weeder course

Definition

A notoriously difficult introductory class designed to eliminate students from competitive majors, typically in STEM fields. It's academic Darwinism disguised as standards, where organic chemistry kills pre-med dreams by the thousands.

Example Usage

Calculus II served as the weeder course for engineering, with a 50% failure rate that the department wore as a badge of rigor.

Origin

Informal student terminology from mid-20th century, referencing agricultural weeding

Fun Fact

Research shows weeder courses disproportionately push out women and minorities from STEM fields, suggesting they might be weeding based on who survives hazing rather than who'd make good scientists.

Source: Student culture and STEM education critique

Related Terms

Intermediate

satisfactory academic progress

The minimum standards students must meet to remain eligible for financial aid, including GPA requirements, completion rates, and maximum timeframes. Fall below these metrics and discover that 'satisfactory' is carrying significant financial weight.

🎓 Education / Academia

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Student-Centered

An educational philosophy that puts students at the center of the learning experience, as opposed to the traditional model where they were more of an inconvenient byproduct. It sounds revolutionary until you realize it basically means letting students talk more and the teacher talk less.

🎓 Education / Academia

Intermediate

solute

The substance that gets dissolved into a liquid solvent, creating a solution—basically the Kool-Aid powder before you add water. In chemistry, it's the minor player that disappears into the major player (solvent) like your motivation on Monday morning. The solute is always the one getting absorbed into something bigger, never the other way around.

🎓 Education / Academia

Intermediate

paper mill

A commercial service that sells pre-written or custom academic papers to students for plagiarism purposes, ranging from high school essays to doctoral dissertations. These academic black markets undermine integrity while proving remarkably difficult to prosecute.

🎓 Education / Academia

Intermediate

academic probation policy

The formal set of rules governing how students with poor academic performance are warned, monitored, and potentially dismissed. It's the bureaucratic framework ensuring that flunking out follows proper procedure and documentation.

🎓 Education / Academia

Advanced

fermi

An obsolete scientific unit equal to one femtometer (10⁻¹⁵ meters), named after physicist Enrico Fermi because apparently scientists enjoy naming impossibly tiny measurements after their colleagues. This is the scale where you're measuring things like atomic nuclei, where the concept of "really, really small" takes on a whole new meaning. It's been largely replaced by the femtometer, but physicists still use it occasionally when they want to confuse undergraduates.

🎓 Education / Academia

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