MIT: The AP Under Fire

[molliebatmit]

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@sax

So if I understand correctly students at MIT will be required to take a more “varied” (required) curriculum at the same time as having to take more introductory classes with most of the AP’s not counting. The end result would seem to be less credits available during the 4 years to take what you want and less credits available to take more advanced classes in areas that you are interested in.

There are actually going to be fewer required classes if the recommendations are implemented – there are currently seventeen required courses (9 science and 8 humanities), and the recommendations call for sixteen required courses (8 science and 8 humanities).</p>

<p>The MIT graduation requirements are currently set up to allow a student who comes in with no AP credit to graduate in four years taking the standard number of classes. (That is to say, there are seventeen required courses, and thirty-two are required for graduation; a student with no AP credit can take four classes per term for eight terms and graduate on time.) </p>

<p>So the new scheme actually allows room for one more elective explicitly, and in theory would allow for even more than that – the introductory EECS class, for example, will probably be on the list for Computation and Engineering. It was previously not a mandatory course; many students, therefore, will be able to count a course they would have taken anyway toward the graduation requirements when they would not have been able to do so before.</p>

<p>What I find most troubling about this proposal:

1. It’s geared toward the engineers at MIT to the detriment of the scientists. As a biology major, I wouldn’t have wanted to take a class from either of the “Computation and Engineering” or “Project-Based Experience” categories, and of course all the engineers will now think they’re too good to take an intro biology class.
2. All freshmen will now be required to take a “freshman experience” humanities course, which I think is ridiculous and counterproductive. As the system works now, a freshman’s humanities course is the only one in which he or she is in class with students from all four years; I learned a lot from the seniors in my humanities classes when I was a freshman. I would not have wanted to be stuck in some hokey freshmen-only course, not for all the money in the world.</p>