64 Comments
According to an email circulated among the science types, the CC’07 Valedictorian is Claire Lackner, a published Physics major and Rabi Scholar, and daughter of Lamont-Doherty climate change maven Klaus Lackner. Don’t hate her because she’s smarter than you, or because she’s not on facebook–that’s pretty much par for the course.
Memo after the jump.
“Date: Apr 13, 2007 5:29 PM
Subject: Physics major Claire Lackner selected as 2007 Valedictorian!
To: undisclosed-recipients
Dear Colleagues:
It is my great pleasure to announce that Ms Claire Lackner,
a senior physics major, has been selected as Valedictorian for
the Columbia College Class of 2007. Please join with me in congratulating
Claire on her outstanding achievements and wishing her well
for her future.
Andrew Millis
Professor and Chair
Department of Physics”
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64 Comments
@curving matters cu alum is right
orgo 1 – 24% As
french 2 – 72% As
even though an A+ is possible, you have to be better than more than 3/4 ths of your class to even be close to that grade in the sciences. whereas you have to pretty much not fuck up in the humanities to get As. so even though the sciences do technically give out more of those A+ grades, their students have to fight it out pretty hard to get a decent gpa in the first place.
@congrats to claire. and deservedly so.
but theres definitely a reason why hard science/math majors keep finishing on top.
those classes are curved. someone WILL get an A+. not so in humanities classes. I’ve had many professors tell me they don’t give A+’s as policy. figures that this would be in the classes I kicked ass in and would’ve gotten an A+ in if they existed. alas.
@hahaha who cares about art history anyway, far less relevant in any sense besides to the academic. Also, if it has been the case that columbia’s best students are science majors, it would show that the most intelligent select into those majors.
@I like how humanities majors always complain that their work is graded subjectively. What the hell do you expect, a grade based on the number of words and accuracy of punctuation? If you can’t accept subjective criticism, go major in a science, where you are graded on what you know (or what the professor thinks you should know..or be able to do…). Otherwise, go back to spending half the week drunk and shut the hell up.
@why Why did most people here miss the point?
The candidates for Valedictorian are the very very top students in the class.
Now – it is likely that a very very top students in math or sciences earns more A+s than A’s, and has a GPA over 4.0.
It is very unlikely that even the best humanities major will earn more A+s than A’s, for two reasons
1) Grading is more subjective, and so raw intelligence can’t put a person in the A+ category in every class
2) Fewer A+’s are awarded. Some humanities profs never award A+.
Thankfully, the CC Valedictorian is not determined by straight GPA.
BUT if the Valedictorian in CC is a science major more often than a humanities major, that would indicate that the school has a hard time looking past the superior GPAs of the top science majors.
After all, it’s unlikely that Columbia’s best student is more often a science major than a humanities major. The number of science majors is so small and the number of humanities majors is so large!
@shallowme She is also very pretty.
@How Do they pick salutorian? Just outta curiosity
Congrats to both!
@easy math The sciences vs. humanities debate is completely unnecessary.
Only one thing is important and that is obvious:
Claire > you
@Speak for yourself Speak for yourself, you dump.
@anon wow! i don’t know claire but nick is a great guy and i’m happy to see him get salutatorian.
@wait rich lipkin was a rabi scholar?
@meanwhile Nick Klagge has a facebook, worked on spec and academic awards committee, and is generally very popular and got Salutatorian.
@wow seeing the vulgarity of the comments here definitely makes me thankful that my name has not appeared on the Bwog. i guess dealing with nasty comments is the price of fame.
@definitely It IS pretty ridiculous.
Based on my limited interactions with Claire and Nick, they seem like good people who worked hard and got damn good results. Congrats!
@Gene Ray This stupid STUDENT has been taught by evil educators dumb singularity dispossessing her of racionate MIND.
Students must ask the truth and seek Cubic Creation but they are given a DOG BRAIN and learn only servitude to evil singularity.
True COMPREHENSION for you dumb-ass students can only self-actualize when the dynamism of CUBIC creation is fully revealed.
@yay yay for claire!! she’s a great person and totally deserves this.
@odd.... looking at the rabi site of past fellows, you can see that both bryan laulicht & richard lipkin are listed as rabi scholars. back in the day, laulicht made columbia news for being caught trying to cheat on the gre exam by recording answers with a friend. (http://media.www.columbiaspectator.com/media/storage/paper865/news/2002/11/20/News/Seniors.Accused.Of.Using.HighTech.Devices.To.Cheat.On.Gre-2037968.shtml) and then lipkin was busted when he turned his dorm room into a grow house. (http://media.www.columbiaspectator.com/media/storage/paper865/news/2003/09/04/News/Cc.Senior.Arrested.For.Marijuana.Possession-2036429.shtml) great group of kids!
@cu_alum the valedictorian in 2005 was comp lit.
i think that in general, the grading distribution is such that more students in the humanities get A-range grades (at least my transcript tells me that) than in science. however, since humanities is not generally graded on a bell curve, not all profs give A+s, whereas in the sciences they do. so, in general, humanities students have higher gpas than science students, but if you look at the people at the tops of their classes in their departments, those in the sciences will have higher gpas.
with that said, even a physics major needs to take the core, so claire had to be good at writing if she aced lithum, cc, arthum, musichum, etc (i’m guessing she got an A in all if she’s #1 in the class)
@Erwin S. E(psi) = H(psi)
Y’all can kiss my Hamiltonian operator.
@Science Major x + vt + 1/2a(t^2) = the major ball-licking you nonscience majors can do
@humanities major so…where does that put us?
@science major in line at a soup kitchen?
@masochist ARCHITECTURE. ARCHITECTURE. ARCHITECTURE. At least physics teachers don’t insult you.
@wirc People are being bigger DBs than usual about this. I smell jealousy.
@ps after a little more thought, let me add that this doesn’t apply to people who study things like ARABIC. that shit’s hard.
@of course those people are terrorist sympathizers and don’t deserve A+s anyway.
@well for christ’s sake, SO ARE FEMALE SCIENCE MAJORS! how are you gonna entertain your husband’s dinner guests with a major in physics??
@Women Women aren’t supposed to talk at dinner parties, silly. Who would serve the drinks and cook the din-dins?
@Obviously Hispanic, West Indian, or Eastern European women.
@Touche The help, of course… But a good wife should go to finishing school, Switzerland preferably. Otherwise art history is definitely the preferred major.
@Anonymous Does anybody have any solid data about what grades are given out with what frequencies in which classes? I don’t doubt the sincerity of the claims made, but I see many claims and very little data. I’d be interested in seeing, say, a distribution or two—
@A+'s are A+s are awarded in almost all science and math departments and rarely if ever given in most of the humanities and social sciences at Columbia. There are thus a number of math/science students each year graduating with more than a 4.0 ,which is unheard of among humanities and soc science students. Not to diminish the accomplishments of Claire one bit, but the GPA ranking is institutionally skewed.
@haha as a humanities major, let me tell you, A+s are definitely awarded in history, anthro, english, and religion classes (tho i can’t speak for the other depts)!
there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s harder to be a science major than humanities… no offense intended to humanities majors–god knows, i wouldnt major in anything else–but it’s much easier to BS a paper than an exam, and the only humanities people you ever see freaking out in the library cuz of work are either writing theses or they’re… pardon my term… dumb.
@prof speaks As a humanities professor, I have seen the hard data: A+ routine grades in most of the sciences/math depts and are almost never routine grades (they are awarded exceptionally) in the humanities and most social sciences. I have also seen the lists many years in a row for students who are in the top 25% (who might be awarded Latin Honors) and the vast majority are in hard sciences and have GPAs of over 4.0.
So, if you are in the humanities and have numerous A+ grades, kudos! you are the anomaly.
@but really... How on earth is an A+ a routine grade in ANY class?
It seems much more likely that a science student can consistently get A+s whereas the humanities kids suffer from subjectively graded essays/papers/whatever.
Regardless, getting the 1-2 A+s in a 30-40 person physical science class is an accomplishment. And the people who I know that do that generally put A LOT more effort than one would put into an essay or two.
I’m not trying to diminish what a humanities student does, BUT I don’t like the attitude that science students have unfairly inflated grades – if someone scores a 100 when everyone else scores around 60 (which is usually the case!), they deserve the highest possible grade!
@Congrats Claire Does anybody know when the rest of the Phi Beta Kappas and Latin honors will be announced?
@Anonymous Hah, also, her high school science fair project may save the world:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1075
(Search for “proof” on the above page.)
Here’s to Claire, ‘leeter than most.
@As in physics As in physics awesome, but you have to concede that A+s are a great deal more common in Math and Science, so it’d be hard to have a Valedictorian MECLAC major–even if it is much, much easier.
@from personal knowledge, claire is way smarter than me in math and probably could write humanities paper at least as good as mine.
she wins!
@uggh it’s so much easier for hard science students to pull high GPAs than liberal arts majors who have to write essays – not do “right” or “wrong” problem sets
@holy shit you have to be joking. im sure she can not only write a paper as well as or better than a decent libarts major (since she did take the whole core plus some other libarts courses im sure) but she can also understand more physics and math than like 99% of the world. now while you MAY be able to write a slightly better paper than her, what else can you do? you’re probably not capable of understanding half the material our best science students know like the back of their hands. seriously lay off. this campus gives the sciences way too much shit.
the libarts definitely have their place and its pretty much stupid to argue these majors are smarter than others, but please dont try and ruin someone elses hardwork when realistically you’re probably nowhere near being in her league.
@hahaha oh man, that’s hilarious.
yeah, it’s much easier to pull a high GPA in hard science than liberal arts. That’s why you get all these English and Art History majors who can’t take the rigors of bs’ing their way through papers and have to drop out and become star Physics and Applied Math students.
Bravo to Claire Lackner!
@kazzy shut the fuck up idiot. you probably don’t know shit about art history.
@your mom wow man. that was quite the insult. I have to say, of all things that have been used to belittle me in front of others, “not knowing shit about art history” has definitely got to be among the harshest of insults.
@Also Chances are you’ve taken some sort of art humanities class as part of your core, so you probably DO know shit about art history.
@uhhuh because “the hums” provide really rigorous and up-to-date means to study art, music, literature and philosophy right?
anyways, back to the topic congratulations to claire – brains and beauty.
@Get over it How many times have you written a paper in two hours or less? Do you think you could pull A’s in a physics class with that kind of time commitment? I doubt it.
@wow! everyone is being supportive and congratulatory!
@nice way to jinx it!
@awesome! in answer to the previous question: http://rabi.columbia.edu/
hey, she lives on my floor! and wow, what a genius. i will definitely congratulate her the next time i see her. =)
@Rabi scholar? What’s that?
@Not a statistician Is there a correlation between academic success and eschewing a Facebook profile? Look up the Phi Beta Kappa thread from last year– a good portion of those folks were not on Facebook.
@a friend claire is doing top notch work in robotics now http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~allen/GRASPIT/
she id easily a bright light in the very talented physics dept we have here
@casey I shared one class with Claire. She is, by far, one of the brightest people I’ve ever met. No kidding. She deserves this.
And, yes, she’s Prof. Lackner’s daughter.
@good i approve of her being valedictorian. she’s smart and a nice person. and klagge is salutatorian? good for him, although i haven’t seen him in some time.
@come again? thank god you approve! heaven forbid you didn’t
by the way, mind if i take a shit tomorrow morning? i intend to wipe afterwards too if that’s okay with you.
@fact Fact: The Columbia College Valedictorians of the Classes of 2002,
2003, 2004 and 2006 – Kareen Rozen, Max Lipyanskiy, Jacob Barandes
and Jaehee Kim – were Rabi Scholars.
@a girl? really? they understand math well enough to be physics majors? larry summers promised me that wasnt true.
Larry!!!….
@wow and a physics major too.
@Huh? I thought it was relatively common for the valedictorian to be a Physics major
@not what i meant! I didnt’ mean that women what the people afterwards assumed!! I guess in my mind it was obvious that I was saying that it is surprising that the Valedictorian would be a pure science major as it is much more difficult than the humanities. That is what I was wowing about.
@Aw man Not on facebook. I would’ve poked her like woah.
@and nick klagge is salutatorian