Did you review the curriculum for DC's major?
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Anonymous
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Do you have any idea about the academic rigor of your DC's program of study, and do you even care if it's rigorous and makes them a stronger thinker?
My nephew is "killing it" according to BIL at his run of the mill state school. BIL brags about how the kid is getting As. I took a look at the list of courses he's taking and he has shown me the syllabus for a class that relates to my field. I can't believe how little this college expects of its students. They basically just collect tuition for four years, stamp their diploma, and send them out into the world without bothering to make them learn how to write or think critically. I'm sure the kids who major in job oriented things like nursing or structural engineering have to actually learn something, but my nephew is not being served well by his college IMHO. I remember reading something about a study showing that most college kids didn't increase their intellectual skills much from freshman to senior year. I thought this had to be a poorly done study, but now I can see how this is possible. |
Anonymous
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Troll
Only a tiger mom/extreme helicopter parent would do this to an adult child |
Anonymous
| Lol, no. |
Anonymous
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I'm OP.
They are not adults when they're living in your house under curfews and other house rules and applying to colleges into certain majors. I did check out the differences in how various colleges teach when my now college kid was applying. Brown takes a completely different approach from Columbia. What you are expected to do in the classrooms at Texas A&M is very different from what they do at Hampshire. It strikes me as odd that a parent who is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to send their kid to school wouldn't examine these things and provide some guidance. It's a difficult thing to measure and compare across schools though. “What students are supposed to be doing or learning diverges wildly,” said Nate Johnson, founder and principal consultant of the firm Postsecondary Analytics, who follows this. “You have students majoring in everything from philosophy to heating and air-conditioning repair to accounting. Even if you had measurable assessments in all those different areas, adding them up to say students made X amount of progress isn’t the same as what you can say about 9-year-olds or 10-year-olds hitting certain benchmarks in reading.” https://hechingerreport.org/as-students-return-to-college-a-basic-question-persists-what-are-they-learning/ |
Anonymous
| I’ve been fairly obsessed with reading course catalogues and student handbooks since I was a student, so I read all of them for the schools DC was deciding between because I wanted to. But I don’t poke DC about it. They are an adult, even if a young one, and unless they ask for my opinion about a class or anything else they might be doing, I leave it up to them. |
Anonymous
PP again, the chance to “examine and provide guidance” was during the school selection phase. And I don’t think anyone enrolled in Hamilton thinking they’d have an experience similar to A&M. |
Anonymous
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I did it.
And then when to course catalog for fall. Picked out classes. I do t see anything wrong with this. |
Anonymous
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Who. Gives. A. Crap.
College is a learning experience, in many different ways. Being exposed to other view points from peers, exposure to different professors, activation on campus, living on your own, etc. They are adults. They are not being spoon fed or trained - they will take from it what they choose to take from it. These are your nieces/nephews? You can back off. They will either learn what they need to be a successful adult or they won’t. Focus on you want to micromanage your child’s college experience. If you’re asking for advice for your own kids, I’d help them get into their top ranked school, provide financial support & let them take it from there. Did your parents micromanage what classes you took? I think that is part of growing up. The college experience is so much more than what you deem acceptable studies. |
Anonymous
| Jesus Christ. |
Anonymous
I don’t think he reviewed the curriculum either. |
Anonymous
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I checked the types of classes included in the majors/minors of interest to my child, as not all curriculums are the same from school to school
Checking what is actually taught in those classes based on syllabus? No. |
Anonymous
| A grown woman pettily envious of an in-law and a teen. Pathetic and disgusting. |
Anonymous
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In my experience a course catalogue description of a course is cursory, oftentimes only barely describing what they actually do. I took a religious studies course to fulfill a humanities requirement. It was supposed to be a comparative course on the major pillars of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I don’t think any of those religions were ever even mentioned. Instead it was entirely about tribes like the Yanomami. Same with an English course. It was supposed to be about “classic” American authors, but the reading was by quite obscure ones.
But to the larger point, MYOFB |
Anonymous
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To take your example: you asserted that Brown and Columbia have different approaches in the classroom. Certainly they have different approaches regarding how students choose which classes to take. But neither approach is more or less rigorous and tells you nothing about how a particular class approaches the subject. Even reading course descriptions isn't really going to tell you that.
I encouraged my student to compare course catalogs for her intended major as part of her decision making process. But it's not my decision to make. |
Anonymous
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What is it in you that made you look up the courses after your conversation with your BIL?
What is it in you that couldn’t accept and be happy that your nephew is “killing it?” What is it in you that needed to say “run of the mill state school”? That’s what you should address in therapy. You’ll be happier if you do. |