gre writing issue sample writing 102
- Universities should require every student to take a variety of courses outside the student's field of study.
Write a response in which you discuss your views on the policy and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider the possible consequences of implementing the policy and explain how these consequences shape your position.
The speaker claims that one’s intellectual development comes more effectively from experiencing a variety of disciplines outside of one’s major field of study. Of course, in many cases, it is true that diversity in academic curriculum may hamper students’ concentrated efforts. Like the speaker’s assertion, however, I believe that students benefit more from taking various courses outside their primary concerns than from a narrowly bounded intellectual focus, especially for the following reasons.
Of course, we cannot deny that exposure to too many areas of knowledge sometimes works negatively to students’ intellectual growth. With respect to the depth or strength of one’s intellectual construction, dispersion of one’s interest (which is) inevitable by the need to take different courses at a time may lead to a “dabbler’s” understanding characterized by, though broad, superficial and cursory examinations in many unrelated subjects. Besides this superficial and slovenly understandings in many areas, the burden to take many unrelated courses may increase stresses among students; what are the real benefits for a chemistry major to prepare mid-term papers on subjects such as ‘the history of the nineteenth century feminist painters’ and ‘the best financing principle in the modern global economy’ as well as ‘organic chemistry’ and ‘methods of chemical bonding’ all together? In this sense, diversity in course design, whatever its intrinsic value might be, seems detrimental to students’ true development.
Nevertheless, it does not necessarily mean that concentration is the only policy that best meets students’ intellectual development. When it comes to some inspirational stimuli, we cannot dismiss the value of taking diverse courses. Just as a psychology student may gain a hunch from a biology class, so many engineering students can be stimulated from such ‘soft’ sciences as arts or social sciences. From my personal experience, I, an economics major, have always been thrilled to learn that many courses in sciences such as biology or physics include interesting topics that effectively illustrate the complex principles of finance or monetary policy. This tells us that it is not concentration but diversity in course design that helps students’ intellectual growth.