My daughter just finished her first year at Amherst College. I thought that she would be sufficiently challenged there, but she has gotten straight A-'s all year, seemingly without much effort. The classes she’s taking aren’t necessarily easy. She took mostly history, English, French and Spanish classes. In her history and English classes, she told me she was able to do well by just skimming the readings and she felt like she didn’t have to do all the reading to do well. She also said she got nothing below an A- on any paper she wrote for her history or English classes and she wrote the essays fairly quickly and didn’t even read them even though they were 200 level classes. She wrote her 10 page English final in 4 hours. She also felt that the French classes were easy even though she was taking upper 200 and 300 level French. She took beginning Spanish but felt it was easy because it was just like French. I don’t want college to be easy for her. I feel like she needs to be challenged more if she’s going to learn something. Should I encourage her to transfer to a more difficult school? What even would be a more difficult school?
Grades don’t measure challenge.
Challenge is internal.
If someone can skim the surface and graduate with a degree and excellent grades, then they are turning themselves into a person who skims the surface and relies on external measures to define themselves.
What’s more difficult? Being authentic to your own internal standards of excellence, no matter how prestigious the school.
Doing your very best work. Engaging with the material. Going beyond the required reading. Exploring your intellectual passion. Using it to make a difference in the world.
Do that, and grades won’t matter any more.
lol at this post
I don’t know what it’s like in STEM majors, but for liberal arts, at the premier ~Georgetown University~ in our nation’s capital, getting an A- requires a standard effort - no more. No all-nighters, not even a quick spell check on your essays. The A- is the gold standard for the good student.
The A actually requires effort. I figure it’s the same at many schools. I think it’s called “grade inflation.”
Does your daughter feel she is not being challenged or is it just you?
I would be thrilled that my daughter/son was doing so well in college. Also consider these are lower division courses your daughter is taking, so it if they are too easy, I would expect A+'s without even attending classes.
To me it looks like she got a solid foundation in the HS for all her pre-req/GE courses she has taken so far and I would not jump the gun and start looking at transfer schools until she starts taking some upper division courses.
I agree with @stradmom that “grades don’t measure challenge”.
Be proud…
I would recommend that your D hold herself to a higher standard than getting good grades. She should try to read carefully and digest all of the assignments, give her maximum effort to papers etc. – that is how she can get the most out of her college education. In addition to classwork, your D might also look to challenge herself further by seeing if she can do research with a professor in an area of interest, getting involved on campus in leadership positions etc.
I didn’t get all A-'s, but I have to admit I skated through undergrad with very little effort (not at Amherst though).
It’s good to be concerned and you can nudge her, but at the end of the day what can you really do? I’m not sure if there’s anything my parents could have said to me to make me care more, other than pulling the financial rug out from under me and I don’t think they would do that for someone making OK grades.
Encourage her to push herself in harder classes, or a harder major, or perhaps going for a certification of some sort. How can she set herself apart as a liberal arts student? Those are the things I’d point her toward.
It sounds like she is very smart and is only taking courses that are directly in her wheelhouse.
Before you tell her to transfer, why not have her seek out more challenging classes or more challenge generally? For one thing, she might want to stop skimming and spend more time really delving into the subject matter she’s chosen to study. I agree with post #1.
Nor does the number of the class always tell the whole story. Surely there are student reviews that describe the difficulty of the classes, the expectations and amount of work expected, and how the professor teaches. Also, why not branch out into another area where she will be more challenged? Trust me, if she ventures into the world of STEM, she won’t be skimming.
It’s also really too early to tell. My daughter did not find her freshman year nearly as challenging as her sophomore year. She agrees with your daughter that language classes are not hard-though she said it did take a lot of work and time to complete the required work.
I also agree with the comment about A-s vs. As. There’s a big difference between the two, particularly in humanities classes. It’s not hard in many classes to get A-s with the sort of skimming and competent work you describe. But the A requires real excellence. My daughter commented while writing a paper this year that her prof was a hard grader and that she could sniff out BS in a second. She worked her tail off in that class!
Better A- than B+s ! The “good-but-not-good-enough-for-an-A-” message
Is she complaining about not being challenged or humble-bragging? For girls in particular, there can be social pressure to pretend you aren’t working as hard as you are. The analogy is the duck – the duck is gliding smoothly over the pond, but below the surface its feet are paddling madly.
Another thought is that maybe she’s choosing classes to protect her GPA. Maybe she’s avoiding math and science and asking around for the easy professors because she’s scared of not making A’s. Has she focused on a major yet or is she just exploring still?
There is another possibility: she may get a surprise in September. I know many students- both in my day, and in my collegekid’s current experience, who found first year pretty easy- and then fall of sophomore year, in higher level classes it suddenly got a lot more challenging. I have seen quite a lot of people come out of first year with some poor study habits and have to pull up their socks sharp-ish. It seems to happen most often with kids who were really college-ready (for me, some of my first year college classes were easier than my final year HS classes). who have taken really safe options in first year.
Amherst should have plenty of challenging course options for her.
There are all kinds of A grades. Some students meet grade standards with modest effort and others do more. If a student is enrolled in a class and attends and attend the brain good. Every class should have the potential for learning more than is required by reading about people mentioned in the text or class or really delving into the topic of a paper or whatever s else feeds the mind, heart or imagination. Read good books and carry one with you for idle times. Attend lectures. As are nice and make parents proud, but learning as much as you can is far more interesting, broadens width and depth of knowledge, spurs intellectual curiosity in a complicated world, and is simply fun to learn something new. If the current course load is too easy, add to the schedule with interesting classes or faculty. I don’t understand how someone wouldn’t push themselves to learn more…In terms of your tuition how much are you spending per A versus the A and tons of thinking as and doing and reading constantly which has been the core of education that preceded reading law. Finally, if enrolled in a non required class with an A that is mind numbing, drop it and take something different. College is a wonderful opportunity to learn and enjoy.
Another suggestion from my D’s experience at a different LAC – in a second semester freshman year class she found one elective class particularly fascinating and she took it upon herself to speak to the professor and arranged with him to do an additional research paper (20-30 pages or so) on a topic of interest to her. The professor was wonderful and spent time with her going over the paper, giving comments etc. It turned out to be a great way for her to get to know the prof. well, to hone her research and writing skills etc. If I remember right the professor arranged to give her credit for a 300 level class instead of a 200 level class – but that really didn’t make a difference to her – she just wanted to feed her own interest/curiosity. Starting the end of her sophomore year, my D started doing research work with professors in her major – she continued doing research until graduation and had an article published in a peer reviewed journal.
I feel confident that if your D is proactive I feel confident she can find ways to fully challenge herself at Amherst.
If she signs up for Chem, Calc, and Physics next semester, guessing it will be a different story. Am guessing she took all classes in her strongest subjects.
This.
Spanish 1 will be easy if you are good at French. And if you look at some grade distributions, it is possible she is in the bottom half of the course with an A-.
Whats her major my opinion on college is a very math/science based one lol.
Little is hard in school my wife “got” a 4.0 at Tulane while working full time and going to grad school and she is normal IQ.
Her major was not remotely math based give her some diff calculus she will plead the 5th and cry for mercy. If its not math/science I just dont think its very hard.
My opinion I know others differ.
I told my daughter that college offers opportunities to learn, that will not be available later in life so get everything you can out of it. It’s not about getting the A’s, though she does that. She reads everything assigned & adds more reading & research that she ferrets out of the prof or the librarians. She takes projects & papers further, even if she can’t turn in that amount of work. She goes to all office hours even some with profs that she is not currently studying with, to ask questions, learn, debate, etc. She spends time doing research, going to seminars, auditing interesting lectures. She seeks out unusual classes on things like Native American philosophy, exposing statistical fallacies, designing a planetarium show. She has a double major, one in the college of arts & sciences, one in the college of engineering. There is no limit to the learning that is available on her college campus.
In addition to the good advice received above, has she gotten involved on campus beyond her coursework and class time? College is about growing in a lot of different ways - in and out of the classroom.
You could advise her to shoot for Phi Beta Kappa. Amherst doesn’t have distribution requirements, but she won’t get PBK without STEM courses.
I think Amherst College will get progressively harder when she takes upper division classes. She could also load up and finish in three years,saving you a TON of money.