S L Forsburg (forsburg at salk.edu) wrote:
: I think this depends on how the department is set up. Some
: departments are more lenient on admissions, expecting to cull the class
: later on; others are very rigorous on who gets in, with the
: expectation they will all be able to succeed. Many departments
: use the comprehensives as a screening process (which personally I
: think is appropriate--rubber stamping students with a pass does no
: one any favors later on). Others use comps as a means to determine
: minimum competence only; they may intend the inevitable screening
: to occur downstream in the meat and potatoes of thesis research.
I've seen a couple of people unhappily drift off after investing
quite a few years in grad school. Given the competitive situation
in science, that may be better than drifting off after investing
even more years in a post-doc, after a substandard PhD.
In one of those "How would we fix the world" discussions,
comps seemed like they might be a good place to tell
people that they weren't going to make it in the
program. But we realized that there were difficulties
-- in general everyone really thinks that the only way
to tell if someone is going ot make it as a scientist is to
let them try to be one. Comps, which usually involve some of the
same kind of learning & examination that undergraduate does, don't
really figure out the question.
How do we judge the sometimes naive youngsters contemplating
entering science? There was a letter to the editor in the 8-30-96
issue of Science arguing that undergraduate grades did not
reflect "career success in science", nor did success at winning
Canadian graduate fellowships. That lead the researchers to
speculate on what factors may predict career success, including
abstract qualities like curiosity, drive, organization skills, etc.
Of course, it's very difficult to judge those things, and the
letter writers didn't define "career success." But the letter did
start some interesting speculation.
Here's the URL for the letter
http://science-mag.aas.org/science/scripts/display/short/273/5279/1115c.html
--
Bharathi Jagadeesh/bjag at ln.nimh.nih.gov
Lab of Neuropsychology
NIMH
Building 49, Room 1b80
Bethesda, Maryland 20892
(312) 496-5625 x270
