not for long.
If by “ulterior movie” you mean considering motives other than just getting the highest possible grades during college, then yes holistic admission does have “ulterior motives.” In the previously referenced Rivera study, she found “elite” firm employers generally wanted to hire similar persons who fit in well with the cultural – a group that mostly had a similar background. Holistic, highly selective colleges take steps to avoid this and instead want a diverse class of individuals with a wide variety of interests and experiences who will make the college a better place while attending and hopefully the world a better place after graduating. They don’t just want students who spend all of their time studying and get top grades/scores, but don’t do much else. Considering non-stat criteria like course rigor, LORs, essays, and out of classroom activities assists in these goals. MIT describes this well in their summary of the most important admission criteria at http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match – talking about having a collaborative/cooperative spirit, creativity, initiative and risk taking, etc. It’s not a big conspiracy where everyone knows that it’s best to focus on scores above all else, but does not. Instead they are up front about their goals and motivations, and it seems to be working for many highly selective colleges, as they continue to have such policies.
You do this in almost every thread. When you cannot adequately dispute via research or numbers, then the dispute relates to something personal about me – my political position, me being an engineer, me not being a “holistic” thinker like you, me not being a “global” thinker like you. , etc. Have you considered that it might instead relate to your personal biases? How many of your threads relate to something about emphasizing IQ or scores? It’s all of them I can recall seeing.
Eliminating the bell curve while simultaneously keeping the test difficult enough to measure mastery doesn’t pass on students who can’t handle harder courses, why on earth would it?
Because in some cases…especially in intro classes making the exam difficult enough to truly measure mastery in a STEM course would mean the vast majority/everyone would completely flunk out due to inadequate STEM foundational preparation during US K-12. And this isn’t only at directional publics or private schools with similar easier admissions, but also respectable/elite Us. Have a relative and a friend who attended the same college(Tufts) in the early '80s and early-mid '90s who both recalled flunkout rates* of as high as 60% and witnessing the Prof and department heads bluntly telling the flunked students to strongly consider switching majors as staying in the department would require them to retake the entire year-long intro course over and passing it with around a C/C- or better for it to count for major credit.
In other cases where this doesn’t apply, some Profs…especially old-school ones want a way to differentiate the genuine top performers/geniuses from the above-average students…especially those who struggled to get to above-average to maintain positive reputation with elite graduate/professional departments/schools and highly selective STEM employers.
*Talking D and F level grades…not Bs or C-s.
You are now saying the point of a bell curve is to pass students who wouldn’t be able to pass a regular exam because of k-12 prep? That also makes no sense to me and is the complete opposite of the idea of weeding it those who can’t handle the material. If the material is taught well and the students work hard and are intelligent enough to get it, they should do well. This might be one of them or 90% of them, why does it matter?
Why not figure out who doesn’t have the proper prep and give it to them before they take the weeder courses? If it’s not a matter of innate intelligence, but just a lousy K-12 experience, why not address that?
Lots of colleges do. For example, mandatory or advisory placement testing is often required before taking an entry-level math course in college. Of course, this is often a shock to students and parents when, for example, a student who always got A grades in high school math (in retrospect poor quality high school math courses) with intent to major in some kind of engineering gets a placement test result that requires or recommends him/her to start in precalculus or lower, almost assuring that s/he will need one or more extra semesters to complete the engineering major that normally expects students to start in calculus 1 or higher.
Great. What the heck does that have to do with designing a test so that a specific number of students fail it, regardless of their preparation or mastery of the material?
I read the title of this thread, and never really opened it because it seemed obvious. I assumed it would die quickly. Like starting a thread announcing that 50% of college students are below average. Okay, right. What is to discuss?
Very amused that now it is almost 350 posts and still going strong. Lol
One possible reason is some Profs hold to the idea that it’s not their job nor the job of 4-year colleges to provide remediation in areas which should have been taken care of during K-12.
Many educational systems in other parts of the world tend to accord more with this line of thinking.
For instance, students placed on vocational tracks in Germany who later want to attend a 4-year German college need to attend remedial institutions completely separate from the colleges specifically geared to that purpose in order to gain eligibility to apply to those colleges. Until recently, the same was the case in the ROC(Taiwan). Unless things have changed, taking remedial courses in college isn’t possible nor would most Profs nor many in such societies feel that’d be the appropriate place for it.
However, most 4-year colleges do offer remedial courses. Examples:
https://www.math.princeton.edu/undergraduate/course/mat100/
http://catalog.williams.edu/catalog.php?strm=1161&subj=MATH&cn=102&sctn=01&crsid=019206
Also, some other colleges like Harvard and Oberlin offer a two semester version of calculus 1 that includes review of precalculus (hiding the remedial course work in the extended length calculus 1 course).
In the case of Oberlin, that’s interesting as unless things have changed…one can complete the quantitative proficiency requirement without having to take calc 1 or higher level math. Here’s some of the following ways one can fulfill that requirement:.
Take one quantitative full or two quantitative half courses content in the natural or social sciences…such as 1 intro CS classes for majors or a couple of social science courses or science courses with some use of quantitative modeling
Taking statistics.
Wasn’t an issue for me as I completed calculus, took 3 intro CS classes for majors, and took a summer stats course at an elite U for fun.
Then again, one had similar flexibility regarding fulfilling the writing proficiency requirement. One can complete it by opting to write a longer research paper in certain intro/intermediate humanities/social science classes and having the Prof scrutinize it more for writing proficiency along with content. You do need to do that for two humanities/social science courses to fulfill the requirement.
When we started looking at engineering schools in the early zips, we noticed that several schools were concerned about engineering attrition rates and had started to provide catch-up programs, often starting the summer before freshman year. If placement tests are taken in the spring before entry, a student can take pre-calc over the summer and remain on track to complete a STEM degree in four years.
Other schools offered a two semester class covering calc 1 through 3 designed for students who had gotten a 5 on the calc AB exam, in order to catch up with increasing numbers of students entering college with calc BC and beyond.
Sometimes it is not that the k-12 experience wasn’t good, just that other students have entered with a better background or had an easier adjustment to college life. Especially if schools are not awarding credit or advanced placement for students who have taken AP classes, a student without this type of background will generally have a more difficult workload. Even students with a good background can have difficulties adjusting to large lecture classes, multiple choice tests, delayed or erratic feed-back, unavailable or sometimes clueless TA’s,misinformed peers in study groups, etc.
This can become a problem if the class is curved, or the instructor is not addressing problems encountered by beginners but is focusing primarily on the needs of the best prepared students, in what is advertised as a beginning class. Or if a student does not realize that they will need to access the tutoring center or learn the fundamentals from online tutorials until it is mid-semester or later.
As @cobrat points out, this problem is not unique to engineering classes, and students can generally fulfill a number of requirements at a variety of levels. I think that part of the issue that arises in engineering specifically is that the number of required classes means that there is less room to balance a schedule.
@Data10 I don’t live or work in the US and nor does my children. I can afford to be impartial to this whole issue. You on the other hand can not. I don’t have the motive, means, or opportunity but you do, if you want to pass privilege down to the next generation.
My main point in this thread is simply this: If grading is all over the place, varying from school to school and from major to major, then a standardized exit exam would solve the problem nicely. (At the very least, it would reduce the feeding frenzy that is college admission, and may even allow students to focus on what they really want to study if employers warm to the idea). The others are side issues that I was dragged into by the lines of questioning from fellow posters.
I find this talk of bias a bit surreal. Aren’t you the one that, in a previous thread, misrepresent the Duke data and presented it as fact, until another poster corrected you? (I did not comment at the time because I did not want to be accused of piling on). To me, that was extreme bias. If you deliberately misinterpreted the data, that would not be cricket; if you did so unconsciously, it shows an inability to maintain objectivity in the presence of evidence that goes against you. I notice you do that a lot. If you don’t like the result, then the study is too old, or the stat is not good. Without going into details, I can say that there are new studies that show the same thing over and over again, and that meta-analyses have shown consistent results as well. (Look at Kuncel’s talk and the Slate article again). You simply choose not to see it, which of course is your prerogative.
I am sure you will want to get the last word in, but for me, I will dismiss myself for a while to allow other posters to get their say. Reading between the lines, I can tell they are getting tired of our antics.
Looks like Oberlin requires two QFR courses. Calculus is not required, though it counts as such a course:
http://catalog.oberlin.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=32&poid=3926&returnto=717&print
However, students who want or need to take calculus 1 have the option of taking it over two semesters with review of algebra and trigonometry (MATH 131-132) instead of the usual one semester (MATH 133). That the two semester option with review of algebra and trigonometry exists indicates that there are some students who need remedial math work in order to take calculus 1, which is the usual starting point for college level math.
Are you serious? A top score of 94% means one or more of those things? C’mon—a 94% is quite excellent, and on a test where there’s lots of important but easy-to-get-wrong detail, that seems an utterly reasonable result.
If you expect multiple 100%s just by virtue of a test being given, you’re in a weird world.
Most large test populations will fall onto the Bell curve naturally, which is why it is used for statistically analysis in many, many fields.
Also, a good test has a variety of problem difficulties, from easy to medium to hard. So very few students will get the hard problems (or all of them), so they become the As. Many get a majority of the medium, many get only the easy and a few mediums, etc.
So whether you think the SAT is a good test or not, it fits really nicely on a Bell curve if I have to guess (self-selection of student populations may really remove the lower D/F SAT=400 tail).
If a teacher has taught a class twice, odds are they put together a group of tests that will yield a good differentiation between the As, the Bs and the Cs. It is surprising to anyone who teaches, but the same distribution seems to come in year after year, between the hard working, the smart, the lazy, the confused, the ill-prepared. I would never curve a student with good mastery of the hard problems to say a B, just to keep some 25/50/25 distribution.
On the other hand, if I can’t select a high enough performing population to get say 40%As, 40%B, 15%C, 5% D/F, I may have a weed out class.
Are we really looking to do the “feel good” everyone gets a trophy or an A here? I think the A students show mastery of the hard problems and their capability to take on harder tasks like grad school or the more academic parts of say engineering (not Excel tracking of parts, but designing a complex part and analyzing it in a complex environment). The C students should either step up their game, even in midterm, or look for either a major that is easier or a job that does not require complete mastery, or maybe more important the ability to learn quickly and do something with minimal explanation and with some good creativity, and of course, also a good work ethic.
I won’t hire lazy people because I think they will be better programmers, but everyone can pick their own team. Some people with lower energy levels make good programmers or analysts because they can tolerate 8 hours of coding or analysis without roaming the halls in search of anyone to talk to. No one typically has 100% prima donna A graduate of MIT work either (someone still has to track those parts in Excel) or wants to deal with all of them coming in wanting harder more scarce assignments.
Using the two variable idea, you can come up with 4 types of people: smart and hardworking, smart and lazy, stupid and hard working, stupid and lazy. Obviously smart and hard working is the best, smart and lazy is OK if you can get them to do something (which is surprisingly hard), next I would pick stupid and lazy since I can solve that with the circular file and a later layoff, but stupid and hardworking … really scary. You don’t want anyone producing anything from code to design to Excel spreadsheets tracking parts with lots of errors in large volume.
PS - Precalc for an aspiring engineer is not an insult if that is what they are getting on their incoming test, it is a blessing. Back in the day, only private schools had freshman testing and way fewer people took Calc in high school, so it was just attrition of the masses in freshman calc even at a flagship. I would be very surprised if a summer class at a community college near home can’t catch you up, or if there is no way to graduate in 4.5 years … Obviously the best time to take this, if you aren’t a math genius or coming out of a top high school is summer before freshman year.
PPS - Engineering graduation in 4 years has always been much less than 100% … and will never be close to 100% … the C students will need 4.5-5-6. If you are not a top student, plan ahead financially and manage your expectations. The alternative is to get kicked out of engineering with a poor GPA that looks funny for some easier majors where everyone has a 3.0 or higher. Possibly the large number of people taking Calc in high school is helping, that is one class down (leaving Physics as the next big hurdle).
Re #356 and precalculus for engineering frosh
Agree that summer between high school and frosh year is the best time if this is needed (although it really should not since precalculus is supposed to be taught in high school). But most colleges only do placement testing too late to sign up for a summer course. Better would be for admission letters in April to include placement test pointers, with recommendation for summer courses if needed.
Re #356 and stupid and hard working
Heard that as a joke about army recruitment, though it could apply to other employers.
Exactly - why would anyone do that, unless capacity was so limited that even good students had to be weeded out?
This is what no one seems to be able to explain.
I think that’s a reference to this German Army General:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord