Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

That seems right. I think that a lot of the educational curriculum is just targeted to the average, so if you are smarter, it can just all seem incredibly boring.

One example which really pissed me off when i was a student is how so many math classes in college base a huge portion of your final grade on tons of mind numbing homework. This of course is targeted to the average idiot: the university has figured out that most students have trouble with math and in order to avoid high failing grades they create homework which is a way for people to get points toward their grade by solving the same simple problem over and over and over again. And of course you do not need to understand the material to do the homework, because if there is a problem you cannot do you can just ask the TA, etc. Thus, they replace true understanding with memorisation and dull grinding work. Of course most smart people I knew would more or less blow off the homework and just ace the tests, and thus they would often end up getting a B- even though they probably understood the material better than anyone else.

I hate "me too" posts, but when I saw what you wrote I really did want to give you more than one "upvote". I'm a mathematics (and computer science) major at a large, middle of the road university and I can say my experience has been exactly this. I gave my full rant in another comment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1312043 ). Basically, real mathematics takes a lot of mental resources, so in order to appeal to the masses universities have to make the material mind-numbingly stupid. Remember: it would be unacceptable to large corporations if only 1% of the current engineering graduates were graduating, regardless of how much smarter that smaller group would be.

> Of course most smart people I knew would more or less blow off the homework and just ace the tests, and thus they would often end up getting a B- even though they probably understood the material better than anyone else.

My Calculus II class graded mostly on the stupid homework (from James Stewart's book, no less) and attendance!

Unless you care enough to work hard in highschool and have enough money to go to a school like MIT, "higher" education is a huge joke.

How rapidly can you place upward into more advanced classes (presumably only for math majors) at your university?

It depends on the classes, actually. They do "clepping out" on a per-professor basis. But trust me, I'm looking into that.

EDIT: I even sat in on an upper-level programming languages course, and the most advanced thing you learned (from what I gathered) was a bit of Common Lisp. I hate to sound like an arrogant ass, but for the entire lecture I was thinking "Is there something wrong with me? I learned this in highschool!"

You mentioned getting a scholarship in the other post about your college. What dictated your college choice?

Short answer: money.

Long answer: I had an ACT in the 30s and a GPA of 3.9 upon graduation from highschool, and I took a few AP courses (my school only offered 3, and in addition I took AP Physics over the internet (terrible idea)), got a 5 in the AP Calc test, etc. but past that I hadn't taken the SAT subject tests or anything, so I wasn't really competitive. My family and I don't have a lot of excess money just lying around, and basically my options were thus: get admitted to a couple upper-tier-but-not-Ivy-League schools and pay with money I didn't have, or go to a crappy state school with scholarships.

I've had a job since 7th grade (but there are not a lot of tech companies in my area, so they haven't really been 'tech' jobs), but all of that was saved for buying my own vehicle, insurance, 'spare' money for college, etc. I remember getting excited when I received a ~$20K a year scholarship to a "Blah Blah Institute of Technology", only to find that it cost $50K a year to attend.

Overall, I'm burnt on the education system. My goal now is to get out with a stupid degree before I completely crash, but I'm already coming dangerously close...

EDIT: I was also in Duke's TIP program, which got me mail from Columbia and the like, but once again I couldn't really afford to go through with any of that.

EDIT 2: Before this sounds like just a bunch of whining, a huge chunk of this was my fault. I could have had higher scores and grades and whatnot, but I really just didn't give a shit. I hated school, and wanted to do as little as possible. I've always loved learning though.

You pretty much sound exactly like me. You're not alone at all.

I know it sounds corny, but it does feel good to hear someone say that. (-:

Good. That's why I said it. :)

I had a 4.7 GPA in high school. (Yay honors classes and my school being more interested in making themselves look good than math.) By my sophomore year of college, I was completely burned out. If I love learning so much, why did I hate college? It was supposed to be different...

I ended up not finishing my degree to get into the startup game. I feel much, much better now. I don't think I'm going back, even though I only need one or two classes to be done. Yeah, a piece of paper might be nice in the general sense... but I don't want to give those bastards another dime. I had to take out loans to pay for all of school, so I'm a solid 70k in the hole. Fun times.

>I had a 4.7 GPA in high school.

Funny story: my school wouldn't allow you to score over a 4.0 on anything. This meant that if, for example, you blew off a stupid humanities class and got a 'B', you could never have a 4.0. This is great in theory, as most schools should ask for a "GPA out of a 4.0" number, and all would be grand. In practice, they didn't, so my official transcript from the school would always read '3.9', without giving any clue that the GPA's were capped!

Craaazy. My school gave you + .125 for honors, and + .25 for AP courses. This would be added after the division... a 4.0 for an A and a 3.0 for a B, both AP, ends up as ((4 + 3) / 2) + (.25 + .25) = 4.0.

Oh, and everyone over a 4.0 gets reported as valedictorian.

The math can't possibly work out that way (or your school isn't attempting to report anything remotely useful as a GPA).

Get straight Bs and take 4 AP classes or 8 honors classes over your 4-year career and get a 4.0? I call BS.

> (or your school isn't attempting to report anything remotely useful as a GPA)

That is correct.

> Get straight Bs and take 4 AP classes or 8 honors classes over your 4-year career and get a 4.0? I call BS.

This is exactly what I did. I took all honors courses and did well in all of them.

Oh, so I found my school handbook, if you'd like to see. Apparently they changed the addition to 0.06 and .12. It's on page 27:

http://freeport.k12.pa.us/srhigh/FSD%20Student%20Handbook.pd...

Wow. You are correct, and I apologize for calling BS on you. That system is appalling. I call BS on your school system... :)

No big deal. It _is_ incredibly ridiculous. Also, see the post by jfbillingsley above. he's a friend of mine. At least I got good things because of my school's terrible grading...

Oh, mine was pretty neat too. We didn't have a 4.0 scale. It wasn't a 5.0 scale either.. it was just kind of arbitrary. The AP and honors courses had a higher "weight" (1.1 or 1.2 instead of the normal 1.0). So it was possible to get i.e. 4.8 if you took four AP courses. But here's the kicker: if you took other 1-weighted courses, they'd bring your GPA _down_. So it was possible to take 12 courses, ace them all, and get a LOWER GPA than someone who took the bare minimum number of courses. This happened to me.

Speaking of high school grade systems, my school had grades out of 100. Talk about unnecessary competitiveness (both with yourself and others). I obsessed over getting 97s and 98s rather than 94s and 95s. While we weren't officially ranked, it was well known that out of 700-800 students in your class, a 98 average put you in the top 5, and a 94 put you somewhere in the top 100-200. Because the school released college admissions statistics (in the format of GPA | SAT | accepted/rejected/waitlist), you could see that you have empirically little chance of getting into Harvard with that 94, but a very very good chance with that 98.

That said, most people were generally very smart, passionate and inspiring people to be around. They actually cared about at least some subset of what they were learning. But a lot of the work was pure grind, and to impose that on a bunch of smart creative people is a shame.

It's not about placing more rapidly. If you don't know the material then you need to learn it somehow, but if the course goes at a snail's pace then who the hell wants to waste their time showing up?

You need not just proper placement, but proper speed.

Placing out of a boringly paced class into a different boringly paced class doesn't help.

Placing out of a boringly paced class into a different boringly paced class doesn't help.

True, as I discovered after my grade skip from fifth grade to seventh grade. That's why my involvement in nonprofit organizations is all about finding better curricula for gifted learners, even if I have to write the curricula myself.

MIT is free if your parents make less than $75k/year.

If I had known that, I would have actually tried in highschool.

That's why I'm trying to spread the word. :-)

and if you like to compete in something that lets less than 10% win (prize = admission).

Right, because if you happen to not get into MIT, all of your high school preparatory effort was entirely wasted. (MIT alum here, but there's nothing all that singularly unique about MIT in my book. I'm glad I was able to go, but I also realize (claim?) that most people who would be successful at MIT will be successful wherever they go, and that MIT is likely a rounding error in their success. MIT doesn't turn lead applicants into gold graduates.)

Oh man, really? That's been my experience in high school, but I was really looking forward to college, where I heard that many professors make homework totally optional and the vast majority of one's grade comes from tests.

That's what they told me too.

It depends on the college. I would imagine that Stanford would be a bit better quality than my school.

From CS-106X, Programming Abstractions (intro course)

http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106x/handouts/01-CS106X-Cour...

Your final grade will be computed as follows:

    Programs   25 % 
    Midterm    25 % 
    Final      50 %

From 51 H, Multivariable Calculus (freshman course)

http://www.stanford.edu/class/math51h/51h-info.html

Grading:

    Mid-term 1:  20% 
    Mid-term 2:  20% 
    Homework:    20% 
    Final Examination:  40%

In a Stanford CS project-heavy class, the projects are usually 50% or more of your final grade, and those are pretty tough to do without some understanding of the material. In a problem set class, the exams are typically 50% or more. For example, in CS103 (learning the basics like proofs, induction, graph theory, set theory, a little complexity, etc.) your grade is 45% psets and 55% exams; in 154 (in-depth complexity), it's 40/60. In 248 (3d graphics) it's 90% projects, 10% exam. So even if you get a TA who helps a little too much on psets, you won't get better than a B without understanding the material.

I was really looking forward to college, where I heard that many professors make homework totally optional and the vast majority of one's grade comes from tests.

You would probably like majoring in math at the University of Minnesota then. The reason to do (self-chosen) homework between the tests is just to be ready for the tests. (Well, really the reason to learn anything should be to learn it, irrespective of grades, but you know what I mean.)

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