The uphill battle for pre-professionals in SEAS

GPAs are of the utmost importance for pre-professionals at Columbia. This holds true whether you are a student in Columbia College or in SEAS. However, during my time at Columbia it has seemed as though it is considerably easier to achieve and maintain a high GPA as a student in the college. Maintaining good grades is dependent upon three things: the number of classes being taken, the difficulty of the material in each class, and the nature of the curve. If we compare the course load of the average SEAS premed and the average CC premed, it seems to me that the SEAS student has a much more demanding workload. Even when comparing the easiest (in terms of major requirements) major in SEAS, applied math, to a major in CC with relatively demanding requirements such as biochemistry, the SEAS student must take at least six more classes. A similar comparison can be done between the financial engineering major and any of the economics joint programs. Students of both programs compete for the same jobs. However, a financial engineer takes all the classes of their counterparts with the exception of at most three classes, but must take at least ten more.

Not having taken these classes myself and having limited information about their difficulty, I will leave it ceteris paribus and assume the same level of difficulty among the content of all classes. This leaves the curve as the final deciding factor in my equation for maintaining a high GPA. Assuming science classes in the college curve similar to engineering classes, only humanities classes and the engineering core and electives need to be compared. I have the general sense that in the college it is very difficult to get an A and nearly impossible to get an A+, but by the same token it is hard to get below a B. This differs from engineering classes, where roughly the top 16 percent gets an A- or higher and the top two percent gets an A+, but about 50 percent of the class also gets a B or lower. While the potential to get a high grade is definitely greater in SEAS, if you are an average student, you are never going to see that advantage, and will probably do worse than your average counterpart in the college. It seems fair to say that pre-professional students in the college can choose to have fewer classes and on average receive higher grades. This seems to suggest that SEAS students are constantly working harder for lower grades, which is a sorry state of affairs.

As a high school student, college life was one of the things I looked forward to. I actively anticipated the freedom to simultaneously go out and have a good time, excel academically, and participate in extracurricular activities. However, as an engineering student, I feel that such opportunities keep evading me. While I am active in CU Global Health, I would like to participate in more athletic and academic clubs. SEAS students have a notorious reputation for being anti-social and awkward, but most of us really do not fall into that category. We do not have the time due to reasons stated earlier to go out and socialize as much, and more importantly, assume positions of responsibility in extracurricular activities. Aside from the student councils, students from the college dominate leadership positions in most clubs—at least, it appears that way, which is enough to actualize the stereotype. Not only does the academia of the college lend itself to maintaining a higher GPA, but it also causes a snowball effect where it even helps college students stand out in their extracurricular activities.

My main concern with the status quo is that talented and qualified students from SEAS must compete with their college counterparts and are deemed less competent or lacking in soft skills. This type of discrimination often occurs during the internship process, job placement, and graduate school applications. It is unfair that students must constantly work harder to retain a competitive GPA and still lose out. While I admit that I have an inherent bias being a premed SEAS student, I think that, presented as objectively as possible, the facts support my opinion. I also do not want to demean students in the college, many of whom are exceptionally hard working and intelligent. As a premed in applied math, having talked to many other premed and finance pre-professionals in SEAS, I understand many of the problems that we experience. To correct these inequities, change must come from the engineering school itself. Possible modifications include providing stronger disincentives during freshman year to being a pre-professional in SEAS or improving the curving within the engineering departments. As things stand, SEAS students have an inherent disadvantage relative to their college counterparts.

The author is a sophomore in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in applied math.