Reed college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reed looks like a good fit for my DS, but it's relatively low graduation rate is concerning. Their material claims that it's because they are so rigorous, but that doesn't seem believable and/or they should prepare their students to be successful in their comps and thesis. Anyone have insight?

Is your kid high-achieving and good about getting things done, or does he need a lot of prodding? If the former, he will do well and graduate on time. If he is the type to procrastinate, I would be more worried.

He has ADHD so does tend to procrastinate, but always gets things done without prodding. He's happiest when allowed to go deep into a subject of his choice. For example, in 9th grade, he wrote a 15 page research paper in history class on a subject he chose, and he loved doing it.

Reed has some fairly rigid distribution requirements. He will have to go deep in subjects he may not find interesting... Although some of that can be done with summer classes. In my day, English majors taking science at PSU over the summer was popular. But as someone who tried to do that with French at UW... The credits didn't transfer exactly and the college was very unyielding about it. Reed isn't like Hampshire, for all that they're often compared--the curriculum is pretty strict: a year of math or foreign language, a year of science. A year of social science, a year of English, a year of history, and I think an art class, plus whatever they have for their Humanities freshman class now. It makes for a well-rounded education, but someone who completely tunes out stuff they don't want to learn about (like my own kid) might do poorly in the classes that don't interest them... And Reed not inflating grades, or telling you grades unless you ask--you could be in for a lower GPA than expected. That won't matter to some top grad schools, but it might for the more metrics based law and med schools with hard cut offs.