What Every Science Student Should Know
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What Every Science Student Should Know
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226198880 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 05/06/2016 |
| Series: | Chicago Guides to Academic Life |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
What Every Science Student Should Know
By Justin L. Bauer, Yoo Jung Kim, Andrew H. Zureick, Daniel K. Lee
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2016 Justin L. Bauer, Yoo Jung Kim, Andrew H. Zureick, and Daniel K. LeeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-19888-0
CHAPTER 1
Welcome to the World of College Science
The one thing none of your college science courses will teach you is how to succeed in them. Studying science needs to come with an owner's manual, and that manual is this book.
Study skills, choosing a major, research, and career planning are just a few of the topics covered in this concise guide. The scientific disciplines — math, engineering, chemistry, computer science, etc. — are both challenging and rewarding. Yet relatively few students make it through the intense and sometimes competitive world of college science. Because you don't know what you don't know, you need advice from people who have been through what you are about to experience. This book — painstakingly distilled from years of research, interviews with successful scientists and science students, and our own experiences as recent science graduates — is the advice that we, your authors, wish we had heard when we came to college.
Good luck and welcome to the world of college science! We look forward to helping you every step of the way in the coming pages.
Why Is Science So Hard?
Only a small fraction of the most able youngsters enter scientific careers. I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. Something happens in the school years to discourage their interest (and it is not mainly puberty); we must understand and circumvent this dangerous discouragement. No one can predict where the future leaders of science will come from.
Carl Sagan
Sixty percent of college students planning to study science or medicine change their minds later in their academic careers. Why do so many students end up leaving their scientific aspirations behind?
First of all, science isn't easy to learn. We come out of the womb with the capacity to learn human language, but no one begins life with the instinctive ability to understand quantum physics. To learn science, you have to work at it, like most things worth doing. But this isn't the full story; in fact, the natural challenge of learning difficult concepts isn't the biggest reason students struggle with science. Rather, many college students are dissuaded from science because they don't know how to prepare for their college science courses.
Science classes — sometimes also called STEM classes for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics — can be complicated, impersonal, and often confusing (Note: we will use the terms science and STEM interchangeably). In a typical introductory college science lecture, you will find yourself in a huge room with hundreds of other students, straining to focus on the tiny professor at the front of the class as she whips through her presentation or draws complicated equations on the board. Some students get it right off the bat, and some students don't. Oftentimes, at the end of the course, all you are given is a test and a grade. If the grade is too low, many students simply call it quits.
Don't Give Up!
While there are a number of roadblocks that discourage students from pursuing science, there are even more reasons to stick with it. With lots of hard work and the guidance of this book, you will be able to excel in your classes, earn your college degree, and, perhaps most importantly, appreciate the beauty of the science you study.
But science is not just interesting to study. There are also very practical benefits to earning a STEM degree. The professional world needs and is prepared to pay for people with skills in science and mathematics. Over the past several decades, the percentage of students graduating from college with a STEM degree has declined, while the demand for science -related jobs has grown and will continue to grow. From 2001 to 2011, growth in STEM jobs was three times faster than growth in non-STEM jobs. When STEM majors graduate, on average, they make more than professionals with other degrees. One study found that science majors would earn half a million dollars more than other majors over the course of their lifetime.
The professional opportunities that a science major provides are not limited to science-related fields. In fact, STEM graduates have higher salaries than other majors, regardless of whether or not they work in a STEM-related occupation. Take a guess, what college major is most common amongst S&P 500 CEOs? Business? Economics? Marketing? No. Actually, it's engineering. This just goes to show that the skills you can learn in college as a science major are prized in a wide range of fields. According to the National Science Foundation and the Department of Labor, 80% of all the jobs created in the next decade will require math and science skills. Getting these skills is smart. When you graduate, quite possibly with significant debt, you'll be happy to know that you've amassed valuable and marketable skills to begin making your way in the world.
Finally, from a much broader perspective, skilled scientists are crucial to our future. Modern science touches every aspect of our lives from the produce in your local grocery store to life-saving pharmaceuticals to the safety features of your car. The responsibility to meet the biggest problems of our century will rest on the shoulders of our scientists — challenges like curing diseases and finding clean energy resources. The prospect of helping the world address such challenges is yet another incentive for those considering studying science.
Studying for Skills, not Just Grades
As a college student, you'll need to approach your academic life with a whole different attitude than you had in high school. Many aspiring science students feel crushed when they get a bad test score, perhaps for the first time in their lives. They think a low grade means they are bad at science. This misconception is one of the biggest reasons that students give up on STEM. But keep this in mind: doing badly in a science course doesn't necessarily mean you are bad at science or a bad student.
At Dartmouth College, what do a theater major with a 3.89 GPA and a chemistry major with a 3.11 GPA have in common? Their grades are both equal to the average grade given by courses in their respective departments. Across the board, arts, social sciences, and humanities courses give out higher grades than science courses. Your grade may be more of a reflection of a departmental policy or a quota set by an instructor than of your true talents and interests. Grades are important, but they certainly aren't everything, and they may even be misleading.
In high school, everybody studied more or less the same subjects, so the main factor that differentiated students academically was their GPA. In college, students study different subjects, so comparing grades between majors is like comparing apples and oranges. If you don't have a trust fund in your name (or even if you do), it will be important for you to graduate with knowledge and skills you can apply in the working world, regardless of what grades you get.
In Forbes magazine's ranking of the ten college majors with the worst employment prospects and the worst salary after graduation, all ten of the worst majors were nonscience majors. The college graduates who received high grades in those majors probably don't care very much anymore about how well they were doing on paper. High school was about getting good grades. In college, you need to be studying for grades and skills.
Getting Started
We started writing this book as college students because we saw our classmates in the sciences dwindle in number year after year and were stunned to find out that this was a nationwide phenomenon that no one had successfully addressed. After three years of research, interviews, and writing, we put together a book compiled from the advice of students and recent graduates who have excelled academically, presented in national symposiums, published in journals, created apps, and started their own businesses — all while earning their bachelor's degrees. To make the book as relevant as possible to the average student, we interviewed students from a wide variety of STEM majors from small liberal arts schools, to research-focused private schools, to major public universities, and everything in between. Much of the advice in this book comes from recipients of high academic honors like the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, Fulbright Study/Research Grant, Churchill Scholarship, Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Marshall Scholarship, and the Rhodes Scholarship.
Whether you are a college student still navigating the lay of the land or an ambitious high school student looking for a head start, this book will provide you with the basic knowledge to tackle science head-on and excel in college and beyond.
Chapter-by-Chapter Overview
We've included a brief synopsis of each chapter below. Each chapter can be read and understood on its own, but there is a logical progression from one chapter to the next. Even if you think you already know about the topic we discuss in a given chapter, we still encourage you to read it. Sometimes it is what we think we know already, that makes it hardest for us to learn. As Mark Twain once said: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
Chapter 2: How to Manage College Life
College is an exciting time with seemingly endless opportunities. However, if you aren't cautious, this can be to the detriment of the your grades, as new college students often fail to balance their personal and social lives with their academic responsibilities. In this chapter, we talk about how to manage time and thereby develop the foundation to lead an efficient and satisfying college life.
Chapter 3: How to Excel in Your STEM Courses
This chapter will help you hone your academic skills to succeed in the classroom and in laboratory courses. We discuss tips for taking notes, reading textbooks, preparing for quizzes and exams, and writing laboratory reports.
Chapter 4: Choosing a STEM Major
Here, we will introduce you to the most general types of science majors, explain what those majors are like, and acquaint you with the types of careers that each major tends to pursue.
Chapter 5: Conducting Scientific Research
Undergraduate research is an essential experience for students interested in a career in science, be it academic, medical, or industrial. Through this chapter, you can familiarize yourself with the world of academic research and ins and outs of conducting a research project as a student. Additionally, you'll become acquainted with some of the unique vocabulary, hierarchy, and unwritten rules of the research culture.
Chapter 6: Beyond Your Bachelor's Degree
How do you go from being a student to being a professional? This chapter will help you make this transition by giving you tools for finding a job after college, such as writing your personal statement, creating your portfolio, and applying for scholarships and fellowships.
Chapter 7: STEM in the Real World
This chapter provides detailed advice about preparing for graduate school and professional schools (e.g., medical, law, and business school), and general information about careers for students with a background in science.
Chapter 8: In Conclusion
We close this book with several important tips for all college students, especially STEM students, for rounding out your undergraduate academic experience and preparing for what lies ahead.
Appendix: Advice for Underrepresented Students in STEM
This chapter explains some of the challenges faced by women and other underrepresented students in the sciences as well as some of the opportunities available to these groups. Additionally, we discuss the importance of mentorship in a successful academic experience.
A note about gender pronouns: we shift back and forth between the pronouns "he" and "she" in this book when referring to students, professors, counselors, etc. Science is for everyone, but the English language often makes it awkward to form a sentence without specifying a gender pronoun.
Buckle Up, and Enjoy the Ride!
Studying STEM in college will be an incredible experience, but it will also require a tremendous amount of work and dedication. Fortunately, you've already taken an enormous step by picking up this book and reading this far. That alone speaks volumes about your dedication to succeed in college. We look forward to helping you channel that commitment into the improvement of your college STEM experience. Let's begin.
CHAPTER 2How to Manage College Life
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
William Penn
The typical student arrives on campus excited and nervous about the coming year. He moves into his dorm room, signs up for interesting courses, makes new friends, and starts receiving invitations to join all sorts of extracurricular activities from mock trial to rock climbing. As the term goes on, he gets progressively more exhausted. He starts missing classes. His laundry starts piling up. A fuzzy black mold begins to grow on his shower curtains, and — to his horror — he doesn't know how to clean it. He feels as if he is spread too thin with classes, club events, and social obligations demanding his time and attention, but he is reluctant to drop any of his commitments due to a fear of missing out on novel experiences. Suddenly, at the end of the term, finals period rears its ugly head, and he focuses for days in a state of caffeine-fueled jitteriness only to find out that he scored much more poorly than he ever did in high school. Only then does he realize that he needs a new strategy.
College demands a different attitude toward work and play than what may have worked for you in high school. Academic expectations are higher, and you have more control over your life than ever before. This chapter and the next will help you adjust to a new pace of working by teaching you to manage your college life and prepare to excel in your STEM coursework. If you take these lessons to heart, you can avoid repeating this frequent college pattern by anticipating the challenges that you will face in college and planning accordingly.
Success: It's Personal
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Theodore Roosevelt
Before you set out to "succeed" in college, you need to define what that means to you. Is it earning good grades, conducting meaningful research, gearing up for a specific profession, or something else entirely?
Your idea of success may not be the same as that of your friends, your professors, or your parents. Take some time for self-reflection, sort out what is most important to you, and think seriously about what you would like to get out of college and in your career. One University of Michigan student whom we interviewed summed this thought up nicely: "Always proceed with the end in mind. Yes, you have time to figure out what you enjoy and want to go into, but it should bother you if you do not know where you expect to be after graduation. If you don't have a plan, devote your spare time to figuring it out. It isn't the smartest people who succeed in life, but the most driven." The sooner you figure out what your own goals are, the better you can decide how to get there and what you need to do during college.
You and your classmates come from a wide range of academic backgrounds — from inner-city public schools to prestigious preparatory programs. At the beginning of school, students will find themselves at different levels of readiness to tackle college work. In general, however, your college classmates will be more intelligent and driven than your high school peers; after all, that's how they got to college in the first place. Moreover, your classmates will have different amounts of responsibilities in their lives. Some students may be earning money through work-study to pay for their education; others may be preoccupied with family obligations; still others will be free to devote their whole energy and attention to their classes.
Define success in college in a way that takes into account your educational background and responsibilities. Continually set short- and long-term goals that will leave you satisfied at the end of the day, term, and year. A goal is both a destination and an anchor: you have to chart out what success means for you before you can get there, and having your objective in mind will keep you from going adrift.
Regardless of where you place yourself in the spectrum of college preparedness, don't let your assessment of your peers' academic abilities lead you to doubt your own abilities or lure you into thinking that college is going to be a breeze. More so than anything else, your performance in class depends on your willingness to work hard. If you find yourself having less science background than some of your classmates, it may take some extra time and effort, but by keeping at it, you will catch up.
When you've decided what your goal is, write it down and post it in a location that will be visible to you: on top of your desk, on the door of your room, across from the toilet, wherever. Every time you feel discouraged, remind yourself of what you are working for and hold yourself accountable for realizing your goals. But don't psyche yourself into thinking that you have to stick to the first goal that you've set for yourself. College is a period for development, and you may realize what you wanted to accomplish more than anything as a freshman is no longer relevant for you during senior year. Be open to changing your destination, but always think about how you can get there.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from What Every Science Student Should Know by Justin L. Bauer, Yoo Jung Kim, Andrew H. Zureick, Daniel K. Lee. Copyright © 2016 Justin L. Bauer, Yoo Jung Kim, Andrew H. Zureick, and Daniel K. Lee. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Welcome to the World of College Science 1
2 How to Manage College Life 9
3 How to Excel in Your STEM Courses 31
4 Choosing a STEM Major 81
5 Conducting Scientific Research 131
6 Beyond Your Bachelor's Degree 171
7 STEM in the Real World 199
8 In Conclusion 247
Appendix: Advice for Underrepresented Students in STEM 255
Notes 265
Index 275