After sending my last message, I decided I might as well offer some
evidence counter to my message. But in the end I'll twist it back into
my original message.
My daughter is in her second year as a design student in the School of
Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) at University of
Cincinnati. UC-DAAP is a top rated school, and quite competitive. When
my daughter and I met with the chair of the Design Program, I expressed
my amazement that DAAP does not ask students to submit a portfolio of
their art work with their application for admission into DAAP programs.
His response was that they base admission solely on ACT, GPA, and HS
class rank. They know they can take smart students and turn them into
good designers. It is more difficult to take less smart artistic
students and turn them into good designers. DAAP wants smart trainable
students. Being a top school, that's what they get.
I figure there must be a lot of truth in this admissions philosophy that
spills over into science. A student with a high IQ and a willingness to
work can probably succeed in physics, engineering, pre-med whether they
had HS physics as a senior, as a freshman, or not at all. If we were a
competitive school such that all the students in my calculus physics
class had ACT scores of 30 and above, I probably wouldn't care what
their backgrounds were.
That's not the case. Students in my class generally average about 24-26
on their ACT composite. (It fluctuates from year to year.) That's a
bit higher than the national average, but it's not high for students
thinking they might want science or pre-med careers. In fact, it's
pretty low for that. I have my work cut out for me. In general, my
students need all the help they can get. Anything they're seeing for
the first time is more difficult than things they're seeing for the
second time. Our local HS has a good senior physics program. When they
get to my class they've seen most of it before, but at a lower level and
without the calculus. They generally do just fine.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu