I know there are a million caveats … but are the equivalent classes at high-end colleges more difficult/rigorous than at state flagships? I’m mainly thinking of STEM classes. A prof can make a class as difficult as they want by either piling on tons of work (busy work) or stretching a student’s understanding by giving more difficult problems on tests. For example, would the Calculus I class at Stanford be more difficult than Calculus I class at UTexas even though they cover the same basic material?
It would really depend on the school. For example, many state flagship schools have kids enrolling from hundreds of different types of high schools with greatly different academics. Therefore, some schools might have first semester classes start off slowly to even out the kids who are not from good high schools. On the other hand, other schools might use a freshman Calculus class designed for STEM majors to “weed out” the kids who might not be abkle to make it through an Engineering major.
It also depends on the size of the school. High-end LACs have tiny classes for, say, intro Calc. They have virtually no TAs and so students get a more nurturing experience there. 15 students taking Calc vs 300 – your daughter can just raise her hand when she misses something and not get weeded out.
On the other hand, I heard a story about Swarthmore chem class. Swat takes only the top students. First day of chem class the professor said: I’ll be starting on chapter 3 of the chem book because you should have covered the first three chapters in high school.
Sadly the person who told me that story foundered in that class.
Agree with londondad.
For STEM subjects, in general those that are ‘core’ to grad school requirements are likely to be reasonably similar across size/selectivity of university in the material covered & level of what mastery required. In large part, the universities & grad schools have worked out what material should be mastered within those courses, and any reasonably solid uni should leave you prepared for the level required to start in med school, or a physics phd, etc. In some cases, the resources will be as good or better at State U than a fancier name.
The bigger difference will be in the student cohort, especially at the intro level (where you may have students who have to take the intro as a pre-req for something else): overall the cohort at Mudd or MIT is likely to set a tougher standard in intro physics than a general cohort at random State U. Not that there won’t be plenty of very clever, motivated students at State U- just that the density is likely to be lower.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1619090-schools-that-are-considered-to-be-on-ivy-league-level-for-undergrad-p1.html is a long thread on a similar topic. Pay attention to @bernie12 's many comments, since s/he compared course materials and exams from courses at various different schools.
Stanford does offer different single variable calculus sequences (19-20-21 and 41-42). The two quarter 41-42 is faster paced than the three quarter 19-20-21 that covers the same material. Each sequence is 10 quarter credit units (= 6+2/3 semester credit units).
University of Texas also has different calculus sequences (single variable calculus with introduction to multivariable calculus). M408C-M408D is the standard sequence over two semesters. M408D-AP is an honors course for those entering with AP credit. There is also a somewhat less rigorous M408K-M408L-M408M sequence over three semesters. Each course is 4 semester credit units (= 6 quarter credit units), so the number of credits earned in these sequences could range from 4 to 12 (= 6 to 18 quarter credit units).
I was looking at math courses at Stanford and it looks like they cover a year and a half of material in 1 year. That could make it more difficult.
I took first year chem at a small LAC. I TAed it at a large state U.
The material covered and difficulty of exams is the same. Far more peopel got D’s and F’s at state U. Reasons:
- more unprepared students
- students didn’t seek out support
In terms of grades - keep in mind you are getting curved against your peer group which certainly varies from school to school.
However, more selective colleges tend to have higher curves or more grade inflation.
http://www.gradeinflation.com/
The “curve” at both the school I attended and state University was based on high score which tended to be near 100.
Still had about 1/3 Ds and Fs at state University and maybe 10 percent at LAC.
Thanks for the responses. D18 is going to apply to a few high-end schools next year and I’m concerned about what will happen if she wins the lottery and actually gets admitted to one of them. She’s thinking about majoring in Cognitive Science. I guess I’m different from many here at CC in that I want my kid to go to a less academically “intense” school. I don’t want her buried in books for four years. My preference is for her to learn what she needs to know, not get burned out, and preserve her creativity.
@VickiSoCal – “2) students didn’t seek out support”. That’s my main concern for D18 if she gets into a high-end school.
Both schools offered extensive support. At a smaller school, it is just more in your face. But the material covered is the same.
It depends on each school and professor. But generally I believe the answer is yes.
It is a misconception that kids at high end schools (not sure what that means but I’m assuming you are referring to schools with very competitive admissions) spend four years buried in books.
One of my kids went to MIT. His friends were involved in everything- EMT’s for the city of Cambridge and Boston; tutoring in local schools, a full range of sports activities, debate, music, volunteering for political campaigns, artistic endeavors (film-making particularly popular). At parents weekends we were astonished by the rich, non-academic lives the kids experienced (in addition to research and other academic oriented EC’s).
Creativity doesn’t get preserved- it gets nurtured by being with and being inspired by other people- teachers, mentors, peers.
I had a good friend who started off at a smaller, high-quality LAC then transferred to state flagship U and ended up back at the first LAC. The reason: At the LAC, the student:professor ratio was smaller and the professors tended to coddle the students more (as mentioned above). In his case, he said the LAC was easier.
I think it’s going to depend on the school and the student’s “fit.” I would imagine the top state schools like Cal, Virginia, Texas and Michigan are going to be just as challenging curriculum-wise. But the large numbers of students might not be a fit for all. Personally, I loved going to a large school as I benefitted more from student study groups than one-on-one help from professors.
High end schools do not typically admit students who must work extremely hard to get good grades. They admit students who got top grades while also being significantly involved in ECs.
This discussion is one in which I think it’s importance to emphasize the difference between STEM classes and other types of classes. As noted above, in STEM classes there is specific material that needs to be learned as a prerequisite for graduate or professional school. This is much less true in English, History, Political Science, and many other disciplines. In those classes, writing and discussion are more important, and thus in those classes there is likely to be a bigger difference from the same subjects in less selective schools.
Not just that. In science and engineering majors, introductory courses tend to be important prerequisites for more advanced undergraduate courses, even if the student will not go on to graduate or professional school (also, not all professional schools have specific undergraduate preparation requirements). Humanities and social studies majors also often have prerequisite sequences, but these tend to be shorter than those in science and engineering majors.
Engineering majors also have external accreditation which sets a relatively high minimum standard (a college could, of course, go beyond that). The relatively high minimum standard does mean that the difference in content and rigor is narrower than the difference that could exist in some other major.
This does not mean that one cannot get a good education in humanities or social studies at a less selective school. Indeed, there was a (now deceased) faculty member in Yale’s English department whose undergraduate school was California State University - Bakersfield, one of the least selective California public universities.
I seem to recall an article in the WSJ that asked “Do elite colleges lead to higher salaries”(maybe someone can help me out here) which basically said that for STEM degrees, it really did not matter where you attended undergraduate school. The thought was that STEM represents a basic core of knowledge that is fairly established and did not benefit from prestige. So learning chem or calc at one school is basically like learning chem and calc at another. There was no benefit from one school over the other.
This article looked solely at the earning of a worker and did not get into the lofty idea of learning for the sake of learning which the OP might be asking. It is refreshing to see students interested in learning and not earning.
Not STEM, but my D was taking a foreign language (Arabic) at her small LAC and a friend from HS was taking the same class at our state university. Both classes used the same text book. At my D’s school, students took 4 classes a semester and there was no extra weighting for any class (classes with labs, for example). At the state university, the Arabic class was 5 credit hours, instead of the usual 3. At my D’s school they finished the text book in the first semester and the second semester used the next level textbook. At the state university, they covered half the text book in the first semester, and the second half in the spring semester.
I’ve taken classes at both a local state university and a top-40 private university. The professors are similar because the difficult academic job market makes it so that low-ranked universities can have professors with PhDs from the very best schools. However, the student bodies are different, so the professors tend to cover topics more slowly at the state school. I’m probably more suited for that than the private school, to be honest, but I got into the higher-ranked school and so I go there. 
I always see people signing up for tutoring, staying up all night in the library, writing op-eds about being stressed out, etc. Some of this is poor time management, but a lot of it is just that the classes are really hard for us now even if we didn’t have to work that much in high school.