7 ms·

In undergrad, the professor who taught intermediate microeconomics told us about how law and business school admissions officers knew how tough his course was (

In undergrad, the professor who taught intermediate microeconomics told us about how law and business school admissions officers knew how tough his course was (it was the weeder course), and that doing well would be a feather in our cap. I made the mistake of believing him. The savvy students took intermediate micro at nearby schools and transferred the credit along with a higher grade. Graduate schools will look at rec letters and take the professor's praise into account, but they haven’t the slightest notion of whether a class you took is hard or not. Students who want to optimize their future prospects know this, and select their courses accordingly. Oh, and employers know/care even less than graduate schools.

tylergetsay 4y ago
This also applies to high school in my experience. I had a lower GPA but took AP classes, my friends who took easy classes got into better schools.
- mathattack 4y ago
  Same though I’d say that the group who optimized for grades over challenging themselves in high school didn’t fare so well. Same in college actually. I don’t have much law school data but it seems like the folks afraid of competition when they’re young don’t grow into it when they get older.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  At least with AP classes you get a GPA bump that affects the raw numerical calculation. That way, you can come out ahead if you get A- or better in the AP class. I recall that for some schools/purposes, they just looked at your GPA without weighting, but for most purposes they gave credit for weighted grades. This also applied to class rank, but for me all of this was a couple decades ago.
- schoolornot 4y ago
  AP classes served only to keep the hoodlums out when I took them. I still don't understand what the point is of them. Not one of them were anything like a real college course. If someone wants to shortcut some credits, I recommend memorizing some flash cards and taking a DSST/CLEP exam.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    My AP classes were phenomenal and honestly much better than my undergrad courses which would have had a hundred students in them and met much less frequently. They also cut a year from my undergrad.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  I bombed my AP tests after a year of stress, what a waste of time and a consequential amount of money at the time Whereas the community college classes I also took in high school were like 8 weeks long, and - like the rest of college - you really only needed to do the midterm and the final and you get the same credit AP test score transfers credit across the country while being unnecessarily stressful and long courses. community college credits cannot be guaranteed to transfer and have more utility locally or in an adjacent school system, while being shorter semester long courses. Dollar costs are adjacent.
  - tssva 4y ago
    If your costs for community college and an AP test were adjacent your local community college must be a bargain. AP test currently costs $97 while the local community college is $185.50 per credit hour. Our local school system actually pays for the 1st 4 AP tests a student takes so the difference is even greater.
  - MertsA 4y ago
    >AP test score transfers credit across the country while being unnecessarily stressful and long courses. community college credits cannot be guaranteed to transfer and have more utility locally or in an adjacent school system, while being shorter semester long courses. Dollar costs are adjacent. That really changes if you get a degree though and AP classes are not necessarily guaranteed to meet whatever requirements some degree program specifies. Personally I had an AP CompSci class that I scored a 5 on but it counted for absolutely nothing for my CompSci degree yet the classes I took at the local Community College transferred to state college and satisfied their prerequisites. The actual college courses were easier than AP to boot. If you get an AA degree at the community college then you're probably better off transferring to another college with the degree than with AP class credits at least in my experience. I lived in a state that offered free dual enrollment so I was able to cut a bunch of core classes at the high school and get most of an AA at the same time.
- caminante 4y ago
  You just sparked a therapy thread about the dubious ROI of AP programs! :-)
- grogenaut 4y ago
  I went to a good uni in the same city as my high school. The admissions officers told me they knew my (mediocre) grades (all tough classes) were fine cause they were familiar with my high school and this helped me get in with lower than average grades. My test scores were generally good as well. This was repeated by the other two schools. Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them. Even Carnegie was familiar with my highschool (5 states away from MO), I just didn't get in there as I didn't have time to re-take the basic SAT Math as I had forgotten more geometry from freshman year than I needed to get to their high bar. I did nail the SAT2 math though. Many schools took that or the ACT which I did better on. I think it depends on the size of your college/uni and how many other kids from your school go there. I do remember being pissed watching one of my friends go up and get national honor society honors for their senior year because they finally passed their third try at freshman Algebra and had really high marks overall their senior year, where I was pulling a class high 89% in Stats but my gpa was not high enough. Seems to have worked out going to engineering though which definitely did not grade inflate when I was there.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    > Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them. How come sports have such important role in the US school system? Between this and all the scholarships I hear or read about, I feel that sports are effectively a "cheat code" for academic success - why learn anything when you can play all day and still get into the best universities because of athletic accomplishments?
    - Retric 4y ago
      A big part of this is collages have plenty of candidates with good grades and test scores it’s hard to differentiate at the high end. Writing a successful novel is a bigger boost than sports, but sports are easier.
    - 4y ago
- MertsA 4y ago
  I went to high school in Florida so we had dual enrollment available at the local community college for free and it counted as high school credit as well as college credit. Quite frankly the actual college class was way less work, an easier grade for all of my classes, less uncertainty about if the credit would actually transfer to whatever degree program, etc. AP classes always seemed like a scam in that regard, especially with the option to take a summer class or a class outside of high school hours to free up a period for an extra elective at the high school.
jcelerier 4y ago
Hm, I wouldn't be so categorical. I remember sitting at the class council in a somewhat selective post-highschool school in France, and the teachers knew very well that in highschool A, a student with 16/20 average grades in math from professor X was likely to be as good as a student with 12/20 in highschool B with professor Y, and used this info for admission. They didn't know this for every highschool/prof, but still for many of the good ones in southern France (I remember discussions ranging from Perpignan to Nîmes)
- Sebguer 4y ago
  You're talking about school distinctions, which doesn't have anything to do with what the person you're responding to is saying. They're talking about taking the class elsewhere, and transferring the credit, so the end transcript would not materially distinguish. They'd still have the cachet of the institution that they're graduating from, not where/who took each class.
  - seszett 4y ago
    Doesn't work like that in France.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Interesting! My experience is with US colleges and law schools, of which there are a lot more. I think that’s why there’s not a lot of detailed knowledge.
- caminante 4y ago
  > Hm, I wouldn't be so categorical. The Lycee -> Grande Ecole track in France isn't comparable (smaller, specialized, local.) 0. US business/law schools are singular, professional degrees with way more variety in the applicant funnel. 1. Program rankings/prestige are "everything" 2. Rankings are heavily weighted on quantitative acceptance/matriculation profiles by GPA and entrance exams (GMAT/GRE/LSAT). 3. As a result, GPA handicapping (for difficulty) doesn't really happen for top MBA/JD programs.
psyklic 4y ago
Purposefully avoiding academic challenge sounds like a poor strategy for grad school success! From my experience, the best students take classes based on interest rather than ease, and they are more prone to overload their schedules (rather than optimize for high GPA).
- rocqua 4y ago
  The strategy is about optimizing admissions rather than success. Probably because the fear of "not getting passed this important checkpoint" is baked into school. That teaches to optimize for the checkpoints. And people can really take those lessons to heart.
arkh 4y ago
Reading this makes me appreciate the preparatory school / competitive exams / Engineering school system. You could have some hard teachers netting you some 5/20 average grade and it would have no bearing on your school entry exam score.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  The French system has issues too, just different ones. The system is extremely disingenuous. It looks fair if you take a casual glance at it but it’s actually completely rotten. Administrators from the education ministry mercilessly impose on most high schools in the country a strict adherence to the official curriculum and disallow any form of selection but as always in France a few select high schools are above the rule and start preparing selected students years in advance. If you look at the official statistics, you will see that a clear funnel to the top schools exist at least from middle school. When you consider where you get your engineering degree still significantly impact your career in your fifties (I’m not kidding), it’s all kind of a joke actually. My main advice to prospective French students is generally to just go study abroad and then never come back and before I’m taxed of just being bitter I do have a degree from one of the prestigious Parisian schools.
  - orwin 4y ago
    > When you consider where you get your engineering degree still significantly impact your career in your fifties (I’m not kidding), it’s all kind of a joke actually. No true in CS, and not true in biology. I'm now 28k above the average (not median) pay for CS engineers in France at 31, nobody asked me for a diploma i don't have anyway (i did not validate my bachelor in math and did not really finish my CS school as i was hired during my last internship and couldn't find the time to validate it) and no questions were ever asked about my school years. Only stuff they asked is previous experience, experience with technologies and amazon architect certification (that i didn't have). For biology (and geology, and probably physics too but i lost touch with my friends in those areas), the thing that really matter is which professor and/or which lab did you work for. Even if you get an biology engineering degree, you can follow through with a doctorate if you went to the right labs. As for geology, you can come from a rural area and be good at one of the worst highschool in the departement, then go to a university ranked 10th and still be the only French astrogeologist doctor in years and work directly with Curiosity teams.
jxramos 4y ago
So true, local accolades are simply unknown in the wider realm. Big name brand travels farther than niche ranks of stellar departments in smaller known universities.
Daub 4y ago
It is a matter of principle that no course or program should be easier than another. Of course, this principle does not match reality. But as an academic in a management position, I try hard to level the playing field at a course level.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  You can't level a playing field where students can just buy all the answers online and get the same degree. At this time a university does not function as proof of education. It's proof of elitism. That one is not too poor, and will take on a lot of debt and follow orders. Any course that does not hand make its materials should not be accredited.
  - Daub 4y ago
    Almost completely agree. I have put a vast amount of energy and time into raising the bar of our course material.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    University and education has always been a certification game. What matters is that an institution has approved you and certified what you know.
- tester756 4y ago
  >It is a matter of principle that no course or program should be easier than another. It makes no sense and I don't think there's solid reasoning behind this concept like... why?
  - Daub 4y ago
    Why? Simple… 1. Students would flock to easy courses and avoid hard ones. Students can be very mercenary, especially when they are choosing electives. They want the degree, not the learningf experience (some of them anyway). 2. Lecturers would make courses deliberately easy in order to purchase good student feedback. One of my first tasks as manager of my program was to put a stop to lecturers who were giving an average grade percentage of 98 (I kid you not... 98 freakin percent). FYI student feedback is one metric of tenure. I am not saying that all subjects are of the same difficulty. I am simply saying that it is perfectly possible to package domain-specific knowledge/skills in approximately demand-equal lumps.
Balgair 4y ago
> In undergrad, the professor who taught intermediate microeconomics told us about how law and business school admissions officers knew how tough his course was (it was the weeder course), and that doing well would be a feather in our cap. The hubris and egomania of professors never ceases to amaze. Perhaps this could have been true for the local community, but with 2800 colleges in the US with over 100,000 professors combined, there is no way any even extremely large admissions office could keep track of the retirements and new hires let alone the quality of a particular professor. Why would any office have such a position to keep track of professor quality? How could that add to the assessment better than an interview?
- saghm 4y ago
  > The hubris and egomania of professors never ceases to amaze You're assuming that they were unaware what they were saying wasn't true. It's possible they were fully aware it wasn't but said it anyways for professional advantage.
  - Balgair 4y ago
    Professional Advantage over the students?
    - saghm 4y ago
      Professional advantage over other professors who are either more scrupulous or less convincing. All else being equal, a professor with students clamoring to get into their course will have more influence than one whose course no one wants to take.
      - Balgair 4y ago
        I'd say it's the opposite. I'll speak to my experience in the US Ivory Tower and STEMy R1s mostly: Professors are ranked and gain tenure nearly entirely based on their research output as it relates to grant funding. Classes are generally seen as a cudgel to scare nontenured Professors into getting more grant money. If you slack on the grants, you have to teach classes, generally. It is a very intentional vicious cycle. A Professor with a popular class is a bad thing, as it means they'll have less time to research and apply for grants. Professors that like to teach generally go to much smaller colleges where the above comment may be true, but I don't have experience in those kinds of places and can't confirm or deny. It does sound really nice though!
eldritch_4ier 4y ago
I remember cheating was absolutely rampant among East and south Asian students when I went through undergrad (a mere 3 years ago) to the point where something like 70% of all honor cases (cheating investigations by the student council) were this demographic - multiples their proportion of the student body. Many got away with it and had excellent GPAs as a result, no doubt a credit to their job prospects, and all it cost was their “academic integrity” (if such a thing matters at all anymore)
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Was this among Asian immigrants or Asian American students? Separately, the student council investigates cheating allegations? I'd think there would be confidentiality concerns that would prevent student inquiries.
  - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
    Asian immigrants especially, but some 2nd generation+ students who come from Asian communities in the area who were still pretty traditional. I personally had to report 4 south Asian students blatantly cheating for an exam, and had a cheating ring of maybe 8 East Asian international students busted in my 2nd semester honors math course. On student council: there was significant student govt at my school. Student council, but also student honor councils and student justice councils. Honor handled all cheating cases, justice handled disciplinary cases. I’m not sure how they handled confidentiality, but even as a resident advisor you can encounter some sensitive stuff and the culture was one of “student run society” with the professional staff to guide it. This was at a “public Ivy”
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      Very interesting! How were the students cheating? In real time on exams, or collaborating on take-home work? Do you think these demographics cheated more than other students, or got caught more? What’s a “public ivy”? The Wikipedia entry claims this term includes UC Irvine/Riverside/etc., which seems like a stretch. Is there a tighter or more well-known definition?

tylergetsay 4y ago

This also applies to high school in my experience. I had a lower GPA but took AP classes, my friends who took easy classes got into better schools.

mathattack 4y ago
Same though I’d say that the group who optimized for grades over challenging themselves in high school didn’t fare so well. Same in college actually. I don’t have much law school data but it seems like the folks afraid of competition when they’re young don’t grow into it when they get older.
gnicholas 4y ago
At least with AP classes you get a GPA bump that affects the raw numerical calculation. That way, you can come out ahead if you get A- or better in the AP class. I recall that for some schools/purposes, they just looked at your GPA without weighting, but for most purposes they gave credit for weighted grades. This also applied to class rank, but for me all of this was a couple decades ago.
schoolornot 4y ago
AP classes served only to keep the hoodlums out when I took them. I still don't understand what the point is of them. Not one of them were anything like a real college course. If someone wants to shortcut some credits, I recommend memorizing some flash cards and taking a DSST/CLEP exam.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  My AP classes were phenomenal and honestly much better than my undergrad courses which would have had a hundred students in them and met much less frequently. They also cut a year from my undergrad.
yieldcrv 4y ago
I bombed my AP tests after a year of stress, what a waste of time and a consequential amount of money at the time Whereas the community college classes I also took in high school were like 8 weeks long, and - like the rest of college - you really only needed to do the midterm and the final and you get the same credit AP test score transfers credit across the country while being unnecessarily stressful and long courses. community college credits cannot be guaranteed to transfer and have more utility locally or in an adjacent school system, while being shorter semester long courses. Dollar costs are adjacent.
- tssva 4y ago
  If your costs for community college and an AP test were adjacent your local community college must be a bargain. AP test currently costs $97 while the local community college is $185.50 per credit hour. Our local school system actually pays for the 1st 4 AP tests a student takes so the difference is even greater.
- MertsA 4y ago
  >AP test score transfers credit across the country while being unnecessarily stressful and long courses. community college credits cannot be guaranteed to transfer and have more utility locally or in an adjacent school system, while being shorter semester long courses. Dollar costs are adjacent. That really changes if you get a degree though and AP classes are not necessarily guaranteed to meet whatever requirements some degree program specifies. Personally I had an AP CompSci class that I scored a 5 on but it counted for absolutely nothing for my CompSci degree yet the classes I took at the local Community College transferred to state college and satisfied their prerequisites. The actual college courses were easier than AP to boot. If you get an AA degree at the community college then you're probably better off transferring to another college with the degree than with AP class credits at least in my experience. I lived in a state that offered free dual enrollment so I was able to cut a bunch of core classes at the high school and get most of an AA at the same time.
caminante 4y ago
You just sparked a therapy thread about the dubious ROI of AP programs! :-)
grogenaut 4y ago
I went to a good uni in the same city as my high school. The admissions officers told me they knew my (mediocre) grades (all tough classes) were fine cause they were familiar with my high school and this helped me get in with lower than average grades. My test scores were generally good as well. This was repeated by the other two schools. Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them. Even Carnegie was familiar with my highschool (5 states away from MO), I just didn't get in there as I didn't have time to re-take the basic SAT Math as I had forgotten more geometry from freshman year than I needed to get to their high bar. I did nail the SAT2 math though. Many schools took that or the ACT which I did better on. I think it depends on the size of your college/uni and how many other kids from your school go there. I do remember being pissed watching one of my friends go up and get national honor society honors for their senior year because they finally passed their third try at freshman Algebra and had really high marks overall their senior year, where I was pulling a class high 89% in Stats but my gpa was not high enough. Seems to have worked out going to engineering though which definitely did not grade inflate when I was there.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them. How come sports have such important role in the US school system? Between this and all the scholarships I hear or read about, I feel that sports are effectively a "cheat code" for academic success - why learn anything when you can play all day and still get into the best universities because of athletic accomplishments?
  - Retric 4y ago
    A big part of this is collages have plenty of candidates with good grades and test scores it’s hard to differentiate at the high end. Writing a successful novel is a bigger boost than sports, but sports are easier.
  - 4y ago
MertsA 4y ago
I went to high school in Florida so we had dual enrollment available at the local community college for free and it counted as high school credit as well as college credit. Quite frankly the actual college class was way less work, an easier grade for all of my classes, less uncertainty about if the credit would actually transfer to whatever degree program, etc. AP classes always seemed like a scam in that regard, especially with the option to take a summer class or a class outside of high school hours to free up a period for an extra elective at the high school.

jcelerier 4y ago

Hm, I wouldn't be so categorical. I remember sitting at the class council in a somewhat selective post-highschool school in France, and the teachers knew very well that in highschool A, a student with 16/20 average grades in math from professor X was likely to be as good as a student with 12/20 in highschool B with professor Y, and used this info for admission. They didn't know this for every highschool/prof, but still for many of the good ones in southern France (I remember discussions ranging from Perpignan to Nîmes)

Sebguer 4y ago
You're talking about school distinctions, which doesn't have anything to do with what the person you're responding to is saying. They're talking about taking the class elsewhere, and transferring the credit, so the end transcript would not materially distinguish. They'd still have the cachet of the institution that they're graduating from, not where/who took each class.
- seszett 4y ago
  Doesn't work like that in France.
gnicholas 4y ago
Interesting! My experience is with US colleges and law schools, of which there are a lot more. I think that’s why there’s not a lot of detailed knowledge.
caminante 4y ago
> Hm, I wouldn't be so categorical. The Lycee -> Grande Ecole track in France isn't comparable (smaller, specialized, local.) 0. US business/law schools are singular, professional degrees with way more variety in the applicant funnel. 1. Program rankings/prestige are "everything" 2. Rankings are heavily weighted on quantitative acceptance/matriculation profiles by GPA and entrance exams (GMAT/GRE/LSAT). 3. As a result, GPA handicapping (for difficulty) doesn't really happen for top MBA/JD programs.

psyklic 4y ago

Purposefully avoiding academic challenge sounds like a poor strategy for grad school success! From my experience, the best students take classes based on interest rather than ease, and they are more prone to overload their schedules (rather than optimize for high GPA).

rocqua 4y ago
The strategy is about optimizing admissions rather than success. Probably because the fear of "not getting passed this important checkpoint" is baked into school. That teaches to optimize for the checkpoints. And people can really take those lessons to heart.

arkh 4y ago

Reading this makes me appreciate the preparatory school / competitive exams / Engineering school system. You could have some hard teachers netting you some 5/20 average grade and it would have no bearing on your school entry exam score.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
The French system has issues too, just different ones. The system is extremely disingenuous. It looks fair if you take a casual glance at it but it’s actually completely rotten. Administrators from the education ministry mercilessly impose on most high schools in the country a strict adherence to the official curriculum and disallow any form of selection but as always in France a few select high schools are above the rule and start preparing selected students years in advance. If you look at the official statistics, you will see that a clear funnel to the top schools exist at least from middle school. When you consider where you get your engineering degree still significantly impact your career in your fifties (I’m not kidding), it’s all kind of a joke actually. My main advice to prospective French students is generally to just go study abroad and then never come back and before I’m taxed of just being bitter I do have a degree from one of the prestigious Parisian schools.
- orwin 4y ago
  > When you consider where you get your engineering degree still significantly impact your career in your fifties (I’m not kidding), it’s all kind of a joke actually. No true in CS, and not true in biology. I'm now 28k above the average (not median) pay for CS engineers in France at 31, nobody asked me for a diploma i don't have anyway (i did not validate my bachelor in math and did not really finish my CS school as i was hired during my last internship and couldn't find the time to validate it) and no questions were ever asked about my school years. Only stuff they asked is previous experience, experience with technologies and amazon architect certification (that i didn't have). For biology (and geology, and probably physics too but i lost touch with my friends in those areas), the thing that really matter is which professor and/or which lab did you work for. Even if you get an biology engineering degree, you can follow through with a doctorate if you went to the right labs. As for geology, you can come from a rural area and be good at one of the worst highschool in the departement, then go to a university ranked 10th and still be the only French astrogeologist doctor in years and work directly with Curiosity teams.

jxramos 4y ago

So true, local accolades are simply unknown in the wider realm. Big name brand travels farther than niche ranks of stellar departments in smaller known universities.

Daub 4y ago

It is a matter of principle that no course or program should be easier than another. Of course, this principle does not match reality. But as an academic in a management position, I try hard to level the playing field at a course level.

devwastaken 4y ago
You can't level a playing field where students can just buy all the answers online and get the same degree. At this time a university does not function as proof of education. It's proof of elitism. That one is not too poor, and will take on a lot of debt and follow orders. Any course that does not hand make its materials should not be accredited.
- Daub 4y ago
  Almost completely agree. I have put a vast amount of energy and time into raising the bar of our course material.
- imtringued 4y ago
  University and education has always been a certification game. What matters is that an institution has approved you and certified what you know.
tester756 4y ago
>It is a matter of principle that no course or program should be easier than another. It makes no sense and I don't think there's solid reasoning behind this concept like... why?
- Daub 4y ago
  Why? Simple… 1. Students would flock to easy courses and avoid hard ones. Students can be very mercenary, especially when they are choosing electives. They want the degree, not the learningf experience (some of them anyway). 2. Lecturers would make courses deliberately easy in order to purchase good student feedback. One of my first tasks as manager of my program was to put a stop to lecturers who were giving an average grade percentage of 98 (I kid you not... 98 freakin percent). FYI student feedback is one metric of tenure. I am not saying that all subjects are of the same difficulty. I am simply saying that it is perfectly possible to package domain-specific knowledge/skills in approximately demand-equal lumps.

Balgair 4y ago

> In undergrad, the professor who taught intermediate microeconomics told us about how law and business school admissions officers knew how tough his course was (it was the weeder course), and that doing well would be a feather in our cap. The hubris and egomania of professors never ceases to amaze. Perhaps this could have been true for the local community, but with 2800 colleges in the US with over 100,000 professors combined, there is no way any even extremely large admissions office could keep track of the retirements and new hires let alone the quality of a particular professor. Why would any office have such a position to keep track of professor quality? How could that add to the assessment better than an interview?

saghm 4y ago
> The hubris and egomania of professors never ceases to amaze You're assuming that they were unaware what they were saying wasn't true. It's possible they were fully aware it wasn't but said it anyways for professional advantage.
- Balgair 4y ago
  Professional Advantage over the students?
  - saghm 4y ago
    Professional advantage over other professors who are either more scrupulous or less convincing. All else being equal, a professor with students clamoring to get into their course will have more influence than one whose course no one wants to take.
    - Balgair 4y ago
      I'd say it's the opposite. I'll speak to my experience in the US Ivory Tower and STEMy R1s mostly: Professors are ranked and gain tenure nearly entirely based on their research output as it relates to grant funding. Classes are generally seen as a cudgel to scare nontenured Professors into getting more grant money. If you slack on the grants, you have to teach classes, generally. It is a very intentional vicious cycle. A Professor with a popular class is a bad thing, as it means they'll have less time to research and apply for grants. Professors that like to teach generally go to much smaller colleges where the above comment may be true, but I don't have experience in those kinds of places and can't confirm or deny. It does sound really nice though!

eldritch_4ier 4y ago

I remember cheating was absolutely rampant among East and south Asian students when I went through undergrad (a mere 3 years ago) to the point where something like 70% of all honor cases (cheating investigations by the student council) were this demographic - multiples their proportion of the student body. Many got away with it and had excellent GPAs as a result, no doubt a credit to their job prospects, and all it cost was their “academic integrity” (if such a thing matters at all anymore)

gnicholas 4y ago
Was this among Asian immigrants or Asian American students? Separately, the student council investigates cheating allegations? I'd think there would be confidentiality concerns that would prevent student inquiries.
- eldritch_4ier 4y ago
  Asian immigrants especially, but some 2nd generation+ students who come from Asian communities in the area who were still pretty traditional. I personally had to report 4 south Asian students blatantly cheating for an exam, and had a cheating ring of maybe 8 East Asian international students busted in my 2nd semester honors math course. On student council: there was significant student govt at my school. Student council, but also student honor councils and student justice councils. Honor handled all cheating cases, justice handled disciplinary cases. I’m not sure how they handled confidentiality, but even as a resident advisor you can encounter some sensitive stuff and the culture was one of “student run society” with the professional staff to guide it. This was at a “public Ivy”
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Very interesting! How were the students cheating? In real time on exams, or collaborating on take-home work? Do you think these demographics cheated more than other students, or got caught more? What’s a “public ivy”? The Wikipedia entry claims this term includes UC Irvine/Riverside/etc., which seems like a stretch. Is there a tighter or more well-known definition?