<p>Well, I guess I have a middle view on whether the bottom quartile gives “dumb cooties” to the top quartile: it depends. It depends on how the university does things. Like, if it has an honors college, how many honors courses are there? Are there general ed requirements that everybody has to take, without honors sections? Are there some majors without many honors kids in them? How does the “spread” affect extracurricular activities? If the honors students are segregated, how do the other students feel about that? While it’s true that upper-level courses in the major will exhibit a weeding-out effect, how much of an effect is there? How much will, say, an upper-level English course at Arizona State differ from an upper-level English course at Princeton? I think it’s hard to say.</p>
<p>“Well, I guess I have a middle view on whether the bottom quartile gives “dumb cooties” to the top quartile: it depends.”</p>
<p>It is extraordinary how you are posting excellent expressions of what I’m thinking before I do.</p>
<p>If you’re mixed with everyone in a freshman English class, then the preparation of the bottom 25% matters a lot. If you’re taking a senior tutorial in Sanskrit, or a big lecture survey class without discussion sections, then it doesn’t. Most courses and majors will be somewhere in the middle.</p>
<p>“I didn’t go to the Ivy League; I didn’t go to Stanford or UCLA. I’m a CPA who went to a state school, and I run the largest wealth management firm in the world.”</p>
<p>Call me arrogant or whatever, but…it’s PWM. No one cares about your credentials because you don’t need any undergrad ones 
When you see more public schoolers at an investment bank, PE fund, or hedge fund than Ivy League schools, do give me a knock.</p>
<p>As it is, I do think the whole ivy league thing ended a while ago. Stanford is a good school, Notre Dame’s MCOB is a good school, NW is a good school, JHU is a good school, and all can make claims to be equal to Ivy League schools in different ways (academic repute, employment salary, etc). But there’s a gap between the top and “not-so-top” schools that definitely exists, and kids who weren’t able to make the cut definitely have to work much harder than a Dartmouth kid who coasts into a BB internship during the fall internship period after sophomore summer or a Wharton kid who gets spoonfed BofA as a backup in case his grades suck.</p>
<p>Also, I’ve noticed people who seriously care about the ranking systems [outside of parents, of course, who are surely interested simply for the benefit of their kids ;)] are total weirdos. If you honestly think you have a significant edge as a Harvard undergrad than a Duke or Dartmouth undergrad when it comes to networking through Wall Street or OCR, then you’re probably going to work in PWM. The way I see it, 1-10 is a group of its own, to be admired for their well-roundedness and student happiness, and then 11-19 (stopping before vanderbilt) is equally well-suited for helping your career, but you won’t get spoonfed as much and everything.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why the assumption the Berkeley education is superior? If they’re able to transfer from a CC and still excel while in college, it seems to me they’re at least as well educated as the other students that are graduating. Heck, I imagine there’s a lot of students that would rather take 30-40 person classes at a CC than an enormous lecture at Berkeley. Might get a bit better instruction that way.</p>
<p>How do you feel a course taught by an adjunct or grad student compares to a course taught at a CC?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This would seem to make sense, and for me, it does make understanding what matters in a college difficult. If it is the faculty that is most important, as JHS seems to suggest, then Berkeley must be better than a mediocre community college, so the education must be better there. But if a smart student from a mediocre CC can do just as well at Berkeley as a student who started there from freshman year, then it doesn’t seem like the faculty really matters all that much. It comes back to that well-worn theory that “a smart student will do well anywhere.” So what would be the point of going to a “good” college at all?</p>
<p>The difference is that the CC only offers lower division courses, for which instructors capable of teaching are relatively common. Note that four year schools make extensive use of adjuncts and TAs to instruct lower division courses. Upper division courses at four year schools require instructors with more advanced knowledge who are less common. The offerings and content of upper division courses at four year schools tends to be more variable across schools than the offerings and content of lower division courses at four year schools and CCs.</p>
<p>Here’s something I honestly don’t understand and would like someone to explain to me, since we are not a STEM family. Let’s put aside the quality of the college and university education for a second. The top kids at our high school graduate having completed Calculus AB or BC, and AP Stat, since they took Algebra 1 and Geometry in middle school. Some students are even a year or two more advanced than that and do higher level math at the local university for junior and senior years. They are similarly advanced in physics and chemistry and biology, not to mention non-STEM subjects as well. Let’s suppose these top kids go off to study engineering at an elite school like Cornell, MIT, or Stanford. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, their high school classmates who took the normal math track of Algebra 1 in 9th grade and never made it to any AP math or sciences (since they weren’t eligible due to their normal math tracking) go off to the state school, also to study engineering. How is it possible the latter group can be engineers of the same caliber as the former? It is often stated on CC that engineering curricula vary less across institutions than do liberal arts curricula. So if that is the case, does that average kid need an extra year or two catch up in math and science to the high school val who also chose to attend the state school, or to catch up to the elite school kid? Does he take 5 or 6 years to earn the same degree the stronger student can earn in 4 years?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In practice, many universities have different levels of frosh English composition, based on the school’s own placement test (and/or AP test) scores.</p>
<p>For example, here is Arizona State’s English composition placement information:</p>
<p>[Placement</a> Information | Department of English](<a href=“http://english.clas.asu.edu/wp-placement]Placement”>http://english.clas.asu.edu/wp-placement)</p>
<p>A student may be place into:</p>
<ul>
<li>WAC 101 (remedial)</li>
<li>ENG 101 (normal first semester English composition)</li>
<li>ENG 105 (accelerated English composition equivalent to ENG 101 and 102)</li>
<li>ENG 102 (normal second semester English composition)</li>
<li>ENG 102H (honors second semester English composition)</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is this really true for non-STEM majors? (We are also not a STEM family). Are you saying that say, a Psychology professor who teaches Psyc 101 is generally not qualified to teach an upper level psyc course?</p>
<p>I don’t recall my kids being taught by any adjuncts or TAs (other than in discussion sections) in their lower-level courses. They were all full professors.</p>
<p>Re: #208</p>
<p>(Let’s assume same college, same major for this discussion.)</p>
<p>The student who takes calculus as a college frosh can complete an engineering major in four years, though it can be a tight fit for scheduling, and s/he may have few or no free electives.</p>
<p>The student who takes calculus in high school eases the schedule pressure and gains space for additional free electives in college, so s/he may take more engineering courses and/or more courses in other areas, or graduate early (or can be a relative slacker in college and take lighter course loads while still graduating on time).</p>
<p>Both will complete the minimum courses for their engineering degree, but the latter student could have taken additional courses in or out of his/her major. That can be a advantage in some situations, though not necessarily in all situations.</p>
<p>
The engineering math sequence provides mathematical tools for use in later courses. Calc I+II often serve a gatekeeping function as well, weeding out students with low abstract reasoning abilities or poor work ethic.</p>
<p>[MIT</a> - Civil Engineering (1C) Example Roadmap | Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, MIT](<a href=“http://cee.mit.edu/undergraduate/1C-roadmap]MIT”>http://cee.mit.edu/undergraduate/1C-roadmap)
I’m sure most MIT students have some background in calculus before arriving on campus, but the curriculum is not designed to require more than high school algebra and trigonometry as prerequisites.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not necessarily. However, there are a lot more people who can teach introductory psychology than can teach the various advanced courses. Even many high school teachers can teach introductory psychology (AP psychology).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The use of TAs for discussion sections associated with big lectures (instead of the LAC model of many sections of a small faculty led course) is a way for the research universities to use faculty sparingly on lower division courses, so that they can be used to teach more upper division courses and mentor graduate students.</p>
<p>“So if that is the case, does that average kid need an extra year or two catch up in math and science to the high school val who also chose to attend the state school, or to catch up to the elite school kid? Does he take 5 or 6 years to earn the same degree the stronger student can earn in 4 years”</p>
<p>Yes, bright but less fully prepared engineering students may well take longer to get the degree. On the other hand, someone who took linear algebra in high school, if he goes to a flagship, may end up with a master’s in his fourth year, or a lot of time for electives and honors research.</p>
<p>At Caltech, their intro physics and engineering courses assume that you can intuit any math you haven’t taken, and they’re generally correct. They’re going to get into the theory of regular college math right away. But that’s Caltech.</p>
<p>“However, there are a lot more people who can teach introductory psychology than can teach the various advanced courses.”</p>
<p>That’s true, although these things get pretty fuzzy in the humanities, and any field that isn’t sequential. There, it isn’t really about knowing the content – any book/painting/sonata you teach in college, you can teach in high school. The question is whether the instructor is capable of guiding advanced inquiry in the subject and evaluating the students’ original ideas. Knowledge of the current scholarly debates in the field comes into play, but any advanced undergrad should be capable of following those.</p>
<p>The biggest advantage I’ve felt class-wise for being at a top STEM type of school has been my classmates. Sure, I could have learned all the material I needed on my own if I went to an easier school, but having a program where everyone is highly motivated, intelligent, and willing to collaborate makes the program feel that much more worthwhile.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ll call you arrogant. These are all just jobs. No better. No worse. Some people like some of them better than others. That’s all. You seem to have this little self-referential world where OMG-everyone-just-drools-over-IB/PE/hedge fund mgt and not PWM. And I have to say – really? The only people who make those kinds of divisions are the kinds of people who are obsessed about faux prestige in their faux little worlds. In the real world - people just pick the jobs they like. The PWM people aren’t crying in their beer that they aren’t in IB/PE/hedge fund mgt. Honestly, the IB people I know are as nice as can be, and they don’t sit there thinking that everyone soooooo wants their jobs or anything.</p>
<p>^^^
I might drool over PWM if I knew what it was. I don’t suppose it stands for Pulse Width Modulation, which is what that acronym conjures up in my mind.</p>
<p>Private wealth management, if I’m decoding correctly. They don’t make as much as the hedgies or all the snot-nosed IB kids think they’re going to, but more of 'em have souls and fewer of 'em are on their third marriage.</p>
<p>^^which is why they don’t need an Ivy League degree? It takes that to lose your soul and have the stomachs for a 3rd marriage? ;)</p>
<p>So if one’s goal was to hobnob with snobs, where should they go?</p>
<p>This issue was raised before, but it was never settled.</p>