@dungaredoll I absolutely agree that you get more bang for your buck at Stanford. I am happy that your son is doing well. I just don’t think that it is very wise for a 22 year old to buy 150k car. It would be better if they saved the money for a house or gave money to charity
@momofsmartdancer : Naw, academically elite students tend to have the chance at doing very well wherever they go (the other poster was almost too anecdotal and kind of demonstrates how even at an elite, you make your own education. For example, I am betting that the Stanford S had a better resume than the daughter at the other school that had skill-sets more tailored for whatever at the time of the application especially if the daughter was at another elite, even if not super elite, private. S branding helps, but an ambitious student helps themselves more than the brand will. Let us bet that there are many S students not as skilled or as fortunate as her S to have that many opps. Why? Because they did not use S to develop them). Also, MCAT more so correlates with studying for the MCAT and being smart. A strong curriculum can indeed provide a boost for some, but I believe that even now (the new one), it would correlate somewhat with other standardized test scores. You can have students in a not so great curriculum that does not emphasize the critical thinking needed for the MCAT (say classes are hard simply because they move at a fast pace, but ultimately the level of problem solving expected on exams is non-existent, minimal, or underwhelming in the level expected), yet if the students going through it were academically elite to begin with, most will study well enough for it to do quite well. In fact, there is the GPA prisoner’s dilemma. Pre-meds (though with MDPhD it gets weird.
Most of them I’ve seen be successful from my school always took the more difficult courses and instructors, more than one grad. course in STEM, or serious upper division courses in STEM courses outside of their major) are often better off maneuvering around more difficult instructors for pre-health cores to maintain a certain GPA. In addition, a lighter or easier STEM courses/instructors will provide time to prepare for the MCAT when that time comes. A more rigorous curriculum may perhaps benefit those who will not get amazing(course management or not) or GPA’s but could use the boost of thinking skills going into the MCAT as it lowers the barrier to do well and compensate for an “ok” (still competitive but not 3.85+ or even 3.8, so more like 3.5-3.79) GPA. However, someone already slated to do solidly or well on most standardized tests…meh. Pre-med is just a poor case study in general. Perhaps pre-grad and engineering for STEM are better because students actually are rewarded for engaging in more rigorous courses and attending schools with programs perceived as more rigorous.
In those cases, a good marker for quality of undergraduate curriculum may be how well those students do in graduate level courses or how mismatched GPA is with regular and GRE subject tests (for example, GRE biochemistry, it is hard to predict the items that will go in the research based section, and even the discreets are all over the place. Many who have taken an MCAT and this one often consider it more of a pain as you have to have achieved and retained high content knowledge as well as analytical skills. The GRE biochem does not have hardly any practice materials unlike an MCAT, so you are on your own after like the 3 old exams that are out there). Or if you really want to do pre-med. It could be interesting to see how many mismatches with lower GPA and high MCAT there are per program. If this is a common trend at a school, it does suggest that there is some rigor in the grading at least. However, deciphering what those MCAT scores means in terms of curriculum quality is weird. Maybe if a more moderately (let us say below 1300, in the 12s somewhere) selective public or private generally had a higher MCAT mean among MCAT takers, it is a signaling that it is the curriculum helping. Otherwise, decoupling it from previous performance on standardized tests is hard. Notice how even the programs that have the med. school guarantees even at schools that are more moderately selective have insane SAT/ACT requirements.
Let’s not get distracted by the car. The point of the tale was not just that her son could afford the purchase due to career success resulting from his fine Stanford education, but more importantly that even the salesperson recognized the superb marketability of Stanford grads. In other words, the man’s comment expressed his confidence in her son’s ability to pay his bills going forward, meaning that even if he were to lose his job, the assumption was he’d soon find another and thus there would be no disruption in payment. I think the disapproving comments about the car purchase is telling, and indicates to me the green emotion that frequently is found at the root of people’s reactions to this topic.
It’s obvious that folks today are very, very uncomfortable with statements asserting that anything or anyone is “better” regardless of the category inside which the subject is being judged. CCers are no exception. It seems to me our society is obsessed with the concept of (personal) equality to the point of stupidity. The concept of all men being created equal refers to legal equality under the law and the US Constitution, which in turn stems from the Biblical concept of equality as far as every man’s sinful inferiority to God as His creation. “Equality” does not now, and will never mean, that we/our kids are all equal in talent, intelligence, beauty, kindness, academic prowess, athleticism etc., or that the government or any other institution (like a college) can or should guarantee equal results. Why is it so hard to just accept that, in general, the elite schools are elite because they attract extremely intelligent and accomplished students with superb credentials who are well-prepared to launch their collegiate career from an educational starting point that is higher than what is generally found at lower-ranked schools?
As just one simple example, kids who were selected to take algebra in 6th or 7th grade and then progressed through high school from there are going to be prepared to immediately handle harder math in college than their classmates who didn’t take algebra until 9th or 10th grade. The former are going to be the vast majority of the students at the elite school, but not necessarily down the ranking ladder.
Collegedad… what makes you think he hasn’t saved his money. You’re assuming because he’s 22 that he spent every penny he has on a six figure car. But thats incorrect and again another testament to his Stanford degree.
@Dungareedoll : I appreciate the cheerleading for Stanford, however we already know this (that not all schools are created equal). The thread is on academic rigor not branding. In terms of academic rigor, there is a lot of grey area, whether trying to compare elites to non and especially when trying to compare elites to each other or even, say Stanford’s peers to each other (and some in the elite category but outside “Ivy Plus”). Like say, I am in Life Sciences and I am a freshman. I looked at HYPMS’s and many others’ courses (description and materials) and curriculum structure and guess what? They differed. To my surprise, it appears to me an average HYPM freshman (as in one that is not going to come in and take the super advanced courses from the get go) will likely have the toughest adjustment. Those 3 appear a lot more rigorous in STEM courses for “the masses of STEM” majors at the lower division and some intermediate courses. S starts to look more like them for some intermediates but more so upper division courses. In general it appears the others have done much more to keep those “weeder” courses “fresh”. Like H has that huge Integrated Life Sciences curriculum (imagine your intro. biology course as a mix of ochem lite, general chemistry, and an intermediate experimental biology course), Y and P made their introductory biology sequence contain like a semester of biophysical and physical biology type of concepts. And they have much more differences. In that area, S is not as far along at the UG level( look even their “revamps” are more on the conservative side pretty much trying to further accommodate the pre-health crowd:http://www.stanforddaily.com/2016/05/22/biology-major-to-revamp-cut-down-on-chemistry-requirements/ by essentially making things easier. Again some others full-scale changed the curriculum per course in a way that made it even more rigorous) Their curricula and even the level of courses for the most part, appears quite traditional, with many intro. and intermediate courses in biology and chemistry not differing too entirely much from better programs outside the super elite. And then, like the other super elites, they still get a decent grade inflation/curve despite these differences.
Stanford is great, but since this discussion is more about selectivity differences determining academic quality and rigor, I am going to stick with my “grey within each cluster” theory. Stanford, like every other program in the elite is awesome but has its issues academically. Many of the Ivy Plus are just now in a position to be carried by the brand and if they fall short in some areas, it goes unnoticed: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2014/10/23/lets-improve-introductory-chem-and-math-51/ . In the Harvard Crimson, there was an article about an econ. instructor so bad that students got a dean to temporarily replace them with someone else until they were properly prepared to teach the course…such are the imperfections of even elite Research 1 universities) Like, clearly instructors are often not going to decide how to pace their courses as academic credentials at schools with already elite student bodies change. They will do what they have been doing in the past unless there is some incentive or concerted effort to change. Like the things I mention happening in “STEM courses for masses” (as in for STEM majors, just not the ultra ambitious among them) at YP, and especially had another agenda attached to it, and had little to do with how “awesome” the average H student is: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2830155/pdf/cbe10.pdf . Seems the med. school had some input and say which is rare…). Does the selectivity give them more freedom to innovate like that, sure. But many other places are selective and choose not to when it would add more rigor and value. Why? Because that is not in the institution or departments character or goals.
Note that I can even look outside these super elites for example. Michigan has traditionally been a leader at enhancing your standard gateway STEM courses, UMD has made lots of strides in the life sciences. If it wasn’t for differences in brand and opportunities provided by the wealth of certain places, and just based on educational quality and rigor, I would recommend programs like these over a few elite privates and publics (though let us be real, a place like Michigan is known to offer a plethora of opportunities).
Dungareedoll I agree with most of what you said. I think a Stanford degree is invaluable for all the reasons you stated I however don’t care if he saved his money. I just don’t think it is very wise to buy a 150k car at age 22. In my world it doesn’t come across very well. While I think the Stanford name can do a lot for you I don’t think Stanford teaches you how to save money or spend it wisely. I don’t think they offer classes in personal financial management. I agree with what GFG said lets not get distracted by the car.
I agree with GFG too. Thats the reason why I chimed in to this thread. But the point is that the marketplace recognizes the value of an elite education.
The irrelevant comments about my son’s spending choices is evidence that parental ego is the real reason that people can’t admit that elite schools are more academically challenging and superior.
The value of the brand is a reflection of the superior academic rigor.
^ Exactly. If employers begin to discover that the product doesn’t match the reputation, eventually the market will adjust and the brand will decline a la Toyota. If companies find that CS majors from Stanford can’t code as well as those from, say, the CC darling Univ. of Alabama, then they will seek out students from UA over Stanford kids and the Stanford brand will suffer.
Lived within Yale’s campus for a year; from what I saw, it seemed that many undergrads partied every night. Seemed that the hardest part must have been the “getting in”.
Amen to that GFG!!!
Maybe so, higgins2013, but that’s a constant on campuses of all kinds. I live near our state flagship and it’s zoo there.
I agree with bernie12 in that this blog is about rigor of education and not about the benefits of the brand of the university. The OP’s question- " I’m interested in your opinions about whether more selective schools are also more rigorous and academically challenging in the classroom."
There is no doubt that highly selective universities offer a brand that will be beneficial to their graduates. Especially beneficial to those seeking a terminal degree. However, the OP was asking about the academic rigor of highly selective universities in comparison to other universities.
I really have not formed a conclusive opinion about this during present day times. My husband and I both graduated from The Ohio State University in the 80’s. They had open admissions back then. I think their goal for undergrads was to weed people out and classes were very rigorous- especially the STEM classes for pre-meds and engineers. They also were on the quarter system and things went very quickly; classes were intense and there were no allowances made for those who could not keep up. Unfortunately, they also did not have much in the way of helpful office hours and there was an issue with understanding some of their foreign TAs. So, there really was not much assistance for struggling students. I think Ohio State, Purdue, and University of Michigan had very rigorous academics in the STEM fields, on par with Ivys during that time period. However, I do think that in the humanities and social sciences, that highly selective universities probably had more depth to their academic curriculum. I was always amazed at some of the research being done at those universities that were referenced in course materials.
@Dungareedoll & @TheGFG :
That, say, Stanford grads are highly valued shows that the output must be good, but the output is a product of two things: the input and the experience. The subject of this thread is a portion of the experience part, namely, the academic portion. So is it possible for School A’s grads to do better, on average, than School B’s even if their academics are equally rigorous? Yes, if School A has the luxury of selecting for candidates with non-academic aspects that may be more valued by the marketplace and if School A provides better non-academic opportunities.
What’s more impressive, frankly, is some School C that takes in inputs that are not at School A’s quality but produce grads that are.
That’s why I am keen to look at alumni achievements: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1893105-ivy-equivalents-ranking-based-on-alumni-outcomes-take-2-1-p1.html
The tiers mostly match up with an input-based ranking like USNews, though you see a few schools that overperform: The publics UVa, UMich, and UW-Madison (as well as NYU–probably due in large part to the success of the grads of the specialty schools there) overperform slightly. Reed and NCF really overperform.
Agreed - the premise of this thread was to ask whether selectivity equated with academic difficulty, not the impact of prestige and branding or whether elite colleges offered more opportunities to their students
I know that there was grade inflation at Columbia when my daughter was there, and there was a broad range of options for course selection. Example: my DD, who was not a STEM student, needed a math course to meet Barnard quantitative reasoning requirements, so she opted to take a basic Stats course. But Columbia offered a broad range of stats courses, all available for credit, and all of which could be used to satisfy basic requirements at both Columbia & Barnard. Stats 1001 (“a friendly introduction to statistical concepts”); Stats 1101 (“for students in fields that emphasize quantitative methods” - prerequisite: intermediate high school algebra); Stats 1201 (“for students who desire … a greater degree of mathematical rigor” - prerequisite: one semester of calculus). My DD chose 1101 – presumably 1001 would have been easier. The current course schedule shows that there are 3 sections of 1001 offered each semester, 3 sections of 1101, and 4 sections of 1201.
So I can tell you that my DD took Stats at Columbia and earned an A, but that tells nothing about course rigor. And despite the claim that the course would be more difficult at a selective school because of the caliber of peer students, I am quite certain that my DD would never have earned that A but for a very generous curve – I think it is likely that STEM students enrolled in the calculus-based class, and my DD was probably surrounded by equally math-challenged social sciences majors.
Columbia has its own student course & faculty review web site, and it’s easy to check to see which profs and courses have the reputation of being tough, and which are seen as lax or easy. If a student was determined to party their way through college, they could select a major and courses to accommodate that preference, at just about any college.
So it really comes down to the student. Certainly the more selective colleges can be expected to offer more opportunities for challenge in coursework… but it still falls to the student to pursue those options.
Reed, in fact, is a huge outlier.
For the most part, yes, rigor does track selectivity (roughly), but until recently, Reed wasn’t very selective at all yet they are in the top 8 per capita in sending grads in to PhD programs in an insane 9 different disparate fields:
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/category/infographics/
Don’t worry about the Debby Downers, regardless of the “world” they live in. Your kid’s having fun, working hard and playing hard. Some of my best memories from my 20s are racing around with a group of fellow programmers in fast cars.
I guess my question about Reed would be: are the students that choose Reed more likely to be the type that intend to get a PhD?
I’ll give my two cents. It’s neither yes nor no. It’s complicated.
I spent a couple years on a Ph.D. admissions committee for a top 5 department. We would get applications from students at colleges from across the world, and we would compare them all with the goal being to admit about 35 of the very best domestic students each year.
We would typically admit about 1-3 graduating students year in and year out from elite schools with strong departments. We would generally not worry too much about the rigor of their education. But once you got out of the top 20-30 schools the statistics would change dramatically. For example, a department at an “average” state flagship might get 1 student admitted every 5 years or so despite having 4 times the number of students. When we reviewed applications from these schools we would often worry a lot about the rigor of the education and whether the students could handle the dramatic step up in intensity. When we did admit such a student, they had often exhausted the standard undergraduate curriculum by sophomore / junior year and had been mostly focused on research & graduate courses during their last year or two.
We clearly required students from the average state flagship to show that they could handle challenges above and beyond those usually provided by their schools. How much of this extra requirement was due to differences in rigor and how much was due to differences in the raw quality of the students is anyone’s guess. But we really didn’t care what the cause was. We were pretty worried that if we just admitted the best student each year from the “average” state flagship without imposing a higher standard then they would have a hard time in our program.
On the other hand, I don’t agree that the most selective colleges are always more difficult academically. Anyone who has attended an elite college can testify to this. Every student can rattle off a list of 10 classes where you can get a B if you just try a little and you can get an A if you put in a little effort. The on-time graduation rate at elite colleges is well over 90%. Except for schools like Caltech, these colleges always have easy classes and easy majors so that any student who is willing to try can graduate. The typical class in a tough major at an average school is much more rigorous than a “gut” class in an easy major at an elite school.
It varies, but I think most parents would be utterly appalled at the lack of training for TAs. In many departments at many schools, the average TA receives less training before being tossed into the classroom than you get when you buy a leaf-blower at Sears.
If there was a situation where the department was “elite” but the school was not, or the department at an “elite” school was seen as ordinary, did the perception of the department generally override the perception of the school for this purpose, or the other way around?
@al2simon: BTW, what about LACs?