| Topic Name: |
ban the LSAT |
| Message Name: |
No offense taken |
| Date Posted: |
01/06/2002 |
| In Reply To: |
Henry, I apologize for offending you. Certainly my comments can only pertain to Duke, as that is the only university with which I am familiar. At Duke, most math classes are curved to a B-/B and most humanities classes are curved to a B or (usually in the upper levels) a B . Even assuming that there is no self-selection going on, that is a difference of about .3 grade points right there.
At Duke, there were fifteen math majors in my class. Of those fifteen, eight are currently in PhD. programs... one at M.I.T., two at Berkeley, one at Harvard, one at Princeton, and three at less prestigious programs ("only" Illinois, U. Georgia, and I can't remember the other). Two were Churchill Scholars. Duke's math department has won the Putnam prize more times over the last fifteen years than any other school besides Harvard. Quite simply, that record far outpaces the record of the general student body.
More importantly, through personal experience found that the mathematics students I worked with were generally far smarter than the humanities students I worked with in my many public policy, political science and language classes. That was not uniformly the case, of course. Certainly there were smart, motivated students - lots of them - who didn't want to be math majors. That doesn't change my opinion that, AT DUKE, the math majors AS A WHOLE were smarter and more motivated.
At Duke, here is what it took for me and most others to succeed in History (Duke has a top History department, if I'm not mistaken). Go to class. Write a couple decent papers. Study a few hours for your exam. Get the B , which was often close to the average grade for the class. Again, this is JUST MY EXPERIENCE. I'm not saying that my experience is the only one, or the only important one.
I never argued that in general LSAT is a better measure of a student's ability than GPA. In fact, it appears that studies have leaned towards LSAT but have been inconclusive. I merely said that in MY case I have no doubt that my LSAT is a better measure than my UGPA.
Again, I apologize for offending you. I hope that we can continue to have this interesting discussion. |
| Message: |
My post wasn't necessarily directed entirely at you -- it's just that the general idea that you alluded to, i.e. that the "hard sciences" are more challenging than the humanities/social "sciences" and that science people are "smarter" than non-science people and could therefore do humanities work better than humanities people -- pisses me off to no end.
Anyway, I think my point still stands: that, in general, it could be argued that average GPAs in math are lower because people who don't have adequate aptitude for math go in to math and bring down the curve. Either that, or the people who really do have the aptitude for it, blow out the curve for everybody else.
There is some grade inflation in humanities courses, it's true. It's not that hard to get a B in a History class -- but I didn't get Bs, I got As, A-s and A+s, and they weren't "easy" to get. I worked my ass off, and classes were FIERCELY competitive for those top grades. Yeah, anyone who is halfway intelligent can slide by and wind up with a B or B-, but to get the top grades you have to really impress the prof or TA. I went to Berkeley, which has one of the BEST History departments in the country. TAs/Profs did not give out As unless they were deserved, especially since they know that a lot of Berkeley UG people go on to grad school and it would reflect badly on Berkeley if they send out people who look good on paper and then turn out to be duds.
I took a Philosophy class at Berkeley on Nietzsche in which the only way it was possible to get over a B+ was to give original insight on his work in your papers (needless to say I got a B+ :-) - my name ain't Foucault!) -- that is a pretty fucking difficult standard to meet, no?
In short, you have a point about it being "easier" to get an okay grade in a humanities class. But getting kickass grades in the humanities is nothing to sneeze at.
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