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U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

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Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#451

Post by coldtea »

peterlk wrote: post #373
Aurornis wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, My neighborhood and social circle have a number of high school age children, some aiming for high ranking universities. None of them have these grueling 15 hour day schedules you’re describing. I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. What unive…

It’s been a while, but when I was in high school, I was up at 6:30 so that I could run through the shower, get to 7AM jazz band late, be at school until 4ish, then off to my minimum-ish wage job until it was time to go to evening jazz/symphony/other bands. Home at 8 or 9; bullshit some homework for a passable grade; and then do it again (I was often doing homework during band practices). Weekends were music events. I…

>The stories I’ve heard from others indicates to me that my experience was not unique.

Unique no. Hugely outlier, yes.

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#452

Post by andsoitis »

oarla wrote: post #366
andsoitis wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA Is it possible that the kids who have to study very very long hours to get a GPA decent enough to get into college are just not that sharp?

If it’s the case, what’s wrong with that? Many have had to do that to get better gpa and college prospects.

Nothing wrong. The person I responded to seemed to suggest there’s something wrong with the system when it might simply be a gap that the child has to close.

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#453

Post by coldtea »

mitkebes wrote: post #323
Aurornis wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, My neighborhood and social circle have a number of high school age children, some aiming for high ranking universities. None of them have these grueling 15 hour day schedules you’re describing. I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. What unive…

> I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. Local high school runs 7:30 to 2:30. It's one of the better scoring high schools in the state, so we have some students who commute 45min-1hour to attend here (at least I had friends who did that when I went there). When I was younger I lived in Albuquerque, and I believe that high school started at 7am, they had staggered start times of 9am for el…

Sounds like US high school is even worse than its healthcare system!

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#454

Post by jimmymcgee73 »

atniomn wrote: post #396
joezydeco wrote: post #15

When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, you can expect that they are going to throttle back once they're away from home with way more free time than is normal. From my kid's experience: she was up at 6:30am, in AP classes by 7:30am (three more to go during the day). Classes were done by 3:00, then sports practice…

I'm 32. In my senior year of high school, I woke up at 5:30 AM, my first class (zero hour) was at 6:30 AM, regular school started at 7:35 AM. school let out at 2:30 PM. I had extracurriculars until 6:00 PM most days. Go home, eat dinner while studying, go to bed at 11:00 PM. I took 8 AP classes and had straight A's. 5 on every test. strong ACT. I attended a prestigious land grant university, like Michigan, and I was…

I’ll add the caveat that motivation matters a lot.

The kids that worked hard because they wanted to be successful? They’re all very successful, even if some didn’t go to top colleges.

The kids that worked hard because they liked the work? Happy, but financially mediocre on average. How much does a history major at Harvard make? Not much. Not a bad life though.

The kids that worked hard because they felt forced to work hard? Most likely to burn out or get into hard drugs.

For what it’s worth as a fellow member of the 1% I hope my kids end up in camp #2.

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#455

Post by com2kid »

hbn wrote: post #213
ungreased0675 wrote: post #175

The University of Michigan has around a 15% acceptance rate. How is it possible that they’re letting in kids who aren’t ready to do college level work? What are they selecting for?

The University I went to has like an 80% acceptance rate so it's not comparable, but I was surprised when I got into 400-level CS classes and there were people who didn't know how to program at all. Our professor assigned us to write a fast fourier transform, and when we had class next week apparently everyone claimed that it was too difficult so he changed the assignment to "find an implementation online and write a…

I went to a 2nd tier state school in the early mid 2000s.

For our senior project class, one group of students successfully incorporated as a startup and sold their project to the city as a SaSS app, and my group ended up open sourcing our cross platform app.

Everyone in the program could code - really well - by the time they got to their junior year. Those who couldn't were weeded out early on.

May have helped they the entire first 2 years were taught in native languages with manual memory management.

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#456

Post by mark336 »

joezydeco wrote: post #15

When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, you can expect that they are going to throttle back once they're away from home with way more free time than is normal. From my kid's experience: she was up at 6:30am, in AP classes by 7:30am (three more to go during the day). Classes were done by 3:00, then sports practice…

Nah its the movies like Christopher Nolans the Odyssey

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#457

Post by sokoloff »

cj wrote: post #368
doctorwho42 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, and how many HNers would cite MIT as one of the best around? Well I learned over a decade ago that they have had Pass/no-credit for the first year implemented for years... So at this point it wouldn't surprise me if you said it's been going on for two decades (at min.) Again, I think people are having the same reaction I had "what, MIT just gets off scotch free for the first year?!". Decade later, watching…

MIT describes the purpose of Pass/Fail during the first semester as: > giving you time to adjust to factors like increased workloads and variations in academic preparation and teaching methods. [0] I can 100% get behind that logic. I can't get behind a college saying they're doing it to "curb a mental health crisis". [0] https://registrar.mit.edu/classes-grades-evaluations/grades/...

Small nit: it’s Pass/No Record rather than Pass/Fail.

If you get a D or F, there’s no external record you even attempted the class, rather than a record that you attempted and failed it.

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#458

Post by [deleted] »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #236
pjm331 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I dont get the argument “life sucks so school should suck too” How about we work on making things not suck

Because that's not reality in the least. And all you are doing is creating a clutch of children/students who have no experience with things that are difficult.

[deleted]

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#459

Post by inglor_cz »

codedokode wrote: post #414
Joker_vD wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sports practice until 5:00. Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces. Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges. I thought it was just a relic of Soviet past but no, apparently it exists in the US and other first world countries as well for some strange reason.

Indeed it doesn't make sense to require sports achievements from someone wanting to study math.

Only in a world where people act logically and also honestly...

The college may have an ulterior motive, as others in this discussion say: to select for scions of richer families and increase the likelihood of gaining an alumn that they can siphon some money from. If someone spends their afternoon playing polo, it is a good signal of riches to be inherited.

One thing that always surprises me during American conversations on wealth and greed is how the academic sector somehow gets a moral pass, even though it is quite obviously geared towards milking young people for every penny.

Re: U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’

#460

Post by nobodyandproud »

UncleMeat wrote: post #425
ungreased0675 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers thinking a UofM degree is a joke. Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency. Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass.

MIT has this policy. Do employers think that MIT degrees are a joke?

Interesting! It looks like MIT, Swarthmore, and Wellesley are the well-known ones so it has precedent.

While I still think it's a disservice to the student, I'd be curious to hear from those that lived through this: Both those that attended and graduated and those that had to drop out.

For the former I'm guessing there's not much to report. I'd be curious about the latter.

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