Recently, Thayer School of Engineering professor Vicki May wrote a Huffington Post article, “Engineers Are Not Smart,” in which she explains that many Dartmouth engineering students decide to quit engineering after receiving a poor exam grade. She concludes that students need to realize “that failure is part of getting there.” I am a member of the Class of 2015 and I am on track to graduate this June with both the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Engineering degrees. I have known I wanted to major in engineering since matriculating to Dartmouth, and in my journey I have seen some of my fellow students abandon the engineering track every step of the way. In my experience, a bad grade may be the stated reason students drop engineering, but is rarely the root cause.
If a student comes in with no advanced standing from Advanced Placement credits or placement tests, the B.E. (like all accredited engineering degrees) requires 25 classes, seven of which are prerequisites, in addition to Dartmouth’s other distribution requirements. Thayer offers the B.E. as a five-year degree, which allows less stress and more time to experience all that Dartmouth has to offer in exchange for up to an extra year of tuition, an option that does not make financial sense for many people. While it is also possible to get the B.A. or a modified major, and many do, there is still a full year of prerequisites required to get the engineering major, which causes the first and biggest wave of students to jump ship.
I still remember getting my first collegiate exam back. It was in Math 8 freshman fall, and the median grade was very low. Within the next week a significant number of the 150 enrolled students dropped the class. This raised the median by more than 20 points, a fact our professor did not convey to us until after the second exam. Although some students’ reasons for dropping the course were probably as simple as a poor exam grade, there were other important factors. The course moved quickly, and there were few resources available to students who did not get the material the first time around. It felt like the entire class was on the waitlist at the Tutor Clearinghouse. There were few teaching assistants, of varying degrees of utility, for 150 students, and office hours were often crowded — it was difficult to get the one-on-one attention often sought. Math 8 is only one example. Many other engineering courses were similar.
Many of my classmates dropped one of the engineering prerequisite courses, not because they were not smart enough, but rather because they lacked the time and resources to learn the material well enough in the time allotted to recover from a poor midterm grade. When a single exam accounts for around 25 percent of the final grade, one bad grade can mean having to drop the class, especially if the student does not feel confident he or she can succeed on the next exam. Dropping an engineering prerequisite may mean that, in addition to retaking that class, the student may have to push back the courses they intended to take the next term. When even the best planning means taking at least two engineering classes per term for 12 terms, falling behind makes pursuing the degree unfeasible.
Academically, my first two years at Dartmouth were pretty miserable. I found the material largely unengaging, which was only compounded by the relatively large class sizes. I often found myself hopelessly lost during lecture and spent a lot of time catching up. This past year, for the first time, I took an engineering class out of interest, not because it was explicitly needed for my degree. I took multiple courses with enrollments under 15 students and found the smaller class size to be a more collaborative and engaging environment. Although it is impractical to have 15-person classes for many engineering, math and science courses, making smaller recitation sessions or having more teaching assistants for larger classes would help aspiring engineers. Students need better and more accessible resources to take a proactive approach. One poor exam grade does not mean someone is not “smart” enough for engineering, but it may be difficult for some students to move past the grade without better support. Dartmouth is a school that prides itself on being a small liberal arts college with a focus on undergraduate teaching. Surely Dartmouth can go the extra mile to enhance the experience of aspiring engineers.
Rogers is a guest columnist.
