<p>I don’t understand the point of deliberately constructing “weeder” classes, frankly. I’m not saying that classes should be dumbed down, not at all, but why try to actively discourage perfectly able kids from taking a class or proceeding further in the major by making it an unnecessarily onerous grind or curving it to death? What is the point?</p>
<p>I agree. With say maybe half the students being in top of their high school class go to schools like Dartmouth, you would expect most could do well in many classes that interest them. Chem was especially grueling…D loved the labs, did well and found it interesting, but when the average test grade is failing—what is the point of that? Waste of a class and discourage some good students from pursuing the sciences/math.</p>
<p>My S liked chem in HS, got a 5 on the AP exam, but he hasn’t taken chem at D. He thinks it is bogus to take the easier intro chem course, but the one he qualifies for because of his 5 is one of those notorious weeders. All they are doing is discouraging kids from exploring a subject that they might love. I’m not saying that they should offer “Physics for Poets” or “Rocks for Jocks,” but still…why should a kid who doesn’t intend to major in the subject and who doesn’t HAVE to take it because they are pre-med or whatever commit GPA suicide for one of these courses? Will they learn more because the curve is so ridiculous? No. </p>
<p>All of this sneering at humanities profs for not screwing kids to the wall grading-wise in intro courses is very short-sighted, IMHO.</p>
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<p>I recently attended a luncheon at a local UC campus and just happened to have a Chem Prof at my table. He was bemoaning the lack of students studying sciences, lack of URMS, lack of women, etc…and lack of money because their department would be larger if they had more students. </p>
<p>After his whining, I popped the question, well actually three questions: 1) why do the sciences purposely force lower grades than the rest of the Uni which, in essence, encourages competition and discourage collegiality (and kills gpas for law school wannabes)? 2) why are the lab classes sink holes for time, i.e., they only earn four credits as do hume/lit courses, but yet take forever just to compete a lab write up? Why not offer Rocks for Jocks, or Physics for Poets if you really want Lit majors to take a science course or two before they graduate? </p>
<p>He was dumbfounded, and just mumbled about the scientific method and discipline (snooze) and changed the subject…</p>
<p>I don’t think weeder classes are deliberately constructed to weed out students. A class need not be designed as a weeder to have that effect. My brother-in-law teaches freshman chemistry at a university where many of his students want to go into the pharmacy program. It’s hard to be lenient to students when asking, “would I want this person to be dispensing medicine to my children?” Providing honest feedback to students early on is in the students’ best interest. They are either able to prove their interest and aptitude in the area they wish to major or to find a different major more to their liking before they get too far along.</p>
<p>What you are describing, standrews, sounds like a reasonable course, not a “weeder” where, as bluebayou describes, grades are artificially forced down and so forth. If the course material is appropriately challenging and covers an appropriate amount of subject matter, and some kids–perhaps even many kids in some situations–who take it can’t cut it, that’s one thing. The idea that most freshmen at a school like D should be failing chem tests is pretty ridiculous, IMHO, because most of them are good and highly able students.</p>
<p>My H was an adjunct math prof at a local Catholic college where the pre-calc math class effectively functioned as a weeder for students who wanted to study subjects that eventually required calculus. This was a very different population of students. In the first place, they obviously had not taken four years of math in HS. Secondly, we’re talking a place where the average SAT per section is in the 400s. My observation was that most of them had no idea how to study. Despite the fact that the course was structured so that kids actually got credit for doing homework and attending class, and the detailed pre-exam review involved working through every single exact problem that would be on the final, just with different numbers (!), over 50% of the students who took this class flunked it every year. They were not only not very bright, they simply had no idea how to go through the routine steps of mastering a subject. For example, rather than actually working through the problems assigned as homework, most of them were obviously simply looking up the answers in the back of the book and transferring them to a piece of paper, showing no work. They never came to office hours, did not consult the student tutor provided by the school, and claimed–after the unbelievably detailed review I described above, that spoonfed the material on the final–that the final contained material they had never seen before! What that school really needed to do was add a placement test and a lower-level math class, but they preferred to continue to feed their grossly incompetent students into the meat grinder and collect tuition $$.</p>
<p>I don’t think you have a lot of people failing introductory chem courses at Dartmouth. The issue with a class like Chem 5 is it’s just a lot of work and time for a pretty average grade. It sounds to me like the issue, at least w.r.t. your son, Consolation, is that the Chem department doesn’t have many/any courses for people who don’t want that intensity but might be interested in taking a chem course or two for self-edification. Other than a tiny handful of classes (Math 5 for instance) in the math department, there’s a similar issue – you need one to three terms of calculus before you get access to the interesting classes. Those courses aren’t insanely hard, but they essentially function as weeders nonetheless.</p>
<p>St. Andrews:</p>
<p>Does your brother-in-law’s course have a mandatory curve? Can 50% of the students receive an A, similar to many hume/lit courses? Or, are the tests designed such that the mean is a ~70 (or worse)?</p>
<p>If so = weeder. It’s a distinction without a difference. Indeed, your BIL’s rationale is to reduce the number eligible for pharm school, so they won’t be dispensing medicine to him or his family. There is no such attempt in Lit/hume to reduce the number of students eligible for law school, for example, by forcing the mean to a C+.</p>
<p>WRT medical careers, the oft-dispensed advice is to go to an easier school for undergrad in order to rack up a high GPA. It is not always the brightest students who set their sights on such careers and get in. There is in reality quite a range…</p>
<p>What are the most popular and least popular majors?</p>
<p>[Let</a> me google that for you](<a href=“LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You”>LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You)</p>
<p>how did you do that that is crazy</p>
<p>Uh, ditto: How did you do that? That is awesome.</p>
<p>Here, [Let</a> me google that for you](<a href=“LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You”>LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You) too. :D</p>
<p>My son got a 90 on his first chem (6) exam but the median was 89. The prof is grading on a curve which brings his 90 down to a “B” Is this normal?</p>
<p>No. I seriously doubt that is what is happening. Although the median for Chem 6 is usually a B/B+, very rarely, if ever, will a professor curve the class down. The tests will get more difficult as the term progresses, so people will score lower, bringing the median down.</p>
<p>Thanks. He thought his grade was going to be lowered but maybe the median curve is just at the end after finals? Ok… a bit more reasonable.</p>