What Every Science Student Should Know

Justin L. Bauer, Yoo Jung Kim, Andrew H. Zureick, Daniel K. Lee

• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780226198910
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Science & Technology

A guide for STEM students who want to excel—both in school and beyond. Based on years of research and interviews with successful scientists and science students, this book is designed for college students on the path to a STEM career, helping them avoid pitfalls and obstacles and find success both academically and in the real world. Like an experienced lab partner or a candid advisor, the book provides both realistic practical advice and encouragement, covering the entire college experience including:

• choosing a major
• mastering study skills
• doing scientific research
• finding a job
• building and maintaining a love of science that will keep you motivated

Written by recent science graduates including former editors-in-chief of the prestigious Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, this guide can help get you through the ups and downs of undergrad life—and help you excel as both a student and a scientist.

1

Welcome to the World of College Science

The one thing none of your college science courses will teach you is how to succeed in them. Studying science needs to come with an owner’s manual, and that manual is this book.

Study skills, choosing a major, research, and career planning are just a few of the topics covered in this concise guide. The scientific disciplines—math, engineering, chemistry, computer science, etc.—are both challenging and rewarding. Yet relatively few students make it through the intense and sometimes competitive world of college science. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, you need advice from people who have been through what you are about to experience. This book—painstakingly distilled from years of research, interviews with successful scientists and science students, and our own experiences as recent science graduates—is the advice that we, your authors, wish we had heard when we came to college.

Good luck and welcome to the world of college science! We look forward to helping you every step of the way in the coming pages.

Why Is Science So Hard?

Only a small fraction of the most able youngsters enter scientific careers. I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. Something happens in the school years to discourage their interest (and it is not mainly puberty); we must understand and circumvent this dangerous discouragement. No one can predict where the future leaders of science will come from.

Carl Sagan1

Sixty percent of college students planning to study science or medicine change their minds later in their academic careers.2 Why do so many students end up leaving their scientific aspirations behind?

First of all, science isn’t easy to learn. We come out of the womb with the capacity to learn human language, but no one begins life with the instinctive ability to understand quantum physics. To learn science, you have to work at it, like most things worth doing. But this isn’t the full story; in fact, the natural challenge of learning difficult concepts isn’t the biggest reason students struggle with science. Rather, many college students are dissuaded from science because they don’t know how to prepare for their college science courses.

Science classes—sometimes also called STEM classes for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics—can be complicated, impersonal, and often confusing (Note: we will use the terms science and STEM interchangeably). In a typical introductory college science lecture, you will find yourself in a huge room with hundreds of other students, straining to focus on the tiny professor at the front of the class as she whips through her presentation or draws complicated equations on the board. Some students get it right off the bat, and some students don’t. Oftentimes, at the end of the course, all you are given is a test and a grade. If the grade is too low, many students simply call it quits.

Don’t Give Up!

While there are a number of roadblocks that discourage students from pursuing science, there are even more reasons to stick with it. With lots of hard work and the guidance of this book, you will be able to excel in your classes, earn your college degree, and, perhaps most importantly, appreciate the beauty of the science you study.

But science is not just interesting to study. There are also very practical benefits to earning a STEM degree. The professional world needs and is prepared to pay for people with skills in science and mathematics. Over the past several decades, the percentage of students graduating from college with a STEM degree has declined, while the demand for science-related jobs has grown and will continue to grow.3 From 2001 to 2011, growth in STEM jobs was three times faster than growth in non-STEM jobs.4 When STEM majors graduate, on average, they make more than professionals with other degrees.5 One study found that science majors would earn half a million dollars more than other majors over the course of their lifetime.6

The professional opportunities that a science major provides are not limited to science-related fields. In fact, STEM graduates have higher salaries than other majors, regardless of whether or not they work in a STEM-related occupation.7 Take a guess, what college major is most common amongst S&P 500 CEOs? Business? Economics? Marketing? No. Actually, it’s engineering.8 This just goes to show that the skills you can learn in college as a science major are prized in a wide range of fields. According to the National Science Foundation9 and the Department of Labor,10 80% of all the jobs created in the next decade will require math and science skills. Getting these skills is smart. When you graduate, quite possibly with significant debt, you’ll be happy to know that you’ve amassed valuable and marketable skills to begin making your way in the world.

Finally, from a much broader perspective, skilled scientists are crucial to our future. Modern science touches every aspect of our lives from the produce in your local grocery store to life-saving pharmaceuticals to the safety features of your car. The responsibility to meet the biggest problems of our century will rest on the shoulders of our scientists—challenges like curing diseases and finding clean energy resources. The prospect of helping the world address such challenges is yet another incentive for those considering studying science.

Studying for Skills, not Just Grades

As a college student, you’ll need to approach your academic life with a whole different attitude than you had in high school. Many aspiring science students feel crushed when they get a bad test score, perhaps for the first time in their lives. They think a low grade means they are bad at science. This misconception is one of the biggest reasons that students give up on STEM. But keep this in mind: doing badly in a science course doesn’t necessarily mean you are bad at science or a bad student.

At Dartmouth College, what do a theater major with a 3.89 GPA and a chemistry major with a 3.11 GPA have in common? Their grades are both equal to the average grade given by courses in their respective departments.11 Across the board, arts, social sciences, and humanities courses give out higher grades than science courses.12 Your grade may be more of a reflection of a departmental policy or a quota set by an instructor than of your true talents and interests. Grades are important, but they certainly aren’t everything, and they may even be misleading.

In high school, everybody studied more or less the same subjects, so the main factor that differentiated students academically was their GPA. In college, students study different subjects, so comparing grades between majors is like comparing apples and oranges. If you don’t have a trust fund in your name (or even if you do), it will be important for you to graduate with knowledge and skills you can apply in the working world, regardless of what grades you get.

In Forbes magazine’s ranking of the ten college majors with the worst employment prospects and the worst salary after graduation, all ten of the worst majors were nonscience majors.13 The college graduates who received high grades in those majors probably don’t care very much anymore about how well they were doing on paper. High school was about getting good grades. In college, you need to be studying for grades and skills.

Getting Started

We started writing this book as college students because we saw our classmates in the sciences dwindle in number year after year and were stunned to find out that this was a nationwide phenomenon that no one had successfully addressed. After three years of research, interviews, and writing, we put together a book compiled from the advice of students and recent graduates who have excelled academically, presented in national symposiums, published in journals, created apps, and started their own businesses—all while earning their bachelor’s degrees. To make the book as relevant as possible to the average student, we interviewed students from a wide variety of STEM majors from small liberal arts schools, to research-focused private schools, to major public universities, and everything in between. Much of the advice in this book comes from recipients of high academic honors like the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, Fulbright Study/Research Grant, Churchill Scholarship, Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Marshall Scholarship, and the Rhodes Scholarship.

Whether you are a college student still navigating the lay of the land or an ambitious high school student looking for a head start, this book will provide you with the basic knowledge to tackle science head-on and excel in college and beyond.

Chapter-by-Chapter Overview

We’ve included a brief synopsis of each chapter below. Each chapter can be read and understood on its own, but there is a logical progression from one chapter to the next. Even if you think you already know about the topic we discuss in a given chapter, we still encourage you to read it. Sometimes it is what we think we know already, that makes it hardest for us to learn. As Mark Twain once said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Chapter 2: How to Manage College Life

College is an exciting time with seemingly endless opportunities. However, if you aren’t cautious, this can be to the detriment of the your grades, as new college students often fail to balance their personal and social lives with their academic responsibilities. In this chapter, we talk about how to manage time and thereby develop the foundation to lead an efficient and satisfying college life.

Chapter 3: How to Excel in Your STEM Courses

This chapter will help you hone your academic skills to succeed in the classroom and in laboratory courses. We discuss tips for taking notes, reading textbooks, preparing for quizzes and exams, and writing laboratory reports.

Chapter 4: Choosing a STEM Major

Here, we will introduce you to the most general types of science majors, explain what those majors are like, and acquaint you with the types of careers that each major tends to pursue.

Chapter 5: Conducting Scientific Research

Undergraduate research is an essential experience for students interested in a career in science, be it academic, medical, or industrial. Through this chapter, you can familiarize yourself with the world of academic research and ins and outs of conducting a research project as a student. Additionally, you’ll become acquainted with some of the unique vocabulary, hierarchy, and unwritten rules of the research culture.

Chapter 6: Beyond Your Bachelor’s Degree

How do you go from being a student to being a professional? This chapter will help you make this transition by giving you tools for finding a job after college, such as writing your personal statement, creating your portfolio, and applying for scholarships and fellowships.

Chapter 7: STEM in the Real World

This chapter provides detailed advice about preparing for graduate school and professional schools (e.g., medical, law,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Welcome to the World of College Science
• 2. How to Manage College Life
• 3. How to Excel in Your STEM Courses
• 4. Choosing a STEM Major
• 5. Conducting Scientific Research
• 6. Beyond Your Bachelor’s Degree
• 7. STEM in the Real World
• 8. In Conclusion
• Appendix. Advice for Underrepresented Students in STEM
• Notes
• Index