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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’

#461

Post by hbn »

com2kid wrote: post #455
hbn wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I started university in 2014 so it was post-Google-driving-up-engineer-salaries, and it attracted a LOT of people with no passion for computers, but wanted one of those well-paying jobs.

It was rare to find people who actually "got" computers, and learned things beyond what was taught in classes cause they just liked technology. Those of us who just really liked tinkering with our computers knew who the other ones like us were. And it still feels like that after working as a professional in the industry for the better part of a decade.

I'm pretty sure most of the people I work with have no idea what a .zshrc file is, or how to configure things to optimize their workflow, or use keyboard shortcuts, etc.

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

#462

Post by throwway120385 »

mylies43 wrote: post #276
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…

For the 7.30 start, its possible its a 0 period class( class before school starts, what a blast these were) and they start earlier then the rest of the student body.

At my high school that was the normal start time for all of our classes, which were 90 minutes. Most of us had to be at the bus about 45 minutes to an hour before start because many of us came from more rural areas with acreage between roads.

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

#463

Post by matthewdgreen »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #304
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…

> 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. Hate to break it to you mate but none of them are getting in. Anyone who lives in a neighborhood with a high proportion of kids making it to the Ivy league and other top schools knows exactly what this guy is talking about…

The Ivy League (and top-tier) situation is out of control, and genuinely raises questions about whether institutions like this should exist.

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

#464

Post by eli_gottlieb »

Aurornis wrote: post #187
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…

> 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.

My high school had us in the building and starting homeroom at 7:30AM, back in ~2003-2007, and that was in upstate NY for a B+ student with nothing special going on.

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

#465

Post by eli_gottlieb »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #463
godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Hate to break it to you mate but none of them are getting in. Anyone who lives in a neighborhood with a high proportion of kids making it to the Ivy league and other top schools knows exactly what this guy is talking about…

The Ivy League (and top-tier) situation is out of control, and genuinely raises questions about whether institutions like this should exist.

It's not, IMHO. When I have kids, I will not send them to any such institution, and I do not advise students that I mentor to go to such institutions.

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

#466

Post by s1artibartfast »

sph87 wrote: post #450
toast0 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like, ivies and whatever are great. But overscheduling and overstessing to get into one isn't. Many states have a guaranteed acceptance path to a state school and/or a path where you do two years at community college and can transfer into a state school to do two more and get a bachelors. A great school on your degree can open doors at the beginning of your career, but missing out on that isn't some terrible tragedy.

I want to add that the UC schools system has (had?) something like this. I know a good number of very intelligent people who did 2 years at a Community College and ended up going to UC Berkeley, UCLA. Not Harvard but West coast ivys at the very least.

I have 6 bay area nieces and nephews that recently went to UC ( Three Berkeley, one Irvine, two Davis). Their school schedules largely resembled the long days described above Plus they had summer school every year as well.

It is basically a suffering and compliance competition to get into college. I think this is a big part of why young women now outnumber young men 2:1 in college enrollment

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

#467

Post by impendia »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #463
godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Hate to break it to you mate but none of them are getting in. Anyone who lives in a neighborhood with a high proportion of kids making it to the Ivy league and other top schools knows exactly what this guy is talking about…

The Ivy League (and top-tier) situation is out of control, and genuinely raises questions about whether institutions like this should exist.

What would it mean for them to not exist?

The issue, as I see it, is that elite credentials are overvalued, and that we live in a society which is becoming more and more unequal, and where housing prices in particular are skyrocketing.

Without solving that, the alternatives to the Ivy League (e.g. undisguised nepotism) seem to be even worse.

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

#468

Post by csa »

dbvn wrote: post #186
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?

Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected. Clearly the entire thing is broken.

> Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected.

For most schools, it’s the opposite.

For folks qualified to get in, they will be selected. For folks at the marginal threshold, it’s luck of the draw.

> Clearly the entire thing is broken.

I agree with your sentiment, but for opposite reason. We need to scale down the number of people at R1 schools and develop a more robust system of technical and trade schools (imho).

The spreadsheet types have taken over the universities from the professors (it started decades ago), so I don’t think that this change will happen unless and until the current system implodes.

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

#469

Post by ndriscoll »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #398
toast0 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like, ivies and whatever are great. But overscheduling and overstessing to get into one isn't. Many states have a guaranteed acceptance path to a state school and/or a path where you do two years at community college and can transfer into a state school to do two more and get a bachelors. A great school on your degree can open doors at the beginning of your career, but missing out on that isn't some terrible tragedy.

I agree with you. I didn't go to those schools. That doesn't mean the environments the original comment that started this chain mentioned don't exist. That was my only point. Whether they are desirable or not is another question. But I don't think we should pretend it's one with an obvious answer for parents. Yes, you don't want to stress out your kids. But I'm not sure it's so easy to blame parents from those hyperc…

Surely these hyper competitive neighborhoods are full of already wealthy people? I hear about people "needing" to spend a ton of money on kids as part of this competitive scene and I just don't get it. If you're that worried about them, why not invest that money into a house (which costs the same as e.g. 4 years at Yale, but you could potentially rent it out until they're old enough, and finance it) for them so that they basically start life on barista-FIRE mode?

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

#470

Post by doctorwho42 »

dbvn wrote: post #431
doctorwho42 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I guess you think MIT students don't learn in their first year? And havent learned in over two decades during that first year. I guess we should stop valuing MIT education as the peak of STEM education in the world!

Have you been to a public university recently? Its abysmal.

K, but that is not the discussion point.
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