<p>Davidson is ranked one of the top schools at which to have a nervous breakdown. How true do you davidson students feel this to be? Especially the premed workload. I know it depends on a lot of factors, but do you constantly feel like you're overwhelmed? From what I've read it's beacuse davidson students are so involved in other things, but do you really think the workload is greater at Davidson than at other schools such as Wake or UNC?</p>
<p>Davidson has a tough workload. It's not as hard as a Harvard or a UPenn but it is tougher then many many schools.
One large factor that might lead to Davidson students having a breakdown is that the proffessors do not grade easily. For the effort we put in, we get much lower grades then we would other places. I'll just speak from experience, I don't really know about other colleges, but at schools simmilar to Davidson, Williams, and Middlebury, my friends have found the same deal, so you can't really escape this at the best SLACs. On the other hand, schools like Boston College, that have the same caliber students, gives out a lot of 3.9s etc.<br>
The other is the name recognition thing. Davidson just doesn't have it in the popular sense. Davidson does have it in the proffesional sense, and the graduate school sense, but not outside of NC in every day life sense like a Princeton would.
So lets say you are sitting at Davidson, the college you liked the most. Probably mom and dad wanted you to go to Harvard, but maybe you got waitlisted (fortunatly because you wanted Davidson right?) there so you chose Davidson and threw out that trashbag of college mail once and for all. Then, you have a bad semester at Davidson, everyone does. you could have been the biggest prestege magnet in the world at Harvard, and now you're struggleing at Davidson. Lets say you want to work in California when you graduate, you have a fair reason to be concerned that your employer won't appreciate your hard work here or your low but actually quite nice gpa. You might drive yourself into a rut thinking about these things and your work mind you. If we add breaking up with your girlfriend we can see there might be a problem.
Then you pull yourself together, you realize that it only takes one employer who knows about Davidson and you're all set because everyone, and I mean everyone, who has heard of it thinks extremely higihly of it. You realize grades aren't the end all be all of existance. You go outside and play some ultimate frisbee with some friends (you know each of them because Davidson isn't 10,000 kids). You go to your proffessor's ofice hours and they help you understand everything. You go eat at Commons or the Union and whatever you get tastes pretty good, certaintly not what you imagined cafteria food to be. You pick up your laundry before going to class. Your class is fasinating, it keeps your undivided attention for a good 80% of the time. You realize your proffessor is brilliant and you've actually learned something. Then you start to realize how fortunate you are to be at Davidson. You realize that you want to have a large workload, thats the point of going to a place like Davidson, but you also get all the other side benefits that makes Davidson speacial. A large workload makes you proud of what you accomplish each semester.
I don't know why I wrote this, basically lets just say that Davidson students have lives outside of academics, this shows that while academics are Davidson's strength, and while they are demanding at times, they aren't all consuming.
Just FYI I haven't done any work today so there are times when this happens. Well its high time I started my Linear Algebra.</p>
<p>My own D's impression is that it is a heavy load, but like orangelights, she feels she is learning a lot, which is at least part of the point of college. ;) I mean, you really do need to know some pretty deep org chem if you are going to be a doctor. You really do need to be able to read and absorb a great amount of written material if you are going to be a lawyer. Same with just about any intellectual profession. You can prep in college, or be like me when I went to college back in the Jurassic era--party your way through college, hope for the best in getting into professional school, and bust your butt catching up then.</p>
<p>Suggestion: Many of the Davidson profs have their syllabi and reading assignments posted. I'm sure that's true at the other colleges you're considering. Compare the amount of reading and the depth of subject matter, and you should get some idea of comparative workloads.</p>
<p>I'm a student at Davidson, and I haven't found the workload to be terribly overwhelming. We definitely work harder than most of my friends at UNC or Wake, but the workload is manageable. Professors have very high expectations, but most are very willing to work with you and help you in any way that they can. I'm a Bio major, not pre-med, but I'm in almost all of the same classes as the Pre-Med students. The hard part about the Pre-med track is that Davidson uses the intro Bio and Chem courses to weed out students who should not be pre-med. This makes for some very hard intro science classes, but allows Davidson to keep their extremely high acceptance rate to med school. In general, people here work alot, and often complain about the workload, but are really very happy and wouldn't go anywhere else. Some weeks or days it does feel overwhelming, but most of the time I feel like I have everything (almost!) under control and am truly learning an incredible amount with incredible professors. I hope this helps, and if anyone has questions, I'd be happy to answer them!</p>
<p>hehehe i love these posts. it gets me motivated and enthused for some hardcore workload lol... but once i get there the dream just breaks down :P</p>
<p>im soo excited
i just found out that i got in this sunday was sooo thrilled!
i just dont know about davidson's size and also the workload...
im used to working hard in school...and i go to a really small public school</p>
<p>Can you tell me anything about the theatre program? Does anyone pursue that interest after graduation?</p>
<p>Does any of you prepared a lot for college after accepted? I'm an international student and I'm wondering if I don't wanna be too overwhelmed, I'd better make some preparations in advance. Besides, I heard that there's a swimming test?</p>
<p>I don't think you need to prepare the summer before you come here. It's more important to come to Davidson fresh and full of positive spirit. There is a swimming test, but the only downside to failing it is that you would take swim lesssons as your water credit rather than a water elective of your choice (sailing, water polo, water ski etc). the water test is fairly easy, you swim one length of the pool and then tread water for 2 minutes. Well, hope this helps.</p>
<p>swimming test???? why the heck do we need to go through a swimming test</p>