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<p>Keep in mind that average GPAs can be skewed by, for instance, people dropping the class (or out of the school altogether for that matter) if they’re doing badly (so it wouldn’t affect their GPA), or by grades in out-of-major classes.</p>
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<p>The data is specifically for assigned grades in major classes. It’s not the GPA of graduating engineers.</p>
<p>And the data is from [theCampusBuddy</a> | Welcome to theCampusBuddy!](<a href=“http://www.thecampusbuddy.com%5DtheCampusBuddy”>http://www.thecampusbuddy.com)</p>
<p>would some universities curve more than others…a harder university would curve more right? And the harder the studies, will the separation between the smart students and the rest be enlargened?</p>
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Is therea site like this for PA schools?</p>
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<p>Well, in fairness, I think it should be said that denseness and cluelessness amongst engineering graduate students seems to be a rather universal trait, and not just one characteristic of those who did their undergrad at Stanford. For example, I know a girl who did her undergrad at ChemE at Berkeley (which is clearly not a ‘relaxed’ school) and then stayed at Berkeley to get her PhD in BioEngineering. She was once offered TA position for the Berkeley chemical engineering thermodynamics undergrad class because she had actually taken that class before, but she confessed that if she were to do so, she would first have to actually know that stuff. Trust me, nobody knew what the heck was going on in that class. Everybody was just glad that they passed. I am convinced that ChemE Thermo is a topic that only a tiny percentage of chemical engineers in the world actually truly understand. For example, to this day, I still don’t understand what the heck some of the Bridgman’s Equations and Maxwell Relations really mean, and I certainly couldn’t teach them to save my life.</p>
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<p>The major problem that I see is that many students don’t even get to the point where an engineering employer will consider hiring them simply because those students do so poorly that they don’t even graduate from engineering at all, either being forced to change majors to something easier, or in extreme cases, flunking out of the university entirely without even being given the chance to change majors. Such was the fate of some of the former engineering students I know who never even managed to graduate from their school with any degree at all. </p>
<p>But that probably won’t happen at Stanford and other relaxed schools, for like I said, it’s practically impossible to actually flunk out. At those schools, as long as you do the bare minimum of work, you will pass. Not with a good grade, but you will still pass.</p>
<p>Furthermore, in this thread, we have been talking about ‘rigor’ and ‘difficulty’ as if these are good things. I’m not so sure that they really are, for the sad truth is, engineering employers don’t really seem to care. For example, I am not aware of any evidence that Stanford engineering students are offered lower salaries than the students from more rigorous peer schools such as MIT or Caltech. Whether deservedly or not, Stanford engineering students are heavily recruited by many of the most desirable companies in the world.</p>
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<p>As a former grad student TA who busted my hump grading and holding extra review sessions for my students, as well as answering or researching their every question, <em>and</em> as a former engineering undergrad whose TAs had almost universally been wonderfully helpful, patient, and knowledgeable, I think this is a really unfair statement.</p>
<p>I’m sorry you seem to have had such lousy TAs, but painting all engineering grad students with one highly derogatory brush is not something that I would preface with the phrase “in fairness.”</p>
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<p>Uh, if you read my post carefully, I wasn’t so much making a derogatory comment about TA’s, but more of a comment of the sheer obscurity and opaqueness of certain engineering courses. Trust me - almost everybody, including the TA’s didn’t really understand ChemE Thermo, and I am convinced that that’s simply because that topic is something that only a tiny percentage of ChemE’s in the world truly understand. Everybody was dense and clueness with regard to that topic. </p>
<p>As a specific case in point, I distinctly remember the final review session in which one student asked the grad student TA how to do certain questions on old final exams, and that TA - who later placed as an assistant prof at another prominent ChemE department - freely admitted that he had no idea how to even start answering those questions until he had seen the answers. I think that serves a simple testament to the sheer difficulty of the exams of that particular course.</p>
<p>But in any case, if you still want to dispute this point, then I would just posit this question to the other ChemE’s out there: do any of you actually understand what some of the more obscure Bridgman’s Equations, i.e. the nonlinear equations, actually mean? I am saying that not just in terms of writing the equation down, but in actually being to explain those equations in plain English what they all actually mean? Or consider fugacity - how many chemical engineers can say that they really feel that they truly understand what the fugacity equations really mean?</p>
<p>Maybe that’s indicative of a limitation of my competence, but I would simply say that not only did I not know what the heck what was going on, neither did practically all of the other students, nor did even the TA’s. It’s one of those courses in which you just feel lucky to have passed and you don’t feel that you actually know anything once it’s over. All you can do is pray that you are “less clueless” than the others so that you don’t fail the curve.</p>