<p>Confusedmom2 said the following on the First Honors Weekend thread, and I hope she doesn’t mind but I think that this makes a very interesting topic for discussion, and also should be its own thread so as not to diffuse the point of the Honors Weekend thread.</p>
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<p>That is kind of the holy grail of questions for academically talented students. I think the variation you find in opinions probably reflects two things: 1) How bright the person answering is to begin with and 2) what classes they have taken so far. There is an old rule that professors teach to the middle level of the class. Nice ideal, maybe, but obviously hard to ascertain. But to the degree it is true, there are always people at the top of the class, and people at the bottom. And to the degree it is true, that is why going to the top ranked schools, especially in terms of average test scores, will yield a higher middle and thus, in theory, faster paced classes with more depth. Also, of course, the brighter your classmates the more one has to work to get the better grades in the class, not to mention more intelligent interactions. Again, this is as a group, not for any individual experience in any one class.</p>
<p>With regard to point 2, the level and type of course will also make a fairly significant difference with respect to one’s impression of “rigor”. People that have to take Organic Chemistry and Physical Chem, or some very hard Bioengineering courses, will have a very different impression of course difficulty than some softer schedules (I won’t name courses because someone would be offended for sure, lol).</p>
<p>Finally, I will point out that these students don’t have a lot of other experiences to compare to. It is mostly against some expectation they had coming in, and it just might not be as hard as they thought it would be. They might find the same at many other schools in their particular case.</p>
<p>I can tell you that when I took summer courses in Calc 3 at my local university (state school branch) it was much easier because the competition level was so much less. By comparison Tulane was extremely rigorous. Goes to point #1. Also to that point, we have the rare real life example in “normal” settings. When the Katrina kids had to scatter, most went to universities in their home town and many of these were highly ranked schools like Wash U, Brown, Emory, etc. There were tons of anecdotes from those kids that they didn’t find those schools to be more challenging than Tulane, and the faculty at those schools similarly said that the Tulane students were right there with the kids accepted at that school.</p>
<p>So I don’t know exactly how to answer a question like that, except a lot of the experience will be what the student makes it. If everything else were equal (and it never is), I would always say pick the school with the brightest average students but where you won’t be in over your head (presumably they wouldn’t have accepted the student in that case, but anyway…). And that school won’t always be Tulane. But that school might also be very wrong for your child for other reasons.</p>
<p>I feel confident your child can find the academic rigor they want at Tulane, but it definitely has to feel right. Instincts are good things.</p>