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> This struggle was reflected in our exam averages, which were, respectively, in the 50s, the 60s, and the 30s. There's a big disconnect between STEM subjects
by chadash 5y ago
> This struggle was reflected in our exam averages, which were, respectively, in the 50s, the 60s, and the 30s.
There's a big disconnect between STEM subjects and liberal arts in my experience. As an engineer, I was used to classes where exam averages were in the 60s (30's does seem kind of low), but I learned to only care about the curve and where I stood on the distribution.
Contrast this with liberal arts courses where generally an 85 on an exam meant a B and a 93 or 94+ meant an A. It's fair enough to say "this paper about social dynamics in medieval Italy is a B quality paper". It's harder to say "this is a 55/100" and here's how it stacks up against the curve in the way that many engineering and math courses allow. At the end of the day though, this translates to inflated grades in liberal arts as compared to math.
The other issue is that (pure) math at the university level is just harder. I suspect that many people who are good at number theory can probably wing it in a literature course. I doubt that vice versa is true. This isn't to downplay liberal arts degrees... the fact that you didn't have the toughest major doesn't make you less intelligent nor does it mean that the field is less important. In fact, in some cases it's the opposite. I know many people who did "tough" majors only to regret it when liberal arts folks with higher GPAs had easier times getting accepted to grad schools.
- puffoflogic 5y ago> I suspect that many people who are good at number theory can probably wing it in a literature course. You may be right, but the worst grade I got in school (as a Mathematics + CS major) was in some absolute throwaway, freshman-level liberal arts class (Intro to Japanese Popular Culture) I took in my third year! Don't underestimate the value of staying within one's wheelhouse.
- dc-programmer 5y agoI got crushed by a class in environmental humanities. Not due to a lack of comprehension of the material but because I didn’t understand the technical aspects of writing literary analysis (extreme focus on close reading of the language used where I tended to focus on the abstract conceits). It felt equivalent to taking a class in graph theory without first taking a proofs/discrete course and everyone else in the class had. Great class though - I think about the texts all the time
- zozbot234 5y ago> I suspect that many people who are good at number theory can probably wing it in a literature course. At the high end, humanities and 'softer sciences' courses can require a huge amount of reading and rote memorization. You end up skimming through entire tomes and trying to figure out what you actually need to read in detail, because it just isn't feasible to deal with the workload any other way. That's just as hard and painful as a course in number theory, just in a different sense.