@bud123 (re post #11): Isn’t the development a wide range of individual skills and attributes – ranging from broad intellectual curiosity, to specific pre-career abilities, to vital understandings of the world and civilization, to ethics/integrity/character, to a love of learning, and MUCH more – *“the most important thing”/i all undergraduate education, at all institutions (from distinguished to mediocre), should provide to all students, thereby equipping the youngster with the fundamental success-elements necessary for a happy, successful, productive, and satisfying life?
I believe it is, and at the top of my list are those crucial educational elements are the “ethics, integrity and character” attributes. If a kid at an esteemed undergraduate school like Brown (and s/he has to be extremely talented and hard working to matriculate there) learns (through the university’s policies) to withdraw from difficult situations after committing to them and/or to structure his life’s challenges to remain within his or her comfort zone, I suggest s/he has been taught some VERY unfortunate lessons. That’s precisely what you laud about Brown pre-med (see your post #8) and I could not more strongly disagree. I’m not at all convinced that this “scholastic slight-of-hand” increases Med School admissions rates even marginally, but were it to do so, is the potential price paid in vital, lifelong character traits worth it? I’m very skeptical that it is.