<p>I agree with xiggi, though it is not comfortable to read what was said if you are “involved” with Cornell. It is pointless to clear what Cornell is not, or is, once you are in.</p>
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My son hated IHUM, but now I can see why it was necessary for him to go through what he did not like, like many things in life. Also, his GPA would have been over 4.0 if there were without IHUM. 
It is a good thing to deflate grades. </p>
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Get in first, worry about this later.</p>
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<p>Because it is a requirement that is clearly advertised by Stanford. Some colleges have a full Core curriculum, such as Chicago, Columbia and Boston College. If you don’t want to take Physics for Poets, don’t apply. Most colleges have general ed requirements or distributives. If you don’t like those requirements, don’t apply. Apply instead to ‘curriculum free’ colleges, such Brown, Amherst and Smith. </p>
<p>If you don’t like Stanford’s education requirements, go somewhere else. Why spend $55k to take courses of no or 'tangential" interest? It makes no sense.</p>
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Why would you apply if you don’t like a school’s requirements?</p>
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Why do we do something that we don’t like?</p>
<p>I don’t understand your point.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that’s the reason they don’t bring it up. I think they are confident enough of their place in the academic world and in what they have to offer that they don’t feel a need to define themselves by rankings or comparison to others. One of my daughters went to Harvard and the other Dartmouth, and I don’t recall either of those schools bringing that stuff up either.</p>
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<p>I am not saying the average man in the street was an amateur Shakespeare scholar. What I’m saying is that there seems to have been in the past a greater compatibility between the language and concerns of academia and those of ordinary people. From the time I was a small child, I was familiar with stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey, David & Goliath, Jonah & the Whale, Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Tom Sawyer. I knew these stories from popularizations in comic books, movies, or church. I’m pretty sure previous generations of kids learned stories like these, too. And I’m pretty sure the current generation of academics and literati is not producing (maybe not even talking enough about) works of similar appeal and importance that trickle down to the common folk. In this sense, the modern literary intellectual as such has nothing interesting or important to say to his plumber (or to his plumber’s kid). </p>
<p>It’s not Yale’s fault if Deresiewicz can’t make ordinary, polite small talk with his plumber. It is, however, a problem for democratic society and culture if liberal education (even in the humanities and social sciences) has turned into highly specialized, technical education that is increasingly remote from the imagination and concerns of average people.</p>
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For the anti-GER students, the requirements are often just a nuisance. There is little point in not considering a school because of a nuisance; every school has flaws, after all. If it is a big enough concern, then you may have a point.</p>
<p>I think this article does a complete injustice to the working class students who attend Ivies or top schools. We can still very much exist as an average American while attending a top school</p>
<p>Why apply - Stanford is the kingkong of engineering (before or after MIT depending on who you talk to but that is a separate discussion)! </p>
<p>Why are they trying to be another liberal arts school or an ivy when we have enough of them in this country?</p>
<p>ewho - for those premeds, this grade deflation is a major concern. From what I am hearing, they are being forced to spend an extra year or two to repair their GPAs in order to get into med schools. A guy who had rice/baylor admission decided to go to Stanford and spent 6 years at Stanford getting a masters and is now going to med school. He could have finished 2 years of medical school by now if he went to rice. I will amend your statement a bit - why bother applying! :p</p>
<p>Senior - I thought the whole point of the requirement of GERs/IHUMs was to make these students Intellectuals or that was nt the point?</p>
<p>IHUM only affects the overall GPA, not the GPA for the core requirements. Also, we are talking about undergraduate education.</p>
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<p>Coureur, you quoted my post but also made a point I did not make. I did not say WHY Cornell did not bring those elements up, just that it was smart to avoid the issue as it is irrelevant to the students and families attending orientation.</p>
<p>Also, the first part of my comment on the post was more important that what followd the “fwiw.” When I wrote that “I do not think that many schools feel that such elements are really important to the students who … have enrolled” I also meant that it is EXPECTED from elite schools to avoid being crass enough to rah-rah about their admission statistics or brag about their “elite” status. </p>
<p>Contrary to what was intimated in the original post I responded to, I do not believe that truly elite schools worry much about sending vibes of eliteness to the world. I actually believe that the elite schools are making deliberate efforts to combat the negativity brought the perception of being too elite.</p>
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The requirements alone do not make an intellectual. They do, however, provide the groundwork for someone who wants to become an intellectual. No one is claiming that once you fulfill the GERs, you are an intellectual. The Faculty Senate has made it clear that the GERs alone are not sufficient to be considered a member of intellectual society. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s good to think of the intellectual in terms of the Phi Beta Kappa requirements at Stanford: three classes of at least three units in each of the five breadth fields, receiving a B- or higher in each class, as the bare minimum for consideration. Those who fulfill these Phi Beta Kappa requirements are very likely to be considered “intellectual” by most observers. Are they intellectuals because they fulfilled the requirements? No, although surely the classes helped them on their intellectual journeys. Rather, they fulfill these requirements because they are intellectuals. Can someone be an intellectual and not fulfill the Phi Beta Kappa requirements? Yes. As I stated earlier, “classes are not always the answer. But being eager to learn and explore in other disciplines is.”</p>
<p>Most med schools take your overall undergrad GPA, multiply it with 10, add it to your MCAT score and tack on additional points for research and interview. So overall GPA constitutes about 40% of application weight.</p>
<p>senior - let me be the devil’s advocate and channel Indian Parent here. GERs and IHUMs exist to keep some liberal arts departments alive.</p>
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<p>But do very many students or parents overall select their college or university based on breadth or general education requirements (or lack thereof)?</p>
<p>^No, but some do. </p>
<p>Anyways, on further reflection, I think a better way of looking at it is that there are things “wrong” with every college. At Stanford, my parents are paying ten dollars per meal. But I don’t use all my meals, and when I do eat I hardly ever eat the (more expensive) meat options. My parents, though, are not going to pull me away from Stanford because of this. Nor will they demand that the administration charge them less. They accept the fact that they will be paying for things that I may not take full advantage of. And, if they do blame anyone, they will blame me first (as they have done with me not taking advantage of advising). </p>
<p>If a parent asked why should she be paying 3000 dollars for a class in which her son is bored, I would first ask in response if the son is not at fault in any of this. I, for instance, hated school until I actually started trying.</p>
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How do you want me to respond to this? Furthermore, what is the point? If we assume your statement is true (big if), the intention of creating the GERs–of which IHUM is a part–is irrelevant to the conversation we have been having on their present value.</p>
<p>Senior0991,</p>
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<p>I wasn’t claiming that it told you much, except that students have a good idea of what they’re going to do when they enter - that’s why there are so few undecided. How many students switch from humanities to engineering or vice versa? I doubt very many. If students are decidedly ‘techie,’ they tend to stay in techie areas, whether it’s science or engineering. If students are ‘fuzzy,’ they tend to stay in fuzzy areas, whether humanities or social sciences or arts.</p>
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<p>I never indicated that. In fact, the only one of the five DB areas that my interests didn’t cover was natural science. The EC classes were a pain, though.</p>
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<p>I think you definitely are the exception. And it is an institutional problem - these broad-reaching GERs shouldn’t be required.</p>
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<p>Actually, they’ve mostly alluded to decreasing university requirements as a way of alleviating the stress on engineering majors in particular. When I spoke with Dean Julie about it, she it was likely the university requirements would be decreased.</p>
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<p>If you knew her, you’d know that would have been a disaster. She already absolutely despised - which is an understatement - taking CS 105.</p>
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<p>You’re right on that. I think that if the university wanted IHUM to be successful, they wouldn’t even consider pass/fail for it. Everyone knows that if you don’t care for a class and you aren’t going to put the effort in to do well, then you take it pass/fail. IHUM already struggles to get students to come to class (if you miss one section, the TF goes all Mr. Hyde on you, etc.) and go to lecture (they require ID terms to make sure students go to class, as well as those stupid clickers, etc.).</p>
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<p>Ah, so that explains why parents are just thrilled when their child tells them he/she is majoring in classics with their $55k. :p</p>
<p>Sorry Senior0991, it’s hard for me to take your points about intellectualism seriously, when you continually condemn the techie attitude toward fuzzies on campus. This backlash of yours in favor of the humanities is just as bad - and it isn’t just you with this attitude. “being intellectual involves a component of applying one’s academic knowledge to the public discourse”? As if techie students aren’t able to do that.</p>
<p>I think it’s safe to say that techies and fuzzies are both rather arrogant toward each other.</p>
<p>bluebayou,</p>
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<p>The question I was posing was a theoretical “why take these courses?” - questioning the basic assumption of a general education. Obviously I know that students have to take them because of the current requirements, and students are aware of the requirements when they enter Stanford.</p>
<p>Senior0991 is right that it’s mostly a nuisance. At the same time, I do think that eliminating them would add to general student happiness. Nobody likes to be force-fed.</p>
<p>The Ivy League is, in most respects, a shadow of its former self. The emphasis on the economic diversity of admitted students has sullied the purity of these once sacred institutions.</p>
<p>By way of illustration, I rate all people I meet on a scale of one to ten based seven categories of personal skill and acheivement. I assigned my son a composite score of 7.3 (inflated by an exceptionally strong hair score (thick, lustrous, and shiny)), and yet he is a viable Ivy candidate. I remember fondly the days when those scoring 9.4 on the Stats21 Scale were waitlist candidates.</p>
<p>Alas.</p>
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<p>Is that because post-secondary education has become more technical and specialized, or because primary and secondary education has degraded to the point that basic literacy (and therefore ability to read the various great works of literature, or articles and books about science or social studies, or even instruction manuals for common items) can no longer be expected?</p>