- #1
JonDrew
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I am a sophomore math and physics major who would like to go to study biological physics as a graduate student. My aim is not to go into the medical field, i.e. Hospitals, pediatricians etc. but my interest generally is to research ways to prolong the human lifespan.
Lately I have been thinking that my academic career is actually in the way of my education instead of helping it. I don't pay attention in lectures because I'm unimpressed with the level of instruction, and continually find OpenCourseware lectures to be much more informative than the lectures at my university. From what I understand the level of instruction drops while the corse #'s increase at my school so, as a consequence the thought of dropping out of college and studying the materials on my own has been increasingly intriguing me.
I am a very self-disciplined and self motivated person and have learned to teach myself things very well. With the money I save in tuition I could pay professors I liked to help me out when I get stuck on topics (or I could also find a grad student in my area to help me with this).
The idea of self-paced learning is something that really resonates with me for the ideas that are vaguely represented in the link below. And in the end, if I ended up finding that its to much for me to do it on my own I can just as easily get back into school because my GPA is relatively good, 3.6.
I would probably stay in school through out the next semester (Spring 2012 and possible Summer 2012) so that I can grab somethings for my toolkit before I say goodbye, e.g. some research for my resume and one last math corse with a professor who I really think will resinate with me.
My four questions are, realistically how good would my GRE subject scores have to be to get into good Graduate schools if I tried this method?
And does anyone have any tips for corse material i could use? Obviously OpenCourseware but books that are written for self education more then lecture based education?
Does anyone know of any research opportunities for non-matriculated students?
Any other general advice?
http://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/v/sal-khan-video-lecture-on-digital-learning
Lately I have been thinking that my academic career is actually in the way of my education instead of helping it. I don't pay attention in lectures because I'm unimpressed with the level of instruction, and continually find OpenCourseware lectures to be much more informative than the lectures at my university. From what I understand the level of instruction drops while the corse #'s increase at my school so, as a consequence the thought of dropping out of college and studying the materials on my own has been increasingly intriguing me.
I am a very self-disciplined and self motivated person and have learned to teach myself things very well. With the money I save in tuition I could pay professors I liked to help me out when I get stuck on topics (or I could also find a grad student in my area to help me with this).
The idea of self-paced learning is something that really resonates with me for the ideas that are vaguely represented in the link below. And in the end, if I ended up finding that its to much for me to do it on my own I can just as easily get back into school because my GPA is relatively good, 3.6.
I would probably stay in school through out the next semester (Spring 2012 and possible Summer 2012) so that I can grab somethings for my toolkit before I say goodbye, e.g. some research for my resume and one last math corse with a professor who I really think will resinate with me.
My four questions are, realistically how good would my GRE subject scores have to be to get into good Graduate schools if I tried this method?
And does anyone have any tips for corse material i could use? Obviously OpenCourseware but books that are written for self education more then lecture based education?
Does anyone know of any research opportunities for non-matriculated students?
Any other general advice?
http://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/v/sal-khan-video-lecture-on-digital-learning
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