Engineering weed out classes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I deliberately picked an engineering program that did not have intentional weed out classes. They had and have a high graduation rate. The faculty perspective is that they filter more in the admissions process, which was good for me but would not have been good for a late bloomer. The first day, when all engineering srudents were in an auditorium, the dean's message was that everyone here is capable of graduating in 4 years with an engineering degree. The faculty were committed to helping every student graduate, which I found reassuring and helpful.

I made the right college choice for me, but it might not have been right for someone else.

My kid is at an ivy with an engineering school: they do not weed out much as 98% continue in the E school after freshman year. The other ivy they considered has a much larger engineering group and also boasts high retention. The other two top-10 privates they considered have E schools in the 350-450 range similar to the ivy they chose and also are clear weedout is done before admission. Kid did all 4 admitted student days to decide and is very happy with the one they picked, Penn: collaboration is the norm, though the other 3 mentioned this as well. DS and peers are only sophomores and they have gotten lots of support from faculty along with very challenging courses. Cs are pretty rare, but for the few who get more than one C for the final grade theylike you to meet with advisor and discuss. Kid has a good friend at one of the top10s he didnt pick and it is run supportive as well and Cs are rare. They also do a lot of undergrad research. Some students study almost all weekend and many hours at night to get As and others study the same and get the average on the curve (B or B+) no matter how much they study. No one takes more than 4 years to graduate unless they are doing 4+1 masters. 4 years for BSE is doable and expected

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone in another thread pointed out that weed out classes can be good because they admit a broader range of students and then keep the ones who are successful. That makes sense to me.

But how does having weed out classes impact the culture of the school? When I was choosing a law school, I avoided schools where the 1L year had a reputation for discouraging the lower performing students to drop out because it created a competitive, rather than collaborative, environment. Engineering school is hard enough -- not being able to work with your peers would make it even more difficult.

Calculus is calculus. Physics is physics. If you can’t do well in these, don’t pick engineering as a major.

If the curve is deliberately set so that x% will fail, that means it is not necessarily an incompetent student or a student who cannot do well objectively. It just means the (school, teacher) wanted to have that percentage fail.

What school does this? I thought most curve to a B or B-

Cal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone in another thread pointed out that weed out classes can be good because they admit a broader range of students and then keep the ones who are successful. That makes sense to me.

But how does having weed out classes impact the culture of the school? When I was choosing a law school, I avoided schools where the 1L year had a reputation for discouraging the lower performing students to drop out because it created a competitive, rather than collaborative, environment. Engineering school is hard enough -- not being able to work with your peers would make it even more difficult.

Calculus is calculus. Physics is physics. If you can’t do well in these, don’t pick engineering as a major.

If the curve is deliberately set so that x% will fail, that means it is not necessarily an incompetent student or a student who cannot do well objectively. It just means the (school, teacher) wanted to have that percentage fail.

Admittedly last Century, but we had no “curve.” Either you got it right or you didn’t. There was usually some partial credit involved hence the oft repeated “show your work” instructions.

Our “weed” outs weren’t really defined that way, but rather were classified as “C-Wall” classes in that you had to get a C or better in the triplet to be allowed to sign up for the next year’s slate. There was one, general set for freshmen (Calculus, Physics, and, yes, English)…then another set for sophomore-level engineering, which varied based on the intended discipline. in Civil, it was Statics, Dynamics, Hydraulics/Fluids, and Solids. The specific courses have changed a bit but the concept is still there.

It made sense then and still does to me. Give any/everyone the chance to prove yourself.

Yes but welcome to the modern age where companies refuse to review your profile with a sub 3.5 GPAa often now.

To be truthful, the kids making Bs and Cs in those most basic classes rarely finished in Engineering. A/B students usually found their groove in upper level courses or even they, too, faded away. It wasn’t unusual to see big(ger) differences between in-major and overall GPAs. But you’re right; the landscape has changed and grade inflation at all levels of school hasn’t helped.

I had Bs and Cs in my basic science and math classes but stuck on through to engineering degree. In fact I took a grad course taught by my advisor and he told me I did better than most of the grad students. But I had spotty performance overall, that was an outlier. I was poorly prepared from a middling high school (no AP courses for example) and I think I have an executive function issue.

Maybe weeding out would have probably been better for me as I would have gone into compsci and made more money, but no one told me I had to leave and I was stubborn!

[Anonymous]

I have a kid doing engineering at a top 20 school known for STEM. He said there were a couple of classes freshman year that graded on a curve, but that's it. I think those were the classes that had the pre-meds and the engineering students all in the same intro classes. What he did note is that in a certain class, when everyone got the question wrong, the professor figured it was the wrong question or badly phrased, and removed that particular question from the grading - because everyone got it wrong. But generally, the school wasn't doing weed out classes at all, even in engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I deliberately picked an engineering program that did not have intentional weed out classes. They had and have a high graduation rate. The faculty perspective is that they filter more in the admissions process, which was good for me but would not have been good for a late bloomer. The first day, when all engineering srudents were in an auditorium, the dean's message was that everyone here is capable of graduating in 4 years with an engineering degree. The faculty were committed to helping every student graduate, which I found reassuring and helpful.

I made the right college choice for me, but it might not have been right for someone else.

My kid is at an ivy with an engineering school: they do not weed out much as 98% continue in the E school after freshman year. The other ivy they considered has a much larger engineering group and also boasts high retention. The other two top-10 privates they considered have E schools in the 350-450 range similar to the ivy they chose and also are clear weedout is done before admission. Kid did all 4 admitted student days to decide and is very happy with the one they picked, Penn: collaboration is the norm, though the other 3 mentioned this as well. DS and peers are only sophomores and they have gotten lots of support from faculty along with very challenging courses. Cs are pretty rare, but for the few who get more than one C for the final grade theylike you to meet with advisor and discuss. Kid has a good friend at one of the top10s he didnt pick and it is run supportive as well and Cs are rare. They also do a lot of undergrad research. Some students study almost all weekend and many hours at night to get As and others study the same and get the average on the curve (B or B+) no matter how much they study. No one takes more than 4 years to graduate unless they are doing 4+1 masters. 4 years for BSE is doable and expected

It's surprising that engineering has a higher retention rate than the school as a whole. It's also nice to see that nobody fails. I guess Penn bats a thousand when accepting students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I deliberately picked an engineering program that did not have intentional weed out classes. They had and have a high graduation rate. The faculty perspective is that they filter more in the admissions process, which was good for me but would not have been good for a late bloomer. The first day, when all engineering srudents were in an auditorium, the dean's message was that everyone here is capable of graduating in 4 years with an engineering degree. The faculty were committed to helping every student graduate, which I found reassuring and helpful.

I made the right college choice for me, but it might not have been right for someone else.

Why don’t you help us out and tell us what college it is?

Many smaller colleges are known for this. Lafayette, Bucknell, Lehigh and Union are the ones in the Northeast known to have rigorous but supportive programs. They know a few will change out of engineering but they are not intentionally taking 1000 kids into engineering yet intentionally weeding out 200 letting 800 move on for the next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I deliberately picked an engineering program that did not have intentional weed out classes. They had and have a high graduation rate. The faculty perspective is that they filter more in the admissions process, which was good for me but would not have been good for a late bloomer. The first day, when all engineering srudents were in an auditorium, the dean's message was that everyone here is capable of graduating in 4 years with an engineering degree. The faculty were committed to helping every student graduate, which I found reassuring and helpful.

I made the right college choice for me, but it might not have been right for someone else.

My kid is at an ivy with an engineering school: they do not weed out much as 98% continue in the E school after freshman year. The other ivy they considered has a much larger engineering group and also boasts high retention. The other two top-10 privates they considered have E schools in the 350-450 range similar to the ivy they chose and also are clear weedout is done before admission. Kid did all 4 admitted student days to decide and is very happy with the one they picked, Penn: collaboration is the norm, though the other 3 mentioned this as well. DS and peers are only sophomores and they have gotten lots of support from faculty along with very challenging courses. Cs are pretty rare, but for the few who get more than one C for the final grade theylike you to meet with advisor and discuss. Kid has a good friend at one of the top10s he didnt pick and it is run supportive as well and Cs are rare. They also do a lot of undergrad research. Some students study almost all weekend and many hours at night to get As and others study the same and get the average on the curve (B or B+) no matter how much they study. No one takes more than 4 years to graduate unless they are doing 4+1 masters. 4 years for BSE is doable and expected

My kid also just finished sophomore year at Penn. ChemE. Says most kids have gotten one C.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did a quick browse of reddit and found student mentioning weed out courses at engineering schools that are direct admit and considered not to be weed out schools, so maybe all engineering schools have weed out courses?

Reddit has random posts, so a noisy source of information (as is DCUM). Add salt to taste.

Many engineering programs definitely do NOT have intentional weed out classes. Multiple examples have been given in other posts above.

Some other engineering programs DO have intentional weed out classes. Not all engineering programs are open about this approach. One really needs to dig into graduation rates for freshmen in the engineering college who graduate with a degree in engineering. Not all programs will make that information readily available to applicants.

Another less direct way of figuring it out is "how many juniors total are enrolled in engineering" (#J) compared with "how many freshmen start in engineering" (#F). If #J is a lot smaller than #F then likely there are weed out classes, whether they admit it or not. If #J slightly smaller than #F then the program might not have weed out classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's surprising that engineering has a higher retention rate than the school as a whole. It's also nice to see that nobody fails. I guess Penn bats a thousand when accepting students.

Many Ivys and other T20 schools have many more fully-qualified students than they could accept. So they only accept fully qualified candidates.

A random public land-grant university in a random state might not have the same ability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's surprising that engineering has a higher retention rate than the school as a whole. It's also nice to see that nobody fails. I guess Penn bats a thousand when accepting students.

Many Ivys and other T20 schools have many more fully-qualified students than they could accept. So they only accept fully qualified candidates.

A random public land-grant university in a random state might not have the same ability.

I think that this is probably the answer. From Georgia Tech to Iowa State, public universities do have a remit to educate some number of their in-state students. Some like Iowa State even have to admit based on a formula embedded in state legislation. This means that kids get admitted to engineering or pre-engineering that might not have taken calc and physics, and the struggle begins.

I also think part of the Ivy schtick is that they only admit the best (debatable—think athletes, legacies) so they have a light touch with the grading which keeps kids in the programs longer. It actually might do an Ivy student good to sweat a couple of grades once in a while.

Either way, any worthwhile program is going to have tough courses and plenty of support available to help when needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I deliberately picked an engineering program that did not have intentional weed out classes. They had and have a high graduation rate. The faculty perspective is that they filter more in the admissions process, which was good for me but would not have been good for a late bloomer. The first day, when all engineering srudents were in an auditorium, the dean's message was that everyone here is capable of graduating in 4 years with an engineering degree. The faculty were committed to helping every student graduate, which I found reassuring and helpful.

I made the right college choice for me, but it might not have been right for someone else.

Same for my D. Very important to be in a collaborative environment. It's been great!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's surprising that engineering has a higher retention rate than the school as a whole. It's also nice to see that nobody fails. I guess Penn bats a thousand when accepting students.

Many Ivys and other T20 schools have many more fully-qualified students than they could accept. So they only accept fully qualified candidates.

A random public land-grant university in a random state might not have the same ability.

I think that this is probably the answer. From Georgia Tech to Iowa State, public universities do have a remit to educate some number of their in-state students. Some like Iowa State even have to admit based on a formula embedded in state legislation. This means that kids get admitted to engineering or pre-engineering that might not have taken calc and physics, and the struggle begins.

I also think part of the Ivy schtick is that they only admit the best (debatable—think athletes, legacies) so they have a light touch with the grading which keeps kids in the programs longer. It actually might do an Ivy student good to sweat a couple of grades once in a while.

Either way, any worthwhile program is going to have tough courses and plenty of support available to help when needed.

DP. Mine sweats it, and she is probably top third of her cohort at Ivy. She takes advantage of all the supports-- TA, office hours, study sessions, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I deliberately picked an engineering program that did not have intentional weed out classes. They had and have a high graduation rate. The faculty perspective is that they filter more in the admissions process, which was good for me but would not have been good for a late bloomer. The first day, when all engineering srudents were in an auditorium, the dean's message was that everyone here is capable of graduating in 4 years with an engineering degree. The faculty were committed to helping every student graduate, which I found reassuring and helpful.

I made the right college choice for me, but it might not have been right for someone else.

Why don’t you help us out and tell us what college it is?

Many smaller colleges are known for this. Lafayette, Bucknell, Lehigh and Union are the ones in the Northeast known to have rigorous but supportive programs. They know a few will change out of engineering but they are not intentionally taking 1000 kids into engineering yet intentionally weeding out 200 letting 800 move on for the next year.

DP. Add WPI and Olin to your list

[Anonymous]

Just thinking back, there were a few students who were weeded out because they couldn't hack it academically but most were weeded out because they were spending their weekends drunk at frat parties and not studying, not mature enough for college, or had other mental health stuff going on. It really was just the tail of the students integrate distribution and did not cut into the bulk of the class

[Anonymous]

I had hired a Penn eng undergraduate in the past . I was underwhelmed and quite a bit surprised by his mediocrity