They certainly would not have a disadvantage in medical school, but I am only looking at it from a learning perspective, not the tunnel vision based one that says: “only do what is useful for…” There are advantages to learning to think about problems in particular ways if you are in the life sciences and quantitative is one that has been neglected at the undergraduate level. What you mention is the way it currently is and not necessarily the ideal. There are also some top schools that encourage students to take calculus based physics/achieve a better background in math than normal. These certainly do not represent most med. schools. There is also the fact that learning something like E and M without calculus is kind of cheating. I often see it as something that ends up being completely in favor of students memorizing the formulas for particular cases when calculus would just make many phenomenon MUCH easier to conceptualize and understand. Also, I feel if physics classes were less traditional and focused on many applications relevant to life sciences majors, then there would be a more compelling case to teach it with calculus (because again, some physics concepts are easier to get with it. It also often simplifies the math). And you mention pre-healths are good at calculus, so are many/most science majors when it is taught in a vacuum.
I am just arguing that more quantitative methods (calculus or statistics) should actually be integrated (as in, I honestly don’t think something like calc. based physics is even enough if not taught differently, in which case, you’re right they shouldn’t have to take it) into life sciences curricula so that students can see it in context and solving relevant problems (which suggests that they are first and foremost in a life sciences class that actually emphasizes problem solving which is too often not the case unfortunately, though many genetics classes do a great job). I don’t really care about what professional or graduate school they want to go to. Developing certain skillsets are important regardless of this. The med. school thing also assumes that every senior in a life sciences major who was initially pre-med is still pre-med and also that all of the ones who still are get in which is not the case. Learning great quantitative and computational skills beyond a basic calculus class can helpful for many things. Students in the sciences (pre-med or not) should have at least one major class that puts certain quantitative or computational methods in the context of science (could be the one they want to study or another one). This isn’t just limited to calc. based vs. a non-calc. based physics. Physics is just one of many potential contexts. Also, this argument over physics is a moot point for many selective schools which require science majors to take what I would consider a physics course with “calculus-lite” such as the mechanics course I referred to at Harvard. And as I suggested, often the second semester is much less lighter. I actually liked Harvard’s pre-med E and M because even though it was calc. based, it showed really neat life science oriented applications from a physics perspective which is not needed for med. school but could still be worth being exposed to. Overall, life science curricula must get over the “if med. schools don’t want it, it isn’t worth requiring” or “we shouldn’t have many classes in the area because all the students are pre-med”. It is kind of crippling and suggests that undergraduate curricula should stand still waiting for post-graduate options to deem certain ideas and skills relevant as opposed to using current research trends/direction of the discipline to determine what is worthwhile. This idea of biology curricula being enslaved to med. schools is as old as it gets.
This is really far afield from the OP’s problem, which apparently was that fewer people have heard of Davidson (his alma mater) than Duke and consequently his experience at Davidson was a major disappointment because he had to wait to get to Harvard Law to properly impress people.
@Pizzagirl : haha, yep because always remember that your own “education” (or in OP’s case, stay at an educational institution) is for everyone else’s appreciation. That’s beautiful as it kind of reflects the views also seen by many younger folks on this forum
The thing is that YOU marry a person who fits you and who you love (might not be for obvious reasons at all), you are not looking for somebody complimenting your choice, you simply found your OWN happiness, why would you care what others think?
Jym, I think it is an analogy. Hopefully not directly relevant here (there are people who marry spouses who then don’t past muster with their “friends” and then take it out on their spouses).
But the question still remains :
Why send your child to one of the “most rigorous colleges” in the US but not highly ranked
Glad it was not my money that sent HappyAlumnus to that hideous school.
He/she should be glad his parents didn’t make him work his way through college (community college and evenings at Burger King to pay for it followed by a stint at a 4 year school as night shift manager of said BK).
I guess the hope is that they are happy to get a fine education and to have the opportunity to attend a fine graduate school someday.
That makes sense in its simplest form but many really seem to want to attend a fine institution, mostly skip the actual “fine” education part, and then go on to attend a fine graduate school some day. At this last destination is where they probably start to desire and appreciate the training aspect of it, but again, undergrad. has mostly become a “get me through this as seemlessly as possible” experience with respect to the education part. I blame the extremely high costs and the incentive structures. Something tells me that if this was corrected (it never will be), then you won’t be getting more threads on places like CC with things like “I’m going to be pre-med and got into these awesome schools, which of them has the most grade inflation?” because it is only about the grades and schools, knowing how professional schools and certain employers work, will use their grading culture to give advantage to their “perfect” students…excuse me, I mean that their perfect students will have earned every single A because they truly deserved it. Harvard students deserve A’s far more than MIT or Princeton students for example. And Stanford, Brown, and Yale students are much more deserving than those. The grades just merely reflect how awesome the students are at each lol.
No one asks: “which place is known for a particularly rich science curriculum and why?”. Likewise, you get threads where students ask about the quality of a major (often non-sciences…with sciences it tends to just be “how hard are the science classes here because I’m pre-med”?) at particular institutions without the OP having even been on the departmental website to check out differences for themselves. Many care so little (or are naive, maybe both) that when they go to an elite school’s thread they are willing to just accept the vague and generic (almost always positive-because it is necessary for us to portray our alma maters as angels with respect to everything-nothing can be at fault, and when it is faulty…we need to excuse it especially when it is the academics which don’t matter) opinions given by posters (who may merely say things like: “of course its good because the school is good” and even if the department/potential areas of interest aren’t good, “you should come because we’re ranked highly overall and students are really happy…”) who simply just want the OP to apply to their school just because…I honestly think this is why schools (even elites) can get away with mediocre educational experiences across several departments. It is simply because students don’t demand much in the way of the academic experiences (If I’m happy outside of class and inside is “good enough”, why complain?) and accept that whatever they are receiving must be as good as the school’s overall rank would indicate (as in they do assume that rank directly correlates with quality of in-class experiences). All I can say in the case of elite schools is that I am really glad students don’t bother asking their friends at other elite schools (on non) how their classes are at the level of asking for help on stuff when taking a similar course or sharing course materials. Many students would be in for quite a surprise if they thought their experience was so great or so much better than elsewhere (or on par with some other place known for high throttle academics). They may find themselves being ripped off.
“Why send your child to one of the “most rigorous colleges” in the US but not highly ranked”
-This is asking it backwards. If the college that fits perfectly with the student and his family happened to be " one of the “most rigorous colleges” in the US but not highly ranked", why you would NOT send your child to such college. The choice should ALWAYS be made based on PERSONAL criteria list. It may happen as well that the chosen UG is “one of the “most rigorous colleges” in the US but not highly ranked”", pretty simple. And more so in case that kid/family does not care about ranking at all. Why such an obsession with ranking, we forgot to check the ranking all together, would not make any difference!
Miami: We want to pat ourselves on the back. Nothing like instant gratification and ego boost we get from knowing that we will get a “good” education for sure because the school is ranked highly…or as I suggested we can at least more easily pretend that we are getting a great one lol. If we aren’t, we can just say “well, at least employers trust my degree and the skills it means I gained even if I don’t” and that’s what matters most of course. This of course is not to suggest it really matters where an ultra-awesome student goes (oh wait, all students at high ranked ones are awesome right?).
Yes, as far as labeling system goes, the highly ranked colleges will provide a great education and no other places will. They collect the cream of the crop students and this type will not even consider going to any lower ranking place. And all employers in a world are trying to hire the graduates of these colleges. Nice and funny picture, isn’t it? So, I guess the main task of this thread is to make absolutely everybody believe that this is the way it works and this is the only way that may possibly lead to success and happy life. Smile and nod, and smile and nod…
That’s not necessarily true, although people certainly love to romanticize the idea.
In fact, rigor is a completely independent factor. There is nothing stopping a college (any college) from increasing the rigor of classes offered. In fact, many schools provide a high level of rigor to less-than-perfect students. The result is that more students fail to get good grades, and/or fail to graduate.
If all colleges had roughly the same graduation rates, then I would wholeheartedly agree with the notion that rigor varies as a function of selectivity, but since that’s not the case, differences in rigor are often not so predictable.
More to the point, saying that colleges “IN GENERAL” follow a certain pattern ignores the reality that the college search process itself is not some equation. Every college is operated differently, and if one particular college bucks the trend, that may make the difference between your kid finding a college or not finding a college.
Umm, no. Most private colleges that had low grad rates would rapidly go out of business. And since most private colleges grade on a ~B+ curve, few students are failing to “get good grades.”
Grad rate is much more a function of the income of its incoming students. Rigor has little to do with it.
