How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Freshman

Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by javert on Sunday September 26, 2010 @05:57PM (#1730082)

Small correction. At one point, you say, "Graduate Students (like me, as of this writing) have earned a B.A. and are working towards either an M.A. or a Ph.D." Of course, many graduate students have not earned a B.A., but rather, a B.S.

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Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by jseliger on Sunday September 26, 2010 @06:45PM (#1730166)

Fixed: "have earned a B.A. or equivalent." I the mention B.S. earlier, too: "Congratulations: you’re now probably working toward your B.A. (bachelor of arts) or B.S. (bachelor of science), which will probably take four years."

Thanks for the heads up.

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Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by arethuza on Sunday September 26, 2010 @06:55PM (#1730177)

You do know that some places award MA degrees in four years as first degrees?

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Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by jerf on Sunday September 26, 2010 @07:47PM (#1730253)

Despite temptation, a beginner's introduction to a topic is not the place to list every permutation of the basic concepts that somebody, somewhere uses, but rather to simply explain the basic concepts. Trying to do both at once results in the student knowing less at the end than when they started; not only do they still not understand, now they're afraid of the topic!

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Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by jpwagner on Sunday September 26, 2010 @07:01PM (#1730180)

I'm so glad you pointed this out. I was getting extremely confused by the bias of the author toward Bachelors of Arts degrees over Bachelors of Science degrees. In fact some degrees were not mentioned at all in the article such as S.B. degrees. I was worried about the validity of his arguments and advice because of the lack of rigor in his research of what degrees undergraduates can earn. Again I applaud your efforts to clean up his act.

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Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by jseliger on Sunday September 26, 2010 @07:52PM (#1730259)

I was worried about the validity of his arguments and advice because of the lack of rigor in his research of what degrees undergraduates can earn.

See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730253 :

Despite temptation, a beginner's introduction to a topic is not the place to list every permutation of the basic concepts that somebody, somewhere uses, but rather to simply explain the basic concepts. Trying to do both at once results in the student knowing less at the end than when they started; not only do they still not understand, now they're afraid of the topic!

In addition, see what I wrote under the section "Degrees:"

Congratulations: you’re now probably working toward your B.A. (bachelor of arts) or B.S. (bachelor of science), which will probably take four years. If you earn that, you’ll have received your undergraduate degree.

It's easier to write "B.A." in most circumstances than B.A. or B.S. or S.B. or B.F.A. or the various other ways of getting cross the same basic idea.

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Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by jpwagner on Monday September 27, 2010 @12:33PM (#1732234)

I guess sarcasm is a big no-no around here (for various reasons.)

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Re:How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Fre... by javert on Sunday September 26, 2010 @11:16PM (#1730618)

AFAIK, the two undergraduate degrees are B.A. and B.S. I just tried looking up S.B., and it appears to be just a different name for B.S.

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