Re:Columbia whistleblower on exposing college rankings
by toast0 on Friday September 16, 2022 @01:08PM
(#32869049)
> The scores are low, because the schools inside the university are VERY selective. There are a large number of freshmen who do not get into their first choice major their sophomore year. This is because they don't have the necessary achievement to be competitive, not because the school sucks.
I'm going to pile on here and agree that while the school may not suck academically, this is a pretty shitty academic plan for students who may not have realised they might need to make a choice of taking a major they don't want or leaving to another institution to study what they want. Transfering between institutions is possible, but it comes with a lot of barriers --- transfer admission is usually secondary to direct admission; credits may not transfer well, especially between quarter and semester systems; sequencing differences may make scheduling difficult, etc. It's unusual to get a 4 year degree in 4 years total when transferring, unless there's a specific transfer program between the two institutions; if, after one year spent working towards their chosen degree, your students are told they can't get it there and they would have to spend four years somewhere else to do it, it looks like a wasted year.
Of course, maybe your institution does accept some students directly into their major and counsels the rest that most of them won't get their choice and they still accept your bargain. And it doesn't sound like a terrible place for an undesigned engineering and technology major, who would presumably be wooed into whatever specific major would accept them after the first year.
EDIT to add: from my experience as a student at an engineering school, almost all the students capable of succeeding in one engineering major would have been able to succeed in the others too, with the exception of biomedical engineering --- you needed to have a hell of a lot more drive to succeed in that. There was a popular belief that mechanical engineering was easier, but I don't think it really was; just it was a lot easier to get excited about it and being excited about your major is an important factor.
I'm going to pile on here and agree that while the school may not suck academically, this is a pretty shitty academic plan for students who may not have realised they might need to make a choice of taking a major they don't want or leaving to another institution to study what they want. Transfering between institutions is possible, but it comes with a lot of barriers --- transfer admission is usually secondary to direct admission; credits may not transfer well, especially between quarter and semester systems; sequencing differences may make scheduling difficult, etc. It's unusual to get a 4 year degree in 4 years total when transferring, unless there's a specific transfer program between the two institutions; if, after one year spent working towards their chosen degree, your students are told they can't get it there and they would have to spend four years somewhere else to do it, it looks like a wasted year.
Of course, maybe your institution does accept some students directly into their major and counsels the rest that most of them won't get their choice and they still accept your bargain. And it doesn't sound like a terrible place for an undesigned engineering and technology major, who would presumably be wooed into whatever specific major would accept them after the first year.
EDIT to add: from my experience as a student at an engineering school, almost all the students capable of succeeding in one engineering major would have been able to succeed in the others too, with the exception of biomedical engineering --- you needed to have a hell of a lot more drive to succeed in that. There was a popular belief that mechanical engineering was easier, but I don't think it really was; just it was a lot easier to get excited about it and being excited about your major is an important factor.