Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone with experience at VT speak to how strong the overall education is? I’m not concerned about pre-professional programs or job placement but I do care that DC is taught how to think in general education courses. Are students engaging in thoughtful discourse at VT or are most kids just focused on their major? In other words, is this a legitimate scholarly environment?

Only two schools in VA have the environment you seek, one public and one private. W&M and Washington & Lee.

I reject your premise. Who said you need to be elite to be scholarly? Don’t let VT off the hook, demand more.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of VA’s top three publics (no need to debate the order here) offer a legitimate scholarly environment.

How strong is the general education at VT? Are the engineering students taking a philosophy course and if so, are they taking it seriously?

Are the philosophy students at UVA, or Yale, taking a multivariable Calculus course, and, if so, are they taking it seriously?

No, they skip serious math classes because it is not required they take them…

Serious math isn’t needed to be a serious thinker. The math kids that don’t get a quality liberal education could be the downfall of humans.

Math is very much thinking. You can’t memorize your way through college math.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many classes engineering students need to take that they have an abbreviated version of gen eds. You can try to take smaller seminars but I'm guessing many try to take easy classes because engineering is already demanding.

This is concerning. We need engineers that understand the issues of society, not just human robots doing math equations. Is this true for other majors at VT? Pre-professional isn’t scholarly.

Schools that have the whole-student/whole-brain engineering as well as the most rigorous stem classes, far above ABET which is a minimum, are the top private E-schools:
Ivies with real E(Princeton Penn Cornell Columbia Harvard Yale)
Plus MIT CMU Hopkins NW Duke

Pull up the details of the curricula and the courses: ethics, writing, leadership skills are all included
VT and other similar schools do not have the peer quality to provide the high level discussion nor the difficult problem sets. Purdue for example, along with VT, meets the bear minimum ABET for math/sci/upperlevels, yet also lacks the ethical and leadership engineering education that the top schools have.

If you want top engineering, VT is not it

I did pull up curricula for Yale, Harvard, Princeton, VT and Purdue. I discovered that Harvard and Yale's ABET-accredited B.S. programs require significantly fewer engineering courses than Purdue or VT. Harvard and Yale require near the minimum engineering courses while VT and Purdue greatly exceed the minimums.

And this is comparing ABET to ABET. Harvard and Yale also offer non-ABET B.A. programs with even fewer technical requirements, designed for students that can’t hang with their weak-sauce ABET programs or want dabble in engineering without really having to do the work.

The bottom line is that engineering schools like VT and Purdue have substantially more rigorous and extensive engineering requirements than Harvard or Yale. VT is much closer to “top engineering” than Harvard or Yale.

Total BS. Harvard requires 80 credits minimum, for MechE, Purdue requires 45 credits, for MechE, yet only 20-30 for many other E porgrams. Plus H requires a research thesis on top of the credits. Dig into the details of the courses and it gets worse.

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone with experience at VT speak to how strong the overall education is? I’m not concerned about pre-professional programs or job placement but I do care that DC is taught how to think in general education courses. Are students engaging in thoughtful discourse at VT or are most kids just focused on their major? In other words, is this a legitimate scholarly environment?

Only two schools in VA have the environment you seek, one public and one private. W&M and Washington & Lee.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many classes engineering students need to take that they have an abbreviated version of gen eds. You can try to take smaller seminars but I'm guessing many try to take easy classes because engineering is already demanding.

This is concerning. We need engineers that understand the issues of society, not just human robots doing math equations. Is this true for other majors at VT? Pre-professional isn’t scholarly.

Even though it's clear you're a concern troll, a simple Google search would give you the answers you pretend to seek. All students at VT have gen ed requirements to fulfill, in addition to their majors. These are called Pathways and include humanities classes. You're welcome.

https://enge.vt.edu/undergraduate/generalengineering.html
https://www.pathways.prov.vt.edu/content/dam/pathways_prov_vt_edu/1AboutPathways/course-catalog/Pathways%20Course%20Guide%20by%20Alpha%2025-26.pdf

Can you read? The question wasn’t what is offered or required. The question is does anyone at VT take these courses seriously. So far the outlook seems dim.

Does anyone take these classes seriously at any college? I’m not sure arguing a school like Harvard is superior when, if you are to believe recent articles, students don’t take classes seriously and don’t read materials.

Sucks for Harvard. SLAC’s don’t have this problem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many classes engineering students need to take that they have an abbreviated version of gen eds. You can try to take smaller seminars but I'm guessing many try to take easy classes because engineering is already demanding.

This is concerning. We need engineers that understand the issues of society, not just human robots doing math equations. Is this true for other majors at VT? Pre-professional isn’t scholarly.

Even though it's clear you're a concern troll, a simple Google search would give you the answers you pretend to seek. All students at VT have gen ed requirements to fulfill, in addition to their majors. These are called Pathways and include humanities classes. You're welcome.

https://enge.vt.edu/undergraduate/generalengineering.html
https://www.pathways.prov.vt.edu/content/dam/pathways_prov_vt_edu/1AboutPathways/course-catalog/Pathways%20Course%20Guide%20by%20Alpha%2025-26.pdf

Can you read? The question wasn’t what is offered or required. The question is does anyone at VT take these courses seriously. So far the outlook seems dim.

Does anyone take these classes seriously at any college? I’m not sure arguing a school like Harvard is superior when, if you are to believe recent articles, students don’t take classes seriously and don’t read materials.

PP again. It’s been a few years since I looked at the curriculum for several schools. I would have preferred my kid who wanted VT to go to a liberal arts school. It is, officially, a polytechnic. My kid had more science classes for their science major than were required several top LACs. Though they had some literature, writing and ethics classes, I would have preferred more reading and writing. On the other hand, they know more science than I’ll ever know.

Another thing to keep in mind, it’s big. We also knew some fantastic students in science and engineering who were accepted to higher ranked schools and simply could not afford to go. This was their opportunity; they are not less engaged or less intelligent. They are readers, writers and thinkers who will always lead interesting lives. Not saying this is everyone. Saying these students and professors are there in numbers, but you have find your people. In a big crowd, sometimes that takes longer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gen Eds at VT are called Pathways. Easy to look up what that entails. All students need to complete them, including the engineering students. My senior Hokie placed out of many of them due to AP credit, and some (the STEM related ones, advanced communication and a design one) have gotten satisfied via her major requirements. That left her with 1 arts class to take (she chose an online music appreciation class to help balance her schedule). She also took a global ethics class one semester as she needed 3 more credits for her scholarship that term & wanted an online course to give her flexibility.

Yes but how strong are the courses? Do professors care and challenge the students? Do students care? Testing out isn’t impressive at all.

Was surprised how much most professors cared. They welcome students at office hours, and judging by reports from my VT grad, were open to conversations. Can’t speak to many higher level humanities courses bc mine was a science major. An author read in a humanities class was invited to campus and students were part of the professor-hosted dinner.

Look into the honors college which has these sorts of events regularly. That’s also where you’ll find the physics /humanities double majors.

You will find « will this be on the test? » students in all American colleges and universities these days. You might be surprised.

Anonymous wrote: VT acceptance rate is 40 or 50% for in state? The school is made up on slightly above average kids in the state. Quality of education is dictated by the quality of the kids. Just look at the public high schools in VA. So much cheating. It’s a joke. VT courses can’t be that serious with such students.

This isn’t true at all. Average kids can receive an outstanding liberal education in the right environment. The question is does VT foster a scholarly environment or a pre-professional environment. Based on the volume of folks crying “troll” on this thread, if they represent VT, they are struggling to engage in thoughtful discourse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of VA’s top three publics (no need to debate the order here) offer a legitimate scholarly environment.

How strong is the general education at VT? Are the engineering students taking a philosophy course and if so, are they taking it seriously?

There is something wrong with your brain.

Yes, there are a ton of students who are there to actually learn.

Doesn't matter what their major is.

Cite to a peer-reviewed source?

Troll

Anonymous wrote: VT acceptance rate is 40 or 50% for in state? The school is made up on slightly above average kids in the state. Quality of education is dictated by the quality of the kids. Just look at the public high schools in VA. So much cheating. It’s a joke. VT courses can’t be that serious with such students.

Utter BS

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of VA’s top three publics (no need to debate the order here) offer a legitimate scholarly environment.

How strong is the general education at VT? Are the engineering students taking a philosophy course and if so, are they taking it seriously?

There is something wrong with your brain.

Yes, there are a ton of students who are there to actually learn.

Doesn't matter what their major is.

VT acceptance rate is 40 or 50% for in state? The school is made up on slightly above average kids in the state. Quality of education is dictated by the quality of the kids. Just look at the public high schools in VA. So much cheating. It’s a joke. VT courses can’t be that serious with such students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many classes engineering students need to take that they have an abbreviated version of gen eds. You can try to take smaller seminars but I'm guessing many try to take easy classes because engineering is already demanding.

This is concerning. We need engineers that understand the issues of society, not just human robots doing math equations. Is this true for other majors at VT? Pre-professional isn’t scholarly.

Even though it's clear you're a concern troll, a simple Google search would give you the answers you pretend to seek. All students at VT have gen ed requirements to fulfill, in addition to their majors. These are called Pathways and include humanities classes. You're welcome.

https://enge.vt.edu/undergraduate/generalengineering.html
https://www.pathways.prov.vt.edu/content/dam/pathways_prov_vt_edu/1AboutPathways/course-catalog/Pathways%20Course%20Guide%20by%20Alpha%2025-26.pdf

Can you read? The question wasn’t what is offered or required. The question is does anyone at VT take these courses seriously. So far the outlook seems dim.

DP. Troll