College Education Advice

[WesternBlot]

I just graduated, and my regret is that I didn't take full advantage of all the opportunities. So wherever you end up going, work as hard as you can. Somehow I got into a better Ivy for grad school, but that was just luck - a lot of my friends with better credentials didn't get into that many places. 4 years of hard work is worth not regretting for a lifetime.

 

[rdawson808]

Originally Posted by philosophe

the vast majority of students underestimate the quantum leap between high school courses and serious university-level work

+1.

for reference: at my previous job it was expected that for every 1 hour you spent in class you spent another 3 out of class working and studying for the class. That's 40 hours per week there = classes + outside.

Originally Posted by thinman

As a graduate of a small private college who now teaches at a large state school,

Again +1 with my experience being the opposite.

b

 

[soonami]

Originally Posted by chronoaug

In science/math fields there is always a right and wrong answer, but in history/english classes, you can be 100% correct, but still get a D in the class. Proper arguement structure, and writing techniques are very important as well. Finding and understanding primary sources from over 1000 years ago and then turning it along with other info from previous classes into an original and interesting argument is often more difficult than it seems. Not to mention the endless books, reading assignments and constant essays makes it very very time consuming.

Obviously, you have not taken advanced chemistry classes, because if you had you would know that very often you have to provide an explanation for a novel observation. For example in my Advanced Organic Chemistry lab, we had to propose and defend a plausible mechanism for the asymmetric addition of diethyl zinc to benzaldehyde using a bissulfonamide catalyst. The actual mechanism for the reaction is an active area research and as far as I know has not been published yet. So we were graded on how elegant and physically possible the mechanism was.

Also, proving your work counts for a lot in Chemistry and Physics. In my Physical Chemistry class, just putting down the right answer would give you 10% of the total credit. More emphasis is placed on the scientific thinking: using known equations, proving assumptions, and just showing work. In the real world of science, you cannot publish a paper with a conclusion that is not supported by experiments. However, often the wrong conclusion is often supported by correctly conducted experiments.

But back to college advice, I stand by everything I have said. The only thing that I would add is that whatever you do, if you plan to do it well it will be difficult and the monetary compensation will not necessarily reflect the difficulties you will incur. For this reason, I would say that you should choose to study something that you love because if you can't get rich from your job, you can at least love it.