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Kerry and Bush both had about the same grades in college -- after the campaigns last year depicted Kerry as the "brainier" of the two. Kerry just recently finally released what his actual grades were at Yale.
quote: BOSTON — Sen. John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year -- in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.
His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 -- his highest grade -- in political science as a senior.
"I always told my dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said in a written response to reporters' questions. He said he has previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than studying.
Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade.
In 1999, The New Yorker (search) magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year. Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.
Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.
Kerry graduated from Yale in 1966, Bush in 1968.
Personally, I think that's pretty low for both of them -- I can't imagine what my family would say if I had scored that badly in college. Then again, I didn't attend Yale...
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Did anyone think that John Kerry came across as extremely intelligent? For me, I think it would be more disturbing if he was, because that would mean that my vague conspiracy thoughts were correct and he purposefully threw the election.
It was a depressing election being pretty sure that I was significantly more intelligent than either of the candidates. Well that and realizing that there were no good guys and that the American public doesn't mind that no one in the election seemed to care that much about saying thing that weren't obviously untrue.
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Wow, your exams must be really easy in the US. A pass here is 50%, a C. I don't mind a C. C's get degrees as the saying goes......
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Wasn't terribly impressed with the intellect of either candidate. But didn't they have some great PR groups?
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I knew neither were Albert Einstein's reincarnation, but that brings me to my other point. Just because you do bad in school doesn't mean you aren't intelligent. Einstein failed school for the most part, he dropped out of high school and didn't attend college.
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Also, just because you aren't extremely intelligent doesn't mean you cannot be an excellent president.
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I never thought grades or going to college makes one more intelligent, or by not going it makes you less intelligent.
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Good grades doesn't necessarily mean a high intelligence. It can also be done through hard work and study. High intelligence and low grades can also indicate laziness.
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quote:I knew neither were Albert Einstein's reincarnation, but that brings me to my other point. Just because you do bad in school doesn't mean you aren't intelligent. Einstein failed school for the most part, he dropped out of high school and didn't attend college.
Einstein did bad in school because he was lightyears ahead of every teacher he ever had. He was expelled from high school, he did not drop out, because he continually challenged his teachers and their teachings.
He failed an entrance exam that would have allowed him to study as an electrical engineer, due in large part to the fact that he was sixteen at the time, and he didn't study. Eventually he wound up at a Swiss university, where he routinely skipped class to study physics and math texts in the library.
Einstein was reading physics texts at 12, Darwin at 13, the only degrees he had were honorary.
I think you are correct in saying he was "bad at school". But I think saying that "he failed school for the most part" is an uninformed statement. It's a common misconception, but it's not true.
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quote:High intelligence and low grades can also indicate laziness.
I think that high intelligence actually promotes laziness a lot. If you never, ever have to study in high school, it's too easy to find college too hard to bother with.
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If John Kerry were intelligent he would have put the party's interest ahead of his personal ambition and not weakened What's his name. Dean. Maybe. Intelligent doesn't mean effective. I guess that's where we're going with the grade thing.
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quote:I can't imagine what my family would say if I had scored that badly in college.
A lot of things about this sentence really bother me, but I'll focus on one: Why is what your family says about your grades of such paramount importance that you would say "I can't imagine what my family would say..." instead of, for instance, "I can't imagine how disappointed I would feel..." ...?
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Perhaps her family was putting her through college. In that case, they *should* have something to say about her grades.
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Should they? I'm of the opinion that they should trust that she's doing her best, and they should also consider that grades are in many respects essentially meaningless. When I was in engineering school, people with averages ten or twenty percent higher than mine used to come to me for help.
Added: And either way I certainly don't think that the parents' opinion should be the first consideration when you see your transcript. Regardless of who's footing the bill, how you feel about your own grades is more important than how your parents feel about them.
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quote:I'm of the opinion that they should trust that she's doing her best
Why? Because all kids do their best? Or because *their* wouldn't let themselves fall behind? Or because that individual has shown themselves to be trustworthy?
I don't think it's unreasonable for parents to require a certain GPA if they are going to pay for college. Academic scholarships work that way, and there's nothing wrong with parental scholarships having that element as well.
Parents don't have a duty to put their kids through college, after all.
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quote:Why? Because all kids do their best? Or because *their* wouldn't let themselves fall behind? Or because that individual has shown themselves to be trustworthy?
Because grades just aren't very important. And also a bit of that trustworthiness one, too.
quote:I don't think it's unreasonable for parents to require a certain GPA if they are going to pay for college.
I think it's more than unreasonable, I think it's silly. How can the parents have a clue what reasonable expectations are? They have no frame of reference.
And I think that in a system where post-secondary education is not free or at least comparatively low-cost, then yes, parents ought to try to provide that option for their children if it's possible.
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So when I had a GPA of 0.5 my last quarter in college, my parents should not have been pissed that I wasted $10,000 of thier money?(This was in 1981.)
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wow Twinky. I never really thought about it until you just brought it up. Why DID I say that?
Having less than nearly perfect grades just isn't done in my family. I don't know how to express it any other way.
I'll put it this way -- I have a bachelor degree and I probably have the LOWEST degree of anyone else in my family (I'm counting mostly my sisters, but also most extended family). I got good grades all through high school, but struggled to match my older sister's straight-A's that she got all through college (even though I was in a totally different field and didn't have her 'drive').
I don't know exactly why I said that. I just remember how disappointed my grandparents (who basically raised me) seemed to be if I got less than an A -- not because they insisted on A's, but because they felt I was always capable of an A, so when I got a B, I wasn't doing my best.
And no -- my family did not financially help me through college - my father was already dead, as was my grandmother, and my grandfather soon afterwards (all the people who would probably really care about my grades). So then I guess it carried over only as my own expectations of myself.
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If I was a parent paying for my child's education in college there absolutely would be expectations of performance. Not to pick on msquared but a 0.5 GPA? I think I would be a little upset too Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I had a similar problem, but I guess the difference between you and I is that I do see it as a problem, and my parents' expectations never translated to my own expectations for myself.
My parents' expectations were never explicitly stated in terms of grades, but when my transcript consistently came back with grades in the 67-73% range (with occasional dips down into the 50s and spikes up into the 80s), it was clear that they didn't believe that their brilliant little boy might not actually be the smartest kid in engineering school.
That doesn't mean I'm a bad engineer. Grades do not translate to real-world success or failure, nor are they particularly indicative of actual intelligence. Letter grades are better than numerical grades, but not that much. I always received exemplary evaluations on my co-op work terms, but I was consistently near the bottom of my class for the first three years of university.
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If we are paying for our kid's post-secondary education, and especially if they are still living at home, you can be sure we will have expectations. College is voluntary, if they don't want to go and do the work they can GET A JOB. If they are just slacking their way through college to avoid looking for paid work, I'm not financing that.
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Grades do matter in many things - like getting into graduate school for example. True, most employers don't check your GPA, but if you're looking toward higher education they do make a difference, particularly if you're wanting to get into a competitive program.
The program I'm looking toward only admits 28 people ever other year. You better believe I care very much about my grades.
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My point is simply that saying "we'll fund your education as long as your grades exceed our arbitrary setpoint" is stupid; Parents have no frame of reference to tell what the target average grade should be. I hope that a good parent can tell if their child is slacking through university or actually applying themselves, regardless of whether the child is living at home.
Grades aren't terribly important for grad school in my field. What matters more is your experience and how well you get along with the researchers.
Even in cases where grades matter, the standard is arbitrary. How do you compare a 3.8 GPA from university A with a 3.5 GPA from university B? You can't.
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I do think that it is reasonable if the parents' standards are the same as the university's standards for graduation. If the kid literally cannot graduate with the grades he's getting, then he is wasting his parents' money. That makes the standard non-arbitrary.
I (usually, with recent horrifying exceptions) see grades as tools, to get you where you want. If you want to go to med school, they do need to be high. If you want to graduate and then work at a desired job, they need to be high enough to graduate and get the desired job. They aren't an end in themselves, but they aren't meaningless.
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In that case, kat, there's no need for the requirement. At my university, anyway, if you fail consistently you don't get to come back. You just go home with your tail between your legs. Added: Someone else can have that spot then.
As to your second paragraph, grades being meaningless doesn't contradict your sentences about med school and graduating. That medical schools require high grades does not make grades themselves any more meaningful.
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But it does mean that desiring high grades is not a pointless activity. Disagreeing with the weight given to them doesn't change that weight is given to them, and if you want to go to med school, you have to have high ones.
For myself, high grades had a very specific meaning: money. If I had good grades, scholarships paid for school. If I didn't have good grades, I paid for school. Good grades definitely had a value, to the dollar amount.
For families with limited resources, setting a standard for grades that would induce other people to pay for school has definite merit.
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They probably wont. Besides, what exactly is "your best"? Every waking moment devouted to school? There has to be a line drawn somewhere, and one way of drawing it is grade goals.
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I agree, but Kat's point is that grades are a very important part of the university, for better or for worse, and it's not totally ridiculous to base your goals on them, since so much of the world puts a strong emphasis on them too.
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I think this is better on a case-by-case basis. In my case, grades definitely did correlate with effort. The exceptions were on the fortunate side; while I did get good grades in some classes I slacked in, I never got a bad grade I didn't earn.
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Until my senior year, my worst grade was in Landscape Architecture 101. *hangs head in shame* It was winter semester, 7:30, graded on attendance. I have no excuse.
---
Maybe it's schools. Grades were not a good indicator of learning in high school, but they were a better one in college. I think they are an even better one in grad school, but I'm not sure yet.
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The difference between seperate universities is one thing, but also between the arts and the sciences, and the individual courses within them. There is no 'good grade' except to you personally, where a particular grade becomes meaningless.
But not many people can rise about the pleasure of seeing an above average grade on a paper or exam or course result. It's easy to say 'I don't care about my grades' if they are decent, but much harder to say, 'my a+ is irrelevent' and mean it. As a result, grades are not meaningless. They are not the end of the world, but they are a goal.
Parents do care about how you do because not only is a huge amount of money invested in you, they also want you to be The Best in whatever you are doing, whatever path you choose. The money thing can be only an excuse to guilt you into performing well and thus giving them the satisfaction of that piece of paper that "proves" to them and others that they have brought up a child successfully. I'm not saying they even do this conciously.
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'Good grades' to my parents would have been me getting a 4.0 throughout college, because they know that even in my electrical engineering curriculum it wouldn't have been a stretch for me.
'Good grades' for me were getting pretty much straight B's while putting forth very little effort. I just have always had things I would rather do than sit in class and hear things explained for the fifth time when I understood the first, or second time through.
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If I've raised my child for 18 years I have a good idea of what he or she is capable of. And with my husband and I both being college educated we know what it takes to succeed in school.
So I do have the capability to determine whether or not my child is putting forth an adequate effort in college, and if I'm paying for it I absolutely have the right to set standards.
To insinuate that parents should pay for school regardless of how the child performs is ridiculous. We're talking about significant sums of money and if that child is still my dependent (and if they're full time students they are) I can set whatever parameters I wish.
I don't demand all A's out of my kids. I do know what they're capable of and expect them to at least try. That goes for elementary and middle school and it will go for college as well.
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Disclaimer: I'm quite in a middle of a situation of this type, so I might not be entirely "objective". I'm sorry if I come out too harsh, and I'll listen gladly to any corrections.
quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Parents do care about how you do because not only is a huge amount of money invested in you, they also want you to be The Best in whatever you are doing, whatever path you choose. The money thing can be only an excuse to guilt you into performing well and thus giving them the satisfaction of that piece of paper that "proves" to them and others that they have brought up a child successfully. I'm not saying they even do this consciously.
Ugh... been there. Recently. "We don't care about the grades" worked while I was first/second. Not so much afterward. And sometimes parents don't seem to understand there's much more to life than school, and that even failing one entire year isn't the end of the world. Now is the time to learn a hundred things that they don't teach you in school, and sometimes those experiences will affect your grades. But no matter how much they try, they won't be able to see that. Because when they say "I've been through this" they don't actually remember to continue "and it has affected me as much as you".
quote:Originally posted by Belle: To insinuate that parents should pay for school regardless of how the child performs is ridiculous. We're talking about significant sums of money and if that child is still my dependent (and if they're full time students they are) I can set whatever parameters I wish.
I'm sorry, but that really sounds like tyranny to me. Have you considered what the child's options are in this? Pay for himself? What if he can't afford it? Should he work to support himself? What if that affects how much he would like to involve himself in his study? And what makes you think that what you view as reasonable expectations are reasonable after all? I've come to study in France, under a different system, in a field my parents know next to nothing about, and yet they should get to set standards?! They think so, I don't. That kept building up over the years and led to a split between us. There are more reasons than this, but this is one of the main ones. They now think I'm blackmailing them: "either you agree with me, or I won't talk to you". I'm not. I've reached the point where listening to their expectations only drove me mad and decided I'm not going that way anymore. The "but we still love you" line doesn't work anymore, not when it constantly stands at the end of reproaches.
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quote: Pay for himself? What if he can't afford it? Should he work to support himself?
Yes. If necessary, drop out of school, save up money, then go back. A college education is a luxury not a neccesity. If a parent is kind enough to help pay, then the kid should feel gratitude.
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Trust me, I feel gratitude for that. But I won't let money received from them make me feel guilty about the grades I get. That's why I recently told them I won't take money from them anymore, actually. My brother has agreed to give me money in form of a loan that I'll pay back when I'm able, but otherwise I would have been in a very delicate situation. They think I'm nuts and said they could still help me, but to me that money would come for too high a price, the price of accepting each and every one of their demands.
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I'm in high school. According to my tests, I have an IQ of a little over 150. Theoretically, I should be getting straight 'A's in school. I get straight 'B-"s. I know people who I consider far less "intelligent" than I who get straight 'A's. I know people who I consider as intelligent as I who get straight 'B's.
IQ is a farce, of course, as numerous studies have demonstrated. So what really qualifies intelligence? When I know someone for a while, I get an assessment of what I think is their "intelligence". But that intelligence doesn't correlate at all to grades or IQ, or even how intelligently someone speaks.
With the people I've talked to, intelligence in them seems to be, almost, sentience. It's the difference between the red-pills and the blue-pills among us - who sits with what they have, never dreaming of another level of understanding, and who constantly analyzes existence; breathes reality? To me, intelligence is the level to which you analyze your world. I'm a firm believer in that quote of Socrates, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I have a friend, brilliant physicist and philosopher, who can't stand that quote. He believes that people merely do what the serotonin tells them to do. That we're just bundles of atoms. I don't, but I have no way of proving that we aren't, which I think is the nature of faith. But if I believe we have what might be termed souls, and aren't meaningless clumps of amino acids, then I also have to believe that we must analyze our lives and existences... and I don't know why. Thus, anyone who does that, is, in my mind, intelligent, but I can't quantify that intelligence, nor can I prove or give evidence to support that that is what intelligence really is.
Long post, that.
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Um, Corwin, failing an entire year is the end of the world, or at least any reasonable expectation of other people paying for your slacking.
Incidentally, what's the situation with student loans in the US? In Norway you get a loan from the state that's interest-free for one course of study, usually four years. You have to pass (not just take, but pass!) a given number of credits each semester, though, or they start charging you interest. It's enough to live on, given that you are going to live in cheap student housing, of course. I saved up mine for going to school here; most people blow theirs on beer the first month of the term, of course. It's not quite so bad now that they've changed to handing it out in monthly installments; but back when it was one installment each semester, I knew at least one guy who would live like a king for a month, then eat day-old bread and ketchup for the rest of the month. Also he tended to flunk. Great fencer, though, beat me every time.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Um, Corwin, failing an entire year is the end of the world, or at least any reasonable expectation of other people paying for your slacking.
Not if it is due to circumstances other than that person not wanting to study. Sorry, I realize I probably shouldn't have opened the discussion since I'm not willing to go further and explain all the circumstances at this moment.
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