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What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

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Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#111

Post by WalterBright »

katastic wrote: post #55
ahelwer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Spreading grades out among various assignments and tests is how I managed to pass university (I coincidentally also attended the University of Calgary, hi rdlecler1!). I would have imploded if it all came down to a single giant exam. Why the heck would you want academic achievement to come down to a handful of hours of actual performance? What goal does that serve? University isn't the Olympics.

The true answer is: No grades should matter except the final exam and you should be able to take the final exam as many times as you want. (With a reasonable minimum period between retakes, possibly increasing each time.) If you take AC motors, and fail, and study your ass off and six months later can pass it with 100%, shouldn't that really be... your actual grade? Isn't a grade supposed to represent your ability an…

Taking the exam as many times as you want is a bit unfair to the professor, who has to concoct a new exam each time. If it is the same exam taken multiple times, then it is what is known as an "infinite time" exam which has a deleterious effect on students, as they will be more or less forced to spend infinite time on them.

Besides, taking a month to solve a single calculus problem that should take 15 minutes is a pretty good demonstration that you have not mastered the material.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#112

Post by [deleted] »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #60
thomasahle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on your final exam papers. At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later. Of course universities don't like this…

This is how it works in Germany. One exam at the end of the semester. Nothing else counts. Studying and finding motivation to study is the students responsibility. It's not perfect either, a bad performance on exam day might mean a bad grade even if you're good, but whatever, nobody cares about grades, anyway.

[deleted]

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#113

Post by toomanybeersies »

thomasahle wrote: post #39
rdlecler1 wrote: post #16

I was a TA at Yale when I did my PhD there and I contrast that experience to when I was a TA at University of Calgary. Whether it’s a higher sense of entitlement or just grinding it out to maximize your official grade the contrast between these two schools was striking. At Yale you’d better think twice about honest grading because if you did there would be an army at your door with pitchforks ready. You then have to…

The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on your final exam papers. At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later. Of course universities don't like this…

The problem is that some students are terrible at exams, and exams aren't necessarily a good test of knowledge or ability.

Engineering relies on group projects and assignments a lot for your grade, because engineering isn't just about remembering some facts and writing them on paper. Then there's the problem that people have good days and bad days.

Different people are more capable in different areas of assessment, so I think that the most fair way to assess students is to give them a range of different types of assessment, so that even if they struggle with one type, they can pull through the other.

For instance, I always did really well at large assignments and tasks, especially group assignments (not because I rode on coattails, but because being in a group motivates you to do well), I was mediocre at exams, and I was terrible at small, individual assignments (<5% of final grade). You can see a direct correlation in my transcript between papers with lots of graded homework and small tasks, and poor grades. I did 200-level Algorithms the semester before I took 100-level Algorithms, and managed to get a better grade in the 200 level paper, because it had less homework assignments, despite being the second year version of the same paper.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#114

Post by WalterBright »

ahelwer wrote: post #71
katastic wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true answer is: No grades should matter except the final exam and you should be able to take the final exam as many times as you want. (With a reasonable minimum period between retakes, possibly increasing each time.) If you take AC motors, and fail, and study your ass off and six months later can pass it with 100%, shouldn't that really be... your actual grade? Isn't a grade supposed to represent your ability an…

A grade is supposed to represent your ability and understanding of a topic, but that's only half the equation. Are exams an adequate proxy for ability and understanding of a topic? They aren't for me. When I want to understand something, I create something which requires and demonstrates that understanding - this could be a Wikipedia article, a piece of software, or a lecture. Nothing of value is demonstrated by sitt…

I've never understood how someone could master a topic yet could not answer questions about it. I know from my own personal experience that when I bombed an exam, it's because I simply did not understand the material. When I did well on an exam, I had corresponding confidence that I understood it.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#115

Post by lawnchair_larry »

bllguo wrote: post #74
ahelwer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Spreading grades out among various assignments and tests is how I managed to pass university (I coincidentally also attended the University of Calgary, hi rdlecler1!). I would have imploded if it all came down to a single giant exam. Why the heck would you want academic achievement to come down to a handful of hours of actual performance? What goal does that serve? University isn't the Olympics.

That's a strong counterargument. But I strongly believe homework shouldn't be graded. Incentives are completely misaligned; you're penalized for getting things wrong, when that's a natural result during the learning process. No surprise, then, when cheating becomes a major problem. I personally found doing problem sets and being able to check my answers immediately to be the best way to learn. There's no point to jus…

Except when it comes to writing programs, the homework is the only thing that even remotely demonstrates your utility to an employer. I would go as far as to say that exams should not count, only homework should.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#116

Post by alva »

maksimum wrote: post #54
irrational wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Harvard really considered more prestigious than Oxford or Cambridge? That doesn't follow my perception.

Oxbridge have an average acceptance rate of 18% for undergrads. Harvard is 6%. Assuming similar applicant pools, many who got rejected by Harvard would have been accepted at Oxbridge. Obviously that's only one measure of prestige.

Assuming the majority of applications come from natives UK 65 million US 323 million

Of course however these universities are very popular internationally.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#117

Post by lawnchair_larry »

buchanaf wrote: post #77
ryandrake wrote: post #63

The silliness, of course, is that if you are among the "elite" and "privileged" going to an Ivy League school, nobody is going to give a shit about your grades anyway. Your career and success is already pre-ordained. Why on earth would you bother arguing with your professor that your "A-" should be an "A"? You're going to go to work at your daddy's investment bank after you graduate either way! You think big name ban…

While I didn't go to an Ivy, that's clearly not true. Do you honestly think Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Goldman, law schools, medical schools, etc., are going to accept you if you have poor grades? Not everyone can count on "daddy".

Yes, at least for the tech companies. Grades are irrelevant at FB/MS/Google.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#118

Post by toomanybeersies »

linkregister wrote: post #59
thomasahle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on your final exam papers. At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later. Of course universities don't like this…

That's strange, all my mathematics classes had ungraded homework. Anecdata of 1.

To add to that anecdata, most of my mathematics classes would at least have 1% homework assignments weekly. One of my papers had 25% as homework.

They weren't super hard, if you turned up to the tutorials, you could usually get the tutor to basically hand hold you through it, and if you had any friends doing the same paper, you could just copy theirs. In fact, in first year, we had a rota for homework, so only one person would do it each week.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#119

Post by alva »

jameshart wrote: post #88
vostok wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In academic circles, yes. Socially, not so much. A huge portion of the middle class in the UK went to Oxford or Cambridge. Something like 25% of Etonians get into Oxford or Cambridge. For the Westminster school that number is something like 45%. Harvard does not have that same grip on the corresponding class stratum in the US, but Harvard also has far fewer undergraduates than Oxford or Cambridge and the US is a much…

Eton and Westminster schools are not open to the 'middle class'. Of course, they'll accept the upper class, because that's traditional, but what they really want is the ruling class, which is no longer the same thing. But mere middle class?

It is interesting to see the demographics of these schools change. 20/30 years ago it was as has been for hundreds of years, the British aristocracy. Some parents/teachers express their frustration that a large segment of students are now Russian oligarch heirs, Middle Eastern princes etc.

Of course these are the future power players whether we like it or not. "Old Money" feels inadequate.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#120

Post by buchanaf »

csa wrote: post #107
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're going to go to work at your daddy's investment bank after you graduate either way! Privilege has its limits. Let's take your example. If you're inheriting Dad's investment bank, you still have to keep winning their clients. Most institutional investors have policies which require them to freeze and reconsider firms after leadership changes. If you flunked your way through Harvard, that's going to be difficul…

> If you flunked your way through Harvard, that's going to be difficult. Not really. Maybe "flunking your way through" would be awkward, but these folks know the easy majors. See Government at Harvard. See W's surreal academic career for an example of a well-connected but relatively unintelligent person get a Yale undergrad degree and a Harvard MBA.

Yes, people like George W. Bush, who are in the top .00000001% of privilege, don't need to do well before college, in college, after college, or even as a state or country's highest elected official.

However, for most of the mere mortals at Yale and Harvard, they still have to compete with the every other college graduate, and some of those other college graduates are pretty smart themselves.

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