Posted on 05/18/2006 3:46:05 AM PDT by billorites
Seven days before the test, Stephanie Yeh stood in her sorority house and cried.
An electrical engineering and computer science major, she was set to graduate near the top of her MIT class next month and start a six-figure job as a Wall Street analyst.
Just one test, terrifying to her, remained. She, like scores of undergraduates at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had been putting it off for nearly four years. But Yeh and the others have to pass this exam to graduate.
She had to swim 100 yards, four lengths of a pool, without stopping.
The problem: Yeh never learned how to swim.
''Just having my face in the water really, really freaks me out," Yeh said the day before the test. ''So I never learned, I never really wanted to."
Hundreds of college seniors nationwide are similarly in deep. At Cornell, Dartmouth, and Columbia, where swim proficiency also is required, it is time to sink or swim. For students like Yeh, who has aced virtually every exam in her 22 years, it is time to face demons under the surface.
College swim requirements, which sprang up after World War II, have been in decline since the 1970s. One criticism: The test was biased against those who grew up away from the water.
Among the colleges dropping it: MIT's cross-town rival, Harvard. By 1997, just 14 percent of schools had a swim test, according to a North Carolina State University survey. And more schools have dropped the test since, though college is one of the last chances for mass instruction, said Frank Ormond III, an associate professor of physical education who conducted the North Carolina State survey.
Much to Yeh's chagrin, MIT has stayed the course. Carrie Moore, director of physical education at MIT, calls it....
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
You'd think if these kids knew they'd have to pass this test eventually, they'd have enrolled in adult swim classes at the YMCA in their freshman year.
My sister was phobic about the water, she learned to swim when she was in her 40's and there were people in her class that were much older than her, and more phobic about the water, and they also learned to swim.
As far as I'm concerned there is no excuse for able bodied people not to know how to swim these days.
I had no idea colleges required swimming to graduate.
On the other hand, they knew the requirements when they chose to go to school there.
It's a four-year school. It's got a manadatory swim test. You have four years to prepare. Failure to pass the mandatory swim test is just like not being able to do the math. You know you have to do it or else you just can't hope to graduate. What's the problem?
My husband learned to swim in his 30's, and the program he was in had a special group of 3 or 4 adults who were terrified of the water.
I sympathize with these students' fears, but they had *four years* to take swimming lessons.
That's stupid.
FMCDH(BITS)
Well, if she wants to come to Wall Street and swim with the sharks.....
And math tests are biased against those with no aptitude for math. What is wrong with that?
All tests are biased against those who either don't care to study enough or who have no innate ability to pass the test.
Because if the ship they were on to cross the Atlantic was hit by a torpedo, they would need to quickly swim 100 yards in order to escape the downward pull of the sinking ship.
(Boy Scouts trivia)
Perhaps MIT does not want to graduate people who are smart enough to do MIT academic work, but not bright enough to prepare for a basic life skills test - IOW, too smart to be practical. I applaud MIT.
I went to MIT (a long time ago) and I had no idea there was a swim test until I got there. I couldn't swim either, I had had little access to a pool growing up and it's pretty hard to learn to swim in a rough ocean. If you read the article carefully you had to pass the test OR take a beginning swim class. I took the class, passed the test after a couple of weeks. I was glad they had this requirement. The article tries to gloss over the fact she could have just taken the class, never even tried to do the test, and still met the requirement. "I was too busy". I call BS, it's MIT, everyone's busy, she just didn't want to do it.
A swim test to graduate??? Never heard of such. It's ridiculous. What does swimming have to do with, well, with anything. It must be a northern thing.
Back to the article - she knew 4 years ago so no sympathies.
If she's in a sorority, she was taking plenty of time off from studying.
LOL thanks makes sense scratches head thoughtfully.
One might ask the same question about a whole list of elective requirements in any degree program. Why was it necessary to take an Astronomy Class or a Biology Lab to complete a BS in Business Administration?
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