Reed College Top Questions

I was (and still am) on a first name basis with all my professors. It is my impression that Reed students study every minute of every day. I sure did. Class participation (and attendance) is virtually required. There is nowhere to hide in a Reed class, and students who don't do the reading or try to get by with bullshit are usually spotted very quickly. I took a class where we read the professor's forthcoming book. Our job was the become the professor and present each chapter to the class, while the professor attacked the structure of the argument. It was a fantastic course. Reed prepares students to be critical thinkers, some of us go on to grad school, others don't.

Professors know my name because I speak often in class. Students study very often... and procrastinate very often. Classes are conference based, and therefore cannot function without student participation. Students are generally not competitive because most professor, beside in math and chem etc, don't write grades on tests or essays. You have to specifically request your grades from the registrar to see them. Reed is geared toward learning for its own sake. All freshman have to take a humanities class in which we study ancient Greek and Roman cultures through literature, philosophy, art, and history. That stuff is so not useful in the "real world," but you become so cultured!!!

Academics are Reed's strength. Professors are so casual, they regularly spend time with students before and after class, helping with questions, projects, etc. I have always been able to get the time and attention I needed from my profs. They're great. Reed's education is geared for intellectuals. There's no other way to describe it. It prepares students for going on to grad school, and being leaders in their fields. The professors are world class. Reedies are expected to think big thoughts, to question accepted beliefs, and to prepare for further exploration into the major questions of the day. Graduates go on to become researchers and professors at the top of the field. My favorite classes have been "Social Psychology, Linguistics, and Cognitive Processes." The curriculum in these classes is unmatched, and Reed's conference style requires students to read and analyze the material thoroughly. As a result, the classes are intense intellectual activities, and engage you completely. Basically, if you don't participate, you're not there. So, people participate.

All my professors know my name My favorite classes have all been the very challenging ones that pertained to constructing theories, logic, and all linguistics classes but one have been geared to my interests. My least favorite class was a very elementary class that was poorly structured. My only complaint about it was that it claimed to be about linguistics and failed to be so. We study all the time. We furtively procrastinate on the internet because we are scared to not actually study. Reed students are vocal and do talk, but keep in mind, we are all undergrads and people, so our knowledge is limited and we are scared of embarrasing ourselves. Reedies avoid talking about their classes if they are not doing work for them, but all conversations take an intellectual bent. Of course we are competitive, its just that we are competing to build the best models, not to break each other.

Students spend a lot of time obsessing over work, and the most succesful students are the ones who stop complaining about hte work they have and sit down to do it. My biggest complaint about reed has to do with the grading system. I wanted to come to Reed because i was tired of the grade-grubbing competitive atmosphere of the college-prep high school I attended. I loved the idea that students are motivated at Reed by their academic curiosity and pride rather than the numerical grade they are given. Reed doesn't give you your grade report, a c or above is a satisfactory, and anything below is unsatisfactory or failing. That's what you find out from your midterm and semester reports. Professors also give you great comments. But, if you want to know your specific grades you have to ask your advisor. Now that I'm a senior, and applying to programs I need to know my grades. Looking back now, it seems odd to me that we don't receive our grades and don't quite know what the Reed gradings scale is like. I'm thankful that students are rarely competitive, and i think that a lot of that has to do with the grading system. But somehow i still wish we had better access to our grades. Reed is 100{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} geared towards education for its own sake rather than producing degrees to move into jobs. I love most of my classes. I know my professors really well due to the small size of conference classes. The Russian department is small, but held up by some of the most well-versed and talented professors I've had in my experience at Reed: Lena Lencek and Zhenya Bernstein. The Russian literature classes are incredibly in depth, I've learned to analyze texts at a level I couldn't imagine when I was in high school. I spend a lot of time discussing Russian lit. with other majors and non-majors outside of class. Other classes i've discussed the material outside of class, but usually it's filled with complaints about the class from other students as well. Being a Russian major has another great advantage- i was able to spend a (what turned out to be an incredibly intense but enriching) year in St. Petersburg, Russia experiencing an immersion in the Russian language and first-hand experience with the culture i've spent so much time studying. The thesis experience has been both exhilarating and crushing. It's a highly stressful project, because it is one I care so much about. Some days I have amazing breakthroughs in my research and i'm just PUMPED about what i'm writing. Other days i feel lost, or over my head in what i'm doing, but luckily my thesis advisor is able to provide me with direction and support at those times.

Academics will be most of your life at Reed. And you have to do it because you love learning and you love what you are studying because being career driven won't be enough to get you through. Love is really the only thing that will get you through it, it's a murderous amount of work. Students aren't very competitive, and everyone talks about class outside of class. Hum 110 is a great common knowledge area between students since everyone takes it... Professors are usually pretty good, though about half of the bio teachers don't do so well in larger lectures but are better one on one. Students study all the time. I might study more than sleep actually...

hell yes professors know your name. my favorite class: so far, my art history class that took us to Florence (on reed's dime!), and my freshman hum 110 conference for the great class dynamic and the best professor i have ever had (in spite of subject matter i dislike). least favorite class: spanish 212, first semester of hum 210 this year because of a bad class dynamic and one of the worst teachers i've ever had (in spite of subject matter i liked, that class was like banging my head against a wall for an hour and 20 minutes. instead of a conference, it was like playing 21 questions with the even less funny woody allen of early modern european history). how often students study: if you possess a strong work ethic, minimum 5 hours a day, often past 2 AM. if not, only slightly less or you're screwed. not studying is not an option. not studying enough is also not an option. the workload and academic expectations are enormous--prepare for the onslaught or you WILL be crushed. no, really. class participation: in conference-style classes (the format of most courses at reed), class participation is very common. the idea is that everyone is there to learn from one another, and that's not possible without class participation. intellectual conversation outside of class: yes yes yes. and sometimes too much. i enjoy a good philosophical jaunt or discussion of 19th century russian lit as much as the next person. but there was a period of time last year when if i so much as heard the word "foucault" leave your mouth, you had to be thrown out of my room immediately. to this day, my room remains a "foucault-free zone." i need some humor with my serious academia. plus, i'm just really tired of foucault. competitiveness: kind of--no student actually sees their grades on anything unless they request to see them, an option the majority of students don't exercise until it's time to apply for grad school. my experience with competitiveness has more to do with my own intellectual standards for myself. the only real competitive streak regarding work is who has more of it and who is under the most pressure. my major/department: the art department. you probably should look elsewhere if you want to be a studio art major, but i really like most of the staff, the facilities are decent considering the size of the school, and projects are often more complex than basic technical training. i made a large scale installation entirely out of lollipops for my intro studio final. the art history department has some great teachers but can be a mixed bag. the emphasis is on the theoretical, which i like, but this often limits the areas of focus available to study. i would love to study near eastern art for my non-western credit, but the non-western professor specializes in china, china, and ore china. my intro art history class wasn't spectacular for the same reason: i couldn't care less about ancient greek vase painting. socializing with teachers: yes it is common here, depending on the teacher. i've had a dinners at professors' houses, and sometimes hang out with professors when i see them around. that kind of relationship of equals--as in, i am not having lunch with an authority figure so much as an interesting friend who doesn't talk down to me--is what makes the faculty great. in a way, picking a major is like joining a department. but i have encountered teachers intent on maintaining their personal distance as professionals--and i think that misses the point. academic requirements: intense. students generally only take 4 classes at a time because so much work is involved. kind of a bummer that you can't dabble in as many fields as at other schools. in order to take on a heavier course load, you have to go through a petition process. graduation requirements consist of distributional and departmental reqs, neither of which are actually all that outrageous, though i still fear taking a science course here (tough on science majors, tougher on non-science majors, and brutal on art majors). the standards of excellence, though, are incredibly high. academic rigor and serious scholarship are not taken lightly--do not come to reed if you do not want to or cannot handle intense intellectual discourse. educational emphasis: 110{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} on learning for the sake of learning. though reed sends out more grad students and phd-earners than almost any other liberal arts college in the nation, if that tells you anything.

The classes are traditionally very small, which means that conferences can be very intimate. The conference style classes work out so that a lot is required from each student. The quality of these classes is determined by the quality and effort of the students predominantly, as well as the way in which the conference leader (sometimes a professor, sometimes a student) directs the class. So they can be spectacular, but it doesn't always work out that way. The sciences at Reed operate differently and I don't really understand how, but everyone at Reed takes a conference at some point, even if it's only in Intro Humanities. As for the Math department, it's very traditional; proof-based and rigorous. I wanted to be a math major when I was choosing schools so that was a big part of the reason I decided to go here and I have yet to regret being a part of this department. Education at Reed is geared towards learning for its own sake; this is one stereotype that is very true. The students are a mixed bunch, however. There are plenty who ARE geared toward a specific career, but these people generally have some sort of belief that the theoretical liberal arts tradition will help more in their careers than just technical training.

The average class size at Reed is as small as it is because there are some classes with a handful of students. Though promotional materials rave about small classes and conference style learning, Reed has plenty of large lecture classes. Granted, these classes of 100-200 students might be considered small at other schools, but they are a far cry from the 13 students many of us expect to find.

Whether or not professors know your name depends entirely on the student and the professor, some do, some don't. It is frankly up to the student, though reed, yes, provides the opportunity for personal student-professor relationships. Education at reed is definitely just geared towards education for it's own sake and not towards getting a regular, non-academic job (at least in most major areas).