Sean Kelly wrote:
> I definitely would try to avoid universities where multiple-choice tests are the norm
> (oddly, I've heard that UC Berkeley falls into this category, and as a result it's also
> apparently a haven for cheaters).  I went back to finish my undergrad degree recently
> and despite being at a large state school the classes were all a reasonable size and
> the grades derived from a combination of homework and actual problem-solving
> quizzes and exams.  Now a prospective employer may not know or care what format
> your classes followed, but I'd personally put more stock in a degree that was obtained
> from as few multiple-choice tests as possible.


As I said before, as a matter of school policy, Caltech did not allow multiple choice exams. It also, as a matter of policy, did not allow homework to be part of the grade (unless the homework was the whole point of the course, like a lab course). The homework could only be used as a bias in case the grade was on the edge or there was some special circumstance.

In other words, the grades were based on the midterm and final. This naturally made finals week very, very stressful. On the other hand, if you never went to class, never did any homework, never saw the professor, swooped in and aced the final, you got an A. There were some that did this <g>. I was in awe.

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> College was quite transformative for me as well, just in different way: It make me an enormous cynic ;)

I imagine there is the gamut of quality in universities and peoples' experiences. My going to Caltech was an accident of circumstance, one of the happy accidents in my life. The way Caltech operated suited my personality and style.


> But maybe tech schools are different. The ones I went to were typical "traditional" ones. 

I have no experience with them.

"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:gr452t$1h3s$1@digitalmars.com...
>
> 90% of the classes I took I selected because they interested me and I thought they were important. I made sure I understood front to back every single homework problem, and every exam problem I got wrong. I also paid for most of it out of a part time and summer job, and I'm sure that paying the tuition bills influenced my attitude as well <g>. I wanted my money's worth.
>

In all of the schools I've looked at, 90% of the classes were already chosen for you. The only choices you typically have are when you take a particular class (as in, during what semester, etc), a small handful of electives and a few "course A or course B and then either C or D", etc. Not really much of an issue of choice for the most part.

> Another factor was the attitude that Caltech had towards its students. It treated them like adults. I had never experienced that before.

Compared to being a high school student, just about anything is far, far less patronizing. (Not that that excuses colleges that treat their students like meat.)

> Caltech does not proctor exams, does not have curfews, does not attempt to control what goes on in the dorms, professors are not allowed to take attendance, etc. Most of the students quickly responded to that and behaved like responsible adults.
>

I've never heard of curfews at a college. For a school that actually charges the students tuition, that would just simply be absurd. "Here, I'll give you thousands of dollars so you can enforce a curfew on me", Yea right. I can't imagine that ever flying. And I'd count anyone who has bought into such a thing as having a clear mental deficiency.

Also, I've seen very, very little of dorm activity being controlled. Typically any restrictions are just fire hazard issues and other such sensible things. I've heard that Ohio State University "officially" has some restriction about opposite-gender overnight guests that doesn't really get enforced, but that's Ohio State, it barely counts as a real college anyway. It's more like a combination football-franchise-slash-babysitter-for-developmentally-stunted-twenty-year-olds.

>
> And then we had great events like Carl Sagan coming to dinner at our dorm, guest lectures from folks like Richard Feynmann, and the people running the JPL probes, etc. If all you got out of all that was a degree, too bad, so sad <g>.

Well, when it comes to college, what you're paying for are the classes and the degree (and, of course, books/room/board). So I'm certainly going to measure it's worth with that in mind. Having a dinner with Carl Segan, as great as he was, is hardly worth $100,000, unless you're filthy stinking rich.

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Well, when it comes to college, what you're paying for are the classes and the degree (and, of course, books/room/board). So I'm certainly going to measure it's worth with that in mind. Having a dinner with Carl Segan, as great as he was, is hardly worth $100,000, unless you're filthy stinking rich. 

You could view it as paying for classes and a degree, and some colleges certainly operate it that way. I look at it as more of paying for the environment, much like I'd pay entry to a nice buffet filled with delicious treats to choose from <g>.

Walter Bright wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> I definitely would try to avoid universities where multiple-choice tests are the norm
>> (oddly, I've heard that UC Berkeley falls into this category, and as a result it's also
>> apparently a haven for cheaters).  I went back to finish my undergrad degree recently
>> and despite being at a large state school the classes were all a reasonable size and
>> the grades derived from a combination of homework and actual problem-solving
>> quizzes and exams.  Now a prospective employer may not know or care what format
>> your classes followed, but I'd personally put more stock in a degree that was obtained
>> from as few multiple-choice tests as possible.
> 
> 
> As I said before, as a matter of school policy, Caltech did not allow multiple choice exams. It also, as a matter of policy, did not allow homework to be part of the grade (unless the homework was the whole point of the course, like a lab course). The homework could only be used as a bias in case the grade was on the edge or there was some special circumstance.
> 
> In other words, the grades were based on the midterm and final. This naturally made finals week very, very stressful. On the other hand, if you never went to class, never did any homework, never saw the professor, swooped in and aced the final, you got an A. There were some that did this <g>. I was in awe.

I managed that for one CompSci subject. It was called "System Structures". I have no idea what the subject was about, since I hadn't attended a single lecture; but I came first in the exam.
At the same time, I got 12% for one intermediate exam in Organic Chemistry, which I'd been very diligent in -- I was dreadful at rote memorisation.

Don wrote:
> At the same time, I got 12% for one intermediate exam in Organic Chemistry, which I'd been very diligent in -- I was dreadful at rote memorisation.

I hated chemistry and did correspondingly badly in it.

== Quote from Don (nospam@nospam.com)'s article
> Walter Bright wrote:
> > Sean Kelly wrote:
> >> I definitely would try to avoid universities where multiple-choice
> >> tests are the norm
> >> (oddly, I've heard that UC Berkeley falls into this category, and as a
> >> result it's also
> >> apparently a haven for cheaters).  I went back to finish my undergrad
> >> degree recently
> >> and despite being at a large state school the classes were all a
> >> reasonable size and
> >> the grades derived from a combination of homework and actual
> >> problem-solving
> >> quizzes and exams.  Now a prospective employer may not know or care
> >> what format
> >> your classes followed, but I'd personally put more stock in a degree
> >> that was obtained
> >> from as few multiple-choice tests as possible.
> >
> >
> > As I said before, as a matter of school policy, Caltech did not allow multiple choice exams. It also, as a matter of policy, did not allow homework to be part of the grade (unless the homework was the whole point of the course, like a lab course). The homework could only be used as a bias in case the grade was on the edge or there was some special circumstance.
> >
> > In other words, the grades were based on the midterm and final. This naturally made finals week very, very stressful. On the other hand, if you never went to class, never did any homework, never saw the professor, swooped in and aced the final, you got an A. There were some that did this <g>. I was in awe.
> I managed that for one CompSci subject. It was called "System
> Structures". I have no idea what the subject was about, since I hadn't
> attended a single lecture; but I came first in the exam.
> At the same time, I got 12% for one intermediate exam in Organic
> Chemistry, which I'd been very diligent in -- I was dreadful at rote
> memorisation.

Yeah, my initial most about multiple choice exams, etc. should have mentioned that I was primarily referring to my experience in Organic Chemistry and only a few other classes.  I went to Rutgers, and most of the experience was good, but a few of the large lecture classes, especially the ones with mostly multiple choice exams, definitely weren't.  Heck, even the non-multiple choice questions in orgo were primarily about regurgitation and rote memorization.

Walter Bright wrote:
> 
> Multiple choice exams were against the rules at Caltech (even though we did have a few huge lecture-based classes).
> 
> I'll still hold forth, however, that you're going to get out of it what you are willing to put into it. If you're only going to target getting a degree, I wouldn't hire you. If you are in college to get the most out of the experience (and there are huge opportunities for that in college), your results will be far better.

Definitely.  I never understood people who were trying for a degree or job for money or other reasons instead of because they were interested in the work.  If you've got to do it every day then you should enjoy it.  I've never met someone who was good in their field if they didn't enjoy the work either.

> 90% of the classes I took I selected because they interested me and I thought they were important. I made sure I understood front to back every single homework problem, and every exam problem I got wrong. I also paid for most of it out of a part time and summer job, and I'm sure that paying the tuition bills influenced my attitude as well <g>. I wanted my money's worth.

I'd just like to chime in here that you shouldn't go to college until you're ready go all the way through.  I dropped out after three years the first time (landed a career by accident and couldn't manage doing both), and having that school record when I returned a decade later actually hurt me instead of helped me.

When I went back to school I didn't have the luxury of taking what I wanted because I had a full-time job as well, and while I managed to find some cool courses anyway, I still wish I'd been able to take a few that simply weren't offered at a good time.  The biggest struggle the second time around were the courses I had to take for distributional requirements that I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever.  Leisure Studies being one such, for example (it was the only course offered online that fit a requirement I had to meet).

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> 
> In all of the schools I've looked at, 90% of the classes were already chosen for you. The only choices you typically have are when you take a particular class (as in, during what semester, etc), a small handful of electives and a few "course A or course B and then either C or D", etc. Not really much of an issue of choice for the most part.

This was definitely the case in my engineering program my first time in school.  The major had so many requirements that they wedged in full courses for half credit to get under the per-semester course limit.

Walter Bright wrote:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
>> OTOH, to make things really happen, we need the other kind of guys. Those of us who want to understand. They're the ones who advance the state of the art, and without that, we'd still be traveling on steam trains. I just wish there were more schools and pedagogic knowledge (and good teachers, of course) to make things interesting and fun for us others. But without that, many students get by with so-so grades, having invested only 10% of their effort into it. I know I did. What a waste.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree with the idea that a professor should make the material entertaining. Sometimes I get frustrated with Nova and all its eye-candy, and want to yell at them to get to the meat.

I was talking about pre-university. That's where the interest in math, chemistry and physics should come from. I was lucky to spend my childhood in rural/suburban settings, where machinery, home building, snow plowing, etc. gave me the opportunity to begin to understand physics already before school, just by observing. (Kids from really urban settings are at a disadvantage here. But then they go study law, political science, medicine, and I guess that's good for them. These things are important, too.)

> I see many efforts to remove the work from learning difficult concepts. I think they're all failures. You actually have to work to learn things, and work takes effort and sweat. No pain, no gain.

By the time one gets into university, one should already have both the passion, and the routine of regularly doing one's homework. Oh, and the amazing thing, reading your school books even past the page of the day!!

Learning these things when already at the university is time away from the real meat, while the other students blaze on towards the really interesting stuff -- where you'll never even get because you become a drop-out. (Tried it.)

> If you need entertainment and inspiration, go watch Star Trek <g>.

Good thing I got kids, gives a perfect excuse to watch SciFi.