Why I'm glad my kid's not an Ivy candidate

College Search & Selection
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<p>“Although I cannot document it, I have no trouble imagining that many ordinary Americans (people with little formal education) were fairly familiar at one time with Shakespeare and other rather high-brow stuff (perhaps in derivative, vernacular forms).”</p>

<p>I think you are romanticizing. But even so, let’s take your premise to be true – our average plumber here doesn’t know Shakespeare (etc) the way his older brethren did. Does that make it Yale’s fault when Deseriewicz is unable to converse with the plumber?</p>

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People define what everything is. I never said this is the only definition, rather I said “As generally defined today,” indicating that it (or a close variant) is the most common definition. In fact, the way you defined it (in the quote below) agrees closely with the definition I put out there. </p>

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Now how is a person who is only interested in advanced physics, or post-modern art, supposed to learn this stuff? Classes are not always the answer. But being eager to learn and explore in other disciplines is.</p>

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<p>Because no one has been able to prove that a liberal arts education actual contributes value to the students’ development, or at least that the common execution of such an education is done well. When you’re forced to take subjects that you don’t like, you don’t engage in the material; you’re unhappy with the class and with Stanford for forcing you to take it; you don’t do well because you don’t care about the subject. </p>

<p>I don’t think that it’s all useless, because for some it is. But why not allow students who are interested in mathematics to take a ‘philosophy of mathematics’ sequence rather than IHUM? Why not just let those who are interested in the humanities and liberal arts do SLE? Why not require students to take distribution classes that are clustered within their general area of interest (so not forcing a classics major to take math and engineering, instead in humanities and social sciences)?</p>

<p>I also think it’s laughable to expect that two 10-week classes can somehow instill ethics for citizenship. And it’s absurd to suggest that a single class can contribute a significant amount to one’s intellectual growth. The intellectual journey is one that occurs over a few years. A couple of GERs aren’t generally going to influence that. Rather, theoretically, they expose students to subjects they might not have explored otherwise, and spark a long-term interest in the subject. But I think it’s clear, from the statistics about intended majors and the like, that students know what they want to do and they know what they like. GERs rarely change that: students set their own course.</p>

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<p>You’re asking the wrong question. Even if they could find a class they might like, it is at best a class tangential to their interests. So why would the student waste valuable class schedule space on something that’s only a tangential interest when he/she could be taking something he/she really loves? For example, if I were going to attend Stanford for 20 years, there would be a great many classes I’d take that aren’t related to my main interests (including humanities classes). But I don’t have that time. There were already so many classes that were directly related to my interests that I would never be able to take. Classes far from my interests were rather low on my list of priorities.</p>

<p>In a way, this widespread resistance among students to taking GERs - including IHUM - is at least some evidence of the true intellectualism that exists: they would prefer to immerse themselves in their real academic passions rather than waste time, energy, and effort on subjects they dislike and will likely forget by the time the year’s over.</p>

<p>I also think that what many STEM students dislike is the nature of humanities and social sciences: lots of writing, lots of indistinct discussion, tons of reading. By the same token, what HASS students dislike about science and engineering is the formality, the listing of facts, the definiteness of it, the focus on numbers and equations.</p>

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<p>I don’t think that’s the case at all. I have a friend who’s a classics major who could not find a single natural science class that he would enjoy. He opted for something easy, didn’t care about the class, and got a C. For engineering, he also took CS105 like my English major friend; he also did poorly in it. My English major friend took STATS 60 and ended up having to retake it because she did poorly in it and had to drop it the first time around.</p>

<p>Ignoring that students simply have different interests only worsens the problem . This isn’t a question of ability, either. I think every student at Stanford is intelligent enough to major in anything. The difference lies in whether they like the subject; if they don’t like it, they’re not going to do well in it. That also means that if forced to take a GER class they dislike, they’re not going to do well in it and they’ll be unhappy.</p>

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<p>IMO that’s intellectual snobbery. It’s as bad as techies sneering at fuzzies for majoring in something “easy.”</p>

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<p>It’s funny - people seem to think that the PhD is the epitome of intellectualism (and indeed that’s why people on this site look at PhD production at a given school as a proxy for intellectualism in its student body), yet the PhD is also the epitome of specialization: you focus on not only a specific discipline, not only a specific niche within that discipline, but a specific topic within that niche within that discipline.</p>

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Not everyone needs to be that way. But it does matter; I do not want my President to only know about pre-Colombian art, for instance. I would be okay if she majored in that at her University, provided she demonstrated a commitment to also learning about other fields, if not in college, then definitely later in life.</p>

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<p>Many years ago, my college required all freshmen to take Philosophy and Religion. As a math/physics person, it wasn’t something I thought much about or had any interest in. But in restrospect, it was one of the most important course I ever took and it was one which remembered the most. I have forgotten many math formulas, but I still remember many concepts and ideas we didsucssed in P&R. If my college didn’t require us to take the course, I don’t think I would have, but it was a course which push me out of my comfort zone and challenged my believes. I think that’s what college education is suppose to be. It is one reason why I like liberal arts education.</p>

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<p>^ exactly - as I said above, they expose students to subjects they might not have explored otherwise, but I think that’s rather rare. Most students aren’t going to find value, years down the road, in GERs they were forced to take.</p>

<p>I for one have already forgotten mostly what I learned in an intro philosophy class I took (and this was only 2 years ago). But it got rid of two GERs at the same time - double-whammy! ;)</p>

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I agree. But what those classes can do is provide the tools and inspiration for someone to become an ethical citizen. </p>

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They influenced my intellectual journey. To be more specific, IHUM influenced mine greatly. Without IHUM, I would not have realized my intellectual trajectory as quickly, if at all. I’m not defending IHUM itself here, but I am defending the idea of it. K-12 education does not focus much on humanities or social sciences. It mainly sticks to history and English. But we know there is far more out there. And I think good colleges should acknowledge and take steps to correct this deficiency in K-12 education. </p>

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Enlighten me with these statistics. I also think it is unwise to focus on majors here. The intellectual can major in anything. It’s what he does outside his major that is essential to his intellectual growth. </p>

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You just have narrower interests, then. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Heck, a lot of people would rather be great at a few things than good at a lot of things. This world needs specialists, as it needs those with broad training. However, those who take the former approach should still be exposed to areas outside their comfort zone, if at least a little. As you mentioned, many students do not like the way the other field works. In my opinion, that only gives more reason to have one or two requirements in the opposite field- to push students outside their comfort zones and see how they react. Do they embrace the challenge, or do they shirk it? </p>

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Okay, but your following anecdotes just support my point of needing “more math and engineering offerings tailored to students who are attempting to fulfill the GER yet are not jokes of classes.” I guess my only mistake was not including natural science in that picture. </p>

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I agree. That is why I would argue that the GERs should be reformed. I think there is no reason that a student should not find something enjoyable in the five breadth requirements we have. If students cannot find something enjoyable, that points more to a lack of offerings than any one field being inherently unenjoyable to outsiders. And just because a student may be more interested in classes within his field of interest does not mean he should limit himself to those, for reasons already mentioned.</p>

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<p>IMO you have too much faith in the ability of these short classes to change students. It wasn’t my experience, nor most students’ (which is probably why the university is redoing the requirements).</p>

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<p>Stanford releases them in some of the Faculty Senate minutes, but it’s essentially proportions of students broken down by intent to major in general areas (engineering, social sciences, etc.) vs. the proportions of students ultimately in those. IIRC there’s little change, except for engineering and social sciences, of which there was a little more. Students know what they like.</p>

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<p>No, I definitely don’t - my interest is inherently interdisciplinary, and if I were to list the ‘core courses’ that I’d want to take for what I study, it would span 5 departments. Obviously those were the departments I took most classes in, but there were so many more I wanted to take but couldn’t.</p>

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<p>I don’t think so. I think my anecdotes support the fact that these students don’t care about the subject at all. Change the class all you want, but the material is the material, and it’s material they don’t like.</p>

<p>[By the way, “A couple of GERs aren’t” isn’t an error - the subject is in singular form, but is plural in semantics, and so “a couple of” acts as a phrasal quantifier and calls for a plural verb. Not a case of accidentally using the plural verb on a singular subject because it was followed with a plural noun in a prepositional phrase. If you couldn’t tell, linguistics is one of those 5 departments I mentioned. ;)]</p>

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<p>I do not think that many schools feel that such elements are really important to the students who … have enrolled. The got their “kids” and those kids have the next four years to define their own version of “elite.” </p>

<p>Fwiw, Cornell is rather smart to avoid terms such as “Ivy League”, “admission percentage”, “average SAT”, “class rank”, “World News & Report Rankings” as the comparisons to its Ivy League peers place Cornell at the very bottom of each one of those categories. Since none of that makes Cornell a better or worse school, why bring it up?</p>

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And IMO you have too much cynicism in the ability of these short classes to change students. The University is redoing IHUM, but at the same time it acknowledges the requirements as the bare minimum of a liberal education. </p>

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This does not tell me much. First, these general areas you list are still pretty broad categories. For instance, social science includes economics and political science. Yet this metric would not account for switching from one to the other. Second, the metric you mention would output the same result if everyone intending to major in engineering switched to social sciences and vice-versa. From what I’ve heard, tons of students go into CS (from an unrelated field) after taking CS106A. For the proportions to then remain the same, an equal number of students need to leave engineering. It’s like chemistry: you may have an equilibrium, but there are still forward and backward reactions taking place. </p>

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I think that, at best, they have an incomplete picture of what they like when they enter college. </p>

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But we were talking about breadth requirements. You indicating that your classes of primary interest do not span the breadth requirements means that you have narrower interests. I never said you have narrow interests. Just that you have narrower interests than someone who would be able to find classes of significant interest in all the breadth requirements. My interests, for instance, span across all five breadth requirements easily. I do not think I am the exception. But if I am, it is an institutional problem more than anything else. </p>

<p>Now some students legitimately do not have enough time for GERs on top of studying abroad, major (or double major) requirements, honors work, jobs, research, and extracurriculars. In response, the Faculty Senate has alluded to diminishing unit loads of certain majors, not abandoning requirements. </p>

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I do not think your anecdotes support that. Maybe your friends should have taken CS106A instead of 105. </p>

<p>[By the way, it is an error because you have a double negative. “A couple of GERs aren’t generally not going to influence that.” I guess my mistake was placing it after the “aren’t” instead of the “not”]</p>

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I always wondered if remarks like this is ever necessary. Csdad just dropped his daughter off at a school, which I am sure he is very proud of, and this is an attempt to say, “yeah, but she is not so special, is she?” Good for you.</p>

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<p>How in the world do you come up with “yeah, but she is not so special, is she?” from my “remark” about Cornell being “smart” about not discussing rankings and the USNews during orientation?</p>

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<p>I just KNEW that someone would post the old “Cornell isn’t really an Ivy” angle! The point of my post was to underscore that from my expereince & observation Cornell (one of the schools that the OP knocks) does not foster an “elitist attitude” as claimed via the article. I don’t really think that they didn’t mention ranking, etc. because they are the lowest in the Ivies…I think they didn’t mention them because they don’t care.</p>

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<p>xiggi - I enjoy your posts when they are intelligent and to the point, it is great coming from someone of your age. But there is time and place for everything. </p>

<p>Cornell is a great school, it was a good place for D1, as I am sure it is going to be great for csdad’s daughter. We know it is not the highest ranked Ivy, and I don’t think most of alums really care. Not sure why csdad’s D chose Cornell, but she must had her reason (maybe it’s ranking, maybe not). After someone just dropped off his kid at her dream school, no one needs to be told the school isn’t ranked that high. If you don’t think your post is not inappropriate, what can I say?</p>

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<p>Enough of this non-sense. That is NOT what I wrote … nor implied in any way, shape, or form. </p>

<p>I also wrote that “since none of that makes Cornell a better or worse school, why bring it up?”</p>

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<p>If these classes are so important to the student development, why does nt stanford go with pass/fail or audit so the kids take more interest in them? Just make attendence mandatory.</p>

<p>One point being missed here - if Stanford is charging 40k tuition, that is 13k per quarter, 1k per credit hour (is it 12 hrs that is normal for a quarter?) or 3k per class from a parent’s pocket.</p>

<p>As a parent, I would have to wonder if it is worthwhile for my uninterested kid to be spending 3k of my money because the university wanted to teach him/her some highfaluting intellectualism in a class while he/she is daydreaming about something totally irrelevant because they are bored.</p>

<p>How many such 3k classes are required at Stanford btw?</p>

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<p>I gotta agree with oldfort, here, xiggi. You may have not intended it, but it came across as a slam, which is unnecessary for someone who has excitedly just dropped off a child.</p>

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<p>"I also wrote that “since none of that makes Cornell a better or worse school, why bring it up?” </p>

<p>…I thought that it was obvious why I brought it up…it was , IMHO, directly pertinent to the original thread. The OP states that “Ivy League” schools perpetuate an elitist attitude & that is why they students shouldn’t attend them. My initial experience (although I’m sure not as in depth as others on this forum) is contrary to that assertation.</p>

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<p>Well, all I can say is that I made the point I wanted to make about schools not “describing” how elite they are during orientation, stressing rankings and SAT scores, or comparing themselves with peer schools. </p>

<p>I had and have no intention of belittling the accomplishment of someone enrolling at Cornell. I believe to have a pretty good idea of what this accompishment represents in the grand scheme of things. </p>

<p>For the record, I invite anyone to check my history of “belittling” others for their choices of schools. If my intention was to “slam” someone, it would have been clear and direct.</p>

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I was thinking about that actually. So have other Stanford students, based on reading blog posts. For many reasons, grading IHUM pass/fail makes sense. The only counter I can think of is student motivation in pass/fail classes. I was trying to find some study that analyzed student motivations in pass/fail versus graded classes, but I couldn’t find it. </p>

<p>I think a pass/fail model that works well is one with really high standards tied in with an occasional second chance (if you’re failing and you don’t do what we ask, then we actually fail you). </p>

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That’s a legitimate concern. If it is a strong enough concern, then the parent can vote with her dollars and not send her child to school at Stanford. I do not want to sound snobby, but I think most parents paying full-price recognize the tenets of a liberal education. Furthermore, though we have been using the term “required class,” at the bare minimum there are eight classes from which to fulfill these requirements. In most cases there are many more classes (hundreds). </p>

<p>I should also add that none of the requirements teach “highfalutin intellectualism.” I don’t know where you got that from.</p>

<p>*Quotes corrected for spelling and grammar</p>