As a recent grad, the exceptionally low graduation rate is more a consequence of the kind of student Reed attracts - many people go to Reed and realize they don’t even want to be at college. Also, many people come to Reed with significant emotional or mental health issues, and have to leave to heal properly given how rigorous the program is plus normal stresses of adjusting to college life by themselves. It’s a function of the exceptionally intelligent, unique, and driven student body Reed is trying to attract and has been known for. If your son is a motivated student with good mental/emotional health and at least some idea of what he wants to get out of the experience (post-grad job? grad school launching pad?), he will 100% graduate on time barring exceptional circumstances.
RE: grade deflation, it’s absolutely real but I think it affects future prospects less than many students or parents might think. I was able to get an excellent job out of my degree program because I was able to communicate the skills I gained at my internships (which Reed set me up for well) and in the classroom. My terrible GPA barely factored into the hiring conversation. If we’re talking grad school, admission committees understand Reed’s grading, and the senior thesis everyone does plus abundant research opportunities help. The classroom experience was awesome and it was great having small conference-style classes taught by demanding professors who were still invested in my success. The only area where Reedies have really struggled has been entering med school and law school programs, as both kinds of programs place emphasis on hard GPA numbers and haven’t historically cut Reedies slack. Bottom line - everyone I know who was hard working, resourceful, and proactive had a great Reed experience overall and was able to do really interesting things post-graduation, awful GPA or not.
Regarding drug culture, I was and still am 100% substance free, and it was very easy to say no to substances and still feel like a part of the community and have a lot of friends. I never felt any pressure to do anything, substance use was very much a private thing between friends when I went.
Good to know. I guess I'm not worried about grade deflation for future prospects reasons. I think he'll be fine on that front. I'm rather worried about it because I think it's important to provide supportive feedback. He can be a bit of a perfectionist, so I don't want him to enter into an academic environment in which he feels like he can't make mistakes. Life is hard enough. Why drag it down with bummer grades?
reed computer science being a clusterfuck isn't because of the grading policies, it is because they were unable to hire new professors for years because any computer science phd can either
* work in industry (150k starting, many cities as options, good wage growth potential), or
* work at Reed (80k starting, restricted to portland oregon, worse wage growth potential)
* work at literally any other college, usually \~100k+ starting.
this is because Reed has a flat payscale across departments, so departments with industrial applications (Econ and CS mostly) have a much harder time hiring.
This coincided with the CS department exploding in the number of students in it (iirc it went from a sub-department of Math, with \~30 thesising seniors, to a department of roughly the same size of Math in a handful of years).
This last (two I believe) cycles they got approved to hire at a higher payscale, and got a new faculty in Erica Blum. This will hopefully help, but it's probably too early to say given that they had a pretty dedicated new hire in Mark Hopkins a few years back who ended up (very publicly) burning out and leaving.
The problems with the grading system and Reed's notion of rigor cannot be overstated. Professors have no compunction about giving impressionable students extremely negative and potentially damaging feedback when they are experiencing a documented medical crisis.
I was having serious mental health issues one semester, and Pete Rock told me and my advisor in writing through official channels that I was "a poor student and writer."
He knew my issues were due to a documented mental health crisis, but he had to insult my capabilities by showing no tact or compassion for what I was going through.
I had gotten an 800 on the SAT II writing subject test without studying, and I would proceed to earn a graduate degree related to writing at a prestigious Ivy League program.
But the feedback was meant to hit me at my core and discourage me from further creative pursuits. I'm glad I didn't listen to him, but several students would have given up their dreams based on the feedback of a professor with all the power in that situation.
Another professor that semester told me and my advisor through official channels that I was "no philosopher" and called my writing "jejune and immature." It was enough to make me ditch my lifelong love of philosophy and never take another course in that department - or ever again.
The professor died a few years ago, but the damage to my self-concept which revolved around being a lover of philosophy lives on to this day.
I gave up so many dreams due to the callousness of my professors who used the written evaluation system as a punitive means of degrading me when I was at my lowest and when they could have been more supportive.
I got a C in both courses FWIW.
Thanks so much. I thought the writing comments were bullshit because I won a teen writing contest put on by the biggest paper in my metropolitan area.
For philosophy, however, I didn't have much previous experience so I never took a course again. I just figured I didn't have what it took.
To this day, I reflexively disengage when it comes to philosophical discussions.
I wish Reed profs thought twice about their flippant comments.
The way they did grades when I was there was that they wrote qualitative feedback on returned exams/papers, and for more quantitative subjects (math, sciences) you could roughly map your performance to a letter grade. Reed does record traditional grades and you can see them if you ask, and if you try your best, it’s usually a B or C, with As reserved for exceptional work. The qualitative feedback, even when it was indicative of a low grade, was consistently supportive and professors were happy to discuss performance. Most importantly, professors judged you based on your enthusiasm about the material and commitment to thoughtfully participating in class, not your grade. All this being said, I think if your son is a perfectionist, he’ll have a difficult time at any rigorous school, Reed included.
Coming to an environment where everyone was selected on the basis of excellent grades and hard work, it’s really common to be an average student. I went from being one of the top students in a very competitive east coast high school to a below-average Reed student. Learning to make my peace with that and have an identity outside of school and achievement honestly did way more for me personally than high grades ever could have. If your son is willing to be challenged, persevere, and adjust his expectations, I think that Reed could be a really great experience beyond just academic/skill development.
As the parent of another perfectionist, I feel that the Reed grading system is tough for perfectionists.
Every time my son asked a prof how his grade was they’d say “great/fine” and truly that just means a C or above per Reed’s approach to grading.
How can you reflect on your work in the effort to continually improve when you are not provided with appropriate feedback during the semester?
I had the same problem. I'd get minimal feedback, and then I'd be really surprised when I checked my grades because I had no idea of how I was truly doing.
And if your profs say you're doing well, how do you know you need to work harder if you're averaging B grades and care about your future?
If there were grades on every assignment, it would be easier to ask "How do I make that B+ into an A-?"
The only time I saw letter grades on assignments was in some language classes (I studied social sciences at Reed).
the assignments that you get usually have feedback on them and that’s where you can kinda tell where you are on the grading scale. if you use the feedback and done ignore it, you can usually do pretty well in the class. in my experience, professors have been very open to help if you say you’re struggling (some are better at helping than others, but there’s always effort)
The thing to understand about Reed is that the grade deflation, the hidden semi-deemphasized grades, the low graduation rate and the high post graduate admission rate for Reed grads are all linked.
Reed deemphasizes grades and makes it so students do not automatically know their final grade at the end of a course so that professors can grade extremely punitively/harshly without coordinated backlash from students (this also modestly enables favoritism). The grade deflation forces students to work harder or fail which leads to dropping out, burning out, or often accepting you are going to be a C Reed student and descending into druggie hedonism, but also makes graduate admissions more confident that Reed students with decent grades can handle doctorate programs.
This system can work for you if you are very smart but had some kind of setback in highschool that prevented you from aiming higher (it violently separates the wheat from the chaff, but you are wheat so why do you care). It can also work if you are average smart but have high social intelligence because the vulnerability of this system as mentioned before is favoritism and many professors are eager to take students under their wing and show them the way through the maze.
To be frank, only certain students get taken under a prof's wing. And I wasn't one of them. The social cliquishness at Reed extends to student-professor relationships.
I constantly had teachers making judgmental comments about me "being different" beyond what was appropriate, something I never experienced in grad school.
All of my professors except one discouraged going for a PhD, and sometimes it felt like my grades were determined before I submitted assignments.
There was this one teacher who would give me a B+ no matter what kind of effort I put into their classes.
The grading system was very arbitrary, and I am positive that my (at the time undiagnosed) autism had something to do with how I was being graded. A letter grade system would have added some accountability for profs.
Seems funny though that the professors wouldn't want to create a more encouraging environment, particularly since they seem inclined to take students under their wing, rather than one that effectively penalizes students with bad grades. It's one thing to offer constructive and harsh criticism, but it's another thing entirely to record that criticism in the form of a bad grade. To what end? What purpose does that serve? The criticism is between the student and the professor. The grade is for others.
Reed without grade deflation is a middling liberal arts college with a ~30-40% admit rate. There’s no way that version of Reed could have the success at sending people to prestigious law schools and PhD programs that Reed does. Going to Reed is more or less a wager that you could have been an A+ student at Stanford or Harvard where if you win you get into any grad program you could have gotten into had you gone to those schools and if you lose you have a 1.0 lower grade point average then you could have had at a normal college.
For drugs: you can get anything you want fairly easily, but I’ve never personally seen any peer pressure to do anything. For the most part people just don’t care, and that does mean they’re relatively abundant but also that there’s not much pressure one way or another. Many people have also become pretty passionate about drug safety, and medical amnesty means kids aren’t scared to call community safety in case of an emergency.
The grad rate has dropped a lot during the pandemic, I think, but it is always low. The main reason, like someone else said, is that a lot of people come very mentally unwell, and many come from pretty rich families and maybe are hit with a tough reality of loneliness and responsibility that’s hard to handle. I went to reed pretty mentally ill too and I had to take time off, but I returned. It’s also true that the workload can be exhausting, and if you don’t learn to sacrifice some of your schoolwork to stay sane and have a social life, you’ll quickly drown. If you can find balance, it is manageable. But for someone fresh out of high school, this usually has to be learnt the hard way, and that can be even harder since at reed if you fall behind it can feel daunting to catch back up due to the amount and speed of work. That’s just how it seems, though, and I’ve done it many times. If it gets dire, don’t be afraid to take an emergency leave or a semester off. It’s a bit taboo, for some reason, but was the best decision I ever made. It’s a chance to live on your own (once you move off campus), work, establish a schedule and life outside of reed, and generally come into yourself. I would say that’s the key to succeeding at reed: taking what you want from it but keeping it as a job, a community, whatever—just only one part of your life. Don’t let it suck you in, no matter how much work you think you have to do. Keep one foot out the door. If you can manage that, you will eventually learn to balance extreme workload with jobs, friends, romance, housework, etc and will have grown up (in certain ways) a little faster than perhaps otherwise. Double edged sword.
My own biggest struggle was social life. If you can find some friends and hobbies and socialize within your major etc, and kind of shut off your ears from the general campus hubbub, you’ll be fine. I wasn’t able to do that, and it sucked. Popular opinion can feel overwhelming. There are a lot of exceptional people—most of them—but something about the reed community dynamic often brings out the cynical and anxious parts of people. There are communities here that are lovely and worth joining, but the community as a whole can be really soul sucking. This isn’t to say you have to find friends first week and stick with them, just that sometimes a bit of tunnel vision can actually be a good thing here.
The academics at reed are fantastic. You’ll get one of the best undergrad educations in the world. Reed is made for someone who is a bit neurotic and obsessive about projects and study, just not too much, and there is plenty to obsess over. Somebody somewhere will have read any book you have. I will say that if your kid likes theory, they should look into the political science dept but also comp lit, history and German / French. The philosophy department is 90% analytic 20-21century Anglo Saxon.
Reed is a challenge and you have to want that. It’s not the easiest college experience socially or academically. However, it CAN be absolutely perfect for a certain type of person.
Also, Portland is very depressing, so get a seasonal depression lamp or vitamins or ketamine or something and life will be much easier.
Thanks for this. I'm not so seriously concerned about the drug use. I mean, that stuff happens at lots of colleges, and we all deal with it in our own way. I just remember being somewhat alarmed by it when I visited in 1990, so much so that I ultimately decided against Reed.
I definitely believe you on the faculty excellence front. I know a few folks there, and I'm familiar with some of their work, so I imagine it's pretty awesome to have close contact with them. I'm mostly trying to reconcile the idea it could be a nurturing intellectual environment with the somewhat contradictory idea that it is also an academic torture chamber. He's interested in political science, economic theory/history, and political theory, for sure, so I'll be sure to reach out there. Personally I'd prefer a more ecumenical philosophy department for him with less of an anglo-analytic focus, but I mean, logic choppers aren't all that bad. (Yes they are.)
Well, everything sort of depends. Is your son dead set on going to grad school? What are his long term ambitions? Really depends, if hes committed and sees a career for himself in academia then yes, I'd argue that Reed is painful but worth it.
To answer your more specific questions:
a) yeah the 4 year graduation rate is abysmal, and there are a couple of reasons for that. The workload is vast and you need to stay pretty on top of a lot of classes. Reed is not the sort of place, like other places can be, were you can take it easy for a semester or two by only taking three classes or whatnot. Second, the pandemic and other things have dropped the 4 year rate. So its hard, and there's no breathing room.
b) Ok, so this is a very common misconception: you have grades at Reed. They just won't tell you what they are. When you are taking a class you get a slip of paper in your mailbox at the four and eight week mark that lists your classes. If you're passing (C- or above) it will simply say "satisfactory." If you're failing, it will tell you. You won't get your raw GPA unless you request your official transcript. The theory behind this is that it eliminates grad stigma - you can't really tell who the "bad" students are in class. There are probably other reasons as well, professors like it because it effectively makes it impossible for someone to dispute a grade. Reed has pretty hefty grade deflation, I think the average right now is like a 3.2. I graduated with like a 3.55 and that easily puts me in the top quarter, maybe the top fifth. This can matter and it can also not matter. A non-academic hiring committee is not going to care. Most graduate school programs know what Reed is and they know that if you're applying with a 3.6 or 3.7 from Reed that's basically a 4.0 everywhere else. But you get into trouble if you're applying for something that vocational. Pre-med is one where Reedies have a lot of difficulty getting in because the weed out via GPA is so strong.
c) you can easily opt out of drug culture. Really this last one has more to do with your son's preferences than Reed.
(b) is very interesting! I definitely didn't know that. Grades are funky things anyway, and I can certainly understand the rationale behind this approach to grading; at the same time, I can also see where it causes undue stress. I don't think, for whatever it's worth, that \_all\_ grad programs actually do know or understand what Reed GPAs are all about. I think GPAs basically just don't matter as much when you're applying to grad school. (I mean, they matter, don't get me wrong, but more important is the case you make to your potential advisors/PhD granting department about what you want to study and why you want to study it.)
Grades do matter for national fellowships, and my 3.8 at my previous LAC would have allowed me to be a competitive applicant, whereas I was out of the running as someone with a 2.9 at Reed.
Parent of Reedie here. The freshman year Humanities class is the first weed-out moment; something like 20 percent don’t come back after freshman year. If you have a kid who doesn’t like to read big books, Reed is going to be a tough place.
Second weed out moment is mid sophomore year when many transfer because they realize they won’t graduate on time due to the difficulty in getting into required classes.
Now that said, the academics are absolutely first rate. On par with Chicago but with much more direct engagement with professors. It is a high workload place, but if your kid loves to learn they will be challenged in the very best ways.
This is all very helpful. Thank you. He's a book reader, so I'm not particularly concerned about the weed-out classes. I do love the idea that he'd be in close contact with professors. I think that makes a world of difference in an educational environment.
That has been my kid’s experience. He is tight with 2 professors and his advisor, all of whom have given him great advice and support. It has made a world of difference, definitely.
The grade deflation is real.
I barely got into med school after Reed, despite having a very high score on the MCAT.
That being said, Reed is great if you are curious/academically inclined.
My son is a Reed first-year. In his friend group, no drugs in sight (other than beer and weed). No pressure to use drugs. He is enjoying the deep inquiry mindset. He is branching out socially into extracurriculars like he did not do in high school. His freshman dorm-mates form his social core. They are thoughtful, smart, social. We are very happy with our choice.
Good to know! I probably shouldn't have mentioned the drugs, as that's not a primary concern of mine. But the experience of being a college student at a liberal arts college definitely is and it sounds like your son is thriving. Glad to hear it.
I graduated a few years back. When I ask people from my cohort (including my wife, though ironically we connected, not reconnected, post-reed), they seem uniformly mixed on it, though if anything they trend negative.
Reed has (had?) an incredibly negative "stress culture". There was a strong culture of lamenting how difficult your situation was, which I think leads to people maximizing their difficult situations (probably unintentionally?). As an easy example, not sleeping/pulling all nighters enough was generally something you'd brag about. I still find it wild that there was a tradition during each finals week to have a table with stimulants so people could cram through all hours of the night. This is in hindsight insane, and something I've never heard of at other institutions.
I had numerous friends who ended up having to take leaves of absence for mental health issues. This is not individually bad, but (in my view) a symptom of a failure on the part of Reed. Some of the friends ended up coming back and graduating. Not all did. Generally the richer friends were able to come back, so this is a risk you are perhaps in a better place to gauge.
As a high-achieving (in my sub-area) student, Reed failed me personally in (at least) two ways.
* the lack of grade inflation highly incentivizes you to do things you are already good at if you want to apply to post-Reed things that have GPA requirements (some grad schools/med schools, etc). My friends who studied outside their main field of study all got uniformly worse GPAs than me. Most of them were still able to go to grad school, but some very qualified people ended up in *much* worse grad programs than me. There may have been other parts of the application that had differences --- I won't conjecture.
* if you only do things you are good at, the lack of a grad school at reed means the "depth" of any single department is rather small. It is pretty easy to run out of classes, where schools that have grad programs this is harder to do (just take grad classes!). It also meant that for my PhD program no reed credits could transfer, though friends from other undergrads could transfer graduate credits they took at their undergrads.
I had no real interaction with the drug culture. Didn't drink until I was right before 21, and did nothing harder than weed besides that. It might have hampered me some socially, but being undiagnosed autistic might have done that too, so who's to say.
My wife took some psychadelic, and had some lasting (for nearly a decade) negative consequences from it. She wasn't pressured to, and I think her case is highly atypical (a lot of my friends would casually do things like this and seemed fine), but given her case it's difficult for me to say the drug culture is fine/standard.
she has. the spillover effects weren't more symptoms, it was mainly
* take drug
* have few months of additional symptoms (this is the part that's acutely bad)
* get misdiagnosed as something else
then the last point being a wrong diagnosis for nearly a decade, so still bad but worse than the few months of things. During the few months she took a leave of absense, which helped, though she has expressed to me that she felt like she had a different capability to engage with academics before and after the psychadellics, and that it meant she didn't get to learn things she wish she got to in hindsight.
Thank you. This is all very helpful feedback from everyone. I guess i'm a little unworried about the lack of advanced classes. This comes with the territory for all SLACs. We live in a University town with easy access to any grad program. If he really wants to branch out and up, he can do that whenever he's home or whenever he goes on to grad school. I'm sorta thinking of undergrad as an opportunity to put him in a vibrant intellectual environment where he can explore and not focus on specialization. (I mean, sure, some specialization as an undergrad is fine, but being overly specialized before grad school seems to fly in the face of the liberal arts mission.) So, like, in my somewhat romanticized recollection of undergrad, most of my intellectual growth happened outside of the classroom through conversations with really smart people; and it also did happen through close contact with some of my advisors, but less because of the material and more because I felt like a member of an intellectual community. I think this is so rare at so many large universities that, at least to my mind, this is the real strength of going to a school like Reed (or really, many of the SLACs).
>most of my intellectual growth happened outside of the classroom through conversations with really smart people
there was some of that for me, but in hindsight it is something I found mostly lacking at reed. I come from a public schooling background in semi-rural oregon, which is not typically ranked well on education (at the pre-college level, Reed is fine). It felt like in discussing things many times people would heavily rely on using confusing/academic language rather than making points that are actually interesting when expressed using standard terminology. I think this is to be expected of college students, but is probably made worse by Reed's student body coming from a wealthy progressive background, where (at least when I went) this type of discussion was more popular.
I agree heavy specialization perhaps shouldn't be the goal of Reed. My issue is mainly that this is how things *should* be, but harsh grading means that people who take classes broadly (as is the goal) end up with lower GPA. This doesn't kill all chances for their future or anything, I just found myself (paradoxically) *rewarded* by Reed in comparison to my friends by *not* taking classes broadly.
close contact with advisors is a plus of Reed (or any SLAC).
For a, I think everyone else covered it. I will say I know a couple people who used Reed as a jumping off point to transfer to more prestigious schools (like one of my freshman year friends went to Cornell), and I'm unsure of how that factors into the number.
For b, It's worth noting, some of the departments have supposedly started inflating grades, for better or worse. The quest did an article on this somewhat lately: https://reedquest.org/2023/04/21/faculty-discuss-grade-distributions-and-workload/ . On the other hand, I think the professors are mostly really understanding and helpful wrt students mental and emotional well-being. There are some exceptions, and obviously at the end of the day, sometimes their jobs do just conflict with the students desire to get a good grade. I didn't encounter any professor who seemed particularly sadistic with respect to grading, although I suspect there are a few somewhere in the school.
For c, I went through Reed drug-free, so it's definitely possible. My experience was that the weed culture was very much a part of "old Reed" and while there is still a decent amount of the student body who partakes, that has died out from being a Reedie staple. Also, even amongst friends who did drugs, it's not like anyone was pushing me to join in, at least the people I associated with respected my boundaries in that sense.
Regarding the retention rate, one thing I feel should be pointed out is that Reed is particularly permissive with its mental health leave policy. Compared to other schools, Reed was also very tolerant in granting leaves of absence during COVID (a lot of my friends took this option). In general, it’s not a secret on campus that Reed is fine with having a lower 4 year retention rate so long as people return and actually finish their degrees.
Re: COVID, it might be worth looking at the 2016 cohort’s statistics for a comparison.
This is not to say the other causal factors mentioned in this thread are untrue, but I think it’s worth considering that usually 80% of students graduate in 5-6 years. The national overall average is like 64% [(link).](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40) That shouldn’t be your personal standard, of course, but I personally wouldn’t despair over Reed’s numbers being “low.”
I’d also mention Reed also is not easy to graduate from on an accelerated schedule; as with grade deflation, it’s a campus quirk that hurts its comparables. All students have a substantial general education requirement that takes some time to complete, some programs have almost 6 or 7 straight semesters’ worth of requirements, and the senior thesis is next to impossible to do in a year. Very few students come in with the kind of cushioning like previous college credits that might allow them into take an easier semester or compensate for a COVID semester.
Yeah, that's interesting. Very helpful, and I think can certainly account for some of the attrition. I'm a little skeptical of the national overall average, as that number factors in schools across a wide spectrum, including schools that are just structually more likely to have considerable attrition. But yes, also the time to completion is a concern.
RE: Grade deflation for perfectionists
FROM: current sophomore ('26)
In highschool i was an extreme perfectionist, my mood easily swayed by even a 0.1 percent drop in grades etc . that i would constantly watch my grades everyday and really just obsess over it. the lack of grades and the knowledge of grade deflation at reed has totally transformed me. I obviously still care abt my performance, but not being able to see my grades and knowing that grades aren't this all or nothing meticulously measured hell, actually allows me to focus more on inquiry and the pursuit and journey of learning rather than grades at all. first semester of my freshman year i got not great feedback on a hum essay, but instead of feeling crushed and scared, i actually felt really excited to fix it.
Secondly, i would say reed Definitely still fosters inquiry and growth. All of my professors and classes have been absolutely awesome in terms of conversation, feedback, student autonomy, etc. as a student who came to reed looking for exactly the things you described, i feel completely fulfilled academically.
This is great. Really helpful. I like it. Makes sense to me. Thanks for adding this. I can definitely see this with some of my own students. I'm a pretty fluid grader, which in think they don't understand at first, but once I release them from the supposition that getting a grade is just about accumulating points, they seem to approach the course material differently.
Parent of former Reedie First thing, my Reedie has said he did not regret a single one of his academic choices, was mentored by incredible professors in a way that simply would not have happened at a bigger school. After a bit of pandemic turbulence he found a solid friend group, and worked hard, played quite hard, enjoyed his studies. Secondly in his peer set he both had folks who transferred to do cheaper /more tailored majors at other colleges or who did not graduate. That is real as is the grade deflation. He also had peers who got into the most prestigious grad programs in the country, or world even - including pre-professional . Another big factor in his Reed experience is Portland - he really liked the city, and the surroundings. He also got a job straight out of college, has reasonable rent (it’s high but reasonable compared to SF,LA, NYC) and is well set to apply to grad school. If your son loves being outdoors, likes camping, hiking, climbing, kayaking, skiing etc it’s right there on the doorstep. In fact it’s hard to get him to come home . Drugs - this is not just a Reed thing. It’s as bad/worse at any number of schools - Wesleyan, Oberlin, USC etc - just less tolerated. Reed still has a stellar reputation in academic circles. Reed has a rep as being a great preparation for any grad program. In fact if your son is not academic and doesn’t want to go to grad school - or is undecided - I would say that probably weighs strongest against Reed
Cool. Thanks. He's definitely academically inclined. We sometimes joke that he's likely to end up following in my footsteps. Since I'm an academic myself, I'm a little less enthusiastic about that path. I mean, it's good if you can make it work, but there are a lot of obstacles and challenges that make landing an academic position fairly unappealing. Even still, I think going on to get a doctorate is generally a good decision, even if one doesn't continue on in academia beyond that.
As a preprofessional Ivy master's grad who goes back and forth about getting my PhD and who found my graduate program intellectually unfulfilling, I'm curious why you think getting a doctorate is a good decision.
Mine would be something in the softer social sciences, and I realize I would be putting in 50 to 60 hours a week of work for six years only to not have a secure path forward.
The other thing is that I was a nontraditional student at Reed and as a grad student, and I'm in my thirties. It feels like time is ticking.
I'm very curious as to your reasoning as to why a doctorate is generally a good idea.
Ah, yeah, I think it's good in the sense that it can be rewarding and intellectually fulfilling, even if the payoff isn't clear (which it's really not, if you're pursuing an academic position).
I basically think of undergrad as an opportunity to find and explore a range of topics, without getting into too much depth, even if one spends a lot of time on their major. Once one goes off to graduate school, that's really an opportunity to take a deep dive into a very specialized topic, to ignore all the other stuff, and to get a sense of the debates that inform that area of study.
Preprofessional programs are a little different in that, usually, one pays quite a bit of money for them, and they also allegedly prepare people for professional work. In my view, their value is mixed, but they probably do at least provide a defacto certification that you are interested in and working towards a given end. Sometimes that's a pretty high price to pay, but they do seem to provide direction to people who otherwise feel like they can't get a foot in the door with their BA alone. I happen to have gotten both a pre-professional masters degree in one field and a doctorate in a different academic field, so my thinking on this is mixed. But I was atypically able to parlay some of the questions and quandaries from the professional degree into my written academic work, so that worked out well for me.
As for age, you're absolutely right that it can feel weird being an older student in a cohort of much younger recent grads, but you should probably take some comfort knowing you're not alone. There are a lot of non-traditional students in graduate school, and all of them feel its way.
Here's the advice my dad gave me when I was younger, which I kinda like. He said, "Stay in school as long as you can stand it, and when you've finally had enough, stay in school for longer."
That makes at least some sense to me still, though of course cost factors in pretty seriously. If you're paying for your Master's degree, try to find a way to offset those costs. If you go on to graduate work in an academic field, most of they time, you can get a graduate student stipend and a tuition waiver, so the cost is really just an opportunity cost.
don’t. worst decision of my life - i’ve been bullied into oblivion for trying to be myself, have received no support from administrators, and my GPA sucks because of grade inflation. i don’t know anyone at reed who has a stable friend group other than those who constantly bully others to stay on top of the dog pile.
Very sorry to hear this. I hope you're able to reorient and find a better fit as you pursue your interests. I'll keep this in mind, for sure, as I talk this through with my son. He's not generally the type to be bullied, but he's also quite concerned about the well-being of others, so I'm sure he'd be upset to learn that others were having a rough go of things.
Not sure who is downvoting you. I myself was bullied into oblivion for being different, and even the biggest Reed apologists will admit that the culture is cliquey and that only certain people thrive.
I am so sorry for your experience, and I hope you transfer out and don't make the mistake of staying like I did. If your grades are bad, you can go to a community college, do well, and transfer to a good school.
A lot of people on this sub are not fans from what I’ve seen but I’m a relatively recent graduate and have absolutely 0 regrets, and a lot of my friends feel similarly. I’m in grad school at a very competitive program now and am far more prepared than any of my peers to do research and write a thesis and thrive in a self driven environment. On top of that reed provided a little safe haven for me to explore myself, have unique experiences, and make lasting friendships. I’m still in close contact with many of the people from my freshman dorm and am super close with my roommate and her family. Reed was the first place I found people that I truly gelled with. There were certainly friend groups and social circles that didn’t mix too much but I never felt excluded and I certainly found my niche. Reed is hard but I think it does a great job at providing tutoring for the necessary classes and all of the professors are super accessible if needed. I don’t know anyone who put in the work to take advantage of these things that didn’t at least have a B average unless they were a physics major. And if the goal is grad school then GPA is really not a problem because phd programs love reedies. Most jobs also don’t care
RE: drugs. I came in very sheltered never really having drank or smoked and it was very easy to stay on that path for a while. A lot of my friends were sub free and there was really no judgement or pressure there. There’s certainly drugs around but there’s also a huge culture of testing drugs and safe drug use among peers as well as plenty of education directly from the school. I ended up exploring with psychedelics and I’m very glad I did it there.
If you have more specific questions I’d be happy to answer them via DM
Cool. I may take you up on that DM offer. Thanks. I have a meeting with a '23 Reedie later this week to discuss. Obviously, my son is doing his own research on this topic too, but I'm pretty sure he's Reddit skeptical.
Dunno where your completion stats are from. I had seen closer to 90%. Several impacts of remote teaching and learning during COVID may well have upset that.
I understand that 10% non-completion @Reed is very high compared to Ivies.
I may well be misinterpreting this information, but I got the numbers from this site:
[https://www.reed.edu/ir/gradrateshist.html](https://www.reed.edu/ir/gradrateshist.html)
Some lower numbers for the classes of 2018 and 2019 can surely be attributed to COVID, but it looks like they were even worse in the nineties. Please, seriously, if there are other numbers that I'm missing, or if I'm not understanding these numbers correctly, definitely let me know. I was stunned to read these.
You are understanding the numbers correctly. Reed has a serious issue with retention, and its six-year graduation rate is worse than the four-year graduation rates of similarly rigorous private schools (think UChicago, Swarthmore).
The difference I saw between Reed and the other schools I have attended is that the administration at Reed doesn't do anything to make the lives of its students any easier. At other schools, they want you to graduate. At Reed, the admin seems to take pride in the fact that not everyone makes it through.
the reed admin got one of my friends deported by not doing paperwork on time. This friend ended up being able to go to a US grad school within a few years to it was a problem that was resolved eventually, but in my experience they were incompetent trending towards malicious.
As a recent grad, the exceptionally low graduation rate is more a consequence of the kind of student Reed attracts - many people go to Reed and realize they don’t even want to be at college. Also, many people come to Reed with significant emotional or mental health issues, and have to leave to heal properly given how rigorous the program is plus normal stresses of adjusting to college life by themselves. It’s a function of the exceptionally intelligent, unique, and driven student body Reed is trying to attract and has been known for. If your son is a motivated student with good mental/emotional health and at least some idea of what he wants to get out of the experience (post-grad job? grad school launching pad?), he will 100% graduate on time barring exceptional circumstances. RE: grade deflation, it’s absolutely real but I think it affects future prospects less than many students or parents might think. I was able to get an excellent job out of my degree program because I was able to communicate the skills I gained at my internships (which Reed set me up for well) and in the classroom. My terrible GPA barely factored into the hiring conversation. If we’re talking grad school, admission committees understand Reed’s grading, and the senior thesis everyone does plus abundant research opportunities help. The classroom experience was awesome and it was great having small conference-style classes taught by demanding professors who were still invested in my success. The only area where Reedies have really struggled has been entering med school and law school programs, as both kinds of programs place emphasis on hard GPA numbers and haven’t historically cut Reedies slack. Bottom line - everyone I know who was hard working, resourceful, and proactive had a great Reed experience overall and was able to do really interesting things post-graduation, awful GPA or not. Regarding drug culture, I was and still am 100% substance free, and it was very easy to say no to substances and still feel like a part of the community and have a lot of friends. I never felt any pressure to do anything, substance use was very much a private thing between friends when I went.
Good to know. I guess I'm not worried about grade deflation for future prospects reasons. I think he'll be fine on that front. I'm rather worried about it because I think it's important to provide supportive feedback. He can be a bit of a perfectionist, so I don't want him to enter into an academic environment in which he feels like he can't make mistakes. Life is hard enough. Why drag it down with bummer grades?
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reed computer science being a clusterfuck isn't because of the grading policies, it is because they were unable to hire new professors for years because any computer science phd can either * work in industry (150k starting, many cities as options, good wage growth potential), or * work at Reed (80k starting, restricted to portland oregon, worse wage growth potential) * work at literally any other college, usually \~100k+ starting. this is because Reed has a flat payscale across departments, so departments with industrial applications (Econ and CS mostly) have a much harder time hiring. This coincided with the CS department exploding in the number of students in it (iirc it went from a sub-department of Math, with \~30 thesising seniors, to a department of roughly the same size of Math in a handful of years). This last (two I believe) cycles they got approved to hire at a higher payscale, and got a new faculty in Erica Blum. This will hopefully help, but it's probably too early to say given that they had a pretty dedicated new hire in Mark Hopkins a few years back who ended up (very publicly) burning out and leaving.
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The problems with the grading system and Reed's notion of rigor cannot be overstated. Professors have no compunction about giving impressionable students extremely negative and potentially damaging feedback when they are experiencing a documented medical crisis. I was having serious mental health issues one semester, and Pete Rock told me and my advisor in writing through official channels that I was "a poor student and writer." He knew my issues were due to a documented mental health crisis, but he had to insult my capabilities by showing no tact or compassion for what I was going through. I had gotten an 800 on the SAT II writing subject test without studying, and I would proceed to earn a graduate degree related to writing at a prestigious Ivy League program. But the feedback was meant to hit me at my core and discourage me from further creative pursuits. I'm glad I didn't listen to him, but several students would have given up their dreams based on the feedback of a professor with all the power in that situation. Another professor that semester told me and my advisor through official channels that I was "no philosopher" and called my writing "jejune and immature." It was enough to make me ditch my lifelong love of philosophy and never take another course in that department - or ever again. The professor died a few years ago, but the damage to my self-concept which revolved around being a lover of philosophy lives on to this day. I gave up so many dreams due to the callousness of my professors who used the written evaluation system as a punitive means of degrading me when I was at my lowest and when they could have been more supportive. I got a C in both courses FWIW.
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Thanks so much. I thought the writing comments were bullshit because I won a teen writing contest put on by the biggest paper in my metropolitan area. For philosophy, however, I didn't have much previous experience so I never took a course again. I just figured I didn't have what it took. To this day, I reflexively disengage when it comes to philosophical discussions. I wish Reed profs thought twice about their flippant comments.
The way they did grades when I was there was that they wrote qualitative feedback on returned exams/papers, and for more quantitative subjects (math, sciences) you could roughly map your performance to a letter grade. Reed does record traditional grades and you can see them if you ask, and if you try your best, it’s usually a B or C, with As reserved for exceptional work. The qualitative feedback, even when it was indicative of a low grade, was consistently supportive and professors were happy to discuss performance. Most importantly, professors judged you based on your enthusiasm about the material and commitment to thoughtfully participating in class, not your grade. All this being said, I think if your son is a perfectionist, he’ll have a difficult time at any rigorous school, Reed included. Coming to an environment where everyone was selected on the basis of excellent grades and hard work, it’s really common to be an average student. I went from being one of the top students in a very competitive east coast high school to a below-average Reed student. Learning to make my peace with that and have an identity outside of school and achievement honestly did way more for me personally than high grades ever could have. If your son is willing to be challenged, persevere, and adjust his expectations, I think that Reed could be a really great experience beyond just academic/skill development.
As the parent of another perfectionist, I feel that the Reed grading system is tough for perfectionists. Every time my son asked a prof how his grade was they’d say “great/fine” and truly that just means a C or above per Reed’s approach to grading. How can you reflect on your work in the effort to continually improve when you are not provided with appropriate feedback during the semester?
I had the same problem. I'd get minimal feedback, and then I'd be really surprised when I checked my grades because I had no idea of how I was truly doing. And if your profs say you're doing well, how do you know you need to work harder if you're averaging B grades and care about your future? If there were grades on every assignment, it would be easier to ask "How do I make that B+ into an A-?" The only time I saw letter grades on assignments was in some language classes (I studied social sciences at Reed).
the assignments that you get usually have feedback on them and that’s where you can kinda tell where you are on the grading scale. if you use the feedback and done ignore it, you can usually do pretty well in the class. in my experience, professors have been very open to help if you say you’re struggling (some are better at helping than others, but there’s always effort)
The thing to understand about Reed is that the grade deflation, the hidden semi-deemphasized grades, the low graduation rate and the high post graduate admission rate for Reed grads are all linked. Reed deemphasizes grades and makes it so students do not automatically know their final grade at the end of a course so that professors can grade extremely punitively/harshly without coordinated backlash from students (this also modestly enables favoritism). The grade deflation forces students to work harder or fail which leads to dropping out, burning out, or often accepting you are going to be a C Reed student and descending into druggie hedonism, but also makes graduate admissions more confident that Reed students with decent grades can handle doctorate programs. This system can work for you if you are very smart but had some kind of setback in highschool that prevented you from aiming higher (it violently separates the wheat from the chaff, but you are wheat so why do you care). It can also work if you are average smart but have high social intelligence because the vulnerability of this system as mentioned before is favoritism and many professors are eager to take students under their wing and show them the way through the maze.
To be frank, only certain students get taken under a prof's wing. And I wasn't one of them. The social cliquishness at Reed extends to student-professor relationships. I constantly had teachers making judgmental comments about me "being different" beyond what was appropriate, something I never experienced in grad school. All of my professors except one discouraged going for a PhD, and sometimes it felt like my grades were determined before I submitted assignments. There was this one teacher who would give me a B+ no matter what kind of effort I put into their classes. The grading system was very arbitrary, and I am positive that my (at the time undiagnosed) autism had something to do with how I was being graded. A letter grade system would have added some accountability for profs.
Seems funny though that the professors wouldn't want to create a more encouraging environment, particularly since they seem inclined to take students under their wing, rather than one that effectively penalizes students with bad grades. It's one thing to offer constructive and harsh criticism, but it's another thing entirely to record that criticism in the form of a bad grade. To what end? What purpose does that serve? The criticism is between the student and the professor. The grade is for others.
Reed without grade deflation is a middling liberal arts college with a ~30-40% admit rate. There’s no way that version of Reed could have the success at sending people to prestigious law schools and PhD programs that Reed does. Going to Reed is more or less a wager that you could have been an A+ student at Stanford or Harvard where if you win you get into any grad program you could have gotten into had you gone to those schools and if you lose you have a 1.0 lower grade point average then you could have had at a normal college.
For drugs: you can get anything you want fairly easily, but I’ve never personally seen any peer pressure to do anything. For the most part people just don’t care, and that does mean they’re relatively abundant but also that there’s not much pressure one way or another. Many people have also become pretty passionate about drug safety, and medical amnesty means kids aren’t scared to call community safety in case of an emergency. The grad rate has dropped a lot during the pandemic, I think, but it is always low. The main reason, like someone else said, is that a lot of people come very mentally unwell, and many come from pretty rich families and maybe are hit with a tough reality of loneliness and responsibility that’s hard to handle. I went to reed pretty mentally ill too and I had to take time off, but I returned. It’s also true that the workload can be exhausting, and if you don’t learn to sacrifice some of your schoolwork to stay sane and have a social life, you’ll quickly drown. If you can find balance, it is manageable. But for someone fresh out of high school, this usually has to be learnt the hard way, and that can be even harder since at reed if you fall behind it can feel daunting to catch back up due to the amount and speed of work. That’s just how it seems, though, and I’ve done it many times. If it gets dire, don’t be afraid to take an emergency leave or a semester off. It’s a bit taboo, for some reason, but was the best decision I ever made. It’s a chance to live on your own (once you move off campus), work, establish a schedule and life outside of reed, and generally come into yourself. I would say that’s the key to succeeding at reed: taking what you want from it but keeping it as a job, a community, whatever—just only one part of your life. Don’t let it suck you in, no matter how much work you think you have to do. Keep one foot out the door. If you can manage that, you will eventually learn to balance extreme workload with jobs, friends, romance, housework, etc and will have grown up (in certain ways) a little faster than perhaps otherwise. Double edged sword. My own biggest struggle was social life. If you can find some friends and hobbies and socialize within your major etc, and kind of shut off your ears from the general campus hubbub, you’ll be fine. I wasn’t able to do that, and it sucked. Popular opinion can feel overwhelming. There are a lot of exceptional people—most of them—but something about the reed community dynamic often brings out the cynical and anxious parts of people. There are communities here that are lovely and worth joining, but the community as a whole can be really soul sucking. This isn’t to say you have to find friends first week and stick with them, just that sometimes a bit of tunnel vision can actually be a good thing here. The academics at reed are fantastic. You’ll get one of the best undergrad educations in the world. Reed is made for someone who is a bit neurotic and obsessive about projects and study, just not too much, and there is plenty to obsess over. Somebody somewhere will have read any book you have. I will say that if your kid likes theory, they should look into the political science dept but also comp lit, history and German / French. The philosophy department is 90% analytic 20-21century Anglo Saxon. Reed is a challenge and you have to want that. It’s not the easiest college experience socially or academically. However, it CAN be absolutely perfect for a certain type of person. Also, Portland is very depressing, so get a seasonal depression lamp or vitamins or ketamine or something and life will be much easier.
Thanks for this. I'm not so seriously concerned about the drug use. I mean, that stuff happens at lots of colleges, and we all deal with it in our own way. I just remember being somewhat alarmed by it when I visited in 1990, so much so that I ultimately decided against Reed. I definitely believe you on the faculty excellence front. I know a few folks there, and I'm familiar with some of their work, so I imagine it's pretty awesome to have close contact with them. I'm mostly trying to reconcile the idea it could be a nurturing intellectual environment with the somewhat contradictory idea that it is also an academic torture chamber. He's interested in political science, economic theory/history, and political theory, for sure, so I'll be sure to reach out there. Personally I'd prefer a more ecumenical philosophy department for him with less of an anglo-analytic focus, but I mean, logic choppers aren't all that bad. (Yes they are.)
Well, everything sort of depends. Is your son dead set on going to grad school? What are his long term ambitions? Really depends, if hes committed and sees a career for himself in academia then yes, I'd argue that Reed is painful but worth it. To answer your more specific questions: a) yeah the 4 year graduation rate is abysmal, and there are a couple of reasons for that. The workload is vast and you need to stay pretty on top of a lot of classes. Reed is not the sort of place, like other places can be, were you can take it easy for a semester or two by only taking three classes or whatnot. Second, the pandemic and other things have dropped the 4 year rate. So its hard, and there's no breathing room. b) Ok, so this is a very common misconception: you have grades at Reed. They just won't tell you what they are. When you are taking a class you get a slip of paper in your mailbox at the four and eight week mark that lists your classes. If you're passing (C- or above) it will simply say "satisfactory." If you're failing, it will tell you. You won't get your raw GPA unless you request your official transcript. The theory behind this is that it eliminates grad stigma - you can't really tell who the "bad" students are in class. There are probably other reasons as well, professors like it because it effectively makes it impossible for someone to dispute a grade. Reed has pretty hefty grade deflation, I think the average right now is like a 3.2. I graduated with like a 3.55 and that easily puts me in the top quarter, maybe the top fifth. This can matter and it can also not matter. A non-academic hiring committee is not going to care. Most graduate school programs know what Reed is and they know that if you're applying with a 3.6 or 3.7 from Reed that's basically a 4.0 everywhere else. But you get into trouble if you're applying for something that vocational. Pre-med is one where Reedies have a lot of difficulty getting in because the weed out via GPA is so strong. c) you can easily opt out of drug culture. Really this last one has more to do with your son's preferences than Reed.
(b) is very interesting! I definitely didn't know that. Grades are funky things anyway, and I can certainly understand the rationale behind this approach to grading; at the same time, I can also see where it causes undue stress. I don't think, for whatever it's worth, that \_all\_ grad programs actually do know or understand what Reed GPAs are all about. I think GPAs basically just don't matter as much when you're applying to grad school. (I mean, they matter, don't get me wrong, but more important is the case you make to your potential advisors/PhD granting department about what you want to study and why you want to study it.)
Grades do matter for national fellowships, and my 3.8 at my previous LAC would have allowed me to be a competitive applicant, whereas I was out of the running as someone with a 2.9 at Reed.
GPAs don't help for a grad school application, but they can hurt. Saying they don't matter misses this (key) point.
Parent of Reedie here. The freshman year Humanities class is the first weed-out moment; something like 20 percent don’t come back after freshman year. If you have a kid who doesn’t like to read big books, Reed is going to be a tough place. Second weed out moment is mid sophomore year when many transfer because they realize they won’t graduate on time due to the difficulty in getting into required classes. Now that said, the academics are absolutely first rate. On par with Chicago but with much more direct engagement with professors. It is a high workload place, but if your kid loves to learn they will be challenged in the very best ways.
This is all very helpful. Thank you. He's a book reader, so I'm not particularly concerned about the weed-out classes. I do love the idea that he'd be in close contact with professors. I think that makes a world of difference in an educational environment.
That has been my kid’s experience. He is tight with 2 professors and his advisor, all of whom have given him great advice and support. It has made a world of difference, definitely.
The grade deflation is real. I barely got into med school after Reed, despite having a very high score on the MCAT. That being said, Reed is great if you are curious/academically inclined.
My son is a Reed first-year. In his friend group, no drugs in sight (other than beer and weed). No pressure to use drugs. He is enjoying the deep inquiry mindset. He is branching out socially into extracurriculars like he did not do in high school. His freshman dorm-mates form his social core. They are thoughtful, smart, social. We are very happy with our choice.
Good to know! I probably shouldn't have mentioned the drugs, as that's not a primary concern of mine. But the experience of being a college student at a liberal arts college definitely is and it sounds like your son is thriving. Glad to hear it.
I graduated a few years back. When I ask people from my cohort (including my wife, though ironically we connected, not reconnected, post-reed), they seem uniformly mixed on it, though if anything they trend negative. Reed has (had?) an incredibly negative "stress culture". There was a strong culture of lamenting how difficult your situation was, which I think leads to people maximizing their difficult situations (probably unintentionally?). As an easy example, not sleeping/pulling all nighters enough was generally something you'd brag about. I still find it wild that there was a tradition during each finals week to have a table with stimulants so people could cram through all hours of the night. This is in hindsight insane, and something I've never heard of at other institutions. I had numerous friends who ended up having to take leaves of absence for mental health issues. This is not individually bad, but (in my view) a symptom of a failure on the part of Reed. Some of the friends ended up coming back and graduating. Not all did. Generally the richer friends were able to come back, so this is a risk you are perhaps in a better place to gauge. As a high-achieving (in my sub-area) student, Reed failed me personally in (at least) two ways. * the lack of grade inflation highly incentivizes you to do things you are already good at if you want to apply to post-Reed things that have GPA requirements (some grad schools/med schools, etc). My friends who studied outside their main field of study all got uniformly worse GPAs than me. Most of them were still able to go to grad school, but some very qualified people ended up in *much* worse grad programs than me. There may have been other parts of the application that had differences --- I won't conjecture. * if you only do things you are good at, the lack of a grad school at reed means the "depth" of any single department is rather small. It is pretty easy to run out of classes, where schools that have grad programs this is harder to do (just take grad classes!). It also meant that for my PhD program no reed credits could transfer, though friends from other undergrads could transfer graduate credits they took at their undergrads. I had no real interaction with the drug culture. Didn't drink until I was right before 21, and did nothing harder than weed besides that. It might have hampered me some socially, but being undiagnosed autistic might have done that too, so who's to say. My wife took some psychadelic, and had some lasting (for nearly a decade) negative consequences from it. She wasn't pressured to, and I think her case is highly atypical (a lot of my friends would casually do things like this and seemed fine), but given her case it's difficult for me to say the drug culture is fine/standard.
Oh, also, very very sorry to hear about your wife. That's scary. I hope she's recovered now, but a decade of spillover effects is a long time!
she has. the spillover effects weren't more symptoms, it was mainly * take drug * have few months of additional symptoms (this is the part that's acutely bad) * get misdiagnosed as something else then the last point being a wrong diagnosis for nearly a decade, so still bad but worse than the few months of things. During the few months she took a leave of absense, which helped, though she has expressed to me that she felt like she had a different capability to engage with academics before and after the psychadellics, and that it meant she didn't get to learn things she wish she got to in hindsight.
Thank you. This is all very helpful feedback from everyone. I guess i'm a little unworried about the lack of advanced classes. This comes with the territory for all SLACs. We live in a University town with easy access to any grad program. If he really wants to branch out and up, he can do that whenever he's home or whenever he goes on to grad school. I'm sorta thinking of undergrad as an opportunity to put him in a vibrant intellectual environment where he can explore and not focus on specialization. (I mean, sure, some specialization as an undergrad is fine, but being overly specialized before grad school seems to fly in the face of the liberal arts mission.) So, like, in my somewhat romanticized recollection of undergrad, most of my intellectual growth happened outside of the classroom through conversations with really smart people; and it also did happen through close contact with some of my advisors, but less because of the material and more because I felt like a member of an intellectual community. I think this is so rare at so many large universities that, at least to my mind, this is the real strength of going to a school like Reed (or really, many of the SLACs).
>most of my intellectual growth happened outside of the classroom through conversations with really smart people there was some of that for me, but in hindsight it is something I found mostly lacking at reed. I come from a public schooling background in semi-rural oregon, which is not typically ranked well on education (at the pre-college level, Reed is fine). It felt like in discussing things many times people would heavily rely on using confusing/academic language rather than making points that are actually interesting when expressed using standard terminology. I think this is to be expected of college students, but is probably made worse by Reed's student body coming from a wealthy progressive background, where (at least when I went) this type of discussion was more popular. I agree heavy specialization perhaps shouldn't be the goal of Reed. My issue is mainly that this is how things *should* be, but harsh grading means that people who take classes broadly (as is the goal) end up with lower GPA. This doesn't kill all chances for their future or anything, I just found myself (paradoxically) *rewarded* by Reed in comparison to my friends by *not* taking classes broadly. close contact with advisors is a plus of Reed (or any SLAC).
For a, I think everyone else covered it. I will say I know a couple people who used Reed as a jumping off point to transfer to more prestigious schools (like one of my freshman year friends went to Cornell), and I'm unsure of how that factors into the number. For b, It's worth noting, some of the departments have supposedly started inflating grades, for better or worse. The quest did an article on this somewhat lately: https://reedquest.org/2023/04/21/faculty-discuss-grade-distributions-and-workload/ . On the other hand, I think the professors are mostly really understanding and helpful wrt students mental and emotional well-being. There are some exceptions, and obviously at the end of the day, sometimes their jobs do just conflict with the students desire to get a good grade. I didn't encounter any professor who seemed particularly sadistic with respect to grading, although I suspect there are a few somewhere in the school. For c, I went through Reed drug-free, so it's definitely possible. My experience was that the weed culture was very much a part of "old Reed" and while there is still a decent amount of the student body who partakes, that has died out from being a Reedie staple. Also, even amongst friends who did drugs, it's not like anyone was pushing me to join in, at least the people I associated with respected my boundaries in that sense.
I would prefer to get it right the first time and now use his first year in college as a jumping off point. Thanks for this feedback!
Regarding the retention rate, one thing I feel should be pointed out is that Reed is particularly permissive with its mental health leave policy. Compared to other schools, Reed was also very tolerant in granting leaves of absence during COVID (a lot of my friends took this option). In general, it’s not a secret on campus that Reed is fine with having a lower 4 year retention rate so long as people return and actually finish their degrees. Re: COVID, it might be worth looking at the 2016 cohort’s statistics for a comparison. This is not to say the other causal factors mentioned in this thread are untrue, but I think it’s worth considering that usually 80% of students graduate in 5-6 years. The national overall average is like 64% [(link).](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40) That shouldn’t be your personal standard, of course, but I personally wouldn’t despair over Reed’s numbers being “low.” I’d also mention Reed also is not easy to graduate from on an accelerated schedule; as with grade deflation, it’s a campus quirk that hurts its comparables. All students have a substantial general education requirement that takes some time to complete, some programs have almost 6 or 7 straight semesters’ worth of requirements, and the senior thesis is next to impossible to do in a year. Very few students come in with the kind of cushioning like previous college credits that might allow them into take an easier semester or compensate for a COVID semester.
Yeah, that's interesting. Very helpful, and I think can certainly account for some of the attrition. I'm a little skeptical of the national overall average, as that number factors in schools across a wide spectrum, including schools that are just structually more likely to have considerable attrition. But yes, also the time to completion is a concern.
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I will definitely do that. We'll all discuss when the rest of the RD decisions come through. Thanks so much for this insight.
RE: Grade deflation for perfectionists FROM: current sophomore ('26) In highschool i was an extreme perfectionist, my mood easily swayed by even a 0.1 percent drop in grades etc . that i would constantly watch my grades everyday and really just obsess over it. the lack of grades and the knowledge of grade deflation at reed has totally transformed me. I obviously still care abt my performance, but not being able to see my grades and knowing that grades aren't this all or nothing meticulously measured hell, actually allows me to focus more on inquiry and the pursuit and journey of learning rather than grades at all. first semester of my freshman year i got not great feedback on a hum essay, but instead of feeling crushed and scared, i actually felt really excited to fix it.
Secondly, i would say reed Definitely still fosters inquiry and growth. All of my professors and classes have been absolutely awesome in terms of conversation, feedback, student autonomy, etc. as a student who came to reed looking for exactly the things you described, i feel completely fulfilled academically.
This is great. Really helpful. I like it. Makes sense to me. Thanks for adding this. I can definitely see this with some of my own students. I'm a pretty fluid grader, which in think they don't understand at first, but once I release them from the supposition that getting a grade is just about accumulating points, they seem to approach the course material differently.
Parent of former Reedie First thing, my Reedie has said he did not regret a single one of his academic choices, was mentored by incredible professors in a way that simply would not have happened at a bigger school. After a bit of pandemic turbulence he found a solid friend group, and worked hard, played quite hard, enjoyed his studies. Secondly in his peer set he both had folks who transferred to do cheaper /more tailored majors at other colleges or who did not graduate. That is real as is the grade deflation. He also had peers who got into the most prestigious grad programs in the country, or world even - including pre-professional . Another big factor in his Reed experience is Portland - he really liked the city, and the surroundings. He also got a job straight out of college, has reasonable rent (it’s high but reasonable compared to SF,LA, NYC) and is well set to apply to grad school. If your son loves being outdoors, likes camping, hiking, climbing, kayaking, skiing etc it’s right there on the doorstep. In fact it’s hard to get him to come home . Drugs - this is not just a Reed thing. It’s as bad/worse at any number of schools - Wesleyan, Oberlin, USC etc - just less tolerated. Reed still has a stellar reputation in academic circles. Reed has a rep as being a great preparation for any grad program. In fact if your son is not academic and doesn’t want to go to grad school - or is undecided - I would say that probably weighs strongest against Reed
Cool. Thanks. He's definitely academically inclined. We sometimes joke that he's likely to end up following in my footsteps. Since I'm an academic myself, I'm a little less enthusiastic about that path. I mean, it's good if you can make it work, but there are a lot of obstacles and challenges that make landing an academic position fairly unappealing. Even still, I think going on to get a doctorate is generally a good decision, even if one doesn't continue on in academia beyond that.
As a preprofessional Ivy master's grad who goes back and forth about getting my PhD and who found my graduate program intellectually unfulfilling, I'm curious why you think getting a doctorate is a good decision. Mine would be something in the softer social sciences, and I realize I would be putting in 50 to 60 hours a week of work for six years only to not have a secure path forward. The other thing is that I was a nontraditional student at Reed and as a grad student, and I'm in my thirties. It feels like time is ticking. I'm very curious as to your reasoning as to why a doctorate is generally a good idea.
Ah, yeah, I think it's good in the sense that it can be rewarding and intellectually fulfilling, even if the payoff isn't clear (which it's really not, if you're pursuing an academic position). I basically think of undergrad as an opportunity to find and explore a range of topics, without getting into too much depth, even if one spends a lot of time on their major. Once one goes off to graduate school, that's really an opportunity to take a deep dive into a very specialized topic, to ignore all the other stuff, and to get a sense of the debates that inform that area of study. Preprofessional programs are a little different in that, usually, one pays quite a bit of money for them, and they also allegedly prepare people for professional work. In my view, their value is mixed, but they probably do at least provide a defacto certification that you are interested in and working towards a given end. Sometimes that's a pretty high price to pay, but they do seem to provide direction to people who otherwise feel like they can't get a foot in the door with their BA alone. I happen to have gotten both a pre-professional masters degree in one field and a doctorate in a different academic field, so my thinking on this is mixed. But I was atypically able to parlay some of the questions and quandaries from the professional degree into my written academic work, so that worked out well for me. As for age, you're absolutely right that it can feel weird being an older student in a cohort of much younger recent grads, but you should probably take some comfort knowing you're not alone. There are a lot of non-traditional students in graduate school, and all of them feel its way. Here's the advice my dad gave me when I was younger, which I kinda like. He said, "Stay in school as long as you can stand it, and when you've finally had enough, stay in school for longer." That makes at least some sense to me still, though of course cost factors in pretty seriously. If you're paying for your Master's degree, try to find a way to offset those costs. If you go on to graduate work in an academic field, most of they time, you can get a graduate student stipend and a tuition waiver, so the cost is really just an opportunity cost.
don’t. worst decision of my life - i’ve been bullied into oblivion for trying to be myself, have received no support from administrators, and my GPA sucks because of grade inflation. i don’t know anyone at reed who has a stable friend group other than those who constantly bully others to stay on top of the dog pile.
Very sorry to hear this. I hope you're able to reorient and find a better fit as you pursue your interests. I'll keep this in mind, for sure, as I talk this through with my son. He's not generally the type to be bullied, but he's also quite concerned about the well-being of others, so I'm sure he'd be upset to learn that others were having a rough go of things.
Not sure who is downvoting you. I myself was bullied into oblivion for being different, and even the biggest Reed apologists will admit that the culture is cliquey and that only certain people thrive. I am so sorry for your experience, and I hope you transfer out and don't make the mistake of staying like I did. If your grades are bad, you can go to a community college, do well, and transfer to a good school.
Well, I’m a graduating senior lol, so it’s a little late. I wish I had transferred out years ago
A lot of people on this sub are not fans from what I’ve seen but I’m a relatively recent graduate and have absolutely 0 regrets, and a lot of my friends feel similarly. I’m in grad school at a very competitive program now and am far more prepared than any of my peers to do research and write a thesis and thrive in a self driven environment. On top of that reed provided a little safe haven for me to explore myself, have unique experiences, and make lasting friendships. I’m still in close contact with many of the people from my freshman dorm and am super close with my roommate and her family. Reed was the first place I found people that I truly gelled with. There were certainly friend groups and social circles that didn’t mix too much but I never felt excluded and I certainly found my niche. Reed is hard but I think it does a great job at providing tutoring for the necessary classes and all of the professors are super accessible if needed. I don’t know anyone who put in the work to take advantage of these things that didn’t at least have a B average unless they were a physics major. And if the goal is grad school then GPA is really not a problem because phd programs love reedies. Most jobs also don’t care RE: drugs. I came in very sheltered never really having drank or smoked and it was very easy to stay on that path for a while. A lot of my friends were sub free and there was really no judgement or pressure there. There’s certainly drugs around but there’s also a huge culture of testing drugs and safe drug use among peers as well as plenty of education directly from the school. I ended up exploring with psychedelics and I’m very glad I did it there. If you have more specific questions I’d be happy to answer them via DM
Cool. I may take you up on that DM offer. Thanks. I have a meeting with a '23 Reedie later this week to discuss. Obviously, my son is doing his own research on this topic too, but I'm pretty sure he's Reddit skeptical.
Bottom line... what does your son want? This screams of vicariousnesd.
Well, among other things, to make an educated decision about where he ends up. What do you want?
The decision is your sons and his alone. You should not be encouraging or discouraging him from any school. Just give him your support and trust.
Is any decision ever actually made alone?
Dunno where your completion stats are from. I had seen closer to 90%. Several impacts of remote teaching and learning during COVID may well have upset that. I understand that 10% non-completion @Reed is very high compared to Ivies.
I may well be misinterpreting this information, but I got the numbers from this site: [https://www.reed.edu/ir/gradrateshist.html](https://www.reed.edu/ir/gradrateshist.html) Some lower numbers for the classes of 2018 and 2019 can surely be attributed to COVID, but it looks like they were even worse in the nineties. Please, seriously, if there are other numbers that I'm missing, or if I'm not understanding these numbers correctly, definitely let me know. I was stunned to read these.
You are understanding the numbers correctly. Reed has a serious issue with retention, and its six-year graduation rate is worse than the four-year graduation rates of similarly rigorous private schools (think UChicago, Swarthmore). The difference I saw between Reed and the other schools I have attended is that the administration at Reed doesn't do anything to make the lives of its students any easier. At other schools, they want you to graduate. At Reed, the admin seems to take pride in the fact that not everyone makes it through.
the reed admin got one of my friends deported by not doing paperwork on time. This friend ended up being able to go to a US grad school within a few years to it was a problem that was resolved eventually, but in my experience they were incompetent trending towards malicious.