Did Emory Revamp their FA program? Or is the NPC effed up or misleading?

bernie12
Mon, 12 Oct 2015 21:35:38 +0000

@collegestu816 : But that is the Vandy model…I don’t think it would work for Emory. It would bias the admissions toward more standard high scorers/achievers. If we could simply offer a full scholarship to more of the same people we get now, then we’d be in better shape and the scores would increase as result. They can keep the standards the same, and simply invite more that meet the standard.

@CrispyBullet : Me and collegestu usually don’t see eye to eye on these sorts of things, but I do believe he has a point with the income bracket of pre-PhD science students when I think about it. The person I alluded to was a scholar but was also solidly middle income (maybe slightly lower). Most of my friends who are pursuing science PhD’s and hopefully myself in the near future are also in this middle bracket or lower (scholar or not…but actually many of them would have been near the standard scores of scholars). There are of course many exceptions. I know of one person, who for example at the last minute decided on science PhD despite coming from a family of doctors (needless to say her parents were initially displeased…until she went to Harvard for it that is). Also, some of the special components to Emory’s science curricula kind of waned after the recession, and usually students who are that into science actually take the curricula and special programmatic options into account. Me, Collegestu, and many folks the same age or slightly older than us came to Emory right before or slightly before the recession back when basically all science departments had honors classes or equivalents. Also, things like the INSPIRE program existed back then (I was in it and many students in it were scholars and most were scholar caliber). Emory is coming back in this area due to things like chemistry, but the what that will look like and its results remain to be seen or even revealed (I don’t think the chem. dept will release the new curriculum structure until maybe late this semester or in the spring). Also, nice that math stepped in and offered an honors course for freshmen (and taught by someone supposedly good). Idea is that to get these folks you must a) actively recruit them through various means (like through the scholars program and through straight up showing up at science competitions like some top schools do) and b) must have curricular options that specifically support those students. Right now and when I was there, departments like chemistry after 2010/11 offered too few electives. Biology was too biased toward “pre-med” sort of courses, physics and math were “very” poor in terms of course offerings and teaching quality. Needless to say, no one would want to engage with that sort of thing if they actually desire solid undergraduate training before graduate school.

Interestingly, one of my friends is at WashU for her neuroscience PhD and I was curious of the differences in their undergrad program (as she has of course TAed for several classes) and she notes how it is less biased toward a pre-health focus in that it offers more labs and research based courses. I noted to her that NBB has recently ramped up such course offerings (like a neurophysiology lab course, which is actually what she currently TA’s at WashU) and she noted that such offerings would have been much better for her when she was at Emory. However, the problem is, I’m sure such changes will go unmarketed by the NBB dept. Even physics is more effective in marketing to untapped sources (Now pre-meds. They for example, have a special brochure for the life sciences physics concentration) of talent/boosted enrollment.