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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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"it also has the reputation of being a weed-out class"

Some universities, apparently including NYU, use Organic Chemistry as a way to limit pre-med class sizes. My university's version passed around 50%, not because only 50% of students attained the Organic Chemistry ability required of an MD, but because a horde of freshmen sign up for pre-med and you need to whittle that down before they take senior classes and apply for med school. So even if this is an artifact of SAT-optional student quality, in the spirit of busting bottlenecks I'd prefer an Organic Chemistry course to have standards commensurate with every other class.

Sadly, I think this is not part of anyone's motivation to fire Jones. It's likely the adaptation pressure you describe. In my ideal world we'd have good (objective!) standardized tests as our primary gatekeeping mechanism. But for some reason, measuring ability is anathema.

Ultimately: low med school acceptance rates, caused by lack of residency positions, caused by lack of hospitals, caused by monopolistic pressure, caused by healthcare law. End soapbox.

Locally, I'm not very certain. Some possibilities:

  • Keep med school acceptance rates up (90% of our pre-med graduates are accepted!)

  • Keep class sizes for higher level pre-med courses down, to focus effort on the ones likely to make it

  • Honest good intentions that students not waste their time studying for a profession they'll never be able to take up

  • Administrators annoyed at all the Juniors switching majors

I’ll bite. Do you have a particular reason AA comes into it, or is this just a drive-by?

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