Declaring Your Major
- Clifford Stueck
- Feb 22, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: May 1, 2019
Good morrow my wonderful viewers. I hope you all had a fantastic week full of adventure and happiness! Today we have a special blog post relating to declaring your major. How do the liberal arts conflict with this notion? What happens before and after? What makes the GRE exam so difficult for a STEM major? Tune in to the next paragraph to learn more.
Many kids come into college knowing exactly what they want to do. Whether it is engineering, computational mathematics, or IST, these students usually possess some form of the same question. Why can’t I just declare my major? Why am I listed as a pre-major?
Students that know exactly what they want to do in life, neigh, have dreamed endlessly about a certain career path want to be able to dive right into the nitty gritty. They want to be able to take their major classes right out of the gate to make sure they were correct in their choice of major. Having to wait until second semester sophomore year can be detrimental to those who realize they have chosen wrong or those whos GPA now prevents them from declaring the major they so desire. Liberal arts have always conflicted with this ideology and is one of the reasons students must wait before they actually “declare” their major, but is it necessary?
Well, let’s look at the situation analytically. As we have discussed before, liberal arts classes pose almost a necessity when it comes to gathering a deep understanding and strength in communication. Freshman year literature, philosophy, and history all contribute to a wider depth in learning. They are courses that many people dread, and yet are happy they took them looking back on them later. However, there is still the problem that some of these students who go to schools that have either GPA minimums or program caps may not be too thrilled if these types of classes prevent them from acquiring the major of their dreams, but can we ethically allow those who seemingly have no foundation in liberal arts to acquire a career in a STEM field? It’s kind of hard to know for sure. At a certain point, a person becomes limited by the vastness of knowledge and really needs to be able to work as a team to tackle challenging problems, thus avoiding the China problem of post 1.
Schools like Penn State do a better job than most when it comes to the liberal arts curriculum. They require interdisciplinary classes, technical writing, and even general ed classes that allow students to build up a decent foundation in skills other than STEM. A large unending debate facing the world today is how we can revitalize the liberal arts education for a STEM major. While there is no official answer many schools, just like Penn State, are slowly adding classes they feel add to the growth of these majors. Classes that cause one to really think, understand, and communicate, sometimes going as far to even incorporate these into a STEM like class.
This kind of leads into our third question of the day. Many universities do not prepare their STEM students well enough for the GRE examination. Most can manage to pull out high scores on the math section of the exam, but the English section can often prove detrimental. Most STEM majors won’t even have written an essay in almost 3 years unless technical writing is a requirement at the school. Imagine looking at a practice GRE junior year and going through some practice questions on the English section. It would probably appear to you like Hieroglyphics.
Obviously, it is not necessarily the school’s fault. In fact, the GRE is one of the reasons the liberal arts debate exists. How can we optimize a path to a STEM major with enough liberal arts to enable the student to excel in communication, teamwork, writing, and their own major? The question is very difficult to answer, and a more thorough investigation is needed.
I would say this is about as good a spot to end as any! Be sure to tune in next week where we will be analyzing the two different cultures on campus… Liberal arts versus STEM, the best showdown to take place possibly in your life.
Enjoy your final week before break friends! -Clifford
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