<p>What can you tell me about the workload at Williams? I keep hearing that it is very intense. How does one manage that if you are an athlete? Since 40% or the students are varsity athletes I know it must be possible, but with traveling and all, how do folks keep up?</p>
<p>I don't know how helpful this advice will be to you, but the workload obviously depends on what courses you take. Trust me, it is entirely possible to take a course schedule for all four years that will let you coast. On the other hand, it is also possible to choose courses that will consume your life and leave virtually no time for extracurricular activities or sports. Most Williams students fall somewhere in between. As a rule of thumb, though, I would say that courses in the hard sciences have the heaviest workloads (hours in the lab, lab reports, etc.). That's not to say the sciences are necessarily harder, though. And there certainly classes in the social sciences that can take many hours a week (e.g. certain unnamed history professors assign insane amounts of reading for every class).</p>
<p>Thanks crnchycereal...that does help. Do the profs take into consideration the time you are away from campus if you travel for sports or are you on your own to figure out how get everything covered? Just stay away from the insane profs I guess...</p>
<p>insane profs are sometimes the best profs..so dont stay away from some profs just because they are hard. Profs dont take into consideration the time you are away from campus for sports etc. You are expected to do all the work and attend all the classes. No special privilege is given to student athletes. </p>
<p>Williams is extremely hard but the students dont have the collective whining mentality like students from certain schools. The thing is ..it's fairly easy to get a B/B+ but incredibly hard to get an A, especially in english, polisci, philosophy courses etc.</p>
<p>Well... most profs are pretty generous with extensions, so if you need extra time on a paper because you were away for a game, they'll probably be cool with that. But don't expect them to lower their standards for the finished result.</p>
<p>Wow, did my post on not working much get deleted? Ha, funny...</p>
<p>But yeah, extensions are pretty easy to get if you have a valid excuse. Or so I've been told, I've never actually tried.</p>
<p>As you will see from the link below, at least up until 2001 (and probably continuing), as Williams became more athletic, it experienced among the highest rates of growth in grade inflation of U.S. colleges and universities. This doesn't mean you will coast, but it does mean that the college has built in athletics to its grade (and probably workload) expectations.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/</a></p>
<p>Uh, mini ... that link shows Williams having an fairly average rate of grade inflation over the last 40 years, just barely above the trend line, and in fact slightly lower than average in recent years. Since the rate is consistent with other, less-athletic schools, there's no reason to conclude that athletics have much of anything to do with Williams grade inflation.</p>
<p>In any case, grade inflation isn't really relevant to workload, because it also inflates expectations. Sure, an athlete (or anyone else so inclined) can sign up for a humanities course, rarely go to class, never do the reading, turn in nonsensical papers that they wrote in the hour before they were due, and probably still pull a D or even a C if they're somewhat intelligent. But a C isn't really a respectable grade at Williams anymore. Because the average GPA is essentially a B+, even average students have B+ GPAs. C's have fallen off the bottom of the bell curve: B, B+, A-, and A have become the new D, C, B, and A. And getting a B+/A-/A still requires a lot of work.</p>
<p>Why doesn't mini like athletes now? I just kind of get that vibe from alot of his (or her) posts around here...</p>
<p>And, if you look at that graph you provided, we don't have one of "the highest rates of growth in grade inflation of U.S. colleges and universities." Extrapolate lots of those figures around 10 or so years out to 40+, and we're be doing pretty decent.</p>
<p>Even if that was the case, do you have any way to back up your assertion that athletics is the cause of grade inflation at Williams?</p>
<p>I am not suggesting AT ALL that athletics are a "cause of grade inflation". I am saying that the campus has accommodated itself to having a lot of athletes. If you are there, you know it from scheduling practices. </p>
<p>And I see that as a GOOD thing, not a bad one. If a college chooses to have a very high percentage of athletes, and a very high athletic participation rate, it SHOULD accommodate to having them.</p>
<p>"If you are there, you know it from scheduling practices."</p>
<p>If you were actually there, you would know that, with the Division of the Day, no official practices are held until after the end of classes. If students have no afternoon classes and choose to work out themselves, that is their choice.</p>
<p>"Why doesn't mini like athletes now?"</p>
<p>Mini has never been particularly fond of athletes at Williams especially, most likely because he obviously was/is not one (maybe he was stuffed into a locker or some such when he was younger).</p>
<p>Regarding the information on grade inflation, page 5 of the report mini links to clearly shows that Williams is in the bottom half as far as "GPA Change per Decade" is concerned, with schools such as Duke, Harvey Mudd, Kenyon, NC, N Iowa, Northwestern, Ohio U, UW LaCrosse, Miami, and Texas all experiencing higher rates of grade inflation than Williams according to GPAs.</p>
<p>Athlete or no athlete, Williams is hard. Professors are understanding when it comes to extending deadlines, and other things like that, but you don't get a more lenient grading. Whatever you do here, you learn to manage your time efficiently. Sports is not the only thing. I have friends who are in 5 different ensembles and still take demanding classes.
Believe me, A's are hard to get here. You've got to work for them.</p>
<p>Agree, Williams is hard. If you want to keep your GPA in the cum laude range you're going to have to put in some serious hours. A's, even A-'s are scant, especially among first years. The difference between a B+ and an A- may be arbitrary but the B+ is more readily given. The curve does get flatter as you move up in years and into more advanced classes in your major. On the otherhand, B or B- is reasonably easy to achieve.</p>
<p>Williams kids are doers outside the classroom. They may be athletes, they may be artists, musicians, actors, leaders -- or some combination of two or three -- but they almost all are heavily invested in extracurriculars of some sort. Time management can be stressful at first, but most kids learn to give priority to what matters most to them.</p>
<p>Grading also depends on on the type of classes you take. Most profs don't routinely give grades below C's on papers, but tests and problem sets can go all the way down to 0. So humanities classes are easier to pass, but usually really hard to get A's in, while science classes are much easier to get A's in (just do well on the tests) but also more dangerous if you screw up.</p>
<p>Champion,
Realize that your team mates are in the same boat as you regarding practices, travel, and studying. Its not easy, but you should have a pretty good support group to help you stay organized and focused to get everything done.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>If you're taking any writing/reading intensive classes this fall, it might be a good thing to email your professor for recommended reading over the summer. That will show your professor you're strongly interested [and it may help you in if it's a difficult class to get into] and also give you a leg up on the readings. I've done that for my HIST 148 class, and now, I've got a lot of good reading to do over the summer.</p>
<p>Last fall, I signed up for RLFR 111 2 weeks late, and I just couldn't keep up with the reading, besides, it was too much for me to handle over the semester, so I switched to 105.</p>
<p>Keeping up with the workload becomes less of a big deal as you learn to figure out how best to manage your time and activities. For me, I only got better during my second semester. Looking back, I realize I didn't have that much work during the first semester but I complained a lot. First semester will probably end up being my easiest at Williams! And I had freshman friends who took 5 classes in the spring.</p>
<p>Starting problem sets on time helps [I started doing mine the day I got them], and just speeding up on things in general. I realized no matter how good you are, if you're not reasonably quick at it, you won't a good reward for your efforts. This was especially true in art, where you had to meet seemingly impossible deadlines or "face serious consequences for your grade" as the prof put it. Some of mates jokingly said she treated us like that was the only class we were taking for the semester. And there's a ring of truth to that. Of all the professors I've had so far, it was only my music prof [too bad he was visiting] who was sympathetic to our other class commitments, although that didn't diminish the load in any way.</p>
<p>Anyone know what the cutoff for cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude have been in recent years?</p>