How did this thread turn into just a discussion of math??
@doschicos According to this thread, Math is one of the least regretted majors, but most abandoned. For me, an interesting discussion.
And @Data10 always has some great insight.
We had that discussion with DS19 before first semester started. There has been lots of talk in our neck of the woods (Ontario) about high school grade inflation and how the typical student can expect to see their marks drop by 10% or so in first year of university. We warned him not to be surprised if that happened to him so it wouldnât come as a shock. Fortunately it didnât turn out to be the case for him. Still in following an online forum for his school there were plenty of posts from despairing students after getting the results from their first mid-terms. There was a definite subset of students who were already ready to throw in the towel.
Whats your point?
^STEM grading can be another beast to deal with. Definitely some levels of deflation at some schools as well as competition with classmates for even a B grade.
Lots of college students will see lower grades than in high school. For example, the most selective colleges will spread A high school students across the A to B range in college. Colleges overall will spread A to B high school students across the A to C range in college.
This is quite likely why the majority of successful pre meds I know IRL went to a school where they were in the top 25% of incoming students. Such a GPA dependent future doesnât give much time to figure things out, both with deeper academics and their new college life. Itâs easier to succeed when oneâs foundation is solid compared to classroom peers. When it isnât, itâs common to assume they donât have what it takes and choose something else.
@BookLvr I believe the survey was meant for people in the job market, not university seniors. Iâm responding to your comment that they should use university resources instead of ziprecruiter.
It seems like the theme here is that more people are happy with their choice if it was something applied that led to good career options immediately after undergrad.
But yeah, I agree with the comments questioning the methodology. We really donât know the quality of the data.
Probably more like, if their career options were worse than they thought when choosing the major, they are more likely to have regret. Someone who chose a major associated with lower income career options may not regret it if s/he knew beforehand that fact and were ok with lower income, but may be more likely to regret it if s/he mistakenly believed that those career options were higher income and expected a higher income.
Perhaps another potential source of regret is choosing a narrowly focused pre-professional major* and then later finding out that the associated profession is not what one really wants to do (or has other undesirable characteristics that were not seen when choosing the major).
*e.g. computer game design (instead of computer science), sports management (instead of business), petroleum engineering, etc.
@ucbslumnus Those are all possibilities, but we canât see that with this data. It would definitely be interesting to know expectations vs. reality for those high-regret majors.
âChem 1A (General Chem) â B is most common grade (18% B, 16% A)â
The %ages I got including +/- were 30% As, 31% Bs, 23% Cs, which is a pretty good curve for this class, known as a pre-med weedout for freshmen.
âNot sure kids at many âgiant schoolsâ automatically get weeded out any more than at LAC type schools.â
Larger public schools do weed out more than LACs, but there are smaller, private colleges that also weed out, at least for the major - places like CMU, Columbia, JHU etcâŠ
Worth remembering the following:
[ul][]Absent longitudinal data, grade distributions tell you nothing about whether there has been grade in/deflation
[]Absent crazily detailed information on student inputs (information that the institutions themselves donât always have access to), grade distributions tell you nothing about the relative ease or difficulty of a course[/ul]
We have to assume that many students are weeded out during the withdrawal period (post 1st, 2nd exams and/or 3rd exams). At UMich, which Iâm more familiar with, the final exam was worth 40% of a studentâs total grade. So Iâd guess that if the other 60% of a studentâs grade is low in this class, then students drop and arenât included in the grade guides.
Course drop deadlines vary by college. Not all colleges allow drops just before the final exam.
Yep and thatâs why I wrote:
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Check your local listings. :lol:
FWIW, at UMich, you get about 3-ish weeks to withdraw without an approval. The last day to drop a class, with approval, is roughly a month-ish before the final. Thatâs why I assume you see very few Dâs and Fâs in these grade guides.
I believe for Chem 210 Organic Chem at UMich, you would have at least 2 exams in the record books, each 20%, so as a student you can withdraw with approval, knowing at least 40% of your grade, not sure about 60%.
This article is interesting and directly relates to comments posted several pages back. The comments are just as interesting as the piece itself.
Note that colleges with less selective student bodies and a smaller portion of students doing A quality work often give out far fewer Aâs than the selective colleges that have been referenced in this thread. For example, looking up the first Cal State that came up in a Google Search, I see that the most common was an F (or equivalent) among all 3 professors who taught their pre-med intro class. Fâs in pre-med intro chem are almost nonexistent at Stanford, are extremely rare at Berkeley (2.8% F) and Michigan (1% Es), yet are the most common grade at this Cal State.
This effect of %As increasing as a larger portion of the class is stellar students who do A quality work makes it difficult to say whether attending a more or less selective college is helpful in persisting with a STEM major and/or getting Aâs for pre-med. I think it largely depends on both the particular student and the particular class. Some students get pushed to new heights when surrounded by impressive peers and having opportunities for more rigorous classes. These same students may struggle or take on negative characteristics, if surrounded by and having group projects with less impressive students, many of which are doing F quality work. Other students do best as the big fish in the class, especially if the class is at a less rigorous pace that doesnât push their limits.
As I touched on earlier, different students also react differently to getting non-A grades. Some students immediately drop out of STEM and/or pre-med at the first sign of Bâs. Others study more, get help (office hours/tutoring), and improve on future exams.
Of course there will be more when the student body is already high to begin with. Thatâs just common sense. Few students who get 1500+ on the SAT are suddenly going to be doing âFâ work.
But generally a student with a 1200 on the SAT isnât going to be able to keep up with the 1500+ student in the pre-med required STEM classes at the beginning. Sometimes itâs due to ability. More often itâs due to a lack of foundation. The two students might be equally intelligent, but it wonât seem that way to the 1200 student who simply hasnât been taught as much in depth. They will feel theyâre not as capable since they donât know what âallâ the other students seem to know. Perhaps they will buckle down and learn twice as much to fit in and catch up, but more often theyâll start looking for other options in life.
Put the same student in classes with other 1000 score students and they will confidently feel theyâre in the race.
Put the 1500 student in with the 900 students and theyâll usually be bored. Whether they shine or not depends upon their personality. They may be the one getting the A, but theyâll often be wistful for more peers (at least in my experience from what Iâve seen).
Seems to me that a guaranteed way to regret a major is for a student to enroll on a course of study where they canât keep up, and then find themselves needing to change majors or even transfer colleges due to loss of scholarship money. Itâs hard to pull up an undergrad GPA when there are Dâs & Fâs on the transcript.
In other words, the world is full of students with humanities majors who are graduating with honors and all sorts of accolades who would have had very different undergrad experiences if they had chosen to major in math or chem. I donât think humanities majors are necessarily easier, but grades are more directly tied to effort and courses are rarely graded on a curve.
Oh no not the STEM v. HUM grading again. Lots of those math and chem students with high GPAs would graduate with much lower GPAs in a humanities major. Thats because some STEM students lack the critical thinking and writing skills to excel in humanities majors. Everyone has different strengths.