example, if they know that low GPA's are going to be misinterpreted by companies, even engineering companies, then the most straightforward response would be to stop giving out low GPA's. For example, by making admissions tighter, or using entrance exams or P/NP or whatever.</p>

<p>Let me give you an analogy. If I teach my child to not shake hands, to frown all the time, to not look people in the eye, to yell and scream all the time, and basically to engage in weird behavior, everybody is going to misinterpret him as being rude or mentally deranged or angry or all sorts of other things. Now, one might argue that all those other people need to recalibrate how they perceive his behavior. But wouldn't it be better for me to just teach my child to be polite, to engage in social pleasantries, and basically to conform to the rules of social etiquette? </p>

<p>My point is, if you choose to deliberately not follow the rules of society, you are going to constantly be misintepreted, usually to deleterious effect. Like it or not, employers want to see high grades, and if engineering chooses not to play, then like it or not, engineering students are always going to get screwed. That has the effect of deterring students from even trying engineering in the first place.</p>

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When determining how to grade students in your department, which weighs more in terms of importance: the students continuing in the discipline, or those few that might decide that they're better off doing something else? The answer is pretty easy.

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</p>

<p>Those "few", eh? </p>

<p>"Roughly fifty percent of the students who begin in engineering leave the field before receiving
their engineering degree."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.engr.pitt.edu/%7Eec2000/grant_papers/Shuman+ASEE-99.PDF%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.engr.pitt.edu/~ec2000/grant_papers/Shuman+ASEE-99.PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>
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Why admit people into engineering who are not that good, and then weed them out later? Just don't admit the bad students in the first place.</p>

<p>That's what medical schools do.

[/quote]

You've got to be joking, right?</p>

<p>Have you considered that skillsets (incl. basic study habits) improve over time? Students mature between their freshman and senior years.</p>

<p>Not everyone can "measure up" to be a kick-ass engineer when they're applying for their <strong>UNDERGRADUATE</strong> education, but that doesn't mean that they don't show promise and can't become that kick-ass engineer by the time they finish their degree requirements. It's exactly <strong>AT THE END</strong> of the undergraduate program that you want to determine whether the candidate is acceptable for hire (or a graduate program) -- not <em>before</em> they have a chance to prove themselves.</p>

<p>Med schools do lots of testing up front, yes, but that's AFTER the candidate has gone through a regular undergraduate program for exactly the same reasons... to let them mature a bit and prove themselves. To compare med school's (or any other graduate-level program's) entrance qualifications to undergraduate qualifications is absurd.</p>

<p>Seriously, Sakky... I think you're way out in left field on some of this stuff.</p>

59

<p>
[quote]
TAs grade papers. TAs hold review/study sessions. TAs lead lab sessions. TAs in many cases are very involved in the teaching of a course. What's wrong with a TA expressing his/her views about a student's performance in the class?

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</p>

<p>Uh, because it's not her job? You said it yourself - the TA's job is to grade papers, lead lab sessions, and possibly teach a few lectures. It is NOT in the job description of the TA's to actually assign final grades. </p>

<p>
[quote]

If a student warrants a failing grade, the TA has every right to mention their opinion to the professor behind closed doors. The professor still has the final say and, even in this case, the TA's suggestion was noted but ignored. What are you complaining about?

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</p>

<p>And who says that the student warrants a failing grade? In this case, the TA is the one deciding, but like I said, that's not her decision to make. </p>

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On the contrary, the transcript is there to record the outcomes of what was attempted by the student. What you suggest is akin to altering a historical record. If you're going to allow that, you might as well remove "F" from the list of possible grades because it becomes meaningless. The grade of "F" is there for a reason; if you "earn" one, you deserve one.</p>

<p>As was mentioned earlier, if you think it's likely you'll be receiving an F, withdraw from or drop the course before it's too late.</p>

<p>I'm amazed by how little responsibility people are willing to take for the outcomes that result from their decisions. And if these same people are becoming engineers (professionally or academically), we're in for a lot of trouble.

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</p>

<p>For the record, I believe that the F should not be a grade that is handed out, for I see no purpose in doing so that couldn't also be accomplished by just not giving out a grade at all. </p>

<p>And besides, you keep talking as if all of these students who get bad grades are just lazy. How about this, wrprice. Why not come down to MIT and talk to some of the students and ask them just how 'easy' it is for them to avoid getting bad grades. Or better, yet take some classes at MIT yourself. Then perhaps we'll see just how amazed you are about "by how little responsibility" these MIT students who are getting bad grades must be taking. </p>

<p>The fact of the matter is the many engineering programs, especially the top ones, are filled with extremely capable and hard-working students who nonetheless get bad grades. MIT is chock full of them. Caltech too. </p>

<p>Now I certainly agree that there are some students at some schools who truly are bad students. But I think the right way to deal with that problem is to simply not admit them in the first place. In Aibarr's case of the lazy guy, UIUC bears responsibility for admitting the guy. Schools should not be admitting lazy people, and if they do, BOTH parties (the student and the school) bear responsibility. You can't lay it all on the student.</p>

60

<p>
[quote]
You've got to be joking, right?</p>

<p>Have you considered that skillsets (incl. basic study habits) improve over time? Students mature between their freshman and senior years.</p>

<p>Not everyone can "measure up" to be a kick-ass engineer when they're applying for their <strong>UNDERGRADUATE</strong> education, but that doesn't mean that they don't show promise and can't become that kick-ass engineer by the time they finish their degree requirements. It's exactly <strong>AT THE END</strong> of the undergraduate program that you want to determine whether the candidate is acceptable for hire (or a graduate program) -- not <em>before</em> they have a chance to prove themselves.

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</p>

<p>Huh? Then this is a simple argument for open admissions. Why even have selectivity at all? You said it yourself - if young people haven't had the chance to prove themselves, then why even run an admissions process at all? Why not just let everybody in? So are you advocating that MIT, Stanford, and Caltech simply run open admissions? If not, why not? </p>

<p>
[quote]
Med schools do lots of testing up front, yes, but that's AFTER the candidate has gone through a regular undergraduate program for exactly the same reasons... to let them mature a bit and prove themselves. To compare med school's (or any other graduate-level program's) entrance qualifications to undergraduate qualifications is absurd.</p>

<p>Seriously, Sakky... I think you're way out in left field on some of this stuff.

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</p>

<p>How am I out in left field? Like I said, selective admissions is a tactic used by practically every decent school. If you didn't do very well in high school, you're not getting into Stanford. You're not getting into MIT. You're not getting into Caltech. One might argue that those students who didn't get in didn't have an opportunity to become mature, but that's too bad. You can't say to Stanford "Yeah, my high school record is mediocre, but I am going to be much more mature as I grow up, so you should admit me now." That's not going to fly.</p>

<p>Seriously, I don't think anybody is advocating open admissions for any school, and certainly not the top ones. So if we are going to be living in a world where admissions is competitive, I don't see what is wrong with making them more so. It's already extremely difficult to get into MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, and the like. We all accept that as a fact of life. So what's so controversial about making it even more difficult to get into, so as to get rid of the not-so-good students who are probably going to flunk out anyway?</p>