Transferring out of CMU

[ucbalumnus]

@tsbna44

Final result this semester. 2 A+, A, 2 B- including a class he thought he’d fail. He had one B in all of HS yet has had Cs and B minus in college, not to mention dropped courses.

Realize that when high school A and B students go to college, they get spread across the A, B, C range in college. So it should not be a surprise that many students have lower college GPAs than high school GPAs.

[ucbalumnus]

@seniorparent2021

Unfortunately, the 10-12 hours of work does not include classes which is why so many kids stay up so late.

CMU requires 360 units to graduate, or an average of 45 units per semester. This means the following:

• 3 CMU units = 1 semester hour at colleges that require 120 semester hours to graduate (average of 15 per semester).
• 1 CMU unit of semester course = 1 hour of work per week (nominally), based on 1 semester hour = 3 hours of work per week (nominally). So a typical semester course load of 45 units should nominally mean 45 hours of work per week.

Now, if a typical course load means substantially more than 45 hours of work per week, every week, even for students with good time management and not taking a schedule with all high workload courses*, that suggests that CMU is generally underrating the workload in assigning credit unit values.

*High workload courses would be those with labs, computer programming assignments, art studio, music performance, or large term projects.

[artstudent2023]

People seem to be content to discuss a “high stress” culture as part of the deal when going to a place as “high caliber” as CMU. What your are all overlooking is that it is not the academics that are the true source of this stress.

The faculty at CMU are abusive

They do this on purpose. They psychologically abuse and physically exhaust young people because these comments above enable that type of abusive culture. It is not necessary, and does not help anyone in the long run. Finishing university mentally and physically broken does not prepare you to succeed. Many students (who are not discussed here on this chat) commit suicide- multiple suicides during my time at CMU- because the faculty and the administration destroy them. The university doesn’t pay for lighting, for facilities to be maintained- your children end up in rat infested dim basements without any positive role models. No wonder they break down.

Stop supporting these dangerous practices in higher education. It’s not acceptable!