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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=dcmom12345]Update: 
Socially everything has gotten better and I fee DD is enjoying the city but academics have even gotten a little worse which is adding more stress(multiple phone calls home crying over exams and homework). Thinking about switching major(wants to ensure ad least a 3.0 gpa) but she has never enjoyed the humanities before and is a little sad about "losing math". [/quote]

My impression from this thread is that your daughter is starting to like Columbia, has an IQ of 150 or the equivalent, was never challenged at all in grade school or high school, and now is in classes designed to challenge kids with IQs of about 165 or the equivalent, is passing everything, is getting some C’s and is getting a lot of B minuses.

If that’s correct, I think she should just stay at Columbia, get tutoring, take a lot of economics electives and learn to swim with the sharks.

Reasoning:

- The people here who expect all kids in T30 STEM majors to get GPAs over 3.5 every year are ignorant idiots who should be trampled to death by elephants. Or drowned in ponds. They have no idea what it’s like to have an IQ of 150 and suddenly be in a room where a third of the students have IQs of 165. It takes some time for a normal, very bright kid to get used to studying with a bunch of baby Stephen Hawkings.

- Learning how to deal with academic challenges is incredibly important for people with IQs of 150. People with IQs of 150 can do anything if they learn how to learn, but they’re pretty much as unemployable as semiliterate high school dropouts if they don’t learn how to apply themselves and cope with the boredom involved with studying difficult things. Your daughter is now experiencing what most other kids have experienced since third grade. The whole point of paying Columbia so much money is to put your daughter in the first place she’s ever been where learning is as hard for her as sixth grade was for most of her classmates.

- Chances are the professors are hazing the students to some extent and trying to weed out a lot of premeds and pre-engineers. Getting higher grades will probably get a lot easier for your daughter once the weeding out is over and your daughter understands how college works.

- STEM professors tend to be much harsher about grading than humanities majors are. If your daughter has a 2.5 GPA now, that’s probably the equivalent of a 3.5 GPA for a humanities major. Any sensible grad school admissions people who  see many applications from Columbia grads will know that your daughter is a victim of grade deflation.

- Hanging out in classrooms full of baby Hawkings may be terrifying, but it’s also amazing. If your daughter can pass classes, why give that up?

- She can probably double major in economics, or take a lot of economics electives if Columbia doesn’t have formal double majors. Then, after she gets her bachelor’s, she can go to grad school for economics, data science, finance or actuarial science and change from being an ugly math-physics duckling into being a beautiful quantitative finance swan. She won’t get the privilege of slaving away as an academic for decades, but she will go be a quant for ungodly amounts of money at Goldman Sachs or the like. She’ll have a terrific quality of life, and no one will care what grades she got freshman year at Columbia. [/quote]

I agree with this 100%. It surfaces the two ideas that I was about to share. First, that there’s a tremendous value to be at a school with a lot of people who are more talented than you are in various ways. I can speak from personal experience - my freshman year at my T-10 school was extremely stressful and humbling academically (2.7 first year!) but in retrospect, perhaps the most important experience of my life.  Lots of fears and tears, but I also discovered how strong and resilient I am underneath. AND I truly learned from and enjoyed my peers/classmates, who were all brilliant in their own ways (as I am, too, it turned out … but that took time to fully discover.)

The one caveat to this is the role that social support played in my experience. I didn’t ever feel isolated or like a fish out of water. My peers were not all “grinds,” and our connections even first year were less about academics/grades and more about the rest of our identities. Had everyone else been grinds who obsessed about their GPAs 24/7, I might have sunk from the pressure. Hard to say.

Second, I was going to recommend your DD try economics. It’s not math, but it’s not “humanities” either. If she likes it, it can be as quantitatively rigorous as she wants to make it.  And her math background will be a huge plus! Again, if she likes it, so can take it in many different directions. Finance, of course. Or law (international trade and antitrust specialities, for example, can be very quantitative if you choose - lots of opportunities to work with hard-core economists!)

Again, if theoretical, abstract,  academic math is her thing, maybe economics would feel wrong to her. But there are SO many ways to go with it, including theoretical and abstract.

Good luck! This really is a great opportunity for your DD to think outside the box a bit. Not every idea we have about ourselves at age 18 turns out to be correct. It’s ok to pivot!!![/quote]

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