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maxwells-daemon 19 minutes ago [-]
My college (Caltech) was pass/fail (no quantified grades) for the first couple of terms, and I thought it worked very well. It did alleviate the some of the stress of beginning a higher-expectations environment, but it also let students explore classes they wouldn't have if they had to worry about GPA. I know a few people that changed their whole field as a result; the geology department was known to pick up students this way.
joezydeco 1 days ago [-]
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 until 5:00. Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces. Then homework after dinner until 10:00 or so, sometimes much later. Homework assigned over weekends. Homework assigned over breaks.
That's 15+ hours a day, every weekday, for an entire school year. Then you have test prep (APs and the ACT/SAT), college applications, writing essays and scholarship applications, college tours, sorting decisions, financial aid applications, etc etc etc. And now her college already has a few hours of orientation videos stacked up for her to watch before she moves in.
Personally, I don't blame her if she checks out for a few weeks. Or a semester.
Aurornis 5 hours ago [-]
> 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 universities are you targeting with such an extreme schedule?
There are some parallels here to the people who say that everyone in tech is working 80 hour weeks: If you get pulled into one of these bubbles you are surrounded by others doing the same thing and it starts to feel like everyone is doing it. You assume everyone, everywhere is having the same experience. The people outside the bubble are left puzzled by these descriptions.
peterlk 2 hours ago [-]
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 did not go to a top tier school, and I did not live in a top tier place. The stories I’ve heard from others indicates to me that my experience was not unique. I wasn’t even the most busy of the people I knew.
This wasn’t every single day, but it was more on days than off days. Contrarily, I had a great time in college because the pressure of classes actually felt like less than I was doing in high school.
ratelimitsteve 1 hours ago [-]
this closely matches my experience graduating with a C average and getting accepted to a branch campus of a public university. I then crashed hard out of that school because, as you said, suddenly I actually had a lot more agency and a lot less responsibility.
godwinson__4-8 3 hours ago [-]
> 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. If you think it's a fib just because you're not aware of it that's not exactly robust social commentary.
toast0 2 hours ago [-]
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.
godwinson__4-8 2 hours ago [-]
Apologies, I didn't meat to be overly combative or suggest a moral judgement. And 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 is another question.
It's also not an easy question 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 hypercompetitive neighborhoods. We are living in a world of self interest were increasingly everyone has a college degree, thereby devaluing the credential at a basic supply/demand level. The very best schools are in a class all their own, and (rightly or wrongly) have been largely immune to this downward pressure.
Talk about bubbles is also not really useful. Wealth is a bubble. Software engineering is a bubble. A neighborhood where everyone goes to a state school is a bubble. Poverty is a bubble. But at the macro level if people don't think the world is getting more cooperative and is just getting more competitive, doing whatever they can to keep or send their kids to the best bubble possible is at the very least defensible. I think there are also a lot of parents who don't seem to have a robust concept of the future. I assume anyone being born today is entering a far more competitive and frankly, brutal world by the time they are college age. The world is getting smaller. And not enough people seem willing to do the work required to make sure all kids do well. In such a world, pushing your kids in high school so they can get the best shot makes sense. This can be true even if it doesn't make other people morally wrong. In the same way wealth doesn't make you a better person. But let's not pretend that in a world where (in the United States at least) many people among us if they lose their job won't be able to afford healthcare, that wealth is entirely without virtue.
Suggesting that is indicative of the same sort of "they'll be fine" thinking that frankly, strikes me as the most "bubble" idea possible. From where I sit, it's simply the case that the world is not getting easier.
GPerson 50 minutes ago [-]
The OP is describing my experience. (Result: deferred from MIT, so it was somewhat for nought.)
mylies43 4 hours ago [-]
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.
mitkebes 3 hours ago [-]
> 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 elementary, 8am for middle school, and 7am for high school.
jorts 4 hours ago [-]
My public high school started at 7:10 a.m.; I assume it was to accommodate bus schedules.
a34729t 2 hours ago [-]
I guess then it's good to be a D1-level athlete? (for everybody else, that's basically being a state champ in whatever sport)
geodel 4 hours ago [-]
I think magnet school and/or outside school /rec-league sports can easily bring that 15h number.
Overall I think you are right it is indeed bubble and once one is in, it is difficult to see not everyone is doing that.
I have a friend in town both husband, wife work from home and extremely busy with their elementary/middle school kids school/activities that I haven't seen him in years.
Being out of their bubble I only know whats happening but don't get to be tutored in how all these activities are essential. And even rare back out once in a while can be serious digression that affects child's future.
ratelimitsteve 1 hours ago [-]
I was at school from 6:45 AM to about 4:30 PM every day, and had extracurriculars and homework on top of that. This wasn't considered an extra stressful or difficult schedule, it was just what you did.
kalcode 5 hours ago [-]
A lot of this is just inflicted by parent culture and anxiety. Unless your kid applying to an elite school, most college/university accept between 60-80% of their applicants. If they have decent GPA.
We are making the kids endure that out of fear of their college, but stats don't back up the grind they make the kids do.
michaelbuckbee 5 hours ago [-]
Parent of a middle and a high schooler and we try very hard to not pressure the kids, but a lot of it is coming from their peers and the school.
Joker_vD 5 hours ago [-]
> 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.
codedokode 57 minutes ago [-]
Indeed it doesn't make sense to require sports achievements from someone wanting to study math.
tdeck 5 hours ago [-]
I have heard that it began to try to keep certain ethnic groups out of university and continued because sports bring in scholarship and (for D1 schools) sponsor money.
InitialLastName 3 hours ago [-]
Not just ethnic groups. Schools mostly can't say "we only want rich people" but they definitely want to prefer students who will contribute to the donation revenue stream either themselves or through their parents. Signals like "doesn't have a job to take up their time in high school" and "parents can afford (and have the free time to enable) expensive, time-consuming activities" are really good proxies for that.
atniomn 2 hours ago [-]
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 totally prepared and performed very strongly right out of the gate. I was competitive with elite students who had attended the most prestigious high schools both in the United States and internationally.
Today, I'm an extremely well compensated engineer. My household income is top 1%. My career is gratifying. I have a rich social life and a loving wife and child. If your children are operating at this caliber, and they're able to sustain this level of effort, they're going to go places, no matter what they chose to do. You are rewarded for this effort.
semiquaver 15 minutes ago [-]
Thanks for posting this. As someone with ambitious kids that will be in HS soon, this thread and the general doom mood on this topic has been worsening my hypertension…
firesteelrain 5 hours ago [-]
This must be a State thing.
> 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 until 5:00.
In other States, high school starts later like 8:45/9am. You can take classes online and start school later if you want or do dual enrollment and skip later periods.
> Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces.
Mine worked and were in clubs. Kids are remarkably resilient. In some States, work time counts in lieu of volunteer time.
> Then you have test prep (APs and the ACT/SAT), college applications, writing essays and scholarship applications, college tours, sorting decisions, financial aid applications, etc etc etc. And now her college already has a few hours of orientation videos stacked up for her to watch before she moves in.
This sounds like a lot of undue pressure. UCF didn’t make you do that. ACT or SAT works and you have a couple years to do it. Not all at once in Senior year and you usually can composite your score across the highest tests.
danilafe 4 hours ago [-]
7:30 is consistent with my experience in Oregon. Work does not count in lieu of volunteer time if you're writing an essay about your involvement with the community. I don't think schools NEED both ACT or SAT but you only have so many shots and may have an affinity for one or the other, so people like to take both.
firesteelrain 4 hours ago [-]
Okay it sounds definitely regional/State specific. Some states are more flexible such as counting work hours towards volunteer hours and allowing ACT/SAT/alternatives.
bradfa 1 days ago [-]
Are normal adults not "working" in a similar way to your kid for 15+ hours per weekday?
Comparable adult parent things would be up at 6am, prep kids for school day, in the office by 8am, 8 hours of work plus a lunch, departing the office around 5pm, transporting kids to/from some activities, dinner, helping kids with homework, somehow fit in regular shopping needs (food, essentials, etc), maybe some volunteering or hobby things, if lucky in bed by 10pm, and we're easily at 15 hours of "work" on a weekday.
Yes, it's a lot.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 11 hours ago [-]
Children are part of hobbies.
Very challenging at times, but for example I sleep with my kid hugging me, or I chat with them while in the car, or we do chores while watching tv or something like that.
And not every day is packed like that, you can tell your kids "no more than 3 times per week of activties, the other 2 days are for playdates", and that should be acceptable.
There are horrible days of the week, but it's not daily 15 hours of work. That's training for slavery.
Homework for break and homework for weekend should be STRONGLY ILLEGAL.
davidgay 5 hours ago [-]
> Children are part of hobbies.
That is a weird (modern?) delusion. Without children, our species disappears in <100 years. And the last of those years would be painful for those still alive.
Those who are having and raising children are the ones doing the most for the next generation.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5 minutes ago [-]
No, I am not saying that in a negative way. I have kids and I love them deeply.
I am saying that the people who have kids now are aware of how much effort it involves, so they consider it "part of hobbies" (as in, interesting things), not as part of "chores".
Modern society requires that, otherwise people just have no kids.
And yes absolutely, the government overlooks entirely all the work that goes into parenting now. The standards have raised enormously.
Aurornis 5 hours ago [-]
You took an unfairly uncharitable interpretation of that comment.
It wasn’t saying that children are hobbies. It’s saying that time spent with children is enjoyable and time spent with them is not an enjoyable chore.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4 minutes ago [-]
Thank you, I realized that could be misunderstood only afterwards.
I consider hobbies highly important for my mental health, so children are highly important too
_zoltan_ 6 hours ago [-]
we wake up at 7, prep the kids to school, they walk there alone then, we have coffee together, then I drive to the office by usually 9:30. have a proper lunch break with colleagues, then in the office until 6pm or so, then drive home, have dinner, put the kids in bed by 8, then we can watch a movie/do hobbies/etc.
while I work, my wife can do the shopping and take care of other household chores if needed.
krupan 23 minutes ago [-]
Those aren't high school kids prepping for college that you are talking about. Just wait a few years
bakies 5 hours ago [-]
No one my age can afford a stay at home wife
Aurornis 4 hours ago [-]
Most of the stay at home spouses I know come from lower middle class households and they’ve made their lifestyle, living location, and other spending decisions fit their desired work arrangement. Even many of the construction contractors I’ve talked to recently (which is a decent number due to some remodel work) have stay at home wives.
What most people can’t afford is to maintain their desired lifestyle and only have one parent working. It’s similar to how people earning 3-4X the median wages for an area will think they’re barely getting by, while someone earning 1/4 of what they do is raising a family with two kids.
geodel 3 hours ago [-]
> What most people can’t afford is to maintain their desired lifestyle
True, goes without saying. I see most of the time when lifestyle is not even considered making a choice but simply as "everyone does it".
I might turn into most odd person in some sense among friends, colleagues, family/ relatives because I just happen to say things explicitly which makes for weird conversation.
Everyone around me expects these between the lines.
disgruntledphd2 4 hours ago [-]
> No one my age can afford a stay at home wife
If you work in tech, this is possible. It's gonna suck, and you'll feel poor relative to your peers, but it's entirely possible.
firesteelrain 5 hours ago [-]
How old are you? Wife has been stay at home mom since 2006. And that was when I made $40k/yr.
bakies 4 hours ago [-]
30
_zoltan_ 3 hours ago [-]
my wife was stay at home when I was 30. doesn't change a thing. I earned much less then, and we had a different lifestyle (and less kids :-))
bakies 1 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a lot was different and those things cause change
firesteelrain 3 hours ago [-]
Everyone’s situation is different. It can be done.
bakies 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah...
vel0city 3 hours ago [-]
I've known many families around that age (+/- 5 years) with a stay at home spouse taking care of multiple kids. It really shapes their lifestyle in a lot of ways (smaller/older house, rarely eat out, rarely big family vacations, clothes/toys often from secondhand consignment stores, fewer/cheaper vehicles, etc.), but that's what's important to them so that's how they've set their priorities. Most didn't come from extremely wealthy backgrounds so its not necessarily like other wealthy people are propping them up, although a few are like that.
It may very well be impossible in certain markets but I wouldn't say its true across every family with the parents being around 30 years old.
bakies 59 minutes ago [-]
That's mostly speaking personal anecdote and live in a wealthy area. So that drives the point
_zoltan_ 3 hours ago [-]
this is mostly the norm in Switzerland in my social circle for families with children - husband works in tech, mom stays home until all the kids are old that they don't need mom around so much and/or you don't need to spend a fortune on them.
school launch + supervision for the 11:30 - 13:30 period is ~42 USD per day per kid, kita (pre-kindergarten) is easily ~3100 USD/month or more per kid. (I've put the numbers here in USD as most of the audience is outside of Switzerland for easier comparability), so for a lot of families, if mom works, mom's salary is spent on these costs.
alephnerd 1 days ago [-]
Naw. Adult life is so much easier with regards to competitive pressure compared to getting into a good college. The real world is Pass/Fail, much to the chagrin of plenty of HNers.
Aurornis 4 hours ago [-]
> Adult life is so much easier with regards to competitive pressure compared to getting into a good college
You’re competing apples and oranges. Getting into a top college is similar to grinding to get into Big Tech jobs and then climb the ladder there.
Good colleges are easy. The top few colleges are very hard.
> The real world is Pass/Fail, much to the chagrin of plenty of HNers.
If by “fail” you mean lose your job in the next round of layoffs and have your career derailed, possibly.
You’re still comparing apples and oranges. The people who compete for top college spots usually continue competing for promotions and better paying jobs. The people who coast through high school look for jobs where they can coast and then get comfortable with whatever salary that provides them.
joezydeco 1 days ago [-]
And we shouldn't expect adult/parent level of work out a 16/17 year-old. There's no time left any more to be a kid.
Aurornis 4 hours ago [-]
> There's no time left any more to be a kid.
I have several hobbies that are popular with kids (mountain biking, rock climbing, and some others).
I can assure you that there are plenty of kids with more time than I have to dedicate to these hobbies at every popular spot I go to. Many of them are ambitious, smart, and working toward top universities, too. It’s actually fun energy to be around.
The parent comment about students getting up at 6:30AM and working 15 hour days is highly unusual.
rayiner 5 hours ago [-]
16 year olds aren’t kids. My dad was in boarding school
in bangladesh at that age working 16 hour days (which is why I don’t have to live there).
basisword 5 hours ago [-]
Things change, thankfully.
rayiner 4 hours ago [-]
Why should we change the practice of putting people to work to build civilization when they’re at their physical and energetic peak? In his early 20s my dad helped overthrow the Pakistani government, and by his late 20s and early 30s he was helping tackle the astronomical infant and maternal mortality in the country. Why shouldn’t our young people in America work?
bradfa 1 days ago [-]
Your comment specifically compared it to the normal adult, my point is the normal adult who is a parent is very likely doing even more than your example of your kid. Even for adults who aren't in the elite high earner category, heck people who make less money are likely working even more hours per day just to make ends meet.
watwut 5 hours ago [-]
As adult with job and kids, I honestly don't work as much as a kid described in that comment. It is in fact way less competitive. I get a good pay, my job is reasonably interesting (ai can make it sux and probably will, but we are not there yet). There are parts that sux or where I am under pressure, but overall, it is better to be an adult then to be teenager trying to get to competitive school.
And for the record, I had to work less to get to good school back then.
Broken_Hippo 6 hours ago [-]
How, exactly, are they working more? How many low-paying jobs offer overtime, if they are full time at all? Any clue how many jobs won't let you work a part-time job or won't work around another job? Can't exactly work for Uber if you can't afford a decent enough car. And this is assuming you have older children that don't need childcare.
The fact is that they aren't working extra, not for a job anyway. The extra work comes in the time making dried beans instead of buying canned, in repairing stuff poorly, in shopping around for a doctor that takes the state health insurance or an affordable option if you have none at all, in taking busses (if they are available), and other unpaid things. Your child will be lucky to afford the activities that gets them a 'good' education, especially if they have to work.
tetromino_ 4 hours ago [-]
> not for a job anyway
That is exactly OP's point: for OP, if a child's "working hours" includes university prep and resume-padding sports activities, then an adult's "working hours" includes housework, grocery shopping, dealing with insurance and taxes, and commute/family chauffeur time.
alephnerd 1 days ago [-]
Absolutely. I think some degree of competitive attitude should be developed, but admissions since the late 2000s have become hyper-competitive.
Pressure makes diamonds, but it also crushes everything else.
speff 5 hours ago [-]
"It takes a ton of pressure to make a diamond". I read that in a game when I was a kid and took it as a guiding principle in my life.
Overcoming hard times absolutely made me a better person, but as I've grown I've seen many examples of the fallout you're referring to. Sometimes people just break.
nukethebay 4 hours ago [-]
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boelboel 24 hours ago [-]
Sometimes I wonder where all these HNers work. The majority of "slightly below top companies" seem to consist of mediocre workers, which is fine. Employees are just doing their job and if they fuck up, even badly, it's not too difficult for them to get a new job. Meanwhile a student getting a few subpar grades, often for reasons beyond their control, should somehow be punished forever.
mrngld 6 hours ago [-]
I don't get all this existential talk about college acceptance. Yes, elite schools should expect elite applicants.
Meanwhile, the state school down the road is a fraction the cost, teaches a lot of the same content, and will accept anyone with a pulse. In my state, at least. State universities are somewhat competitive to get into, but state colleges... wide open.
All of which is very real-world. Certain top firms recruit only top candidates. Everyone else works somewhere further along the spectrum.
disgruntledphd2 4 hours ago [-]
> I don't get all this existential talk about college acceptance. Yes, elite schools should expect elite applicants.
As a non-US person who's worked for a bunch of US companies, my belief is that the Ivy League et al act as a class system, rather than a symbol of educational attainment.
apocalyptic0n3 3 hours ago [-]
I strongly disagree. I knew a number of people who were accepted into those elite schools (two at MIT, two at Harvard, one at Brown). All but one of them were lower-to-lower middle class and only able to attend due to the grants given by the school itself. The thing they all had in common was they were incredibly intelligent and hard working. The elitism definitely exists, but it's not the way you describe in my experience
Aurornis 4 hours ago [-]
I’ve known a lot of Ivy League graduates and they were all very smart. Most of them were very good people, too. A lot of them came from backgrounds that didn’t include wealth or social connections.
This goes against the stereotypes you read online, but many of them are motivated by a desire to sneer and cut down others’ achievements. Look up “tall poppy syndrome” for one phrase describing this phenomenon.
disgruntledphd2 3 hours ago [-]
> I’ve known a lot of Ivy League graduates and they were all very smart. Most of them were very good people, too. A lot of them came from backgrounds that didn’t include wealth or social connections.
Again, the fact that entry to the class system can be meritocratic is entirely disconnected from the fact of it operating as a class system.
When I worked at Big tech I remember recruiters (US-based) talking about hiring from approved schools, which were mostly Ivy League.
Additionally, when we were hiring a candidate in Europe, our director wanted to know what school she had gone to. Fortunately, she was an Oxbridge graduate so all was well.
Again, even if all Ivy League graduates were in the top 1% of objective merit, the use of this credential in hiring/firing/other decisions is what makes it a class system.
I have worked with many Ivy League graduates and they were all super smart and mostly effective, but that doesn't change my point.
Aurornis 3 hours ago [-]
I was responding to this part of your post:
> rather than a symbol of educational attainment.
Your original argument appeared to imply that it was a system designed to separate people by class, not by merit or educational attainment.
In my experience the people who are that selective about university pedigree are either doing it out of laziness (outsourcing selection process to the university filtering mechanism) or they have a degree from that system and believe that hiring people from it will automatically grant them more allies, thereby improving their own power.
cindyllm 3 hours ago [-]
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nukethebay 4 hours ago [-]
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altairprime 5 hours ago [-]
HN is centered around venture capital, which in college terms is the subtopic of branch Finance under Business Administration. SJSU, a top business school half an hour south of YC Palo Alto, has an intensely competitive Investment program that admits very few applicants for which students directly manage an investment fund; meanwhile, their Accounting under B.A. program is admitting anyone with a GPA of 2.2 or higher. That duality can be deeply confusing to people on the glamorous side of the fence: why would SJSU cheapen itself by admitting literally everyone it possibly can into Accounting by, when being highly selective results in such a high quality Investment program? That confusion fades rapidly when considered from the other direction: Investment is where the glory is, for those who seek that, and for the rest of us, there’s Accounting and Finance.
While HN, VCs, SJSU, and Tech are obviously not composed of the same population or applying the same restrictions, it’s certainly reasonable to highlight one similarity: the potential glory of one’s role at work directly impacts how competitive it is. That we’re currently in a nightmarish layoff cycle due to the ZIRP bubble popping and due to businesses replacing costly (and glorious) creative roles with more economical PREs (prompt reliability engineers) is amplifying this effect more strongly in Tech than in other industries, because Tech — just like the Investing industry that’s underpinned it for so long — has been saturated with glory and competitiveness.
I spent my career in tech working in the roles that do not offer glory — IT, rather than Product; Cost Centers, rather than Profit Centers — but even within IT, there were a couple of roles that had more glory and were much more competitive in their selection and evaluation criteria than others. At my final IT job, we were less strict about credentials and competitiveness with directors and vice presidents than we were about the high-glory role of enterprise architect. So while I do empathize with HN’s bias, having myself once pursued glory in tech, such competitiveness is abnormal in most jobs in most fields.
lotsofpulp 6 hours ago [-]
>Employees are just doing their job and if they fuck up, even badly, it's not too difficult for them to get a new job.
This might be news to many people. Or do you mean it’s not too difficult to get a new job at Walmart?
boelboel 3 hours ago [-]
If they had experience at good companies I think the odds are better than the student getting into a good university after fucking up some classes.
geodel 3 hours ago [-]
Building crud, bagging crud, greeting crud. All the same.
cactusplant7374 6 hours ago [-]
All of the AI companies are what I would consider top companies and all of them have had consistent outages because of bugs. OpenAI resets Codex limits almost weekly because of a major outage. Top companies have plenty of average employees.
kakacik 5 hours ago [-]
Only if you make it so. Good college/university means little in many jobs. The best devs for example (and most paid correspondingly since they knew their value very well) I've ever met were either coming out of subpar schools or skipped university altogether.
I myself went through mediocre noname university in eastern Europe with OK grades and it didn't matter at all, now I get perm salary thats better than 99% of devs in whole Europe while doing just that and nothing more, while sporting 10 weeks of paid vacation yearly. Quality of life further down the line, success and happiness are extremely non-correlated with all this academic stuff.
Its just control freak helicopter parents, which, albeit with good underlying intentions, fuck up everything they touch, including mental health of their kids. So kids compete just to endlessly compete while winning less than nothing. This is how deep regrets later in life are made.
techjamie 1 days ago [-]
That's also assuming you have children. I'm childfree and most days are all mine once I punch out unless I've got stuff to triage here and there.
b0rtb0rt 17 hours ago [-]
he meant actual adults with responsibilities
pirates 6 hours ago [-]
Reactions like this always make me appreciate not having kids.
alistairSH 1 days ago [-]
Personally, I don't blame her if she checks out for a few weeks. Or a semester.
Nor would I, but I'd also accept that she did so and failed a few classes.
Just like I did in the 90s. Although in my case it wasn't burn-out, but system shock at actually having to try to get good grades (Fairfax County PS then UVA).
Did that bombed first semester probably eliminate med school or an elite graduate program? Sure. But I probably wasn't cut out for either anyway. And it was a kick in the pants and got me to pay attention and work.
mrngld 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, same here, for me high school was easy and I failed (or effectively failed, a D counted the same as an F) a couple classes right out of the gate. It was a lesson to myself that I never learned to study in high school and had to learn that skill ASAP.
Michigan and its apologists here would rob these kids of real-world experience, reducing them to infants. And then we're all disappointed when these adults act like infants.
skillina 5 hours ago [-]
Robbing the students of that experience would be to hand them an inflated letter grade. If anything this encourages instructors not to be gentle in grading first semester students. Students who eke out a low C grade will get the warning and can calibrate the level of effort needed (or switch fields) without the impact on grad school admissions or intern/new grad job search.
mae3x 1 days ago [-]
This schedule is no different than my schedule from 30 years ago and I don't consider it problematic at all. You frame it as 15+ hour days by including all aspects of their day as "work" but no normal adult includes their workout time and their social engagements as part of their work day. Time spent in sports is fun, not work. If it is work, then quit. Time spent in gym class and lunch is not work. Remove all that bloat from your framing and it is a very reasonable workload.
jerlam 1 days ago [-]
Yes, if you go to a junior college or night school, you will discover what an actual busy schedule looks like and it's not sports clubs and volunteer activities taken for the sole purpose of inflating your college admissions letter.
Some of those students have 40 hour jobs, some night shift, that they can't skip or else they don't have a home or school anymore. Others have kids that can't be neglected.
freefaler 1 days ago [-]
Indeed. At uni, starting in my second year, I worked as a programmer (no remote work, office at 1hr commute from uni dorm) on top of my studies. It was hard, but doable. My major was applied math, so the CS part was the easier bit, but the math, especially Analysis, Numerical Methods, Linear Algebra, and Analytic Geometry they kicked my butt. We also had a really bad prof for the Math Logic class and no textbook, only lecture notes and his lectures were unstructured shit :(
The biggest problem wasn't the workload itself, but how inefficient learning was back then. It was the early days of the Internet, no coursera, no Google indexed uni sites, no LLMs, no online tutors. I only had a mediocre textbook and some notes I borrowed from friends when I couldn't attend lectures or labs. It took ages. I’d burn hours trying to parse two paragraphs in the textbook, only to ask mates who didn't understand it either.
Now, we have an incredible amount of information & tech at our fingertips: LLMs, Google NotebookLM, online tutors, dozens of textbooks, and sites like Anna's Archive packed with high-quality "free" material. With all this technology, the time it takes to understand, prepare, and master a topic is a fraction of what it used to be. It still takes work and discipline, but man... you can feed textbooks into an LLM and use targeted prompts to debug your exact knowledge gaps on the practice test you get from the LLM.
So I reckon it's easier now than before, simply because learning can be done so much more efficiently. After all these years, I still remember the hardest classes and the most stringent professors with great affection - even though I hated those bastards back then. My Group Theory prof once invalidated a definition I wrote because of a single missing word. At the time, I thought it was an injustice, but later I realized that word was crucial.
University is where young people must face hard work and reality, because it teaches them what true meritocracy is. It should be hard, it's the same way a gym workout should be hard or it’s ineffective.
watwut 5 hours ago [-]
> Time spent in sports is fun, not work.
It is fun when it is fun, when you can skip it or do it purely because you want to. If you go to sports club because you have to, it is work and not fun.
If you go volunteer or have to join the club for college application, they become work. They are not fun stuff.
> Time spent in gym class and lunch is not work
Gym class is work. Kids are not there voluntarily.
yrjrjjrjjtjjr 5 hours ago [-]
If your job required you to sleep 8h a night would that make it less restorative?
doctorwho42 4 hours ago [-]
If it was tracked, graded, and effected your outcomes (salary & prospects)... Id bet you'd say it was less restorative!
Like can you honestly say you'd feel rested if you had to wear a Fitbit like device to bed owned by your company to track your sleep?
squibonpig 15 minutes ago [-]
That's different lol?
general1465 4 hours ago [-]
Absolutely. I can barely sleep when I feel pressure of what I am have to do next day, especially if it is something stressful. When somebody would be measuring performance of my sleep the idea of sleep would be stressing me out.
watwut 4 hours ago [-]
Sports club and volunteering are neither restorative nor relax. Sports are another competitive activity you are supposed to excel at. You dont do it to rest and relax.
You come in and do what you are told. You don't chat with friends or play around, you focus on whatever trainer told you to focus at. You dont do what you want to do, but what trainer thinks will make you more performant. And if it hurts or you are tired or just really want to do something else, you still do it.
Thlom 5 hours ago [-]
Did she ever have time to just go outside and hang out with friends?
geodel 4 hours ago [-]
You are looking to "destroy kid's future" with such heresies like hanging out with friends. What's next? not going to school when one is sick?
iamnothere 1 days ago [-]
We need to normalize a gap year, or at least a gap semester. Young adults need a break after the pressure of graduation and college admissions, and whether it’s work or travel, some perspective helps ground the college experience and make it a choice instead of an obligation.
In my experience, many freshmen treated their first year as a gap year anyways, especially if they took difficult senior classes. First year classes aren’t always as rigorous as good AP classes (depending on both the high school and the university), so you can skip or cram while partying.
1 days ago [-]
hirvi74 3 hours ago [-]
I wish the US had mandatory conscription. Not necessarily military conscription, but kind of like the German model where you either do military service or public service (if I remember correctly).
I sure could have used the maturity, the money, and the time when I was younger. I learned the hard way that attending college when you have no idea what you want to do only delays your graduation date (major change absolutely fucked me).
renegade-otter 5 hours ago [-]
I am still traumatizes from high school after almost 30 years. I had no extra-curricular activities but I had to travel far for the school of choice (I was an ESL student). Waking up at 5:45, 90 minute travel one way, then 8-9 periods ending at around 5PM. Get home at 7 and then do homework.
Then the never-ending pressure of midterms, finals, and regents exams.
b0rtb0rt 17 hours ago [-]
your kid could also not do any of those things and still go to college(or not) and have a happy fulfilling life
freeopinion 5 hours ago [-]
Just to present another reality... a lot of kids coast through high school academically. They sleep through classes or play video games on their school-provided laptops, or play on their phones all day. They know about "minimum-F" policies where submitting 0 work earns them 50%. And they don't really care about getting Ds. Then some community support program assigns them a counselor who drags them over some finish line to get them admitted to a community college.
No, this isn't every high school student. But there are more people in the group I describe than there are in the group you describe.
Here's my point: There is a lot of ground between the two extremes. And both ends of the spectrum are making it into college of some sort. So it you think your child is under too much stress from taking seven AP classes, drop four of them. If they are overwhelmed by tennis practice, ... maybe recognize that removing all friction from a person's life is not necessarily a good thing. Work together to build coping skills. But no child has to be an Olympic medalist neurosurgeon senator CEO all at the same time. Who is "forcing" that on high school students? You?
There is plenty of room for people with 3.2 GPAs and only two AP classes when they graduate. Frankly, with some family support, it is not that hard to have a 3.8 GPA for 60+% of students.
But I've seen high school valedictorians with 3.9 college GPAs graduate and struggle to find a white collar job. What is the plan for that from U Mich?
SiempreViernes 5 hours ago [-]
When you are contrasting a hypothetical example against an anecdotal example, it is polite to provide some sort of evidence your hypothetical example actually exists.
red-iron-pine 4 hours ago [-]
> But I've seen high school valedictorians with 3.9 college GPAs graduate and struggle to find a white collar job. What is the plan for that from U Mich?
they've optimized for a highly stratified educational environment. The real world don't work like that.
Unless you stay in academia no one cares about your GPA 2 years after you leave.
boogieknite 3 hours ago [-]
its truly crazy. game days for sports take even more time
lucky she has you who considers this. speaking from experience: think about trying to handle that with parents who dont have time management skills
rpdillon 4 hours ago [-]
Same with my kids. At the bus stop by 6:30am, out doing sports and extra-curriculars until 8pm, then dinner+homework until 11pm or so, rinse and repeat.
ackbar03 6 hours ago [-]
Sorry if this seems naive but do students in America actually work that hard these days? Modern television and social media seem to suggest they are all on drugs and doing God knows what
TimDotC 5 hours ago [-]
This is fairly representative experience for high achieving students. When I was in high school, I was typically up at 6:30 AM to get to my 7:00 AM AP class. Classes can end anywhere from 3-4 pm, depending on your course work. After school clubs and activities ranged from commitment. But we were under the assumption that it mattered a lot for college admissions, so many of us participated in 2-3. Once you got home, you had a considerably amount of homework from each class. If you were prepping for standardized exams, you probably dedicated some time to study that as well. Overall, I felt the amount of time spent working in high school was taxing. But also it worked out for me - went to a good college and got a good job and life.
VeninVidiaVicii 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
armchairhacker 5 hours ago [-]
I remember waking around 7am and leaving school around 3pm, then no more than on average ~2 hours of extracurriculars and ~2 hours of homework.
I think the quantity was reasonable, except too much busywork, I wish I could replace it with subjects I was passionate about (i.e. tech).
I also had the entire summer between senior year and college to decompress.
Nowadays I hear that most public schools are giving less work. With all due respect, I believe GP is an anomaly and/or it wasn't the school, but their own pressure.
WarmWash 4 hours ago [-]
>Modern television and social media seem to suggest
Wouldn't exactly make the most compelling content, would it?
smcg 2 hours ago [-]
From my experience interviewing students applying to Ivies, they are working even harder than before. I am blown away by their resumes.
triceratops 4 hours ago [-]
Bimodal economy.
g8oz 3 hours ago [-]
America is a bimodal sort of place.
axus 5 hours ago [-]
Both are true.
andsoitis 4 hours ago [-]
> 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?
oarla 3 hours ago [-]
If it’s the case, what’s wrong with that? Many have had to do that to get better gpa and college prospects.
PyWoody 4 hours ago [-]
No one is forcing them to do this. This is all self-incflicted.
smcg 2 hours ago [-]
The market demands it.
SubmarineClub 3 hours ago [-]
Ok?
I did the whole APs, sports, volunteering thing too, and managed to do just fine in college.
Kids today are just so fucking soft.
basisword 5 hours ago [-]
That blows my mind. It seems so unnecessary. It also doesn't seem to work given where the US ranks globally in education. Is the problem what the admission process? In the UK, even to get into the most prestigious universities you do the same exams as everyone else, maybe a little extra-curricular stuff, and interview with the university. The amount of studying in the evening is no different than anyone else trying to get a good grade, and there are certainly no extra classes you can take (never mind starting the schooldays before the normal time).
vel0city 3 hours ago [-]
> It also doesn't seem to work given where the US ranks globally in education.
This is true because this isn't necessarily "the norm". Its very common to have this kind of life, but there are also a ton of kids who aren't as focused on their academics, who don't take AP classes, who aren't involved in clubs and sports. Only a little over a third of students take any AP exams, and only a bit over half of those end up taking multiple AP exams.
KPGv2 5 hours ago [-]
If the sports and clubs are stressful, your kid should find other activities.
I did everything you mentioned in the nineties and aughts (my sport was year round and coach expected us to travel on our own dime to tournaments that lasted the entire weekend at least four times in the summer, and during the school year I was out of town most Sat-Sun at tournaments, which take way more time than the couple hours a volleyball game lasts or whatever), and volunteer activities that lasted until 10pm for a few week stretches a few times a year.
I had a blast doing things I loved. Counting travel, 30+ hours a week of sports. School from 6:30 to 3:30 (because I took an extra AP physics class that happened before school officially started). I acted in community theatre. I did martial arts. I quit tennis to teach acting for the YMCA my senior year.
Why doesn't your kid love the sport she plays? Why doesn't she love the volunteer activities? Those are meant to be FUN. Like, that's why the colleges want them: to see why she's an interesting person, not a time-management robot. They can tell these things, so stop gaming the system ad find a hobby she'll be so obsessed with that she'll write a college entrance essay all about how it made her a more interesting person.
There is no adcom in the world that is trying to find a selfless 17yo who does drudgery because it's expected of them. They're trying to find people who LOVE building for Habitat, who want to be chefs and serve at a soup kitchen, who LOVE God and ran tech support during COVID for their church livestream, etc.
smcg 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure that you understand how competitive, say, youth sports are. It's not seen as purely recreation, it is seen as a necessary pillar of advancement. Parents don't spend all this time and money sending their kids on travel teams for no reason.
TiredOfLife 22 hours ago [-]
That is the same schedule people had 60 years ago
estearum 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
raddan 1 days ago [-]
> This is about gunning for the elite/upper echelons of society.
Is that what it’s about? Keep in that the University of Michigan is a public university, explicitly founded to “provide the inhabitants of this state with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and the arts.” There’s nothing about being elite in there at all. This is an institution that serves the public.
I’m no stranger to long hours to achieve high status—I’m a professor. But I also started my journey at a public school and a public undergraduate institution. Many of my friends—all good and smart people but in many cases decidedly NOT elite-have leveraged their public education into satisfying careers. I, and my friends, would not have had our opportunities otherwise. I simply could not afford top private school.
I don’t know what to think about this change exactly, but it’s worth pointing out that MIT has had this policy for first year students since 1968. MIT! Seems like UM can make this work if they are thoughtful about it.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
All universities are for the elites. I would love for that not to be the case, but the only reason admissions are this competitive is because there's competition for limited slots.
And yes, certainly a (traditional) university education should not be required for having good career opportunities.
IMO there's a need for a type of education that's vastly more scalable and still equips people with the beyond-secondary education they need to be productive in today's economy.
raddan 20 hours ago [-]
I’m not sure where you get the idea that all universities are competitive because that is simply untrue. Many public universities are required by state legislatures to broadly admit students from their own state. California is a good example. You can see incoming class statistics here: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/entering-class-...
Competitive universities are competitive. Sometimes that competiton is justified and sometimes it is unjustifiably based on pedigree. The program I attended before getting my PhD at a public university was at a well-known private university. But in terms of research productivity and impact, the public university was a MUCH better place to go to school. The PhD program was exceptionally competitive but its undergrad program was not. As a result, many undergrads who wandered through our lab door got a first-class research experience.
I’m not going to pretend that pedigree doesn’t matter (to some people), but it is emphatically not the same thing as “a good preparation.” I took a couple math classes one summer at a low-tier state college. They were just as good as any math classes I took at any of the other places I went to school, public or private.
estearum 19 hours ago [-]
The ones that aren't competitive don't have the ultra-competitive dynamics described above. Not sure what your point is.
That still doesn't mean they're not "for the elites." Universities are for people striving for upward mobility, i.e. to get into or maintain membership in the elite tiers of society. Also there is (obviously) significant variation in the upper end of the elite and the lower end.
raddan 16 hours ago [-]
More than a third of the US population has a college degree. [1] When you consider the fact that 20% of the US population are children [2] that means that roughly half of the eligible US population has a college degree. If “half” is elite, then I’m not sure what “elite” means, because it’s not very exclusive.
> Not sure what your point is.
Well, you said
> All universities are for the elites.
And then I countered that, actually, many are not selective. I am asking you to reconsider your statement. In reality, many college programs confer _skills_, not _status_. This narrative that colleges are for the elites is demonstrably untrue, runs counter to the founding mission of many of them, and strikes me as sour grapes. I know because I was one of the kids who struggled to afford college, went to a public one where I learned _skills_, which I then leveraged into a satisfying career.
> All universities are for the elites. I would love for that not to be the case
What would have to change for you to declare it's not the case?
estearum 6 hours ago [-]
The costs would have to go down significantly. And I don't just mean the direct price to students – even public universities are extremely costly overall.
It costs ~$55k/year to educate a student at UMich. That's more than half of the median US family's income. And UMich is a massive success story. Excellent academic output at a relatively great price – but even there the actual cost would bankrupt a normal American family.
That's a lot of money to spend educating someone into a non-elite trajectory in life, no? Never mind the opportunity cost of 4 years where one could be acquiring direct skills in whatever job they're going into?
vel0city 3 hours ago [-]
Isn't that need of post-secondary education "solved" by community colleges? Extremely cheap for locals, usually offering degree/certification programs especially relevant to employers in the area, extremely lax requirements, etc?
estearum 1 hours ago [-]
In theory yes, in practice it seems empirically like the answer is no. I'm not sure if it's just a vibes/branding problem or what. But yeah I think much larger and more capable community colleges and smaller universities is probably closer to ideal.
InsideOutSanta 22 hours ago [-]
I don't think training people to burn out by 35 is a good plan for anyone involved.
joezydeco 1 days ago [-]
Let me tell you about the scam of 'honors' classes in today's high schools. They not doing anything more introspective or challenging. It's the same classwork thrown at them faster and without as much teaching support. Just more to grind out. But when you don't understand something?
You're smart, you'll figure it out.
In return you get inflated GPAs that get you into better colleges. But if you can't figure it out on the first try? More stress.
Interestingly, a lot of colleges now ignore the 'honors' weighted GPA and ask to see the unweighted score. If you have a teen entering high school, skip the honors track and help them do better in the normal track version of the class. See if your school offers dual-credit with a local community college or state university. Those transfer credits are WAY more valuable now (and cheaper!) than an AP score, with a lot less test stress.
hduto 6 hours ago [-]
I agree partially with your first point and almost entirely with your 2nd point:
After emerging from an ap/ib honors program in highschool (with excellent teachers) I became increasingly stressed in college when any real simple lack of comprehension occurred. I was smort. I should "get it."
However, later in life the ideas from books or concepts we read, discussed, and critiqued (Doestevsky,Shakespeare, sophocles etc) allowed me access to ideas in the humanities that far outweighed that initial college whiplash.
So it's a trade off I would certainly make again.
christoff12 6 hours ago [-]
Knowing what I know now, I definitely would've opted for dual-credit rather than honors/AP classes, and CLEPed out of the remainder of freshman year basics.
liveoneggs 6 hours ago [-]
honors classes have better behavior
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Yeah definitely. But "can you grind" is legitimate selection criterion for making it into the upper echelons. Not an ideal one, but it's not illegitimate.
5 hours ago [-]
Hizonner 22 hours ago [-]
Legitimate in what way? It's obviously fucking stupid. Stupid criteria are not "legitimate".
You'd do just as well rolling dice, and it would be more legitimate because it wouldn't be pretending to do something it doesn't.
JumpCrisscross 22 hours ago [-]
> Legitimate in what way?
Can you teach yourself, broadly. Out of all the filters we have in education, this one might be the most legitimate because it maps pretty closely to lifelong curiosity and learning.
JumpCrisscross 22 hours ago [-]
> Legitimate in what way?
Can you teach yourself, broadly. Out of all the filters we have in education, this one might be the most legitimate.
estearum 21 hours ago [-]
A lot of the jobs that university is supposed to train you for require you to work very very hard for a very very long time.
vjulian 1 days ago [-]
Working like a dog like this is necessary if you’re gunning for the elite / upper echelon of society, yes. If you’re already in that echelon of society, it’s not necessary.
Thank goodness I didn’t need to work so hard, but I can acknowledge what a shitty system it is.
Help me understand why these children or their parents are gunning in this manner and working like dogs in this manner, to join into and propagate such a shitty system?
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Because having money is a lot better than not having money
4 hours ago [-]
somenameforme 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's more that if one doesn't really think one way or the other then life is very much a conveyor belt, and that belt will typically push you into college. And if you're going to go to college, why not go to the best that you can?
estearum 1 hours ago [-]
Universities are still very good investments for most people who go to them
somenameforme 38 minutes ago [-]
In the US the overwhelming majority of people aren't majoring in STEM, and the return for most non-STEM majors is likely negative relative to something like a trade. Even for traditionally well paid cognitive work, LLMs are making the future quite murky. Weird and interesting times we live in. Who knows, maybe the future will make fine arts great again? Personally, I won't be discouraging or encouraging my children to go to college. I'll explain the pros and cons in both directions and leave it up to them.
porridgeraisin 21 hours ago [-]
I'm all for not diluting anything but dropping first semester/year grades is unlikely to cause any major issue IMO. You can encourage lighter electives maybe and remove some elective requirements from later in the course. Already first year courses are fairly generic/light anyways. The purpose is simply to ramp up the competitiveness the same way school itself ramps up over the years. Pretending school momentum carries over to college is just stupid.
consensus1 1 days ago [-]
Do we really want the upper echelons of society to be made up of neurotic workaholics? Do we really want universities to be gate keepers here at all?
hackyhacky 1 days ago [-]
No, we don't, but the alternatives are worse.
Universities at least apply some meritocratic standards. If we bypass universities, there will be some other gatekeeper, it will be worse: mostly an "old boys network" and corrupt, pay-to-play advancement.
consensus1 19 hours ago [-]
Seems like the country was more competently governed before the current university system, though. If its job is to gate keep incompetence out of leadership it is failing spectacularly.
hackyhacky 18 hours ago [-]
> before the current university system,
When was that? Harvard was founded in 1636.
estearum 18 hours ago [-]
When you consider the complexification of any single industry over the last 50 to 100 years, then multiply that by every single other industry, then multiply that by the newly complex interactions between industries, then consider that the government must keep some degree of handle on all of that complexity, and consider that they must do it with a smaller headcount per capita (even before Trump) than ever before, against better-funded and more sophisticated "adversaries" (people/orgs trying to evade government management) than ever before ...
It seems very possible to me that the managers of said system are far better than ever before and still fail to produce spectacular results.
throwitaway222 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
buellerbueller 5 hours ago [-]
I, personally, want more socialists. I think it would be a good thing for people to bear a bit more responsibility to one another in the USA.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Surely if it was wasting productive time in industry, then companies would just hire people directly out of high school, no? There's a reason they don't do that.
shibapuppie 20 hours ago [-]
Oh no, socialism.
uncivilized 1 days ago [-]
Sad state that of affairs when comments like this appear and have affirmative replies. Shows how socially unaware and one-dimensional a Hacker News is.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Competition continues to rise for limited higher education slots. The solution is not to get rid of the measurements we use to decide who should occupy those slots, it's to add more slots (and ideally, also create viable career/life opportunities that do not require a super-expensive education to begin with).
Can you explain how that's "socially unaware" or "one-dimensional"?
uncivilized 1 hours ago [-]
Well your comment had nothing to do with what you’ve written now.
There’s a reason why it’s flagged now.
estearum 1 hours ago [-]
It's flagged because there are crybabies in this thread lol
rayiner 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pavel_lishin 6 hours ago [-]
Spiders Georg, etc.
redserk 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
5 hours ago [-]
elmer2 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
enragedcacti 5 hours ago [-]
So as a college freshman you were closely monitoring the ethnic backgrounds and high school GPAs of your fellow classmates?
doom2 5 hours ago [-]
> It's for students that have had their grades inflated in High school and got into the university based on their ethnic background, instead of merit/points on the SAT.
Why only students who got in based on ethnicity? What about students who only got in because their parents are wealthy or alumni? Or students who get in because of athletics but wouldn't otherwise meet academic admissions criteria? I don't know why there's all this focus (and pushback) on race based admissions when there are multiple other meritless avenues for students to get into college. That people focus on eliminating one and not the others is very telling.
bakies 5 hours ago [-]
Check your racism guy
steve-atx-7600 5 hours ago [-]
It isn’t racist to acknowledge that some schools select students based on factors other than demonstrated aptitude. In the last ten years it was a fad in the US to not require SAT scores until folks realized this was dumb and reversed course.
bakies 5 hours ago [-]
You can select by aptitude and also not select only white people. You're saying you have to lower the bar for people that aren't white. That's the racist part. And the whole DEI culture war bullshit in politics. There's no bar lowering involved.
mc32 6 hours ago [-]
Is she typical or atypical of the kids having issues? My bet is the kids having issues are ones that were less academically inclined. Perhaps they were misled throughout primary education (trophies for everyone, equality of results rather than opportunity, dumbed down mathematics, skipping physics as a req., etc.)
I don’t think kids like yours are having issues but rather kids who didn’t apply themselves academically.
Basically A or even B grades cannot be an average grade. C or 2.0 would be the expected average but of course this hasn’t been close to true since GWB introduced his idiotic policy.
It’s no secret, if you let kids (or people) slack, 80 to 90% will slack off. 10 to 20% will endure out of principle or habit.
alephnerd 1 days ago [-]
^^^ This. 100% This.
This kind of applicant is now treated as table stakes for programs like UMich, and acceptance rates for impacted majors like CS in top programs have dropped to single digits.
It is ridiculously competitive to get into top programs now. I got into an Ivy in the late 2000s to early 2010s. With my stats from back then (13 APs all 4s and 5s, a 4.5+ GPA, varsity wrestling, JV XCountry, NHS, CSF, USAPHO, USAMO, Policy and LD debate, a 2200+ SAT, 35 ACT, 8 SAT Subject test), I would have been lucky to get into CS@UC Davis today and I absolutely wouldn't have gotten into my alma mater.
costco 36 minutes ago [-]
I'm pretty sure you would get into Berkeley with that profile. Also you can just major in math and get a job as a software engineer anyways. I agree that the system has reached the point of absurdity though. ETH Zurich and KU Leuven have the best solution to this issue in my mind, which is to let everyone in but make the classes ridiculously hard so that 50% leave in the first year.
porridgeraisin 21 hours ago [-]
Then why is getting into M.S programs much easier? The GRE is barely an exam and it's not like you need to go to an IIT or do any olympiads to get into columbia or a good UC. Yes in principle you have fewer applicants than bachelors, but that would be compensated by the fact that indians and chinese students also apply no?
alephnerd 21 hours ago [-]
> Then why is getting into M.S programs much easier?
Because domestic undergrads applying to a research-oriented grad program are advised to apply directly to a PhD program.
MS/MA programs are expected to remediate deficiencies at the undergrad level, and most undergrads will take 1st year MS/MA classes as part of their senior year doing a bachelors. Alternatively, the MS/MA is awarded if a PhD candidate failed Quals.
Outside the US, the expected path is BA/BSc/BEng/BTech to MS/MA/MTech/MPhil to PhD.
In the US, the expected path is SB/AB to PhD and MS/MA if you fail quals or are looking for a professional program to remediate coursework deficiencies.
porridgeraisin 20 hours ago [-]
Makes sense
Der_Einzige 2 hours ago [-]
Policy/LD debate, especially if you were good, might as well be a minus these days. That just tells everyone you're going to spread "post-modern neo-marxism" / fashionable nonsense wherever you go, and/or be more slimy than the worst memes about lawyers could ever imagine.
Debate is actually dying, and for a reason. Good riddance, don't let the door kick your ass on the way out.
SlightlyLeftPad 1 days ago [-]
It’s what the American corporate work culture expects though. She’ll be well acclimated.
randusername 2 hours ago [-]
This is a bewildering article and discussion.
Grades and academic performance are outcomes. They're indirect stressors at best; why would one generation suddenly be unable to cope?
The real story is what has changed to increase the stakes of grades. I suspect freshmen are taking out historic debt to contend with food, housing, and tuition costs meanwhile the entry-level job market is extraordinarily competitive. There is no room for error.
oarla 2 hours ago [-]
My personal opinion is that grades are one aspect of a filter that decides which college and subsequently which network a certain individual will have access to. It has a high correlation with intelligence but not linked via causation.
Every generation has struggled with it, except now it’s discussed heavily on social media and other forums. Hence the impression that it’s unique to this generation.
Are there challenges today that didn’t exist for previous generations? Yes! Are they more complex compared to what the previous generations faced? No!
wredcoll 2 hours ago [-]
Famously places like china/india/japan/etc have extremely traumatic final exams. There was just an article about suicides from some kind of (indian?) final exam screw up.
It doesn't take much of a logical leap to associate it with the pressure put on the children taking the tests.
Presumably that kind of pressure ia coming to america.
ux266478 56 minutes ago [-]
American culture incorporates a sense of institutional nihilism that India and China do not have (at a large scale). As globalism winds down and population contraction starts to take hold, it seems far more likely to me that the resulting labor dynamics will end up killing the post-war approach to higher education, particularly as white collar jobs end up constituting less of the economy.
7402 1 hours ago [-]
children?
Showing my age here, I guess. Fifty years ago, 18-year-olds in college were referred to as "men" and "women."
nobodyandproud 55 minutes ago [-]
You must've heard the viral claims that the brain doesn't fully develop until 26?
Though auto-insurance claims do show some truth to late teens and early twenties drivers being...not mentally ready.
reaperducer 1 hours ago [-]
The real story is what has changed to increase the stakes of grades. I suspect freshmen are taking out historic debt to contend with food, housing, and tuition costs meanwhile the entry-level job market is extraordinarily competitive.
Money is the easy excuse.
The root of the problem is that many of them simply are not ready for college for a variety of reasons from parent coddling to defunded primary schools to the reduced ability to think abstractly and with foresight due to the lack of long-form reading.
I know on HN, every reflex is to blame money in one form or another. But there's plenty of blame to go around.
ratelimitsteve 1 hours ago [-]
is one generation suddenly unable to cope or did we just recognize that this has been a long-standing source of stress and maladaptive behavior and finally decide to do something about it?
ungreased0675 5 hours ago [-]
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?
hbn 4 hours ago [-]
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 about it"
I feel really grateful I graduated before the advent of LLMs because it was really easy to stand out as a good student when the standards are apparently so low.
Side tangent but in the same class he caught people zero-citation copy-pasting from Wikipedia on the papers we were assigned to write, and the guys acted like they had no idea you couldn't do that.
giantg2 4 hours ago [-]
I went to a state school. The quality varied wildly depending on the department. It was very eye opening in the general English/writing classes when encountering people who couldn't read or write above a 4th grade level. The difference between they're, their, and there was like a riddle to some of them. Of course many didn't make it more than a semester or two.
That's the big thing - the college might be dropping the first semester grades so they can squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
collabs 4 hours ago [-]
> The quality varied wildly depending on the department.
I feel like it has always been this way. I went to a small private university. The natural sciences and especially the pre-med students had their days fully packed, like the only time you could even have a moment to talk about anything was at the cafeteria during meals.
Then there was the business department. The college athletes apparently picked business as a major because you have to pick something. You couldn't guess what was their preferred minor and why... The overwhelming preferred minor was music because the buildings for department of business and music were adjacent.
Compare that to the pre meds who were always worried about getting a B and somehow "ruining their chances at med school".
antonymoose 1 hours ago [-]
I feel like the prevailing story you would hear “back in the day” was always the star quarterback or the kid of a rich donor getting white-glove treatment. Instead my experience matched GP, handful of students complaining that a tree-balancing exercise is “too harsh” and getting the entire assignment slashed by the professor being pressed to increase the size of the department.
vel0city 3 hours ago [-]
> The college athletes apparently picked business as a major because you have to pick something.
I actually think it makes a lot of sense to go for some kind of basic business degree if you're angling to go into professional sports. Having some basic concepts of basic business law, finance, etc. seems pretty important for someone looking to shop their abilities and likeness around and have some understanding of the contract negotiations they'll hopefully be a part of. Outside of the gym its probably the most relevant kind of skills being taught on a college campus for that career path.
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
> That's the big thing - the college might be dropping the first semester grades so they can squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
This seems most likely. If you think of college as yet another extractive business (and you can bet the administrators at colleges think this way), then students that drop out are simply cu$tomers you are failing to retain: Pure lost revenue.
everybodyknows 3 hours ago [-]
> ... squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
Propitiated, in many cases, by the unnoticed run-up of their student loan debt balance.
atomicnumber3 3 hours ago [-]
In almost any program, it is entirely possible to navigate your degree so that you are allowed to come away with a high GPA but knowing largely nothing useful. There's enough burned out adjuncts, overworked pre-tenure profs, and coasting/research-oriented tenured profs that with some help from upperclassmen and the ability to detect lax professors, that you can manage to get through largely unscathed by learning. Typically to your chagrin/despair as you then begin interviewing.
chasd00 4 hours ago [-]
> 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 about it"
that sounds unbelievable. Not calling you out by any means i'm just shocked! I can comprehend tuning down the difficulty but not to the level of find some code online and write about it.
steveBK123 3 hours ago [-]
If you are an old like me, I don't think you can use current acceptance rates. They are artificially low compared to old rates because kids just send so many applications out now.
20 years ago UofM had a 50% acceptance rate, from some light google searching. Apparently they received 115k applications last year vs under 25k in 2005.
The biggest factor is that applying is a lot easier in the age of web applications, common application, and students being advised to send 10-15 applications out. In the 2000s even a good student might apply to 3-5 schools and feel they had covered enough.
jcranmer 4 hours ago [-]
There are, I think, three big hurdles for freshmen in college:
First, college can be a very abrupt shift from "someone is watching over you" to "you, and only you, are responsible for yourself." If you slack off in high school, someone--your parents, your teachers, your school administration--is likely to get on your ass to put you back on track, and this is more likely to be the case for people who get into tougher colleges ("helicopter parents" are very real things). But in college, if you sleep in and miss all of your classes... no one is going to care. Well, your parents might, but your parents aren't with you in college to do anything about it. I've seen quite a few people who went from straight A's in high school to failing most of their college courses because of this.
Second, a lot of those accepted are going to be the smartest person in their class, who are now going to a college where they might be average--or even below average.
Finally, college courses are generally more difficult than a high school course, even an AP course, teaching the same material; there's just a lot more that's expected as students. Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students, but by the time you get to a senior-level course, reading multiple research papers a day for per class is considered pretty normal. Of course, if you're a kid with a truckload of AP courses who let you skip your first year of college, now you're dropped into courses that expect you to have already adjusted to college life first.
atomicnumber3 3 hours ago [-]
"Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students"
Interesting, that's not my observation at all. Instead freshman classes were the most grueling experiences, intentionally weed-out classes to try to detect and, well, weed-out early those who wouldn't have the combination of grit, intelligence and organization skills to make it to the end of the degree.
I speak somewhat hyperbolically, it was never _unfair_, but the classes absolutely were paced and had homework/exam loads that you would simply be unable to cope with if you were trying to half-ass it. At my college, Calc I and Physics 1 were the big freshman showstoppers. I tested out of calc 1, but my IB HL was chemistry and as such I had a chemist's disdain (and begrudging respect) for the more academic science of physics, and while the actual topics weren't difficult, there was a LOT of homework and the exams left no stone unturned.
Comparatively, jr+ classes tended to be much more relaxed, focused more on learning the material than ensuring you are willing to do 8-10 hours of physics homework per week.
Every college is different though, I suppose.
jghn 3 hours ago [-]
This was a few decades ago but we had 2 tiers of weed outs. The first was the intro classes that most everyone took their freshman year. Then there was another wave that was major specific and tended to show up 2nd semester of sophomore year into 1st semester of junior year, essentially the point where coursework was shifting almost entirely to be major specific.
So for instance, one of the notorious freshman weed out classes was a class that *every* engineering student took. But then each individual engineering major had their own handful of pain in the ass classes that showed up as the engineering curriculum diverged.
thedougd 2 hours ago [-]
Same experience in 2000s. I’ll never forget there was a kid on his third try to pass the mandatory Intro to Engineering class. I sure hope he moved on to a new major.
pj_mukh 3 hours ago [-]
All of this has been true for the last 50 years at least? What changed?
AndrewKemendo 3 hours ago [-]
All of this has been true for at least two generations
That’s what college life was like for me in a top 10 US school in 2003-2008 and was true of that school since 1954.
vehemenz 4 hours ago [-]
Exactly. They're rejecting 85% of applicants because they're not qualified, but the 15% they admit are, by and large, not qualified either. I'm at one of Michigan's peer institutions, and we have the same problem.
rtkwe 4 hours ago [-]
College is a pretty large step up for most people even if they're good at high school and go to a relatively decent one. It's a sudden promotion to full adult in charge of yourself and your success in a way that's hard to prepare for living at home.
chasd00 3 hours ago [-]
> College is a pretty large step up for most people
but it's always been this way since forever. Why would it need to change now and not a hundred years ago? What circumstances are different?
rtkwe 57 minutes ago [-]
Places are more concerned about mental health now for starters.
t3hTao 3 hours ago [-]
As someone who lives in this area... Sorry for saying this.. Ready for it:
Nepo babies and affirmative action babies. (Dont @ me about Gratz, lets not pretend its no longer happening)
The students that come out of there are just normal. There is nothing special in the UoM sauce. They have more ego as their state school grad who makes the same money as them.
Sure there is a floor, they didn't let the alcoholic nepo baby in. But the people that made it to entry level Fortune 20 companies were the same tier, or maybe they were worse. Best engineers were people from random schools around the country that just wanted to work there.
Note: This didn't apply to people that had been there for 2 or 3 years. After that, even the UoM grads had their ego destroyed and they were normal people again.
vondur 2 hours ago [-]
How many kids are "Nepo", and aren't they usually donating some kind of money to the University to sweeten the deal?
JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago [-]
> How many kids are "Nepo", and aren't they usually donating some kind of money to the University
Plenty of kids are small-town nepo. Daddy threatens to call his lawyer every time they get a C or get in trouble, and teachers and administrators cave.
okaram 4 hours ago [-]
They are NOT saying they're not ready for college level work, right? They may not be ready for UMich college level work.
Also, they may need an adjustment period, which makes sense.
I think we need to wait and see how it works, before blindly criticizing a possible good idea
dbvn 5 hours ago [-]
Once you cross a certain threshold, it's luck of the draw if you're selected. Clearly the entire thing is broken.
cogman10 5 hours ago [-]
It's a pretty different environment going from high school to college. There's a dynamic change that's pretty sudden where your parents are no long really in the picture for support.
What they are trying to do is keep the kids that would otherwise do well but might freak out in the first semester. Seems pretty fine to me especially since those are grades that if we are being honest really don't matter anyways.
cm2187 5 hours ago [-]
I wonder how kids have managed to deal with that for two centuries…
wolttam 5 hours ago [-]
Live in an overall less uncertain environment?
anself 4 hours ago [-]
It’s not actually less certain now than it was then. It’s just the media has gotten louder. Cuban missilie crisis, civil rights, world wars, nuclear weapons, it has all been happening for a while.
halls-940 4 hours ago [-]
When you look at real wages vs cost of living and the trend line is down and showing no signs of ever going back up, the question will I be able to afford the resources to survive and have a family, will my kids be able to afford a home, that's the growing uncertainty.
There is a real issue that housing is unreasonably expensive in many areas, which we could fix via the innovative strategy of not making it illegal to build housing.
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
Now plot that wage plot against productivity, or corporate profit, or any US stock index, or as you said: housing costs. Real wages are not keeping up with anything. It's not just housing.
Household income is not wages. If people work more hours income goes up while wages are flat. That series only includes full-time workers. High earners are doing better, that's the k-shaped economy. The upside of going to college is being carved out by changes in the labor market. A more representative measure would be average wage for non supervisory roles which is flat since the 1970s. Lower earners face higher inflation than the CPI because more of their paycheck goes to necessities. CPI shelter is what I'm interested in.
colpabar 4 hours ago [-]
Did you worry about any of those things as a freshman?
brendoelfrendo 4 hours ago [-]
Yes? When I started college 16-ish years ago the '08 financial crisis was still fresh in my mind. Many of my peers were deeply concerned about the kinds of jobs and wages they could expect to find after graduation.
mg794613 4 hours ago [-]
On all fronts we are having a easier time than before.
Healthcare, safety, life expectancy, disease, mental health (yes, you disagree, but it not being existant in the past kinda sets tue bar).
So what do you mean with "uncertain environment"?
rayiner 4 hours ago [-]
You mean the less uncertainty during World War I, World War II, or the Cold War?
UltraSane 3 hours ago [-]
Life in the 1800s seems a lot MORE uncertain than now.
naasking 4 hours ago [-]
What's less certain about modern environments compared to past ones?
Uncle_Brumpus 4 hours ago [-]
I definitely didn't have to wonder if my career choice would be invalidated by AI by the time I graduate.
t-3 4 hours ago [-]
No, you would have to worry about your job being sent/lost to Mexico, Japan, China, etc. Now those jobs are already lost and we have a different vulnerability. Same story, different clothes.
freejazz 4 hours ago [-]
At university? You sure about that?
t-3 4 hours ago [-]
Downsizing and outsourcing hit all non-management positions, the only moat against it was technical expertise, but that's been eroded for quite a while. How much moaning about development being outsourced to India have we heard in the past decade?
krupan 17 minutes ago [-]
Past 2 decades
giantg2 4 hours ago [-]
The possible end result isn't that much different than the threat of wars or the financial crises - no job, possible death, etc.
IncreasePosts 3 hours ago [-]
When I was in a CS program in the US in 2005 I heard from dozens of people as well as media pundits that it's a bad choice because all the tech jobs would be outsourced to india.
naasking 3 hours ago [-]
No, in the past you just had the possibility of childhood illness and death, the death of siblings, war, famine, drought, none of which are real problems for university students these days.
UltraSane 3 hours ago [-]
Imagine being a typesetter when the transition to digital printing presses was occurring.
cogman10 4 hours ago [-]
You've never heard of college dropouts?
Kids have "managed" this by dropping out of college.
SiempreViernes 4 hours ago [-]
He just said: they freaked out, dropped out and did some less qualified work. Meanwhile inept kids from money who were taught that form them effort is not required went on to get lucrative jobs without merit, and now Trump is president.
hirvi74 4 hours ago [-]
A lot of money helped then, and it sure helps now too.
red-iron-pine 4 hours ago [-]
alcohol and sleeping in
iugtmkbdfil834 4 hours ago [-]
Yes.. and that friction, too, served a purpose. There it a reason it tends to be referred to as a filter, because by first year you find out whether you have what it takes to survive that environment or not. The good news for everyone is that now we get to find out in 2nd year, where our sunk cost is much greater. Hurray for winning.
cogman10 3 hours ago [-]
First semester, not first year. And I suspect that the filter will still be in play for students because they'll still have coursework to complete. They simply don't get the grade feedback reducing the stress of perfecting that semester while they are still learning the ropes.
iugtmkbdfil834 3 hours ago [-]
We all know how it goes. Minimal adjustment is made to accommodate someone in some way only crazies like me would object to and soon the entire school is pass/fail depending on whether you show up with your own pencil; just to ensure we do not induce stress. Naturally, then stress will be first experienced in first real job, but lets have private ( non-school ) sector worry about that. Maybe they can institute their own stress-free policy. And so it will go on.
cogman10 3 hours ago [-]
As I said to another commenter
> That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen.
They have proposed 1 semester, if they propose extending it then I'll be right along side you saying that's ridiculous. However, it's just as likely that they'll say "Actually, 1 semester was too long, we'll just do it for 1/2 a semester".
iugtmkbdfil834 3 hours ago [-]
It is genuinely hard to argue slippery slope fallacy when we have years upon years of examples like social promotion, resulting grade inflation and such. Own your argument man. If you are ok with end result, say so.
cogman10 2 hours ago [-]
> It is genuinely hard to argue slippery slope fallacy when we have years upon years of examples like social promotion
No it's not, because that's a tangentially related thing. You can't say "because social promotion is widely practiced, colleges will eventually eliminate grades" That's a non-sequitur. It'd be just as silly as me making the argument that "because some classes at my college were pass/fail, eventually they'll all be pass fail". That's the slippery slope argument.
> Own your argument man
That's not my argument, dude. And claiming it is is bad faith bro.
> If you are ok with end result, say so.
The end result of a single semester not being graded? Yeah, I'm fine with that. Because it's just as likely the university finds it's a mistake and rolls it back as it is that they expand it. It's also likely that they don't do anything with it.
That's my argument. That this policy is probably positive and worth trying. My argument isn't "nobody should ever be graded ever". That's a straw-man that you've cooked up.
UncleMeat 34 minutes ago [-]
MIT has had this policy for years and years. Did they fall down this slippery slope such that everybody is slacking off and nobody is getting meaningfully evaluated?
account42 3 hours ago [-]
Seems to me it would be fairer to kids to filter those not fit out quickly rather than to string them along.
cogman10 3 hours ago [-]
You assume these kids are doomed to failure and not capable of adapting. Sure, some of them are, but not everyone.
It's just 1 semester and also gives students time to switch majors if they determine it's not for them (which is also common).
nobodyandproud 4 hours ago [-]
U of M. is doing no favors to its students. While it's a different environment, that's part of growing up.
Once you're on your own nobody coddles you and it can be brutal.
cogman10 4 hours ago [-]
What harm exactly do you think giving a single semester reprieve is going to cause these students?
ungreased0675 4 hours ago [-]
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.
UncleMeat 33 minutes ago [-]
MIT has this policy. Do employers think that MIT degrees are a joke?
cogman10 4 hours ago [-]
> Employers thinking a UofM degree is a joke.
I've never cared about where the degree of someone comes from. You really think and employer is going to look at UofM and say "Oh, they gave their students a 1 semester reprieve, obviously they are of lower quality"?
> Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency.
Why would the policy of UofM change the hiring practices of companies that are not UofM? Where's the connection?
> Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass.
This may be a real harm, but ultimately they'll have to learn the foundational knowledge to continue going to UofM. Plenty of students fail to learn foundational knowledge outside of UofM, I know because I had to tutor them.
mitchdoogle 3 hours ago [-]
Few employers will even know this is a thing.
nobodyandproud 3 hours ago [-]
Quite a bit.
As a student: Grades are one of the clearest signals on whether you're a good fit for a major or topic you're interested in, you need more work, or you need to trim down the number of classes.
Not providing that clear, cumulative signal is a major disservice to the students.
Also, UofM is expensive so dragging it benefits only the financials for the school.
cogman10 2 hours ago [-]
I think this touches on a real potential harm. I guess my counter is that it'd be hard to make that adjustment after the first semester anyways. Particularly because these will all be intro classes anyways which can all be overly easy. Some of my engineering 3 credit courses really should have been like 6 credits whereas some of my generals 3 credit hours were more like 1 credit. It's hard to know that without getting a feel for the classes and professors.
nobodyandproud 2 hours ago [-]
In the sciences and engineering, many of the major-related 101s are important filter classes.
It sounds harsh but it’s an important reality check for the student.
colpabar 4 hours ago [-]
Won't they need a reprieve next semester since they'll have to go through the same thing?
cogman10 4 hours ago [-]
That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen.
So again I ask. What's the harm?
naasking 4 hours ago [-]
The coddling is a big problem these days, and this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy. The assessment that "they would otherwise do well" is speculative, at best.
jasonlotito 4 hours ago [-]
> this focus on mental health is itself unhealthy.
Yes. We should ignore things like school shootings, which have long been described as the result of mental health issues. Ignore PTSD. Soldiers can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. By all means, ignore the mental health of a rape victim or a child abuse victim. They can just tough it out. Clearly, that's the better strategy.
Oh, and you've been working in this field for how long?
iugtmkbdfil834 4 hours ago [-]
I was not going to engage, but I decided to point out something. Strawmanning on HN won't get you far. There. Hope it helps.
Do you know what it takes to get admitted into Mich tier programs in 2026?
Kids will take multiple APs (taking 10+ isn't unheard of, and in a lot of high schools is expected), do multiple extracurriculars (debate, MUN, DECA sports, academic olympiads, theatre), volunteering (NHS, CSF, etc), and even take college classes in high school.
On top of that while tests are optional, most students still submit their SAT and ACT, and the expectation of 1500+ and 35+ still holds.
And even then there's no guarantee you'll get in.
Most applicants who successfully get into Ivies, impacted majors with single digit acceptance rates at Mich or Cal tier programs like EECS or a BBA, and other peer programs are basically burnt out by 17-18 (the age most kids at these programs now matriculate).
And the first semester is not impactful in any shape or form. It's best to take summary and intro classes as P/NP to even the playing field and then throw in a weed-out class (in CS that was historically data structures or OS).
So many HNers complain about how the younger generation is hyper-competitive yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching.
Heck, with my profile from the late 2000s and early 2010s (right when everything became hyper-competitive and optimized), I actually wouldn't have a shot at most programs at Mich let alone my Alma mater, especially when I compare it to my younger sibling's profile who also attended a Mich tier engineering undergrad in the 2020s.
giantg2 4 hours ago [-]
"So many HNers complain about how the younger generation is hyper-competitive yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching."
Dropping a semester of grades is a cover up for the symptoms, not a fix. A better fix would be stress management and realistic expectations. Building your identity or self-worth around going to a particular school is the insane part. It's great to have big goals, but you have to separate those goals from defining you. It seems many kids today don't make that distinction. Pick a cheap state school with a decent program, get a scholarship, and start living life. All this prestige and pedigree is the type of stuff we should be trying to destroy.
doctorwho42 4 hours ago [-]
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 it help relieve the stress from their rat race of 110% from their childhoods... Man is it worth it. And everyone still loves hiring people out of MIT
cj 3 hours ago [-]
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".
> giving you time to adjust to factors like increased workloads and variations in academic preparation and teaching methods.
> curb a mental health crisis
In this context, both have the exact same meaning, of "stop freshmen who are used to overachieving their entire lives from taking a header off the tallest buildings on campus because they're not used to being less than the top 5% at everything"
ajcp 4 hours ago [-]
> And even then there's no guarantee you'll get in.
> yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching
Your argument is hard to follow. It is prohibitively hard, to the point of being unhealthy, to getting admitted to the University of Michigan. Okay, but how does this policy solve for or address that in any way? Wouldn’t the solution be to increase capacity to meet demand, thus relieving those pressures that create the conditions for them to admit young adults that are suffering from health issues that the universities admissions policies itself precipitated?
alephnerd 4 hours ago [-]
It gives students one semester of breathing room that allows them to chill out and concentrate on education for the sake of education.
And UMich Ann Arbor is already massive - 8,000 students enroll a year.
ajcp 4 hours ago [-]
But, again, the University of Michigan’s own admissions policies created the need for the students to “chill out”. Is this not treating a symptom of the problem, not the motivator?
Also 32,000 undergrads is not “massive” by any measurement[0], especially when accounting for the population of the state of Michigan, much less the broader United States.
Michigan admissions create opportunities for students that found success within the challenging conditions. Umich treats the problem by educating future policy makers about those systems. Then occasionally yields to powerful lobby groups and clandestine operations of fascist administration.
ajcp 3 hours ago [-]
Not gonna lie, really had me going in the first half there.
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
> Heck, with my profile from the late 2000s and early 2010s (right when everything became hyper-competitive and optimized), I actually wouldn't have a shot at most programs at Mich let alone my Alma mater
You're right about this one. I'd never get accepted today at the state university I went to back in the 90s. Back then, applying to college meant taking the SAT, filling out an application, and maybe submitting an essay. That was it. Then you figured out how you'd pay for it. They didn't care that much about AP courses, extracurricular activities, career shadowing, volunteering, college level credits, or anything like that. Sure, they were nice bonuses but nobody treated them as hard requirements like they do today. Hell, my high school didn't even offer AP courses, so I couldn't take one even if I wanted to.
Now, my kid is approaching college age, and all these college admissions coaches are breathing down my neck to get her to take 40 AP courses, join the debate club and chess club, play Sportsball every year, take 4 years of a foreign language, do volunteering, tutor other kids, and then take extra courses at the local community college, and that doing all that will only improve her already-low chances of acceptance. Good grief!
cpburns2009 4 hours ago [-]
You can handle all of that in high school, but suddenly can't handle the mental stress of a grade report your first semester of college? Give me a break.
porridgeraisin 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, it doesn't transfer. This is because the type of work required to perform in school is completely different from the type of work required to perform in college. This means first sem performance often dives even for a diligent student. The stress is not about the first few course themselves rather it is that they can terribly impact your entire GPA. Considering how relatively unimportant the first sem courses are relative to the whole degree, it makes sense to drop it from the GPA. You could also assign them much fewer credits, that would be an alternative solution I suppose.
hirvi74 3 hours ago [-]
That's a lot of effort to go through just to end up writing some shitty JS for some Mega corp.
Der_Einzige 2 hours ago [-]
Stuff like this is why I'm super duper glad that AI is going to fundementally kill education.
SubmarineClub 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
t3hTao 3 hours ago [-]
I hope 'economic' backgrounds also mean nepo babies.
giantg2 4 hours ago [-]
15% seems extremely low for a non-ivy.
t3hTao 3 hours ago [-]
The longer I live, the less I'm impressed by fancy schools.
They don't make great labor. They are normal labor with egos until the age of ~25. Then they become normal labor without egos as the system killed their ego.
I really expected some secret sauce in Ivys/UoM, and nope. Electrical Engineers there didn't know how to figure out mass of a part given density(based on material) and volume.
giantg2 3 hours ago [-]
"I really expected some secret sauce in Ivys/UoM, and nope."
The secret sauce seems to be that many come from money, which means they have connections.
alephnerd 4 hours ago [-]
Because in America, Ivy versus non-Ivy isn't the distinction.
What matters is your major and whether it is a well respected program.
A CS@Texas student will have the ability to open the exact same doors professionally and prestige wise as a CS@Brown student.
You have Ivies, Ivy Tier Privates (Stanford, Chicago, Duke, USC, Caltech, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Georgetown, CMU), and Public Ivies (Cal, UCLA, UCSD, Mich, UIUC, UW, UT, GT, Purdue, UNC Chapel Hill, UVA) that all recruit the same kind of applicant and place in the same careers and employers.
giantg2 4 hours ago [-]
Some of that prestige is more regional. Perspectives change based on location and experience. The ivies tend to be more national.
alephnerd 4 hours ago [-]
They ain't. A non-trivial amount of people have not heard of Brown or Dartmouth, and confuse UPenn with Penn State. Hell, I didn't hear about Brown until high school and I ended up attending an Ivy lol.
And employers and us alums of these programs know the difference is marginal.
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
I don't think anyone on the west coast of the US cares if you're an Ivy grad. Now, Stanford grads on the other hand, every employer seems to cream their jeans over them, for whatever reason. I knew a tech company that sorted their resumes into "Stanford" and "Everyone else". Having not gone there, I don't understand what the fuss is all about.
smcg 3 hours ago [-]
Every employer in the northeast knows who Brown and Dartmouth are.
alephnerd 41 minutes ago [-]
The Northeast isn't the rest of America, the same way someone in Maine isn't necessarily going to think about CMC or Harvey Mudd similarly Brown or Dartmouth doesn't come up much or at all.
kaladin-jasnah 4 hours ago [-]
My impression was NYU had a high(er?) acceptance rate. Not saying they are a bad school, since the people I know there are super sharp, but still.
tarentel 4 hours ago [-]
The acceptance rate is sort of a weird criteria for NYU when you compare it to the other schools it is listed with. It is a very popular school so it gets more applicants than 3-4 of the other colleges it is listed with combined, it has a slightly higher rate than most of those schools. It also accepts more students than probably all of those schools. I went there it is a good school. I don't think most people would put it in the same category as MIT. I certainly do not think it is as prestigious.
steveBK123 3 hours ago [-]
If you are using acceptance rates as a proxy for difficulty of schools in a given year, you need to adjust by desirability of location and perceived seriousness of degree programs.
And across time you have to adjust acceptance rates for the fact they are all way lower now because kids send out 2-3x as many apps.
A lot of kids even 20 years ago were applying to schools in NYC/Boston/DC on east coast because they wanted to be in NYC/Boston/DC. Many of my friends went to said schools for psychology/film/etc type programs at schools that as an engineering major were decidedly for me "safety schools". Many of these were 50% admit then and 10% admit now. I don't think they suddenly became as difficult as MIT.
Meanwhile many engineering schools (the types with Institute in the name) that were in cold rural boring areas had higher acceptance rates than my "safety schools" in Boston.
This trend has seemingly only accelerated. For example picking 3 schools in Boston to isolate just the difficulty feature:
* In 2005 MIT acceptance was ~16% vs 4% now (1/4).
* BC was ~30% vs 15% now (1/2).
* BU was ~68% vs 11% now (1/6).
So theres an argument that the harder the school the less dramatically its acceptance rate has compressed, while desirable good but not super hard schools (which have fluffy majors available) have had a larger effect.
alephnerd 4 hours ago [-]
7% acceptance rate. They're selective.
The "NYU/USC is a party school" trope is from back in the 1990s (aka 2 generations ago).
technothrasher 5 hours ago [-]
Back when I went to University of Rochester in the early 90's, the entire first year was not included in your GPA. So we still got grades, but they didn't count for anything. But in my junior year, the state of NY told the school that they would lose their accreditation if they kept it up, because they saw it as unfairly raising the GPA of UR graduates versus all other NY universities. So while my class was grandfathered in, the practice was stopped the next year for the incoming freshman class.
mikemcquaid 5 hours ago [-]
Studying my 4 year BSc in Scotland: the first two years didn’t “count” to your overall grade and had more “required” modules/classes (e.g. maths for CS degrees).
This had pros and cons:
- it was nice to have a bit more of a gradual build
- this would probably avoid some of the issues here
- if you are lazy like me: you do bare minimum effort first and second year and then get crushed by both workload and lack of foundational knowledge in third year
- if you apply to a US company, some will want to see your “full transcript” and don’t accept “I was too busy playing CS (Counterstrike) to study CS (Computer Science)”
nuclearnicer 5 hours ago [-]
Fascinating. Sort of an interesting experiment between the last freshman of no grades and the first with grades.
Given that 75% of all grades in 2022 were A's, grade inflation has already made the indicator value of grades pretty meaningless. I think this take from a student captures it well:
> Louth, 20 years old, said he earned all A’s and one B in his first semester and doubted he would have worked as hard had the classes been pass/fail. But he thinks he would have learned more from his classes without the pressure of earning high marks.
The first semester should help students explore and engage their curiosity. I think it's a good move and hope the experiment succeeds
mrngld 6 hours ago [-]
But it's not true. Cute to say that, but I wouldn't believe it. Just like most students, given the opportunity to use AI to essentially cheat will often do so (look at the stunning percentages professors are detecting when they bother to try to figure it out), the same applies here; given the option to study these things more deeply or fire up Tinder, Facebook, Minecraft or whatever, they're going to do the latter.
4 hours ago [-]
jmull 3 hours ago [-]
I think the consternation here isn’t warranted.
If a large enough proportion of incoming students need an adjustment period, surely it’s better to have one than not.
Also, it’s misdirected. If incoming students aren’t prepared for college, that’s a problem at the high school level (possibly earlier, too). A university is going to do better for its students if it adjusts to reality rather than expecting it to adjust to tradition.
AngryData 1 days ago [-]
It sounds okay at first glance, but how many people are going to get saddled with an extra semester of debt now because they didn't figure out they weren't suite/ready for college yet but were just passed along through the first semester anyways?
dtj1123 1 days ago [-]
Completely agree. My first semester of university was straight up hazing, which at the time felt like crap.
The consequence though, was that every single person who stayed on the course actually cared about being there. Staying motivated for the next three and a half years was made so much easier because the first six months were so difficult.
jerlam 1 days ago [-]
People called them "weeder" classes in my university.
But it's better earlier rather than later. The consequences aren't severe and you can change majors, lessen your course load, or stop those volunteer opportunities. That's part of learning how to be an adult.
I knew a few people my freshmen year that were put on academic probation. They turned out all right after making some drastic changes. Others simply disappeared during the break.
odyssey7 6 hours ago [-]
Apart from the notion of a moral obligation that may now seem quaint and old-fashioned, you’re talking about their customers who are paying for an education. The responsibility rests partly on the school for solving these challenges. Declaring students “weeds” would tell you all you need to know about the place.
mrngld 6 hours ago [-]
If it's simply pay to win then the value of a degree from an institution falls to absolutely zero. If the product a student is buying is a credential that's supposed to say "I know and can do things, pay me money please" then in order for that credential to fulfill its objective then low performing and mediocre students ("weeds") need to be filtered out. Otherwise, employers and the wider world will quickly realize the credential is meaningless.
See the problem here?
odyssey7 4 hours ago [-]
Paying a teacher to teach ≠ buying a credential.
Failing to teach a student ≠> the student is mediocre.
The student is mediocre ≠ the student is irredeemable and didn’t deserve an education in the first place.
Honestly, it’s wild to me how reluctant people are to accept that teachers have a responsibility to teach their students.
They will charge you $2000 a credit hour to have a teacher teach you — as if the teacher alone is the gatekeeper of an education — and then claim that the teacher is not in any way responsible for the student’s success or failure in being taught.
zamadatix 3 hours ago [-]
How is saying some students get weeded out the same thing as saying the teacher has zero responsibility to teach any of their students? Whether or not you pay or get paid to be at an educational institution, you should be weeded out (early, preferably) if you aren't going to put in your part.
A portion of the educator's role is weeding out students who are not wanting/able to engage with the material before they spend a massive amount of time and money towards stepping stone classes to something they won't try/be able to complete. A portion of the student's role is weeding out the teachers and institutions which are more interested in maximizing the money out of the student instead of teaching them well. The two weeding processes actually reinforce the right outcome together - students getting educated instead of wasting their resources.
odyssey7 3 hours ago [-]
Why take money from someone you know you can’t teach?
The reality is that prestigious universities routinely take money from incredibly talented people who are fully capable of learning calculus with or without a good teacher, the university gives them a careless or actively harmful teacher, and then the student is deemed a “weed” that was rightfully put in their proper place.
When you look at it this way, it’s clear that people are being scammed. Maybe that’s why universities are so reluctant to accept accountability for their teaching quality, blaming the students first and foremost.
red-iron-pine 4 hours ago [-]
see also: the we-take-anyone online degree mill problem
shimman 4 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry but this is straight up a non serious reply. If you want to be in STEM you need to pass calculus, then the specific majors have their own "weed out" courses which is good. There should be some base level of competence and if you can't pass, say, Abstract Algebra then you can't get a degree in mathematics.
There needs to be some sort of academic baseline for university otherwise what is the difference between a youtube playlist and a semester worth of credits?
odyssey7 4 hours ago [-]
Can the school teach its students calculus or does it take money from people, fail to teach them calculus, call them “weeds,” and kick them to the curb? The responsibility runs both ways.
I am definitely not saying that students should pass without learning the material. I am emphasizing that schools and instructors also have a responsibility to teach their students, both morally and financially. Just because the norm is to behave amorally and with greed, that doesn’t make it proper.
to11mtm 1 days ago [-]
Pretty good question.
I remember two things about my university.
First, I was a 'provisional' admission. Which meant that I had to maintain at least a C Average for the first year, Had to log a certain number of hours in one of the 'study centers' every week (Although I could technically do whatever, so I wound up reading a lot of books once I had my coursework done,) and there was a 1 hour a week pass/fail that was primarily following up on the study center logs and connecting students with extra help if the needed it.
Second, I remember a -lot- of people pledging a fraternity their first semester, and statistically it seemed to cause a much higher fail rate... In fact, I tried pledging a social fraternity my second year, dropped out in less than a week because I realized the time commitments and requirements would have tanked my grades; sure enough out of the entire group that didn't drop out, less than 10% survived through the full year.
That second point actually got so bad that, for my last year they actually banned Social fraternities from recruiting first semester freshmen... not sure whether it stuck or not after I graduated tho.
locallost 4 hours ago [-]
The same amount of people maybe that will not have quit and would go on to thrive. Two sides of the same coin. If you want to go to the bottom of it, it's wrong answers only.
dekhn 1 hours ago [-]
"The tyranny of soft expectations"
I was intensely stressed through high school and undergrad, then later in grad school, postdoc, full time job as computer scientist, then as a SWE. It wasn't pleasant but it drove me to achieve at far higher levels, in ways that paid off well in the long run (like financial stability and earlier retirement). Note: in undergrad, I specifically went to a school that did not have grades but still felt all the stress to perform.
I suspect that as unpleasant as stress is, it ultimately can make us better people.
"Our findings reveal that gradeless learning can increase motivation and reduce surface learning but has no significant effect on students’ later academic achievements."
cj 6 hours ago [-]
For some reason that doesn't make me feel better.
If college is supposed to prepare kids for the real world, we should be creating environments that simulate the real world as much as possible.
Creating a consequence free semester is the polar opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, you get a job, and you're on probation for your "first semester" when the scrutiny is at its highest. You don't get the privilege of easing into the job, you're thrown in. Shouldn't be any different for college kids.
The safety bubble we're building around kids + young adults is not going to end well.
krupan 4 minutes ago [-]
I'm not sure college was ever intended to prepare people for the "real world." College programs start out with "general" education and get more and more focused on a particular area of study the further you go. Colleges teach you how to research deeply and write on those narrow topics. Prep for the real world would teach you how to pick a place to live and take care of it, how to parent, how to get along with neighbors and co-workers, how to do your taxes, save for retirement, how to take care of your brain and body, etc. No college requires classes like that for everyone
igorkraw 5 hours ago [-]
Genuine take: maybe it would be more efficient for the economy and society, as well as better for everyone involved individuall, to make room for the ease in period as well, with a clearly communicated end towards the same, so people can acclimatize?
Speaking as someone who grew up in a slightly more cruel world, but still received way more kindness than previous generations (did not die of previously deadly respiratory complications in childhood, got accepted into gifted children program for enthousiasm, not IQ, got recommendation letters for the same reasons, short sighted, ADHD) in my self evaluation, each time I got a break it spurned me to work harder and try more to "pay it back", and every time I powered through strict evaluation and scrutiny it left scars that overall impede my productivity/would do so if I had not gotten therapy to overcome them .
Nature is cruel, but also inefficient. We have long since started building a "rela world" full of safety bubbles that let us thrive. Why not continue with this one?
cj 5 hours ago [-]
The majority of US jobs are offered by small businesses.
The idea of “ease in” periods is nice, but it’s incredibly challenging when the business is understaffed (and hence hiring) for a specific role. You don’t have a lot of extra bandwidth on the existing team to cover for the new guy while he settles in.
pjm331 5 hours ago [-]
Agreed, I dont get the argument “life sucks so school should suck too”
How about we work on making things not suck
x86_64Ubuntu 4 hours ago [-]
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.
enragedcacti 5 hours ago [-]
> If college is supposed to prepare kids for the real world, we should be creating environments that simulate the real world as much as possible.
Would you take a motorcycle safety course where the first thing they do is chuck you into "simulated" traffic? It feels too obvious to say, but just throwing people in the deep-end isn't necessarily the most consistent or effective teaching tool for every situation.
cj 5 hours ago [-]
Starting your first semester in college shouldn't feel like "being thrown in the deep end". You just spent 4 years of high school preparing for it!
But I agree that kids are awfully unprepared for the real world, so maybe coddling kids into early adulthood is unfortunately necessary? The whole situation makes me very sad.
margalabargala 4 hours ago [-]
You don't actually have any idea how different high school and college are, do you? Unless the kid went to boarding school, the environmental change is immense.
cj 3 hours ago [-]
I agree that the environmental change is immense and that it's stressful.
Do I think a consequence free first semester is needed to address that? No..
margalabargala 2 hours ago [-]
I think there's an odd disconnect that a lot of older people have where they forget the goals of institutions, and assume the goals are the experience they remember rather than something else.
For example: what would you say is the point of college, generally? Is it learning? Is it producing functional adults? Or is the goal, itself, to accumulate large numbers of grades that are as close to 100 as possible?
That last one isn't a goal, it's a means to an end.
Human learning is in fact something that can be studied and measured, and not something that was perfected at any point in the last 50 years. If it can be shown that not giving grades the first semester improves the actual goals of learning and adult success, then that's what should be done.
If you get over yourself and your "back and my day" and "consequences", you will see that what is being done is what will help create the world you actually want.
cj 2 hours ago [-]
MIT does pass/fail for first semester, but the reason they give is "to allow students to adjust to collegiate workload" -- I'm 100% aligned and support with that.
What I'm not in favor of is a college doing the same thing, but using "mental health" as the motivator. If mental health is really the issue, maybe the kids they're trying to help aren't actually ready for college.
margalabargala 2 hours ago [-]
In what way is "allowing students to adjust to the collegiate workload" not "mental health"?
I see no difference in this vs the MIT program in terms of reasoning aside from a slight difference in wording.
Is the term "mental health" really such a blinding political football? Like "I hate Obamacare, but I love the ACA" and "Welfare is bad, but we need more assistance to the poor"?
syrrim 2 hours ago [-]
Those are two ways of phrasing the same issue.
5 hours ago [-]
kakacik 5 hours ago [-]
I never went through school of any level that tried honestly to prepare me for real world (TM). Absurd academic directions, insisting on stuff that basically nobody ever used regardless of job later, ROTA ad nauseum. Where is communication, some basic psychology, leading, team work, stress management and so on, which is what each of us needs desperately every day? Or ie taxation and social/medical systems, to which each of us exposed extremely directly?
It should be the mission of every school, but somehow they all missed that. Given, teachers were often abysmal themselves in these topics, but things can be learned just like other stuff.
Michigan also dropped their mandate for ACT / SAT to obtain admission. So, yes, I would say that's pretty broken. Combined with systematic grade inflation American universities as a whole are removing any real feedback about student preparation, level of effort, or ability.
chasd00 3 hours ago [-]
ACT/SAT is still needed for merit based scholarships though so if you fall in the income bracket between homeless and owning your own island those tests are very very important.
t3hTao 3 hours ago [-]
If people were praising American education, this wouldn't be an issue. But at least k12 is heavily criticized.
culi 23 hours ago [-]
The UC system and many other of the top universities in the country have also stopped looking at SAT scores.
Growing up with no one in my family having gone to college I had no idea how any of this stuff worked or anybody to tell me its important. Eventually I moved to a middle class suburb and saw kids hire private tutors for it. Meanwhile I remember 2 days before I had mine scheduled and had to find someone to beg to drive me there. I'm quite thankful that universities acknowledge how silly it is to assess a student's aptitudes from a single test score like that.
I think personal essays and a more holistic assessment is a great alternative but I'm worried about the LLM age and the limits it introduces to that as well. Perhaps interviews are the future. It would certainly better prepare students for the real world
SideQuark 6 hours ago [-]
> The UC system and many other of the top universities in the country have also stopped looking at SAT scores.
Which led to a spectacular failure of incoming students to do basic math, lead to massive increases in failures in first year math courses.
Maybe removing signal loses knowledge about who is ready for standard classes?
zwily 5 hours ago [-]
And UC professors are begging them to unwind that and go back to ACT/SAT.
criddell 6 hours ago [-]
I'm a fan of selection by lottery for kids that can clear some reasonable bar.
ghaff 5 hours ago [-]
The current system is probably closer to that than a lot of people would like to admit.
keeda 36 minutes ago [-]
Coincidentally just last week a relative recounted a conversation with someone who used to be a student counselor (or psychiatrist?) at MIT who said MIT should be even softer on students. WTF, right? The dynamic, the counselor explained, is that MIT is already extremely hyper-competitive to get into and so it already selects for students who are very self-driven and competitive. Hence they tend to take on a much harder workload than they can handle, especially because MIT courses are no joke either no matter how smart you are.
This causes very high levels of stress amongst a large portion of the student body. The counselor hence wished MIT had even softer policies to make it easier for students to walk away from courses with no repercussions.
tzs 23 hours ago [-]
Caltech, too. It was the entire first year when I was there but they have since changed to to the first two terms then normal grades for third term.
However, Caltech and MIT have a reason for this that probably doesn't apply to a large (35000 undergraduate) public university like UM.
Caltech, MIT, and UM all have incoming classes that did very well in high school. Around 88% of the UM class was in the top 10% of high school. It is 96+% for Caltech and MIT.
At all three most students will be going from having been one of the top students at every school they have attended to a school where they are more average. This drop on average will be bigger at Caltech and MIT because their students are clustered more tightly toward the top of their high school class.
Another thing that makes the drop bigger at Caltech (and MIT?) is that UM has a way more flexible schedule. For example if you take physics in your first year, they have I believe three different courses for that. One if for people majoring in life sciences and emphasizes the physics most useful in those areas. Another is for engineers and others doing practical applications. It is more rigorous. The third is for physics majors.
Compare to Caltech. First, there is no "if you take physics". It is a first year requirement. Second, there is just one course. Go to Caltech to major in English (which does occasionally happen! [1]) and your first year you are taking the same required physics and math courses that people there for physics and math are taking. Third, because admissions specifically looked for people with very strong math/science ability, the professors don't have to slow down. Those courses cram a lot into a short time compared to even the courses meant for people majoring in their subject at less specialized schools.
The net effect is that for a top high school student Caltech and MIT are much bigger academic shocks than UM because even though at UM you can find comparable courses structural differences due to its size and its much bigger number of students mean it doesn't make you take a bunch of rigorous courses right from the start at an insane pace.
[1] It is rare. The reasons some have done it include:
• They intend to be science writers or science journalists.
• They intend to go to medical school. Medical school admissions committees like English majors and they like a hard science background.
• They intend to go to law school. An English major with a serious hard science education and a law degree is a good fit for patent law or for going into science policy work.
samiwami 1 days ago [-]
Pass/No Record is one of MITs best ideas for undergrads (that and S^3).
It lets you actually focus on getting acclimated and into the groove without being worried about the difference between an A and a B.
GlibMonkeyDeath 1 days ago [-]
This has the knock-on effect that it becomes impossible to excel in your first semester.
Both of my kids worked hard and were prepared for college, and they did very well their first years, as they were used to the pace and level of information. It's something they are proud of, and it gave them confidence in their future lives. By eliminating the chance to excel, we make life worse for students who should be standing out.
culi 23 hours ago [-]
Kids can absolutely still excel. This just means their "excellence" isn't reduced to a 1-dimensional score. Excelling by writing a phenomenal essay that you still think about or creating a relationship with a professor that stays with you beyond the class is probably an even more meaningful way to excel than achieving some test score
Jtsummers 1 days ago [-]
> This has the knock-on effect that it becomes impossible to excel in your first semester.
No, it eliminates the grade and GPA award for excelling. You can still excel, unless you absolutely require external validation for your work. And even then, it's still college, professors notice top performers even if they aren't giving them an A+++++ and have to give them a Pass instead.
GlibMonkeyDeath 23 hours ago [-]
In my opinion you are under-appreciating the external validation. Removing grades disincentives excelling. Why work any harder than getting a "pass"?
At the larger schools (like Michigan), professors (if a professor is actually grading the class, and not an adjunct or grad student) are hardly going to remember individual performances on freshman exams, or even pay much attention.
doctorwho42 4 hours ago [-]
Classes in college aren't everything, I found that extracurriculars in college were more important than straight A's.
I have only had one company ask for my transcripts and GPA. Ever! And guess what, they were the one company I never wanted to work for after the interviews.
You know what the best companies I ever worked for cared more about? That I got the degree, and a million questions about my skills and projects that I engaged in.
Jtsummers 19 hours ago [-]
This is one semester, not all, and they still will be getting individual marks (necessary to determine final grade). They can excel if they want to, and they'll have external signals if that's what they need. It just won't be reflected in their GPA for that semester. Oh no, the horror.
al_borland 19 hours ago [-]
I struggled my freshman year. In high school, I never had to study or do much of anything outside of class. College was a huge adjustment. My high school also had an experimental math program that didn’t help anything. I’m a decent test taker, so I placed into classes my high school did not prepare me for.
My GPA being low, but not failing, gave me the wake up call I needed to make the needed adjustments. A “Pass” wouldn’t have given me that wake up call, and a “Fail” may have just bounced me out, not giving me the chance to right the ship.
c7b 4 hours ago [-]
Fwiw, afaik in most Oxford and Cambridge degrees the only exams that count towards your grade are in the final year or the final two years. Everything before that is basically preparation, and the colleges doing weekly supervision and regular mock exams to keep tabs who is on track to pass and who needs extra attention. I've never heard there was a problem with a lack of rigor or recognition for the degrees awarded there. So U of Michigan taking a small step in that direction shouldn't be the end of the world either.
rahimnathwani 3 hours ago [-]
I did my undergraduate degree at Oxford. My degree class was entirely determined by my performance on eight 3-hour exams in the final weeks of the final term. These covered topics studied in the final two years.
rahimnathwani 3 hours ago [-]
I grew up in the UK. When I started working full time, I had three academic things on my CV:
- 11 GCSE grades
- 4 A level grades
- 1 University degree
For virtually all of these, the grades/results were determined by exams taken at the end of a period of study:
- GCSE exams taken at ~16yo
- A level exams taken at ~18yo
- University finals taken at ~21yo
At the time, I thought it was very very strange that my GCSE grades for English Language and English Literature were not based on exams, but on a bunch of essays I had written over a two year period.
It seemed strange because those past essays did not measure my current capability, but something else.
But this (measuring students on performance over multiple years) is the norm here in the US. Sure, many students take the SAT or ACT or various AP exams. But many students enter university with their academic performance measured on their high school GPA, which seemingly doesn't even attempt to measure mastery.
storus 4 hours ago [-]
Soon the whole US academia reputation will go down the drain and the degrees we all worked so hard for will have no meaning. How to shoot oneself in the foot 101.
OkayPhysicist 2 hours ago [-]
They're copying a policy MIT has had for decades. Last I checked, MIT is still in the running for the best regarded university in the world.
hirvi74 3 hours ago [-]
I honestly support the downfall of this system. The truly great and exceptional will continue to be such. Degrees are nothing more than a signal, and a weak one at that.
thomassmith65 3 hours ago [-]
That may be intended as hyperbole.
If it is meant sincerely, it is the kind of idea that falls apart in the actual world - especially if someone wants to graduate with Honors in a degree program that requires higher maths.
That isn't to deny there is a lot of societal bullshit involving higher education, but that's true in many aspects of life.
speak_plainly 1 days ago [-]
The stated reason for doing this seems suspicious. A pass/fail dynamic would likely maintain student anxiety, if not increase it.
What I think is more likely is that this move will help them hire less qualified teachers and reduce administrative oversight as now they no longer have to worry about all the issues that come with grading, such as consistency, or the grades accurately reflecting performance. The quality of curriculum will likely drop significantly and this will be reflected in the student’s second year grades.
chasd00 3 hours ago [-]
> A pass/fail dynamic would likely maintain student anxiety, if not increase it.
it will increase it because in pass/fail classes i have had you do not know if you're passing or failing until the final grade/result. With a grade average you know how far you are from failing but without it you have no idea. Maybe they keep the grading the same but whatever you end up with doesn't affect your GPA (good or bad), I can see that reducing anxiety. However, the students are going to be in for a shock the next semester when it's assumed they learned everything they should have first semester and class takes off from there.
eclipticplane 1 days ago [-]
Hire less qualified teachers, move to even larger class sizes with less support, and move more teachers into administrative roles, furthering the decline of education.
doctorwho42 4 hours ago [-]
So MIT has been hiring worse professors for the last 20+ years?
Jtsummers 1 days ago [-]
> A pass/fail dynamic would likely maintain student anxiety, if not increase it.
Pass/fail means that whatever was a C before is going to be passing now. It lowers expectations compared to the previous grading scheme (in that a C no longer has a serious impact on your GPA, you still pass). If the majority of the students are getting a C or better, the majority of students would get a passing mark.
nemomarx 1 days ago [-]
The pass fail dynamic won't increase anxiety if you tell everyone to not fail students, though.
speak_plainly 1 days ago [-]
I would have anxiety if I was a first year student who wanted to transfer out to another school or program and not know if my 'pass' would be sufficient to get prior recognition of learning or advanced standing.
Jtsummers 1 days ago [-]
The resolution to this anxiety, like for all transfer students, is to contact the academic advisors at your next institution and work with them. That's what I did, I had taken a break to work during college and when I returned it was to a new institution. I sat down with one of the advisors and worked out what transferred, what didn't, and what paperwork was needed so I didn't have to take 1st year courses that I already knew but didn't have a clear correspondence to past academics. For instance, linear algebra was mostly covered in my calculus 2 course previously, but was a separate required course at that institution. The advisor discussed it with me (he was a math professor, almost all the advisors were professors) and was satisfied I knew it well enough, I just had to take a different math course to get sufficient math credits but it was a substitution.
4 hours ago [-]
dividefuel 3 hours ago [-]
Thinking more about this, I feel a good solution might be to let students decide whether they want to keep the first semester letter grades once they receive them, or simplify them down to a pass/no-pass.
That way there's still an incentive to do good work, and students who do well still get to receive the benefit of keeping the letter grade. Students who do poorly receive the letter grade as feedback, but have a one-off chance to reduce the impact and try again the next semester.
markus_zhang 3 hours ago [-]
I don't know. Why are they lowering the standards again? Maybe they should raise the standard of high schools instead?
Or maybe they can help them by giving access to mental health practitioners, or maybe set some mandatory sessions to help them for the transition.
Anyway I think dropping first semester grades is a huge band-aid that they should never use. If we keep lowering the standards, maybe the whole education system is failing our children.
dividefuel 21 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure how to feel about this.
On the one hand, this is good for people who need time to adapt to college. It's a big change, especially for young people who are living apart from family for the first time. You have to adapt to living alone AND an entirely new social environment AND a much more independent/rigorous academic environment all at once.
On the other, it may just delay the same result. If someone knows their first semester doesn't really count, they may not put in the time to adapt, then crash out anyway in the second semester when it becomes real. I also feel our society tries a little too hard to insulate young people from failure, and I wonder whether that means people avoid learning important lessons earlier.
I guess the biggest advantage is it lets someone spread the growth out over a little more time rather than getting railroaded at once. This approach is probably most useful for someone who is genuinely trying and struggling, rather than for someone who is not really putting in any effort. It's probably better to help the former, so overall it's probably a reasonable approach.
wildzzz 5 hours ago [-]
I think there's a way to make it work. If you do poorly first semester, you go on academic probation and must improve by your second semester or you are suspended for the next fall. If you successfully get off academic probation at the end of second semester, you can drop those freshman fall grades. Same with suspension but either way, you must have one successful semester under your belt to drop that first semester.
I did really well my freshman year and managed to get deans list. Then I transfered to a much more rigorous school and didn't do well. I didn't enjoy my major, I was living in a house far from campus with three other guys I didn't know and didn't really have any shared interests with. By spring, I was on academic probation. I lived like a hermit and wasn't going to class much or studying hard. I was pretty depressed and my undiagnosed ADHD didn't help. I did have some highschool friends at that school but I hadn't seen them in a while so it was hard making the effort to see them. I got on academic suspension at the end of my second year and had to take my next fall off. I waited the whole summer until I had come back to school to tell my parents because I was so ashamed. I remember my dad was trying to figure out why he hadn't gotten a tuition bill yet and called the bursar office while we were at the beach in August. They couldn't say why he hadn't gotten a bill yet so he handed the phone to me and the lady on the other end is saying "you need to tell them you're suspended." That was a gut punch. I was actually suicidal at this point but I kept it together until I wrote them a long email saying how bad things were. My dad visited me and convinced me to see a therapist. This ended up getting me an ADHD diagnosis and a prescription for Adderall. I stayed in my room a lot of that suspended fall semester but I did join a club sport (while lying about my eligibility as a full time student) which lead to making some friends. When I came back the next spring semester under a new major, I felt ready to crush it and I did. I stayed for the summer and crushed some more classes. I moved in with a friend and got along great with those guys. I was also right next to campus so there was no excuse to missing classes. I met my wife and made a huge turn around. But, those grades from my sophmore year were an albatross around my neck. They ruined my GPA. My in-major GPA was decent but I was still graduating with a 2.6 (freshman year grades didn't apply since they were transfer credits). Luckily, my parents had helped me get internships and my wife's father got me in for an interview at my current employer so GPA wasn't a huge burden to employment.
I really wish I could have dropped any of those sophmore grades. Obviously this policy wouldn't have helped me but I can certainly understand how it could help.
sauceontheside 4 hours ago [-]
I think this is a long time coming given the trends in education. Students just aren't learning and able to receive feedback in ways that would have been commonplace before.
jbs789 2 hours ago [-]
What are grades for?
If for potential employers, then first semester doesn’t matter a whole lot.
If for students, then sounds like they are getting the feedback they need w this approach.
I guess the question is one of comparability across schools.
dbvn 5 hours ago [-]
If nobody is failing, nobody is learning
doctorwho42 4 hours ago [-]
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!
dbvn 13 minutes ago [-]
Have you been to a public university recently? Its abysmal.
everdrive 1 days ago [-]
Breaking news: student anxiety peaks in the second semester.
stack_framer 4 hours ago [-]
I bet some students who pass will face a mental health issue from not knowing whether they passed with an A or a C-.
chasd00 3 hours ago [-]
that's pretty funny and i bet you're exactly right. It will drive high achieving kids crazy to go without a rank or grade and not knowing where they stand relative to their peers.
I get the justification, don't necessarily disagree.
But this also seems like it is just kicking the can down the road.
throwawaypath 4 hours ago [-]
The competency crisis is coming faster than anyone expected.
ratelimitsteve 1 hours ago [-]
They're not getting rid of grades, they're just moving everything to pass/fail rather than letter grades. Afaic this is really just a reflection of the reality on the ground. You either get a C or better and move on to the next level, or you don't. Passing with a C fulfills the prerequisite just as well as passing with an A. Then eventually you either get a C or better in all the classes you need to graduate, or you don't. Cs get degrees. Then you go to the job market and you either have a degree or you don't. Outside of some extremely competitive internships no one cares how you graduated, only whether you did.
throw7 4 hours ago [-]
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
SteveMqz 23 hours ago [-]
At MIT first semester grades for freshman have been pass/no-record for several years now
Chinjut 3 hours ago [-]
For 58 years now.
brunoborges 5 hours ago [-]
Just to be clear, a semester here is 3 months only, right?
Octoth0rpe 5 hours ago [-]
4 at UofM, Sept -> Dec.
bell-cot 5 hours ago [-]
U of Mich's standard seems to be 69 class days - a touch under 14 weeks:
research tilts towards grades not helping learners in contrast to non-quantitative feedback so there's that.
harimau777 1 days ago [-]
Huh, I never considered that grades might be intended to help the person learning. I always assumed they were just intended as a signal to the rest of the world that they had learned something.
culi 1 days ago [-]
I think that's possibly one of the main problems with grades and why they inevitably lead to the grade inflation crisis. From the article:
> In May, Harvard University faculty voted to approve a 20% cap on the number of A’s per undergraduate course in an effort to curb grade inflation. It won’t apply to A-minuses, which committee members predicted would become the most awarded grade.
> At the University of Michigan, a review by the news site MLive found that 74.1% of all undergraduate grades in 2022 were an A+, A or A-. A decade earlier, that percentage was 57.6%.
dpkirchner 1 days ago [-]
For the most part, the only people that see the grades are you, your parents, your teacher, and maybe your friends. Most of the world will just see a pass/fail result (degree or not), unless you also earn special awards.
otoburb 1 days ago [-]
You're right, but I understand that many graduate programs will ask for your undergraduate GPA and/or transcript as part of the application process.
If one doesn't plan on applying to grad school immediately after undergrad then hopefully there is less self-imposed grade pressure.
morkalork 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, the students are being graded like meat. It's not for the cow's sake, it's for the consumer. I say this as someone who had to maintain a set gpa through to keep a scholarship.
timcobb 1 days ago [-]
Johns Hopkins has had this since forever
skt5 5 hours ago [-]
+1.
As an alum I've observed both:
* kids who partied hard first semester since grades didn't matter only to struggle second semester
* kids who benefited from this transition because they didn't go to Hotchkiss
I ended up in both buckets and I have mixed feelings about this since it helped and hurt me.
In the long run - it really didn't matter.
evanelias 23 hours ago [-]
I was about to post the same; they adopted the pass/fail first semester policy in 1971.
But then I was just horrified to read apparently they got rid of that system in 2017 [1], and now it's a normal letter grade?! Assuming that Hopkins still skews quite harshly on grading, that's an awful regression.
> Better than lowering grading standards, I guess.
But both are done. Grading inflation is very real.
The problem is not specific to US uni: in many western EU countries education level is going down the drain at a totally alarming rate. We're talking about kids coming out of primary school and arriving at secondary school with "good grades" although they can barely write, even in their native language.
An official report from the OECD is saying stuff like: "29% of 15-year-old French students failed to reach Level 2 (the baseline level of basic proficiency needed to participate fully in modern society) in mathematics.". We're talking about nearly 1 in 3 people that cannot add and subtract numbers.
And it's not specific to France. It's the same in other western countries. Education in the west is going down the drain while students in Singapore, Japan, China, etc. are hard at work.
People are going to say it's "inhumane" to not grade-inflate. That we should let students pass the first semester without grades. But why stop there? Why not let students who cannot write, cannot add numbers, get their diploma? Neuro-surgeons? Plane pilots? Why not just pick people randomly in the population and assign them a role in society? No more math/physics/chemistry in first year of medicine: anyone can be a doctor.
Really: where do you draw the line? Why stop after that first semester?
It's Idiocracy. And people left and right, just like most in this thread, explaining how all the ideas that let to this state of affair are wonderful ideas that makes lot of sense because school/college/uni is "too difficult psychologically".
The little precious snowflakes, we need to cuddle them.
baggy_trough 3 hours ago [-]
They pretend to learn, and we pretend to grade them.
5 hours ago [-]
nobodyandproud 5 hours ago [-]
In the US the problem starts in late middle school/early high school. For whatever reason, not having a remedial high school and not giving teachers the authority to push underperforming students to such high schools causes problems.
tptacek 1 days ago [-]
Having put two kids through college now: this makes sense. First semester grades are a shitshow anyways, and aren't especially predictive. The first semester at an R1 is utterly unlike any ordinary high school experience and a lot of what you're measuring is just kids getting their sea legs. What's the point? If it's causing drama, just get rid of it.
alistairSH 1 days ago [-]
Maybe. Maybe not. In my case, that first semester of near-failing grades was the kick in the pants I needed to start exerting myself. I entered college assuming it was just as easy as high school. It wasn't. Not even close. And a semester of pass/fail wouldn't have taught me that lesson because I did pass, just barely.
tptacek 1 days ago [-]
So issue the grades but don't record them in the GPA.
red-iron-pine 2 hours ago [-]
teacher tells you you scored a C+, GPA record just says Pass or Fail
hgoel 1 days ago [-]
I was initially thinking they were being too coddling, but you're right, my first semester grades weren't all that good either. I was working hard, but it takes a lot to adapt to the much higher expectations of a decent uni.
They aren't a meaningful signal for how capable a person is by the end of the program. But maybe the fix would be to not count them towards the GPA/permanent transcript, while still providing the achieved grade to the students so they have a measure of how they did.
s1artibartfast 22 hours ago [-]
Do you see this as a self management issue or a course intensity issue.
My anecdotal experience with the University of California system was that course load was a step down from Highschool university prep (which wasn't that bad). Classes were easier than their AP counterparts, and most students who struggled had an issue with attending morning classes after late nights socializing.
My impression from family going through this process now is that the high school prep has only gotten more intense, so what is the gap? Has college gotten significantly harder in the last 20 years?
Which did you find to be the case?
Loughla 19 hours ago [-]
I've worked in colleges for 2 decades. It's rarely purely academic issues that cause bad grades, in my experience.
It's everything else with self regulation. Where most college prep goes wrong is at home, in not allowing appropriate agency for the child to make decisions before college. When you go from having to ask to go to the bathroom to being entirely independent in 2 months, bad shit happens.
This lesson has held true everywhere I've worked, from small junior colleges to D1 state schools.
Subsequently, college has gotten harder, but so has k-12, so proportionately, no it's not more difficult now
b0rtb0rt 17 hours ago [-]
why even go to college if you can’t handle it and aren’t ready?
duxup 16 hours ago [-]
If you're not a super high achiever, how would you know for sure?
For most students college is nothing like high school.
ta20240528 5 hours ago [-]
Tell me comrades, are China and India doing this?
red-iron-pine 2 hours ago [-]
they sure don't.
their fix is rampant out of control cheating
RickJWagner 20 hours ago [-]
I see this akin to what the great Thomas Sowell calls ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’.
Eventually this will lower the bar for everyone.
fucktheMs 3 hours ago [-]
Millennial parents have fucked up multiple generations with their corruption of “gentle parenting”
Weird that trying to appease children, giving them no boundaries, and acting like entitled assholes isn’t a good way to raise a human.
Not that beating them into submission is good either, but the pendulum swung wildly wrong.
smcg 2 hours ago [-]
Children of millennials are not college age yet, for the most part. What are you basing this on?
fhdkweig 1 days ago [-]
It's been a while since I was in college, but mine gave the bare minimum credit hours (3 classes) to qualify as a full time student and the classes were brain-dead easy. That seemed like a good compromise to get students used to the college life.
michaelfm1211 1 days ago [-]
Probably varies on area of study. Many engineering students take prerequisites with intense course load their first year.
hirvi74 4 hours ago [-]
I honestly support this. At least at face value for the devil is always in the details. I have had a similar discussion with many of my friends that are academics. We all, more or less, agree that grades do not really serve their purported purpose.
Grades in their current form might be the purest incarnation of Goodhart's Law.
nodesocket 1 days ago [-]
This sort of coddling and weak policy is setting students up for a rude awaking when they get into the professional workforce.
claudiulodro 23 hours ago [-]
Companies don't expect interns or new graduates to perform at the level of a senior engineer. They expect and plan that they have to ease them into the "professional workforce" somewhat.
Anyways, the biggest tech companies in Michigan are automakers, Dow chemicals, and Whirlpool. These are all respectable places and have different expectations than X or OpenAI or companies like that.
red-iron-pine 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
amanaplanacanal 1 days ago [-]
Seeing the purpose of education to be preparing you to be part of "the professional workforce" is the problem.
spelk 1 days ago [-]
My university let us take 3-4 courses, up to 12 credits total, as Pass/Fail, but only for electives.
I ended up taking just one that way. The policy was really designed for the breadth year because in upper years, you had much less room for electives, but you could try a difficult or unfamiliar subject without worrying too much about your GPA. If you discovered you liked it enough to switch into that major, the course would then be converted to a regular graded course.
I think allowing 3-4 Pass/Fail courses in the first year strikes a good balance. It gives students room to challenge themselves and explore unfamiliar subjects, while still preserving grades as a useful signal of whether they're prepared for college-level work.
That is an excellent book that describes the changes higher education is facing in its students around 2014-2018. I have read it about a year ago.
They really ought to do a follow up for 2026. From what I gather talking to faculty and professors, this problem became noticeably worse since COVID and the years following. A follow up book or study would be very interesting to read.
Balgair 15 hours ago [-]
No one's mentioning it, but also the disease factor.
I remember the first semester in the dorms was mostly the sound of coughing.
Building up the immune system takes disease exposure and that takes time.
Addnib all the immune system depressants and increased exposure events there at Michigan - booze, pot, late nights, hookups, crowds, stress, etc - and you get a perfect storm for the immune system to take a beating.
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 until 5:00. Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces. Then homework after dinner until 10:00 or so, sometimes much later. Homework assigned over weekends. Homework assigned over breaks.
That's 15+ hours a day, every weekday, for an entire school year. Then you have test prep (APs and the ACT/SAT), college applications, writing essays and scholarship applications, college tours, sorting decisions, financial aid applications, etc etc etc. And now her college already has a few hours of orientation videos stacked up for her to watch before she moves in.
Personally, I don't blame her if she checks out for a few weeks. Or a semester.
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 universities are you targeting with such an extreme schedule?
There are some parallels here to the people who say that everyone in tech is working 80 hour weeks: If you get pulled into one of these bubbles you are surrounded by others doing the same thing and it starts to feel like everyone is doing it. You assume everyone, everywhere is having the same experience. The people outside the bubble are left puzzled by these descriptions.
I did not go to a top tier school, and I did not live in a top tier place. The stories I’ve heard from others indicates to me that my experience was not unique. I wasn’t even the most busy of the people I knew.
This wasn’t every single day, but it was more on days than off days. Contrarily, I had a great time in college because the pressure of classes actually felt like less than I was doing in high school.
> 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. If you think it's a fib just because you're not aware of it that's not exactly robust social commentary.
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.
It's also not an easy question 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 hypercompetitive neighborhoods. We are living in a world of self interest were increasingly everyone has a college degree, thereby devaluing the credential at a basic supply/demand level. The very best schools are in a class all their own, and (rightly or wrongly) have been largely immune to this downward pressure.
Talk about bubbles is also not really useful. Wealth is a bubble. Software engineering is a bubble. A neighborhood where everyone goes to a state school is a bubble. Poverty is a bubble. But at the macro level if people don't think the world is getting more cooperative and is just getting more competitive, doing whatever they can to keep or send their kids to the best bubble possible is at the very least defensible. I think there are also a lot of parents who don't seem to have a robust concept of the future. I assume anyone being born today is entering a far more competitive and frankly, brutal world by the time they are college age. The world is getting smaller. And not enough people seem willing to do the work required to make sure all kids do well. In such a world, pushing your kids in high school so they can get the best shot makes sense. This can be true even if it doesn't make other people morally wrong. In the same way wealth doesn't make you a better person. But let's not pretend that in a world where (in the United States at least) many people among us if they lose their job won't be able to afford healthcare, that wealth is entirely without virtue.
Suggesting that is indicative of the same sort of "they'll be fine" thinking that frankly, strikes me as the most "bubble" idea possible. From where I sit, it's simply the case that the world is not getting easier.
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 elementary, 8am for middle school, and 7am for high school.
Overall I think you are right it is indeed bubble and once one is in, it is difficult to see not everyone is doing that.
I have a friend in town both husband, wife work from home and extremely busy with their elementary/middle school kids school/activities that I haven't seen him in years.
Being out of their bubble I only know whats happening but don't get to be tutored in how all these activities are essential. And even rare back out once in a while can be serious digression that affects child's future.
We are making the kids endure that out of fear of their college, but stats don't back up the grind they make the kids do.
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.
I attended a prestigious land grant university, like Michigan, and I was totally prepared and performed very strongly right out of the gate. I was competitive with elite students who had attended the most prestigious high schools both in the United States and internationally.
Today, I'm an extremely well compensated engineer. My household income is top 1%. My career is gratifying. I have a rich social life and a loving wife and child. If your children are operating at this caliber, and they're able to sustain this level of effort, they're going to go places, no matter what they chose to do. You are rewarded for this effort.
> 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 until 5:00.
In other States, high school starts later like 8:45/9am. You can take classes online and start school later if you want or do dual enrollment and skip later periods.
> Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces.
Mine worked and were in clubs. Kids are remarkably resilient. In some States, work time counts in lieu of volunteer time.
> Then you have test prep (APs and the ACT/SAT), college applications, writing essays and scholarship applications, college tours, sorting decisions, financial aid applications, etc etc etc. And now her college already has a few hours of orientation videos stacked up for her to watch before she moves in.
This sounds like a lot of undue pressure. UCF didn’t make you do that. ACT or SAT works and you have a couple years to do it. Not all at once in Senior year and you usually can composite your score across the highest tests.
Comparable adult parent things would be up at 6am, prep kids for school day, in the office by 8am, 8 hours of work plus a lunch, departing the office around 5pm, transporting kids to/from some activities, dinner, helping kids with homework, somehow fit in regular shopping needs (food, essentials, etc), maybe some volunteering or hobby things, if lucky in bed by 10pm, and we're easily at 15 hours of "work" on a weekday.
Yes, it's a lot.
Very challenging at times, but for example I sleep with my kid hugging me, or I chat with them while in the car, or we do chores while watching tv or something like that. And not every day is packed like that, you can tell your kids "no more than 3 times per week of activties, the other 2 days are for playdates", and that should be acceptable.
There are horrible days of the week, but it's not daily 15 hours of work. That's training for slavery.
Homework for break and homework for weekend should be STRONGLY ILLEGAL.
That is a weird (modern?) delusion. Without children, our species disappears in <100 years. And the last of those years would be painful for those still alive.
Those who are having and raising children are the ones doing the most for the next generation.
I am saying that the people who have kids now are aware of how much effort it involves, so they consider it "part of hobbies" (as in, interesting things), not as part of "chores".
Modern society requires that, otherwise people just have no kids.
And yes absolutely, the government overlooks entirely all the work that goes into parenting now. The standards have raised enormously.
It wasn’t saying that children are hobbies. It’s saying that time spent with children is enjoyable and time spent with them is not an enjoyable chore.
I consider hobbies highly important for my mental health, so children are highly important too
while I work, my wife can do the shopping and take care of other household chores if needed.
What most people can’t afford is to maintain their desired lifestyle and only have one parent working. It’s similar to how people earning 3-4X the median wages for an area will think they’re barely getting by, while someone earning 1/4 of what they do is raising a family with two kids.
True, goes without saying. I see most of the time when lifestyle is not even considered making a choice but simply as "everyone does it".
I might turn into most odd person in some sense among friends, colleagues, family/ relatives because I just happen to say things explicitly which makes for weird conversation.
Everyone around me expects these between the lines.
If you work in tech, this is possible. It's gonna suck, and you'll feel poor relative to your peers, but it's entirely possible.
It may very well be impossible in certain markets but I wouldn't say its true across every family with the parents being around 30 years old.
school launch + supervision for the 11:30 - 13:30 period is ~42 USD per day per kid, kita (pre-kindergarten) is easily ~3100 USD/month or more per kid. (I've put the numbers here in USD as most of the audience is outside of Switzerland for easier comparability), so for a lot of families, if mom works, mom's salary is spent on these costs.
You’re competing apples and oranges. Getting into a top college is similar to grinding to get into Big Tech jobs and then climb the ladder there.
Good colleges are easy. The top few colleges are very hard.
> The real world is Pass/Fail, much to the chagrin of plenty of HNers.
If by “fail” you mean lose your job in the next round of layoffs and have your career derailed, possibly.
You’re still comparing apples and oranges. The people who compete for top college spots usually continue competing for promotions and better paying jobs. The people who coast through high school look for jobs where they can coast and then get comfortable with whatever salary that provides them.
I have several hobbies that are popular with kids (mountain biking, rock climbing, and some others).
I can assure you that there are plenty of kids with more time than I have to dedicate to these hobbies at every popular spot I go to. Many of them are ambitious, smart, and working toward top universities, too. It’s actually fun energy to be around.
The parent comment about students getting up at 6:30AM and working 15 hour days is highly unusual.
And for the record, I had to work less to get to good school back then.
The fact is that they aren't working extra, not for a job anyway. The extra work comes in the time making dried beans instead of buying canned, in repairing stuff poorly, in shopping around for a doctor that takes the state health insurance or an affordable option if you have none at all, in taking busses (if they are available), and other unpaid things. Your child will be lucky to afford the activities that gets them a 'good' education, especially if they have to work.
That is exactly OP's point: for OP, if a child's "working hours" includes university prep and resume-padding sports activities, then an adult's "working hours" includes housework, grocery shopping, dealing with insurance and taxes, and commute/family chauffeur time.
Pressure makes diamonds, but it also crushes everything else.
Overcoming hard times absolutely made me a better person, but as I've grown I've seen many examples of the fallout you're referring to. Sometimes people just break.
Meanwhile, the state school down the road is a fraction the cost, teaches a lot of the same content, and will accept anyone with a pulse. In my state, at least. State universities are somewhat competitive to get into, but state colleges... wide open.
All of which is very real-world. Certain top firms recruit only top candidates. Everyone else works somewhere further along the spectrum.
As a non-US person who's worked for a bunch of US companies, my belief is that the Ivy League et al act as a class system, rather than a symbol of educational attainment.
This goes against the stereotypes you read online, but many of them are motivated by a desire to sneer and cut down others’ achievements. Look up “tall poppy syndrome” for one phrase describing this phenomenon.
Again, the fact that entry to the class system can be meritocratic is entirely disconnected from the fact of it operating as a class system.
When I worked at Big tech I remember recruiters (US-based) talking about hiring from approved schools, which were mostly Ivy League.
Additionally, when we were hiring a candidate in Europe, our director wanted to know what school she had gone to. Fortunately, she was an Oxbridge graduate so all was well.
Again, even if all Ivy League graduates were in the top 1% of objective merit, the use of this credential in hiring/firing/other decisions is what makes it a class system.
I have worked with many Ivy League graduates and they were all super smart and mostly effective, but that doesn't change my point.
> rather than a symbol of educational attainment.
Your original argument appeared to imply that it was a system designed to separate people by class, not by merit or educational attainment.
In my experience the people who are that selective about university pedigree are either doing it out of laziness (outsourcing selection process to the university filtering mechanism) or they have a degree from that system and believe that hiring people from it will automatically grant them more allies, thereby improving their own power.
While HN, VCs, SJSU, and Tech are obviously not composed of the same population or applying the same restrictions, it’s certainly reasonable to highlight one similarity: the potential glory of one’s role at work directly impacts how competitive it is. That we’re currently in a nightmarish layoff cycle due to the ZIRP bubble popping and due to businesses replacing costly (and glorious) creative roles with more economical PREs (prompt reliability engineers) is amplifying this effect more strongly in Tech than in other industries, because Tech — just like the Investing industry that’s underpinned it for so long — has been saturated with glory and competitiveness.
I spent my career in tech working in the roles that do not offer glory — IT, rather than Product; Cost Centers, rather than Profit Centers — but even within IT, there were a couple of roles that had more glory and were much more competitive in their selection and evaluation criteria than others. At my final IT job, we were less strict about credentials and competitiveness with directors and vice presidents than we were about the high-glory role of enterprise architect. So while I do empathize with HN’s bias, having myself once pursued glory in tech, such competitiveness is abnormal in most jobs in most fields.
This might be news to many people. Or do you mean it’s not too difficult to get a new job at Walmart?
I myself went through mediocre noname university in eastern Europe with OK grades and it didn't matter at all, now I get perm salary thats better than 99% of devs in whole Europe while doing just that and nothing more, while sporting 10 weeks of paid vacation yearly. Quality of life further down the line, success and happiness are extremely non-correlated with all this academic stuff.
Its just control freak helicopter parents, which, albeit with good underlying intentions, fuck up everything they touch, including mental health of their kids. So kids compete just to endlessly compete while winning less than nothing. This is how deep regrets later in life are made.
Nor would I, but I'd also accept that she did so and failed a few classes.
Just like I did in the 90s. Although in my case it wasn't burn-out, but system shock at actually having to try to get good grades (Fairfax County PS then UVA).
Did that bombed first semester probably eliminate med school or an elite graduate program? Sure. But I probably wasn't cut out for either anyway. And it was a kick in the pants and got me to pay attention and work.
Michigan and its apologists here would rob these kids of real-world experience, reducing them to infants. And then we're all disappointed when these adults act like infants.
Some of those students have 40 hour jobs, some night shift, that they can't skip or else they don't have a home or school anymore. Others have kids that can't be neglected.
The biggest problem wasn't the workload itself, but how inefficient learning was back then. It was the early days of the Internet, no coursera, no Google indexed uni sites, no LLMs, no online tutors. I only had a mediocre textbook and some notes I borrowed from friends when I couldn't attend lectures or labs. It took ages. I’d burn hours trying to parse two paragraphs in the textbook, only to ask mates who didn't understand it either.
Now, we have an incredible amount of information & tech at our fingertips: LLMs, Google NotebookLM, online tutors, dozens of textbooks, and sites like Anna's Archive packed with high-quality "free" material. With all this technology, the time it takes to understand, prepare, and master a topic is a fraction of what it used to be. It still takes work and discipline, but man... you can feed textbooks into an LLM and use targeted prompts to debug your exact knowledge gaps on the practice test you get from the LLM.
So I reckon it's easier now than before, simply because learning can be done so much more efficiently. After all these years, I still remember the hardest classes and the most stringent professors with great affection - even though I hated those bastards back then. My Group Theory prof once invalidated a definition I wrote because of a single missing word. At the time, I thought it was an injustice, but later I realized that word was crucial.
University is where young people must face hard work and reality, because it teaches them what true meritocracy is. It should be hard, it's the same way a gym workout should be hard or it’s ineffective.
It is fun when it is fun, when you can skip it or do it purely because you want to. If you go to sports club because you have to, it is work and not fun.
If you go volunteer or have to join the club for college application, they become work. They are not fun stuff.
> Time spent in gym class and lunch is not work
Gym class is work. Kids are not there voluntarily.
Like can you honestly say you'd feel rested if you had to wear a Fitbit like device to bed owned by your company to track your sleep?
You come in and do what you are told. You don't chat with friends or play around, you focus on whatever trainer told you to focus at. You dont do what you want to do, but what trainer thinks will make you more performant. And if it hurts or you are tired or just really want to do something else, you still do it.
In my experience, many freshmen treated their first year as a gap year anyways, especially if they took difficult senior classes. First year classes aren’t always as rigorous as good AP classes (depending on both the high school and the university), so you can skip or cram while partying.
I sure could have used the maturity, the money, and the time when I was younger. I learned the hard way that attending college when you have no idea what you want to do only delays your graduation date (major change absolutely fucked me).
Then the never-ending pressure of midterms, finals, and regents exams.
No, this isn't every high school student. But there are more people in the group I describe than there are in the group you describe.
Here's my point: There is a lot of ground between the two extremes. And both ends of the spectrum are making it into college of some sort. So it you think your child is under too much stress from taking seven AP classes, drop four of them. If they are overwhelmed by tennis practice, ... maybe recognize that removing all friction from a person's life is not necessarily a good thing. Work together to build coping skills. But no child has to be an Olympic medalist neurosurgeon senator CEO all at the same time. Who is "forcing" that on high school students? You?
There is plenty of room for people with 3.2 GPAs and only two AP classes when they graduate. Frankly, with some family support, it is not that hard to have a 3.8 GPA for 60+% of students.
But I've seen high school valedictorians with 3.9 college GPAs graduate and struggle to find a white collar job. What is the plan for that from U Mich?
they've optimized for a highly stratified educational environment. The real world don't work like that.
Unless you stay in academia no one cares about your GPA 2 years after you leave.
lucky she has you who considers this. speaking from experience: think about trying to handle that with parents who dont have time management skills
I think the quantity was reasonable, except too much busywork, I wish I could replace it with subjects I was passionate about (i.e. tech).
I also had the entire summer between senior year and college to decompress.
Nowadays I hear that most public schools are giving less work. With all due respect, I believe GP is an anomaly and/or it wasn't the school, but their own pressure.
Wouldn't exactly make the most compelling content, would it?
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?
I did the whole APs, sports, volunteering thing too, and managed to do just fine in college.
Kids today are just so fucking soft.
This is true because this isn't necessarily "the norm". Its very common to have this kind of life, but there are also a ton of kids who aren't as focused on their academics, who don't take AP classes, who aren't involved in clubs and sports. Only a little over a third of students take any AP exams, and only a bit over half of those end up taking multiple AP exams.
I did everything you mentioned in the nineties and aughts (my sport was year round and coach expected us to travel on our own dime to tournaments that lasted the entire weekend at least four times in the summer, and during the school year I was out of town most Sat-Sun at tournaments, which take way more time than the couple hours a volleyball game lasts or whatever), and volunteer activities that lasted until 10pm for a few week stretches a few times a year.
I had a blast doing things I loved. Counting travel, 30+ hours a week of sports. School from 6:30 to 3:30 (because I took an extra AP physics class that happened before school officially started). I acted in community theatre. I did martial arts. I quit tennis to teach acting for the YMCA my senior year.
Why doesn't your kid love the sport she plays? Why doesn't she love the volunteer activities? Those are meant to be FUN. Like, that's why the colleges want them: to see why she's an interesting person, not a time-management robot. They can tell these things, so stop gaming the system ad find a hobby she'll be so obsessed with that she'll write a college entrance essay all about how it made her a more interesting person.
There is no adcom in the world that is trying to find a selfless 17yo who does drudgery because it's expected of them. They're trying to find people who LOVE building for Habitat, who want to be chefs and serve at a soup kitchen, who LOVE God and ran tech support during COVID for their church livestream, etc.
Is that what it’s about? Keep in that the University of Michigan is a public university, explicitly founded to “provide the inhabitants of this state with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and the arts.” There’s nothing about being elite in there at all. This is an institution that serves the public.
I’m no stranger to long hours to achieve high status—I’m a professor. But I also started my journey at a public school and a public undergraduate institution. Many of my friends—all good and smart people but in many cases decidedly NOT elite-have leveraged their public education into satisfying careers. I, and my friends, would not have had our opportunities otherwise. I simply could not afford top private school.
I don’t know what to think about this change exactly, but it’s worth pointing out that MIT has had this policy for first year students since 1968. MIT! Seems like UM can make this work if they are thoughtful about it.
And yes, certainly a (traditional) university education should not be required for having good career opportunities.
IMO there's a need for a type of education that's vastly more scalable and still equips people with the beyond-secondary education they need to be productive in today's economy.
Competitive universities are competitive. Sometimes that competiton is justified and sometimes it is unjustifiably based on pedigree. The program I attended before getting my PhD at a public university was at a well-known private university. But in terms of research productivity and impact, the public university was a MUCH better place to go to school. The PhD program was exceptionally competitive but its undergrad program was not. As a result, many undergrads who wandered through our lab door got a first-class research experience.
I’m not going to pretend that pedigree doesn’t matter (to some people), but it is emphatically not the same thing as “a good preparation.” I took a couple math classes one summer at a low-tier state college. They were just as good as any math classes I took at any of the other places I went to school, public or private.
That still doesn't mean they're not "for the elites." Universities are for people striving for upward mobility, i.e. to get into or maintain membership in the elite tiers of society. Also there is (obviously) significant variation in the upper end of the elite and the lower end.
> Not sure what your point is.
Well, you said
> All universities are for the elites.
And then I countered that, actually, many are not selective. I am asking you to reconsider your statement. In reality, many college programs confer _skills_, not _status_. This narrative that colleges are for the elites is demonstrably untrue, runs counter to the founding mission of many of them, and strikes me as sour grapes. I know because I was one of the kids who struggled to afford college, went to a public one where I learned _skills_, which I then leveraged into a satisfying career.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
[2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
What would have to change for you to declare it's not the case?
It costs ~$55k/year to educate a student at UMich. That's more than half of the median US family's income. And UMich is a massive success story. Excellent academic output at a relatively great price – but even there the actual cost would bankrupt a normal American family.
That's a lot of money to spend educating someone into a non-elite trajectory in life, no? Never mind the opportunity cost of 4 years where one could be acquiring direct skills in whatever job they're going into?
You're smart, you'll figure it out.
In return you get inflated GPAs that get you into better colleges. But if you can't figure it out on the first try? More stress.
Interestingly, a lot of colleges now ignore the 'honors' weighted GPA and ask to see the unweighted score. If you have a teen entering high school, skip the honors track and help them do better in the normal track version of the class. See if your school offers dual-credit with a local community college or state university. Those transfer credits are WAY more valuable now (and cheaper!) than an AP score, with a lot less test stress.
After emerging from an ap/ib honors program in highschool (with excellent teachers) I became increasingly stressed in college when any real simple lack of comprehension occurred. I was smort. I should "get it."
However, later in life the ideas from books or concepts we read, discussed, and critiqued (Doestevsky,Shakespeare, sophocles etc) allowed me access to ideas in the humanities that far outweighed that initial college whiplash. So it's a trade off I would certainly make again.
You'd do just as well rolling dice, and it would be more legitimate because it wouldn't be pretending to do something it doesn't.
Can you teach yourself, broadly. Out of all the filters we have in education, this one might be the most legitimate because it maps pretty closely to lifelong curiosity and learning.
Can you teach yourself, broadly. Out of all the filters we have in education, this one might be the most legitimate.
Thank goodness I didn’t need to work so hard, but I can acknowledge what a shitty system it is.
Help me understand why these children or their parents are gunning in this manner and working like dogs in this manner, to join into and propagate such a shitty system?
Universities at least apply some meritocratic standards. If we bypass universities, there will be some other gatekeeper, it will be worse: mostly an "old boys network" and corrupt, pay-to-play advancement.
When was that? Harvard was founded in 1636.
It seems very possible to me that the managers of said system are far better than ever before and still fail to produce spectacular results.
Can you explain how that's "socially unaware" or "one-dimensional"?
There’s a reason why it’s flagged now.
Why only students who got in based on ethnicity? What about students who only got in because their parents are wealthy or alumni? Or students who get in because of athletics but wouldn't otherwise meet academic admissions criteria? I don't know why there's all this focus (and pushback) on race based admissions when there are multiple other meritless avenues for students to get into college. That people focus on eliminating one and not the others is very telling.
I don’t think kids like yours are having issues but rather kids who didn’t apply themselves academically.
Basically A or even B grades cannot be an average grade. C or 2.0 would be the expected average but of course this hasn’t been close to true since GWB introduced his idiotic policy.
It’s no secret, if you let kids (or people) slack, 80 to 90% will slack off. 10 to 20% will endure out of principle or habit.
This kind of applicant is now treated as table stakes for programs like UMich, and acceptance rates for impacted majors like CS in top programs have dropped to single digits.
It is ridiculously competitive to get into top programs now. I got into an Ivy in the late 2000s to early 2010s. With my stats from back then (13 APs all 4s and 5s, a 4.5+ GPA, varsity wrestling, JV XCountry, NHS, CSF, USAPHO, USAMO, Policy and LD debate, a 2200+ SAT, 35 ACT, 8 SAT Subject test), I would have been lucky to get into CS@UC Davis today and I absolutely wouldn't have gotten into my alma mater.
Because domestic undergrads applying to a research-oriented grad program are advised to apply directly to a PhD program.
MS/MA programs are expected to remediate deficiencies at the undergrad level, and most undergrads will take 1st year MS/MA classes as part of their senior year doing a bachelors. Alternatively, the MS/MA is awarded if a PhD candidate failed Quals.
Outside the US, the expected path is BA/BSc/BEng/BTech to MS/MA/MTech/MPhil to PhD.
In the US, the expected path is SB/AB to PhD and MS/MA if you fail quals or are looking for a professional program to remediate coursework deficiencies.
Debate is actually dying, and for a reason. Good riddance, don't let the door kick your ass on the way out.
Grades and academic performance are outcomes. They're indirect stressors at best; why would one generation suddenly be unable to cope?
The real story is what has changed to increase the stakes of grades. I suspect freshmen are taking out historic debt to contend with food, housing, and tuition costs meanwhile the entry-level job market is extraordinarily competitive. There is no room for error.
Every generation has struggled with it, except now it’s discussed heavily on social media and other forums. Hence the impression that it’s unique to this generation.
Are there challenges today that didn’t exist for previous generations? Yes! Are they more complex compared to what the previous generations faced? No!
It doesn't take much of a logical leap to associate it with the pressure put on the children taking the tests.
Presumably that kind of pressure ia coming to america.
Showing my age here, I guess. Fifty years ago, 18-year-olds in college were referred to as "men" and "women."
Nevermind that actual findings like https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260218031606.h... and https://scitechdaily.com/your-brain-doesnt-magically-finish-... say something completely different.
Though auto-insurance claims do show some truth to late teens and early twenties drivers being...not mentally ready.
Money is the easy excuse.
The root of the problem is that many of them simply are not ready for college for a variety of reasons from parent coddling to defunded primary schools to the reduced ability to think abstractly and with foresight due to the lack of long-form reading.
I know on HN, every reflex is to blame money in one form or another. But there's plenty of blame to go around.
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 about it"
I feel really grateful I graduated before the advent of LLMs because it was really easy to stand out as a good student when the standards are apparently so low.
Side tangent but in the same class he caught people zero-citation copy-pasting from Wikipedia on the papers we were assigned to write, and the guys acted like they had no idea you couldn't do that.
That's the big thing - the college might be dropping the first semester grades so they can squeeze a second semester of tuition out of kids.
I feel like it has always been this way. I went to a small private university. The natural sciences and especially the pre-med students had their days fully packed, like the only time you could even have a moment to talk about anything was at the cafeteria during meals.
Then there was the business department. The college athletes apparently picked business as a major because you have to pick something. You couldn't guess what was their preferred minor and why... The overwhelming preferred minor was music because the buildings for department of business and music were adjacent.
Compare that to the pre meds who were always worried about getting a B and somehow "ruining their chances at med school".
I actually think it makes a lot of sense to go for some kind of basic business degree if you're angling to go into professional sports. Having some basic concepts of basic business law, finance, etc. seems pretty important for someone looking to shop their abilities and likeness around and have some understanding of the contract negotiations they'll hopefully be a part of. Outside of the gym its probably the most relevant kind of skills being taught on a college campus for that career path.
This seems most likely. If you think of college as yet another extractive business (and you can bet the administrators at colleges think this way), then students that drop out are simply cu$tomers you are failing to retain: Pure lost revenue.
Propitiated, in many cases, by the unnoticed run-up of their student loan debt balance.
that sounds unbelievable. Not calling you out by any means i'm just shocked! I can comprehend tuning down the difficulty but not to the level of find some code online and write about it.
20 years ago UofM had a 50% acceptance rate, from some light google searching. Apparently they received 115k applications last year vs under 25k in 2005.
The biggest factor is that applying is a lot easier in the age of web applications, common application, and students being advised to send 10-15 applications out. In the 2000s even a good student might apply to 3-5 schools and feel they had covered enough.
First, college can be a very abrupt shift from "someone is watching over you" to "you, and only you, are responsible for yourself." If you slack off in high school, someone--your parents, your teachers, your school administration--is likely to get on your ass to put you back on track, and this is more likely to be the case for people who get into tougher colleges ("helicopter parents" are very real things). But in college, if you sleep in and miss all of your classes... no one is going to care. Well, your parents might, but your parents aren't with you in college to do anything about it. I've seen quite a few people who went from straight A's in high school to failing most of their college courses because of this.
Second, a lot of those accepted are going to be the smartest person in their class, who are now going to a college where they might be average--or even below average.
Finally, college courses are generally more difficult than a high school course, even an AP course, teaching the same material; there's just a lot more that's expected as students. Freshmen courses generally mitigate this somewhat to help ease in students, but by the time you get to a senior-level course, reading multiple research papers a day for per class is considered pretty normal. Of course, if you're a kid with a truckload of AP courses who let you skip your first year of college, now you're dropped into courses that expect you to have already adjusted to college life first.
Interesting, that's not my observation at all. Instead freshman classes were the most grueling experiences, intentionally weed-out classes to try to detect and, well, weed-out early those who wouldn't have the combination of grit, intelligence and organization skills to make it to the end of the degree.
I speak somewhat hyperbolically, it was never _unfair_, but the classes absolutely were paced and had homework/exam loads that you would simply be unable to cope with if you were trying to half-ass it. At my college, Calc I and Physics 1 were the big freshman showstoppers. I tested out of calc 1, but my IB HL was chemistry and as such I had a chemist's disdain (and begrudging respect) for the more academic science of physics, and while the actual topics weren't difficult, there was a LOT of homework and the exams left no stone unturned.
Comparatively, jr+ classes tended to be much more relaxed, focused more on learning the material than ensuring you are willing to do 8-10 hours of physics homework per week.
Every college is different though, I suppose.
So for instance, one of the notorious freshman weed out classes was a class that *every* engineering student took. But then each individual engineering major had their own handful of pain in the ass classes that showed up as the engineering curriculum diverged.
That’s what college life was like for me in a top 10 US school in 2003-2008 and was true of that school since 1954.
but it's always been this way since forever. Why would it need to change now and not a hundred years ago? What circumstances are different?
Nepo babies and affirmative action babies. (Dont @ me about Gratz, lets not pretend its no longer happening)
The students that come out of there are just normal. There is nothing special in the UoM sauce. They have more ego as their state school grad who makes the same money as them.
Sure there is a floor, they didn't let the alcoholic nepo baby in. But the people that made it to entry level Fortune 20 companies were the same tier, or maybe they were worse. Best engineers were people from random schools around the country that just wanted to work there.
Note: This didn't apply to people that had been there for 2 or 3 years. After that, even the UoM grads had their ego destroyed and they were normal people again.
Plenty of kids are small-town nepo. Daddy threatens to call his lawyer every time they get a C or get in trouble, and teachers and administrators cave.
Also, they may need an adjustment period, which makes sense.
I think we need to wait and see how it works, before blindly criticizing a possible good idea
What they are trying to do is keep the kids that would otherwise do well but might freak out in the first semester. Seems pretty fine to me especially since those are grades that if we are being honest really don't matter anyways.
There is a real issue that housing is unreasonably expensive in many areas, which we could fix via the innovative strategy of not making it illegal to build housing.
So what do you mean with "uncertain environment"?
Kids have "managed" this by dropping out of college.
> That's the slippery slope fallacy. That's not what's being proposed and not what's going to happen.
They have proposed 1 semester, if they propose extending it then I'll be right along side you saying that's ridiculous. However, it's just as likely that they'll say "Actually, 1 semester was too long, we'll just do it for 1/2 a semester".
No it's not, because that's a tangentially related thing. You can't say "because social promotion is widely practiced, colleges will eventually eliminate grades" That's a non-sequitur. It'd be just as silly as me making the argument that "because some classes at my college were pass/fail, eventually they'll all be pass fail". That's the slippery slope argument.
> Own your argument man
That's not my argument, dude. And claiming it is is bad faith bro.
> If you are ok with end result, say so.
The end result of a single semester not being graded? Yeah, I'm fine with that. Because it's just as likely the university finds it's a mistake and rolls it back as it is that they expand it. It's also likely that they don't do anything with it.
That's my argument. That this policy is probably positive and worth trying. My argument isn't "nobody should ever be graded ever". That's a straw-man that you've cooked up.
It's just 1 semester and also gives students time to switch majors if they determine it's not for them (which is also common).
Once you're on your own nobody coddles you and it can be brutal.
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.
I've never cared about where the degree of someone comes from. You really think and employer is going to look at UofM and say "Oh, they gave their students a 1 semester reprieve, obviously they are of lower quality"?
> Hiring practices expanding to include multiple take-home exercises to prove competency.
Why would the policy of UofM change the hiring practices of companies that are not UofM? Where's the connection?
> Students not fully learning foundational knowledge they’ll need later because the class is an easy pass.
This may be a real harm, but ultimately they'll have to learn the foundational knowledge to continue going to UofM. Plenty of students fail to learn foundational knowledge outside of UofM, I know because I had to tutor them.
As a student: Grades are one of the clearest signals on whether you're a good fit for a major or topic you're interested in, you need more work, or you need to trim down the number of classes.
Not providing that clear, cumulative signal is a major disservice to the students.
Also, UofM is expensive so dragging it benefits only the financials for the school.
It sounds harsh but it’s an important reality check for the student.
So again I ask. What's the harm?
Yes. We should ignore things like school shootings, which have long been described as the result of mental health issues. Ignore PTSD. Soldiers can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. By all means, ignore the mental health of a rape victim or a child abuse victim. They can just tough it out. Clearly, that's the better strategy.
Oh, and you've been working in this field for how long?
"Is raising mental health awareness causing more harm than good?", https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/analyst-comment/is-raisi...
"Are We Overdoing Mental Health Awareness?", https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/silicon-psyche/20250...
Kids will take multiple APs (taking 10+ isn't unheard of, and in a lot of high schools is expected), do multiple extracurriculars (debate, MUN, DECA sports, academic olympiads, theatre), volunteering (NHS, CSF, etc), and even take college classes in high school.
On top of that while tests are optional, most students still submit their SAT and ACT, and the expectation of 1500+ and 35+ still holds.
And even then there's no guarantee you'll get in.
Most applicants who successfully get into Ivies, impacted majors with single digit acceptance rates at Mich or Cal tier programs like EECS or a BBA, and other peer programs are basically burnt out by 17-18 (the age most kids at these programs now matriculate).
And the first semester is not impactful in any shape or form. It's best to take summary and intro classes as P/NP to even the playing field and then throw in a weed-out class (in CS that was historically data structures or OS).
So many HNers complain about how the younger generation is hyper-competitive yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching.
Heck, with my profile from the late 2000s and early 2010s (right when everything became hyper-competitive and optimized), I actually wouldn't have a shot at most programs at Mich let alone my Alma mater, especially when I compare it to my younger sibling's profile who also attended a Mich tier engineering undergrad in the 2020s.
Dropping a semester of grades is a cover up for the symptoms, not a fix. A better fix would be stress management and realistic expectations. Building your identity or self-worth around going to a particular school is the insane part. It's great to have big goals, but you have to separate those goals from defining you. It seems many kids today don't make that distinction. Pick a cheap state school with a decent program, get a scholarship, and start living life. All this prestige and pedigree is the type of stuff we should be trying to destroy.
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 it help relieve the stress from their rat race of 110% from their childhoods... Man is it worth it. And everyone still loves hiring people out of MIT
> 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/...
> curb a mental health crisis
In this context, both have the exact same meaning, of "stop freshmen who are used to overachieving their entire lives from taking a header off the tallest buildings on campus because they're not used to being less than the top 5% at everything"
> yet when universities start taking steps to help reduce that they start kvetching
Your argument is hard to follow. It is prohibitively hard, to the point of being unhealthy, to getting admitted to the University of Michigan. Okay, but how does this policy solve for or address that in any way? Wouldn’t the solution be to increase capacity to meet demand, thus relieving those pressures that create the conditions for them to admit young adults that are suffering from health issues that the universities admissions policies itself precipitated?
And UMich Ann Arbor is already massive - 8,000 students enroll a year.
Also 32,000 undergrads is not “massive” by any measurement[0], especially when accounting for the population of the state of Michigan, much less the broader United States.
O. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_public_u...
You're right about this one. I'd never get accepted today at the state university I went to back in the 90s. Back then, applying to college meant taking the SAT, filling out an application, and maybe submitting an essay. That was it. Then you figured out how you'd pay for it. They didn't care that much about AP courses, extracurricular activities, career shadowing, volunteering, college level credits, or anything like that. Sure, they were nice bonuses but nobody treated them as hard requirements like they do today. Hell, my high school didn't even offer AP courses, so I couldn't take one even if I wanted to.
Now, my kid is approaching college age, and all these college admissions coaches are breathing down my neck to get her to take 40 AP courses, join the debate club and chess club, play Sportsball every year, take 4 years of a foreign language, do volunteering, tutor other kids, and then take extra courses at the local community college, and that doing all that will only improve her already-low chances of acceptance. Good grief!
They don't make great labor. They are normal labor with egos until the age of ~25. Then they become normal labor without egos as the system killed their ego.
I really expected some secret sauce in Ivys/UoM, and nope. Electrical Engineers there didn't know how to figure out mass of a part given density(based on material) and volume.
The secret sauce seems to be that many come from money, which means they have connections.
What matters is your major and whether it is a well respected program.
A CS@Texas student will have the ability to open the exact same doors professionally and prestige wise as a CS@Brown student.
You have Ivies, Ivy Tier Privates (Stanford, Chicago, Duke, USC, Caltech, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Georgetown, CMU), and Public Ivies (Cal, UCLA, UCSD, Mich, UIUC, UW, UT, GT, Purdue, UNC Chapel Hill, UVA) that all recruit the same kind of applicant and place in the same careers and employers.
And employers and us alums of these programs know the difference is marginal.
And across time you have to adjust acceptance rates for the fact they are all way lower now because kids send out 2-3x as many apps.
A lot of kids even 20 years ago were applying to schools in NYC/Boston/DC on east coast because they wanted to be in NYC/Boston/DC. Many of my friends went to said schools for psychology/film/etc type programs at schools that as an engineering major were decidedly for me "safety schools". Many of these were 50% admit then and 10% admit now. I don't think they suddenly became as difficult as MIT.
Meanwhile many engineering schools (the types with Institute in the name) that were in cold rural boring areas had higher acceptance rates than my "safety schools" in Boston.
This trend has seemingly only accelerated. For example picking 3 schools in Boston to isolate just the difficulty feature:
* In 2005 MIT acceptance was ~16% vs 4% now (1/4).
* BC was ~30% vs 15% now (1/2).
* BU was ~68% vs 11% now (1/6).
So theres an argument that the harder the school the less dramatically its acceptance rate has compressed, while desirable good but not super hard schools (which have fluffy majors available) have had a larger effect.
The "NYU/USC is a party school" trope is from back in the 1990s (aka 2 generations ago).
This had pros and cons:
- it was nice to have a bit more of a gradual build
- this would probably avoid some of the issues here
- if you are lazy like me: you do bare minimum effort first and second year and then get crushed by both workload and lack of foundational knowledge in third year
- if you apply to a US company, some will want to see your “full transcript” and don’t accept “I was too busy playing CS (Counterstrike) to study CS (Computer Science)”
Given that 75% of all grades in 2022 were A's, grade inflation has already made the indicator value of grades pretty meaningless. I think this take from a student captures it well:
> Louth, 20 years old, said he earned all A’s and one B in his first semester and doubted he would have worked as hard had the classes been pass/fail. But he thinks he would have learned more from his classes without the pressure of earning high marks.
The first semester should help students explore and engage their curiosity. I think it's a good move and hope the experiment succeeds
If a large enough proportion of incoming students need an adjustment period, surely it’s better to have one than not.
Also, it’s misdirected. If incoming students aren’t prepared for college, that’s a problem at the high school level (possibly earlier, too). A university is going to do better for its students if it adjusts to reality rather than expecting it to adjust to tradition.
The consequence though, was that every single person who stayed on the course actually cared about being there. Staying motivated for the next three and a half years was made so much easier because the first six months were so difficult.
But it's better earlier rather than later. The consequences aren't severe and you can change majors, lessen your course load, or stop those volunteer opportunities. That's part of learning how to be an adult.
I knew a few people my freshmen year that were put on academic probation. They turned out all right after making some drastic changes. Others simply disappeared during the break.
See the problem here?
Failing to teach a student ≠> the student is mediocre.
The student is mediocre ≠ the student is irredeemable and didn’t deserve an education in the first place.
Honestly, it’s wild to me how reluctant people are to accept that teachers have a responsibility to teach their students.
They will charge you $2000 a credit hour to have a teacher teach you — as if the teacher alone is the gatekeeper of an education — and then claim that the teacher is not in any way responsible for the student’s success or failure in being taught.
A portion of the educator's role is weeding out students who are not wanting/able to engage with the material before they spend a massive amount of time and money towards stepping stone classes to something they won't try/be able to complete. A portion of the student's role is weeding out the teachers and institutions which are more interested in maximizing the money out of the student instead of teaching them well. The two weeding processes actually reinforce the right outcome together - students getting educated instead of wasting their resources.
The reality is that prestigious universities routinely take money from incredibly talented people who are fully capable of learning calculus with or without a good teacher, the university gives them a careless or actively harmful teacher, and then the student is deemed a “weed” that was rightfully put in their proper place.
When you look at it this way, it’s clear that people are being scammed. Maybe that’s why universities are so reluctant to accept accountability for their teaching quality, blaming the students first and foremost.
There needs to be some sort of academic baseline for university otherwise what is the difference between a youtube playlist and a semester worth of credits?
I am definitely not saying that students should pass without learning the material. I am emphasizing that schools and instructors also have a responsibility to teach their students, both morally and financially. Just because the norm is to behave amorally and with greed, that doesn’t make it proper.
I remember two things about my university.
First, I was a 'provisional' admission. Which meant that I had to maintain at least a C Average for the first year, Had to log a certain number of hours in one of the 'study centers' every week (Although I could technically do whatever, so I wound up reading a lot of books once I had my coursework done,) and there was a 1 hour a week pass/fail that was primarily following up on the study center logs and connecting students with extra help if the needed it.
Second, I remember a -lot- of people pledging a fraternity their first semester, and statistically it seemed to cause a much higher fail rate... In fact, I tried pledging a social fraternity my second year, dropped out in less than a week because I realized the time commitments and requirements would have tanked my grades; sure enough out of the entire group that didn't drop out, less than 10% survived through the full year.
That second point actually got so bad that, for my last year they actually banned Social fraternities from recruiting first semester freshmen... not sure whether it stuck or not after I graduated tho.
I was intensely stressed through high school and undergrad, then later in grad school, postdoc, full time job as computer scientist, then as a SWE. It wasn't pleasant but it drove me to achieve at far higher levels, in ways that paid off well in the long run (like financial stability and earlier retirement). Note: in undergrad, I specifically went to a school that did not have grades but still felt all the stress to perform.
I suspect that as unpleasant as stress is, it ultimately can make us better people.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2023.2...
"Our findings reveal that gradeless learning can increase motivation and reduce surface learning but has no significant effect on students’ later academic achievements."
If college is supposed to prepare kids for the real world, we should be creating environments that simulate the real world as much as possible.
Creating a consequence free semester is the polar opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, you get a job, and you're on probation for your "first semester" when the scrutiny is at its highest. You don't get the privilege of easing into the job, you're thrown in. Shouldn't be any different for college kids.
The safety bubble we're building around kids + young adults is not going to end well.
Speaking as someone who grew up in a slightly more cruel world, but still received way more kindness than previous generations (did not die of previously deadly respiratory complications in childhood, got accepted into gifted children program for enthousiasm, not IQ, got recommendation letters for the same reasons, short sighted, ADHD) in my self evaluation, each time I got a break it spurned me to work harder and try more to "pay it back", and every time I powered through strict evaluation and scrutiny it left scars that overall impede my productivity/would do so if I had not gotten therapy to overcome them .
Nature is cruel, but also inefficient. We have long since started building a "rela world" full of safety bubbles that let us thrive. Why not continue with this one?
The idea of “ease in” periods is nice, but it’s incredibly challenging when the business is understaffed (and hence hiring) for a specific role. You don’t have a lot of extra bandwidth on the existing team to cover for the new guy while he settles in.
How about we work on making things not suck
Would you take a motorcycle safety course where the first thing they do is chuck you into "simulated" traffic? It feels too obvious to say, but just throwing people in the deep-end isn't necessarily the most consistent or effective teaching tool for every situation.
But I agree that kids are awfully unprepared for the real world, so maybe coddling kids into early adulthood is unfortunately necessary? The whole situation makes me very sad.
Do I think a consequence free first semester is needed to address that? No..
For example: what would you say is the point of college, generally? Is it learning? Is it producing functional adults? Or is the goal, itself, to accumulate large numbers of grades that are as close to 100 as possible?
That last one isn't a goal, it's a means to an end.
Human learning is in fact something that can be studied and measured, and not something that was perfected at any point in the last 50 years. If it can be shown that not giving grades the first semester improves the actual goals of learning and adult success, then that's what should be done.
If you get over yourself and your "back and my day" and "consequences", you will see that what is being done is what will help create the world you actually want.
What I'm not in favor of is a college doing the same thing, but using "mental health" as the motivator. If mental health is really the issue, maybe the kids they're trying to help aren't actually ready for college.
I see no difference in this vs the MIT program in terms of reasoning aside from a slight difference in wording.
Is the term "mental health" really such a blinding political football? Like "I hate Obamacare, but I love the ACA" and "Welfare is bad, but we need more assistance to the poor"?
It should be the mission of every school, but somehow they all missed that. Given, teachers were often abysmal themselves in these topics, but things can be learned just like other stuff.
If you want to say MIT is soft. Feel free.
Growing up with no one in my family having gone to college I had no idea how any of this stuff worked or anybody to tell me its important. Eventually I moved to a middle class suburb and saw kids hire private tutors for it. Meanwhile I remember 2 days before I had mine scheduled and had to find someone to beg to drive me there. I'm quite thankful that universities acknowledge how silly it is to assess a student's aptitudes from a single test score like that.
I think personal essays and a more holistic assessment is a great alternative but I'm worried about the LLM age and the limits it introduces to that as well. Perhaps interviews are the future. It would certainly better prepare students for the real world
Which led to a spectacular failure of incoming students to do basic math, lead to massive increases in failures in first year math courses.
Maybe removing signal loses knowledge about who is ready for standard classes?
This causes very high levels of stress amongst a large portion of the student body. The counselor hence wished MIT had even softer policies to make it easier for students to walk away from courses with no repercussions.
However, Caltech and MIT have a reason for this that probably doesn't apply to a large (35000 undergraduate) public university like UM.
Caltech, MIT, and UM all have incoming classes that did very well in high school. Around 88% of the UM class was in the top 10% of high school. It is 96+% for Caltech and MIT.
At all three most students will be going from having been one of the top students at every school they have attended to a school where they are more average. This drop on average will be bigger at Caltech and MIT because their students are clustered more tightly toward the top of their high school class.
Another thing that makes the drop bigger at Caltech (and MIT?) is that UM has a way more flexible schedule. For example if you take physics in your first year, they have I believe three different courses for that. One if for people majoring in life sciences and emphasizes the physics most useful in those areas. Another is for engineers and others doing practical applications. It is more rigorous. The third is for physics majors.
Compare to Caltech. First, there is no "if you take physics". It is a first year requirement. Second, there is just one course. Go to Caltech to major in English (which does occasionally happen! [1]) and your first year you are taking the same required physics and math courses that people there for physics and math are taking. Third, because admissions specifically looked for people with very strong math/science ability, the professors don't have to slow down. Those courses cram a lot into a short time compared to even the courses meant for people majoring in their subject at less specialized schools.
The net effect is that for a top high school student Caltech and MIT are much bigger academic shocks than UM because even though at UM you can find comparable courses structural differences due to its size and its much bigger number of students mean it doesn't make you take a bunch of rigorous courses right from the start at an insane pace.
[1] It is rare. The reasons some have done it include:
• They intend to be science writers or science journalists.
• They intend to go to medical school. Medical school admissions committees like English majors and they like a hard science background.
• They intend to go to law school. An English major with a serious hard science education and a law degree is a good fit for patent law or for going into science policy work.
It lets you actually focus on getting acclimated and into the groove without being worried about the difference between an A and a B.
Both of my kids worked hard and were prepared for college, and they did very well their first years, as they were used to the pace and level of information. It's something they are proud of, and it gave them confidence in their future lives. By eliminating the chance to excel, we make life worse for students who should be standing out.
No, it eliminates the grade and GPA award for excelling. You can still excel, unless you absolutely require external validation for your work. And even then, it's still college, professors notice top performers even if they aren't giving them an A+++++ and have to give them a Pass instead.
At the larger schools (like Michigan), professors (if a professor is actually grading the class, and not an adjunct or grad student) are hardly going to remember individual performances on freshman exams, or even pay much attention.
I have only had one company ask for my transcripts and GPA. Ever! And guess what, they were the one company I never wanted to work for after the interviews.
You know what the best companies I ever worked for cared more about? That I got the degree, and a million questions about my skills and projects that I engaged in.
My GPA being low, but not failing, gave me the wake up call I needed to make the needed adjustments. A “Pass” wouldn’t have given me that wake up call, and a “Fail” may have just bounced me out, not giving me the chance to right the ship.
- 11 GCSE grades
- 4 A level grades
- 1 University degree
For virtually all of these, the grades/results were determined by exams taken at the end of a period of study:
- GCSE exams taken at ~16yo
- A level exams taken at ~18yo
- University finals taken at ~21yo
At the time, I thought it was very very strange that my GCSE grades for English Language and English Literature were not based on exams, but on a bunch of essays I had written over a two year period.
It seemed strange because those past essays did not measure my current capability, but something else.
But this (measuring students on performance over multiple years) is the norm here in the US. Sure, many students take the SAT or ACT or various AP exams. But many students enter university with their academic performance measured on their high school GPA, which seemingly doesn't even attempt to measure mastery.
If it is meant sincerely, it is the kind of idea that falls apart in the actual world - especially if someone wants to graduate with Honors in a degree program that requires higher maths.
That isn't to deny there is a lot of societal bullshit involving higher education, but that's true in many aspects of life.
What I think is more likely is that this move will help them hire less qualified teachers and reduce administrative oversight as now they no longer have to worry about all the issues that come with grading, such as consistency, or the grades accurately reflecting performance. The quality of curriculum will likely drop significantly and this will be reflected in the student’s second year grades.
it will increase it because in pass/fail classes i have had you do not know if you're passing or failing until the final grade/result. With a grade average you know how far you are from failing but without it you have no idea. Maybe they keep the grading the same but whatever you end up with doesn't affect your GPA (good or bad), I can see that reducing anxiety. However, the students are going to be in for a shock the next semester when it's assumed they learned everything they should have first semester and class takes off from there.
Pass/fail means that whatever was a C before is going to be passing now. It lowers expectations compared to the previous grading scheme (in that a C no longer has a serious impact on your GPA, you still pass). If the majority of the students are getting a C or better, the majority of students would get a passing mark.
That way there's still an incentive to do good work, and students who do well still get to receive the benefit of keeping the letter grade. Students who do poorly receive the letter grade as feedback, but have a one-off chance to reduce the impact and try again the next semester.
Or maybe they can help them by giving access to mental health practitioners, or maybe set some mandatory sessions to help them for the transition.
Anyway I think dropping first semester grades is a huge band-aid that they should never use. If we keep lowering the standards, maybe the whole education system is failing our children.
On the one hand, this is good for people who need time to adapt to college. It's a big change, especially for young people who are living apart from family for the first time. You have to adapt to living alone AND an entirely new social environment AND a much more independent/rigorous academic environment all at once.
On the other, it may just delay the same result. If someone knows their first semester doesn't really count, they may not put in the time to adapt, then crash out anyway in the second semester when it becomes real. I also feel our society tries a little too hard to insulate young people from failure, and I wonder whether that means people avoid learning important lessons earlier.
I guess the biggest advantage is it lets someone spread the growth out over a little more time rather than getting railroaded at once. This approach is probably most useful for someone who is genuinely trying and struggling, rather than for someone who is not really putting in any effort. It's probably better to help the former, so overall it's probably a reasonable approach.
I did really well my freshman year and managed to get deans list. Then I transfered to a much more rigorous school and didn't do well. I didn't enjoy my major, I was living in a house far from campus with three other guys I didn't know and didn't really have any shared interests with. By spring, I was on academic probation. I lived like a hermit and wasn't going to class much or studying hard. I was pretty depressed and my undiagnosed ADHD didn't help. I did have some highschool friends at that school but I hadn't seen them in a while so it was hard making the effort to see them. I got on academic suspension at the end of my second year and had to take my next fall off. I waited the whole summer until I had come back to school to tell my parents because I was so ashamed. I remember my dad was trying to figure out why he hadn't gotten a tuition bill yet and called the bursar office while we were at the beach in August. They couldn't say why he hadn't gotten a bill yet so he handed the phone to me and the lady on the other end is saying "you need to tell them you're suspended." That was a gut punch. I was actually suicidal at this point but I kept it together until I wrote them a long email saying how bad things were. My dad visited me and convinced me to see a therapist. This ended up getting me an ADHD diagnosis and a prescription for Adderall. I stayed in my room a lot of that suspended fall semester but I did join a club sport (while lying about my eligibility as a full time student) which lead to making some friends. When I came back the next spring semester under a new major, I felt ready to crush it and I did. I stayed for the summer and crushed some more classes. I moved in with a friend and got along great with those guys. I was also right next to campus so there was no excuse to missing classes. I met my wife and made a huge turn around. But, those grades from my sophmore year were an albatross around my neck. They ruined my GPA. My in-major GPA was decent but I was still graduating with a 2.6 (freshman year grades didn't apply since they were transfer credits). Luckily, my parents had helped me get internships and my wife's father got me in for an interview at my current employer so GPA wasn't a huge burden to employment.
I really wish I could have dropped any of those sophmore grades. Obviously this policy wouldn't have helped me but I can certainly understand how it could help.
If for potential employers, then first semester doesn’t matter a whole lot.
If for students, then sounds like they are getting the feedback they need w this approach.
I guess the question is one of comparability across schools.
That reminds me of this simpsons clip where the elementary school teachers went on strike and Lisa has no one to grade her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h4GD2feZ8Q
But this also seems like it is just kicking the can down the road.
https://ro.umich.edu/sites/default/files/calendar/pdfs/Cal_2...
> In May, Harvard University faculty voted to approve a 20% cap on the number of A’s per undergraduate course in an effort to curb grade inflation. It won’t apply to A-minuses, which committee members predicted would become the most awarded grade.
> At the University of Michigan, a review by the news site MLive found that 74.1% of all undergraduate grades in 2022 were an A+, A or A-. A decade earlier, that percentage was 57.6%.
If one doesn't plan on applying to grad school immediately after undergrad then hopefully there is less self-imposed grade pressure.
As an alum I've observed both:
* kids who partied hard first semester since grades didn't matter only to struggle second semester
* kids who benefited from this transition because they didn't go to Hotchkiss
I ended up in both buckets and I have mixed feelings about this since it helped and hurt me.
In the long run - it really didn't matter.
But then I was just horrified to read apparently they got rid of that system in 2017 [1], and now it's a normal letter grade?! Assuming that Hopkins still skews quite harshly on grading, that's an awful regression.
[1] https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2016/05/university-to-...
But both are done. Grading inflation is very real.
The problem is not specific to US uni: in many western EU countries education level is going down the drain at a totally alarming rate. We're talking about kids coming out of primary school and arriving at secondary school with "good grades" although they can barely write, even in their native language.
An official report from the OECD is saying stuff like: "29% of 15-year-old French students failed to reach Level 2 (the baseline level of basic proficiency needed to participate fully in modern society) in mathematics.". We're talking about nearly 1 in 3 people that cannot add and subtract numbers.
And it's not specific to France. It's the same in other western countries. Education in the west is going down the drain while students in Singapore, Japan, China, etc. are hard at work.
People are going to say it's "inhumane" to not grade-inflate. That we should let students pass the first semester without grades. But why stop there? Why not let students who cannot write, cannot add numbers, get their diploma? Neuro-surgeons? Plane pilots? Why not just pick people randomly in the population and assign them a role in society? No more math/physics/chemistry in first year of medicine: anyone can be a doctor.
Really: where do you draw the line? Why stop after that first semester?
It's Idiocracy. And people left and right, just like most in this thread, explaining how all the ideas that let to this state of affair are wonderful ideas that makes lot of sense because school/college/uni is "too difficult psychologically".
The little precious snowflakes, we need to cuddle them.
They aren't a meaningful signal for how capable a person is by the end of the program. But maybe the fix would be to not count them towards the GPA/permanent transcript, while still providing the achieved grade to the students so they have a measure of how they did.
My anecdotal experience with the University of California system was that course load was a step down from Highschool university prep (which wasn't that bad). Classes were easier than their AP counterparts, and most students who struggled had an issue with attending morning classes after late nights socializing.
My impression from family going through this process now is that the high school prep has only gotten more intense, so what is the gap? Has college gotten significantly harder in the last 20 years?
Which did you find to be the case?
It's everything else with self regulation. Where most college prep goes wrong is at home, in not allowing appropriate agency for the child to make decisions before college. When you go from having to ask to go to the bathroom to being entirely independent in 2 months, bad shit happens.
This lesson has held true everywhere I've worked, from small junior colleges to D1 state schools.
Subsequently, college has gotten harder, but so has k-12, so proportionately, no it's not more difficult now
For most students college is nothing like high school.
their fix is rampant out of control cheating
Eventually this will lower the bar for everyone.
Weird that trying to appease children, giving them no boundaries, and acting like entitled assholes isn’t a good way to raise a human.
Not that beating them into submission is good either, but the pendulum swung wildly wrong.
Grades in their current form might be the purest incarnation of Goodhart's Law.
Anyways, the biggest tech companies in Michigan are automakers, Dow chemicals, and Whirlpool. These are all respectable places and have different expectations than X or OpenAI or companies like that.
I ended up taking just one that way. The policy was really designed for the breadth year because in upper years, you had much less room for electives, but you could try a difficult or unfamiliar subject without worrying too much about your GPA. If you discovered you liked it enough to switch into that major, the course would then be converted to a regular graded course.
I think allowing 3-4 Pass/Fail courses in the first year strikes a good balance. It gives students room to challenge themselves and explore unfamiliar subjects, while still preserving grades as a useful signal of whether they're prepared for college-level work.
They really ought to do a follow up for 2026. From what I gather talking to faculty and professors, this problem became noticeably worse since COVID and the years following. A follow up book or study would be very interesting to read.
I remember the first semester in the dorms was mostly the sound of coughing.
Building up the immune system takes disease exposure and that takes time.
Addnib all the immune system depressants and increased exposure events there at Michigan - booze, pot, late nights, hookups, crowds, stress, etc - and you get a perfect storm for the immune system to take a beating.