<p>It’s midterms season, so everyone here’s studying and cramming for exams. Recently, though, one test made me think about how the workload here has changed over the past ten, or even twenty-five years.</p>
<p>I’m friends with some recent and slightly less recent alums (think classes of '06-'12) and talked with them about the type of work they did while they were here. One of them was kind enough to give me his notes and the midterm from 2008 for a class I’m taking now, and after taking this year’s exam, it’s amazing to see how much of a difference there is in difficulty. </p>
<p>In CC, I think the econ dept (and to a lesser extent, pre-med and poli sci) have been the worst offenders in this regard - not so long ago, econ majors didn’t have to take Calc 3 and poli sci majors didn’t need stats, and the list of requirements just keeps getting longer. The major I’m planning on declaring had two classes added over the summer. So are today’s students just that much smarter, or is there something else at work here? Is this an attempt to combat grade inflation? (The administration hasn’t released annual GPA averages for some time now…)</p>
<p>This line of thought makes sense, what with the acceptance rate dropping. But the Core will always be the Core, and rather than decreasing the number of econ/poli sci/premeds (which I imagine is the intended effect), they’ve been steadily increasing despite these new hurdles to overcome.</p>
<p>Can anyone here share their experiences or thoughts on this? If I return to Columbia in 10 years, will pre-meds be taking topology?</p>