“

Professor Chang says that rather than losing mainly students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with lackluster records, the attrition rate can be higher at the most selective schools, where he believes the competition overwhelms even well-qualified students.

“You’d like to think that since these institutions are getting the best students, the students who go there would have the best chances to succeed,” he says. “But if you take two students who have the same high school grade-point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one at Cal State to finish a STEM degree.”

The bulk of attrition comes in engineering and among pre-med majors, who typically leave STEM fields if their hopes for medical school fade. There is no doubt that the main majors are difficult and growing more complex. Some students still lack math preparation or aren’t willing to work hard enough.

”
—

Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard) [New York Times]

Over my years at Berkeley, I’ve seen so many pre-med students breakdown immediately after difficult exams or completely alter their career path because of one bad grade (C) in one class. I shared this article with individuals in my genetics discussion section, declared science majors, and they sympathized with those 13% who were less likely to finish a STEM degree. Science is difficult, it’s difficult to teach and it’s difficult to learn. Furthermore it’s not as romantic as movies, television or even #science (which is honestly just a collection of pretty photos) make it seem. As a result, plenty of students who may have started as intended STEM majors quickly lose their interest. It’s definitely a labor of love at times, and that may not be enough for pre-med students or students unwilling to put in the time and effort to scrape by in introductory courses.

Nov. 4 2011
Via The New York Times
#berkeley #uc berkeley #science #college #new york times
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