<p>It seems as if so many ppl are interested in Plan 2 and I don’t understand why? I checked on there website and i could get in but I don’t really understand why someone would want to major in Plan 2, what are the benefits?</p>
<p>I’m going to be a Plan II Major this Fall while working on a track towards Business. </p>
<p>Plan II allows you a strong foundation in the liberal arts and hard sciences- a perfect combination to learn, literally, anything under the sun. You’ll get a full exposure to the arts and the sciences. Often, Plan II grads go on to the top law and medical schools because of the intensive interdisciplinary curriculum. Essentially, Plan II is “learning for knowledge’s sake.”</p>
<p>Also valuable is the fact that Plan II is highly regarded as on par with the top notch private universities (and some even equate it to close to an Ivy League education) for a bargain price. You won’t find the great price and solid education anywhere else (barring scholarships, fin aid, etc., naturally). </p>
<p>Finally, in addition to the resources of an enormous research university, Plan II students also have a close bond with each other and their professors as each class is strictly limited to roughly 180 students.</p>
<p>Your question seems rather flawed…</p>
<p>why WOULDN’T you want to major in Plan II.</p>
<p>You are getting an Ivy-league caliber education at a public school price. You are offered the resources of one of the largest and most well-respected universities in the world, not to mention most well endowed. You get to be a part of a special group of kids and teachers. You get opportunities not offered to the normal UT student. PLUS you get the social environment of UT and Austin!</p>
<p>I don’t know many other programs that offer FRESHMEN the chance to take a course that is actually being TAUGHT by a Nobel Laureate!</p>
<p>“Often, Plan II grads go on to the top law and medical schools because of the intensive interdisciplinary curriculum. Essentially, Plan II is ‘learning for knowledge’s sake.’”</p>
<p>Hmm…perhaps that and the intense grade inflation…</p>
<p>I have not heard of Plan II having grade inflation…most of the kids in Plan II actually work hard to get good grades, so you don’t see so many Cs and Ds and Fs.</p>
<p>Many teachers require work to be redone until it is at an A or B standard. So the students will make good grades if they work hard and turn all their assignments in at the requisite standard.</p>
<p>Because Plan II is a major, if you are planning on a different major and the major you are planning on has a recommendation for a year abroad, you would need to fit in all the requirements for both majors (to get a double major) in three years in order to graduate in four years.</p>
<p>“most of the kids in Plan II actually work hard to get good grades, so you don’t see so many Cs and Ds and Fs”</p>
<p>You are right in the fact that Plan II students work extremely hard. However, there is an increasing disconnect (especially at such a high level) between extremely smart students who work really hard and students who make As in college. For example, in TC310 (modes of reasoning), the class is a very difficult one where that material, especially toward the end becomes very challenging; nevertheless, students who work hard but still have not fully mastered the material still end up with As. On the other hand, classes such as EE411 (circuit theory), the class average for a given test is 55 (the lowest being a 12 and the highest being a 100) and the score you’re given is what you get. You can be sure that students in both classes study extremely hard to get what they got. But which is more fair? Engineering grad school isn’t necessarily as dependent upon GPA as law or med school certainly. But the fact can’t be ignored that Plan II students sometimes receive grades where a considerable amount of subjectivity is involved.</p>
<p>Tell me more about profs asking you to redo work until it is A or B level…?</p>
<p>Like schismmanifesto, which P2 classes/professors have their students redo work?</p>
<p>That would be Laude’s Originality in Arts and Sciences class…
He guarantees an A as long as you complete everything with decent amount of work.</p>
<p>That sounds nice…but taking the new TC 310 “Invention of Science” with Stephen Weinberg seems like too good an opportunity to pass up even if there may be a risk of a lower grade!</p>
<p>plan II is not inherently interdisciplinary as it is flexible imho. you go to plan II for one/some of these reasons:</p>
<p>1.) you love the liberal arts college philosophy (that a majority of your courses should be outside your major/love of knowledge) but can’t stand living in a suburban/ nearly rural forest of intellectuals.
2.) you recognize the value of being amongst a selective program…everyone around you is smart in their own way, and you can learn a lot from that.
3.) you’re one of the “special” kids at the university.
4.) you want the increased access to research. all plan II students must do a senior (sometimes junior) thesis. i’ve heard testimonials where prof’s who were reluctant to let undergrads in on their research have opened their doors to plan II (dean’s scholars as well).
5.) you want to be open to the possibilites of different academic disciplines; plan II allows you to do that.
6.) you (logically?) want to combine the resources of a large university w/ the familiarity of a small, intimate program.
7.) i don’t know why chris is saying plan II is an ivy league education. he and i know that ivy leagues are overrated, srsly. plan II just makes a lot more sense to me than going to a prestige obsessed ivy league. can we move past the statistics, please people?</p>
<p>to kkwa: i highly doubt you have legitimate data to support your conclusion for plan II grade inflation. plan II is filled with ambitious kids. does that mean that professors should raise curves or markbands even higher for the sake of “grade deflation”? do we want people to commit suicide here? i thought going to university meant getting an education, not minimizing the average gpa of a student.
and you shouldn’t compare a sophomore/2nd-semester freshman course dedicated to engineers (which are not all honors students anyways) to a 1st-semester honors freshman course…it’s kind of a different situation. i’d expect the grades to be lower because that class is required for all electrical engineers, honors or not.</p>
<p>to inskeletonrock</p>
<p>i do not have statistical data that supports grade inflation trends. but then again, statistics are very rarely the only form of ‘legitimate’ data. the only evidence is testimonial attestation from some of my extremely gifted, ambitious plan II friends who have pointed out that the grade received is not always completely representative of the performance. i am not saying professors should in fact do anything although i do disagree with the implied conjecture that good grades should be awarded to reconcile a student’s personal (and often self-inflicted) dependency on good grades for emotional health. i am just pointing out a perhaps unavoidable consequence of the intersect between very bright students who need good grades to get into top grad schools and the program that perhaps caters to them(in a small way to be sure) by stepping over the line of impartiality.</p>
<p>the only implied conjecture that was in what i said was that professors should not adjust markbands to make getting As harder because there are simply too many As. with something that is already a statistic, a measure, grades…why not support your statements with clear stats, instead of relying on subjective accounts? i’m not surprised some plan II kids thought they did not the grade they got for the effort they gave; a lot of smart kids feel like that, and it sounds kind of crazy…but it always makes it seem like you can work more.</p>
<p>while grades in themselves are statistic, the way in which they are given cannot be defined by standard deviations and trends. in any case, this isn’t really getting anywhere. if you don’t believe me, that’s ok. after all, UT is the place to learn for all of us :)</p>
<p>If you go to College Vine and look at the grades for most Plan II courses, there almost always are more As than other marks.</p>