Yes, and anecdotes about unspecified “Ivy”, “top LAC”, “state school”, etc. may not be as helpful as things like “UCSC requires more math than Cornell in its intermediate economics courses even though UCSC is less selective for admissions”.
@bernie12 I graduated from high school 2 years after Ontario eliminated the “departmental”. It was a series of province-wide exams taken after a 13th year of high school designed for those intended on university. So, no one bats an eye when we were told that university was for those with cognitive ability in the 115 range. (We are talking about the second half of the 60s now).
I decided to look into college completion rate over the years after the conversation with my student the prof., and found the following:
American degree completion rate has more than triple since my high school days. There must then be a correspondent decrease in the quality of students arriving at college. I don’t think a difference of one standard deviation between then and now is out of the question.
So, @QuantMech the average person and the average college student may not be all that different. The MSU VP and you may both be right.
@morrismm : Those comparisons make sense and I have seen them first hand (attending a non-flagship for my masters in a discipline I did not major in, I saw how the physical chemistry 1, thermodynamics and kinetics, that my PI teaches was actually more comparable to general chemistry at my alma mater. In fact, the instructors that did more mathematically oriented exams in general chemistry actually wrote more higher level questions. Had they added any calculus, there would be no contest between the two. I also suspect that many undergraduates would mostly not do well or flunk the course with their level of effort at my school. They would have to step it up tremendously. My boss was very nice to them.) But I do wonder how “some” Ivies/top privates stack up to elite publics. From what I have seen, some of the elite publics are roughly the same or even have them beat in departments known for strong/rigorous programs. But again, at that point it doesn’t matter because students at either are in the “elite” bracket usually well above 1300 average SATs and even 1350 in most cases.
At least some of the increase in BA/BS completion was due to increased financial accessibility (GI Bill, increase in state university capacity with low in-state tuition) of US universities starting in the late 1940s. In other words, the prior low rate of attending a university in the US was at least in part due to capable students not having the financial ability to do so.
Also, the elite private universities then took much larger portions of their classes based on SES-eliteness rather than academic eliteness.
Some of the big flagship-level publics may have a “let them all in and see if they can handle the work” attitude, or used to before they became more selective in the last few decades. This may have been based on the age when capacity and funding was plentiful, so giving more people a chance to try college, even knowing that some will not succeed and graduate (or many will take longer than four years to graduate), may have been the prevailing attitude (including in the state government giving the funding, since they wanted to increase the educational attainment of the state population to boost the state economy – i.e. higher education was seen more of an investment in the state’s future, not a cost that needs to be cut to balance the budget and pay for all of the prisons needed as a result of the 1970s-1990s crime wave and resulting politics).
Of course, the elite privates in decades past took greater portions of their classes from SES-elite (not necessarily academically elite) sources, so they may have had some offerings more suitable for those less-than-academically-elite students (i.e. less rigorous), along with others for the portions of their classes that actually was academically elite. Perhaps some of those less rigorous offerings survive today at some of those schools.
For what it’s worth, I recently read an article after googling “Grade Inflation at Colleges” or something like that. I read that the privates tend to center higher than the publics. I think I read the privates are more likely to center around a 3.3 and the publics a bit lower (maybe a 3.0? not sure).
Of course this is a gross generalization and average gpa and rigor are not necessarily proportional in either direction.
One thing I have heard in defense of schools that use a curve (which typically scares people because they think it’s hard to get an A)…having that curve can come in quite handy when the classes get hard and your D is now a B-.
Another personal experience…a good friend of mine (very bright woman) went to RPI and majored in business (this was years ago). I remember her complaining about how hard it was…she would get 16’s on tests (out of 100) (and it wasn’t an F…it curved higher than that). I don’t remember her GPA when she graduated, but it was definitely below a 3.0. For what it is worth, she is today the most successful friend I have, and has been since graduation. She got into banking and I think just really hit the ground running. No way of telling if RPI and their rigor had anything to do with her success, but this thread made me think of her experience and I thought I’d share it.
This is all good conversation and debate…but at the end of the day, it really just comes down to the school, major, and student/student body. I think generally speaking the overall consensus is that there is somewhat of a relationship between selectivity and rigor, but there is so much gray area the only real way to answer the question is to research it by school and by major.
@collegemomjam my D is at RPI and it’s really tough – just getting above a 3.0 is a lot of work and requires real focus. (And she was a straight-A student with a 2300 SAT going into college.) She says that the people she’s met who have transferred in from other schools, or transferred out to other schools, have all commented how much more difficult it is at RPI than where they came from or went to.
@insanedreamer it will pay off. I also just remembered, my husband’s cousin’s daughter recently graduated from RPI and has a fabulous job with Boeing…I think RPI grads do very well.
Another factor is the growing importance in four, five and six year graduation rates as a measure of competence but in the ratings and by government. It used to be that public schools did not care that much about the individual success of a student as there was always someone else to fill the seat. Now good state governments are being pro-active about forcing schools to pay attention to graduation rates to ensure that they get some return from their investment.
Very few people can really give useful experiential examples here as few have attended both the highly selective college and the state flagship type college at the same point in their academic careers. Many have done grad work and one and undergrad at the other. Apples and Oranges, says I.
I attended a variety of state and private colleges on my journey. All at the undergrad level. While none of them would be considered elite in the Ivy sense, they ranged from a Big 10 school to small private LAC. In my experience, the biggest difference is the individual professors. The Big 10 school had some HUGE lectures for ‘core’ classes. Those were ameliorated by small groups of about 30 students meeting on non-lecture days.
Defining rigor is also important. Some classes are hard because of the sheer volume of work or the pace at which they expect it to be learned. Some are difficult because the expected depth of understanding is greater. In one case, the course was more difficult because the professor was incapable of communicating clearly in the dominant language of the city in which he taught. (which hardly makes it more rigorous, but definitely makes it more difficult) The most selective of the colleges I attended had one professor who was simply legalistic. She was more concerned with checking boxes than educating students.
If you have the time and skills, research the professors at the schools you are considering. The best, IMHO, have non-academic experience in their field. They also have a reputation for engaging lectures, useful office hours and challenging, but fair projects/exams. I preferred courses where there were frequent quizzes or exams. Too few and you can do quite poorly if you do not understand how that professor ‘tests’. From the school standpoint, you may find significant differences in specific colleges within a university. There is simply not a one-size fits all answer to this.
@Torveaux : I worry that our ability to judge “fairness” of projects and exams is low. Like if I usually look at RMP or something, I generally know that “fair” means easier/if you do the minimum expectations you will get everything out of the test or assignment. There are other buzzwords I usually look for when looking at say, rating websites. Usually a high quality rating for a person also rated as difficult is a good hint. The quality and details provided in the ratings may also be indicative.
Like this popular instructor from my school:http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=74364
Notice how some students mention a research portion of the exam or “creative problem solving” (he puts scenarios that students are unfamiliar with and then you must use the tools you learned to see them through)
This other highly rated professor gets similar commentary: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=376520
I tend to trust these types of ratings if I am looking for a challenging but good experience. They seem to have the right idea in terms of challenge and students generally agree, and of course you have some naysayers (as you should…teaching should not be only about satisfying everyone).
But then there are teachers punished for good teaching (this lady has mixed reviews oftentimes because those with AP credit take her and expect a cruisy experience and often are caught off-gaurd, so they then rate low. Students more serious about learning STEM usually give her class high ratings because it is fairly engaging and incorporates many activities: In fact, 2 students from her class were inspired to make an Ebola kit. The one who finished it won 100k for the concept/invention. That could only happen in her section): http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=333056
Then there is this:http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1711650
This person gets high ratings: Wanna know why? Meets expectations for the ease of the intro. biology sequence. Is the only lecture track instructor teaching course that gives multiple choice only exams. If that doesn’t play nicely into the hands of newly minted HS grads (freshmen) and sophomores and upperclasssmen who want to work much less, then I do not know what does. Students seem to reward laziness and mediocrity when they are not motivated or desire to learn/want to get by for the semester. Those meeting their expectations for ease/laid back experience will be rewarded, those who don’t will not as much unless they are upper division or teach a subject that students generally deem as more difficult no matter their background, so it seems the chemistry instructors are being cut a nice little break. Also “Blessed are those who teach upper division courses” is what I say and an article I read I believe. They get to maintain a self-selected cohort if they want.
I guess when researching the instructor, you must actually just talk to students who took the course and ask more than: “was it easy?” and "how is it graded?: if you are actually taking it for something more than a grade. You have to actually ask what types of things you do in the class if you want a more holistic depiction of it. Also, even rigor gauges can be off. Any class may be hard to a student if they expected it to be so simple that they would barely have to do minimum requirements (like going to class, reading, etc) or if they got cocky and underestimate the course completely. The latter happens a lot at more selective schools. Students getting caught off guard.
I tend to agree with @planner03
My S graduated HS ahead of all of his friends (all above 4.0, multiple APs, etc.). His friends are all at great schools, USC UCSB OU UCLA UCI SDSU Western WA and my S is at an Ivy. Most of them earned 4.0 their first semesters and got on deans list but not my S. It’s rigorous at his school and his college doesn’t grade on a curve. I guarantee that if my S were at one of his friend’s schools he would be on the deans list
@CALSmom : You can make no such guarantees, also instructors chooser whether or not to grade on a curve and not schools. Some instructors may give exams that warrant a curve, and some will not. In the latter case, you have to meet the performance standards for the course and in the former, the instructor knows that they are challenge even bright students so there will be problems not even they will get completely or at all so it will yield a low average. Also, it is their first semesters…selective institutions have a reputation for having a more intensive weedout in first year courses.
In addition, are all of them majoring in the same disciplines taking the same courses? Unless this is the case and they all put their coursework and course websites together to compare, we will never know. You also assume that such a small performance gap between your son and those others should directly translate to differences in performances in college. Well, they were all really good to begin with. They could get better (continued or improved study habbits, strategically selected courses and instructors, etc), worse (have trouble with developing real study habbits and independence as HS excellence may have come easily or have gotten caught up in the college experience). There are too many factors to say that differences in first semester GPAs have much to do with the overall rigor of the college. I would need to know a lot more. The only thing that could be true is that Dean’s list is harder at an Ivy or many elite privates as grades may just generally be concentrated at the top due to a mixture of excellent students and even some grade inflation.
Also, dropping the term Ivy doesn’t say much. I find it very much depends on which Ivy (because then I can kind of gauge which schools likely have similar rigor in a department/pathway dependent manner. See, again, many more factors). It may have very little to do with it being an Ivy (vs. other selective schools such as USC or even UCLA) and more so have to do with even size differences. Like if one encounters cozier courses and section sizes in the first year where the instructor can afford to have more rigorous assignments and demands (because there is less to grade) then this can largely explain differences in the first year. Other larger selectives (especially publics and those the size of publics like USC) may converge as the class sizes of students shrink. For example, if one looked at elite privates with similar selectivity as USC (maybe a little above or below) that are more medium sized, then many will have first year courses that compare better with what you see at Ivies like Brown or Dartmouth and I guess Cornell (a bit larger, but not USC) for example. I’m talking places like Notre Dame, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Washington University, Emory, Carnegie Mellon, Rice, that ilk of schools.
@bernie12 I understand all the points you have made and I apologize if my statement came off as arrogant for my S. The reason and only reason I stated I guarantee he would have made the deans list at the other schools is because he took same classes if not harder as his friends in HS and out scored them all. They keep close tabs on each other via group chats to compare their schools, classes, profs and such, so from this info he ascertained that he is doing much more rigorous work in harder classes but keeping As and Bs. None of his friends took Linear Algebra and Stats with upper classmen their first semester. I’m not at all saying that the other schools are inferior but speaking to the OP question if more or highly selective schools are more rigorous, and IMO it is.
Oh, and as for the not grading on a curve statement…that came from the Dean of the college at the convocation. So unless you are calling her a liar, you are misinformed. B-)
@CALSmom : They are likely misinformed…professors can do whatever they want. A Dean has no control over their grading practices (even Princteon’s grade distribution days were simply strong recommendations). I truly doubt that they have that much oversight over individual instructors. I know NO school with that level of oversight. I doubt this is some exceptional Ivy. If anything, it is fictitious (Ivies and their peers are known to have difficult classes with curved grading including HYP and even lower tier schools). I look for STEM course websites and could find them from all 8 Ivies and you can look at syllabi from each one and you will find instructors at all that say they curve or scale versus relative performance/a class mean. If some courses did not curve the fact is most students would fail. The Dean was likely hyperbolic to emphasize the intensity of the experience. That is not unusual at any school.
Also course selection is a CHOICE. Your S is doing what he is supposed to IMHO. However, you may no compare him to the others who DID NOT take the same courses he did. You just admitted that. You S chose a more rigorous to begin with. At that point you are really comparing apples and oranges.
So did he take harder college courses than his friends? If so, then it is not exactly a controlled comparison of taking the same type of courses at different schools. Perhaps the other students got better grades because they chose easier courses, not because their schools’ courses were easier.
Also, 4.0 in college (any college) is not that common, so there may be some exaggeration to claims that “most” of his friends got 4.0 college GPAs.
His other courses were biology and a writing seminar. I guess those classes can be compared apples to apples? Anyway, his frame of reference is what he gleaned from his friends and if he were to attend their school and take the same courses, could he have attained the same grades as them? As you can see, they’re competitive and it has carried over into college
@ucbalumnus maybe so on the exaggeration, however a mother of one of his friends posted a pic of her kid’s deans list certificate on social media.
But back to the OP about selective colleges being academically harder than not-as-selective colleges, I am still of the opinion that they are. The major also plays into that as stem is harder/rigorous than humanities majors. I have read on other CC threads that some Ivies are not that difficult to maintain good grades if in humanities, but again I’m just basing it on other CC posts.
I am really hoping that emogi was sarcasm, or else there is a lot of “misinformation” coming from the students taking the courses and even the instructors who run them at all 8 Ivies:
Clearly these faculty did not realize they were not curving/scaling and the students didn’t understand what was happening to their grades either:
Either that or there is a 9th Ivy (there is no magical Ivy with substantially different grading practices than other Research U’s unless you want to go back in time to P’ton grade distribution era)
I’ll pass on that Dean’s alternative facts and so should you lol.
*Note that Dean’s list at most (I really do not know any where it does, even the most grade inflated selective colleges) schools does NOT require a 4.0.
I cannot help but to do this because I don’t want anyone seeing this to think that there is some Ivy that students need to avoid because the Dean says that even rigorous instructors do not or cannot curve:
Penn: http://www.thedp.com/article/2014/11/finding-a-cure-premed-culture
Students describe how curves in STEM work.
Dartmouth: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chem52/Syllabus.pdf
Old, but likely the same practices exist
Cornell: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/196686-organic-chemistry-at-cornell-p3.html
Students on CC report on how the curve works
Columbia: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/columbia-university/337047-whats-the-hardest-class-youve-taken-at-columbia.html
Talk of curves in STEM courses here. Doubt they stopped a decade later.
In fact a couple of summers ago: http://d1y8y8w88yi38p.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/S3443D_syllabus_summer_2015.pdf
Instructor speaks of the curve (I mean cluster analysis/normalization lol)
Now on to HYP:
Harvard: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chem27/lectures/2006Lectures/Lecture_10_Feb_27_2006.pdf (Old, but pretty sure many teachers still curve there, this isn’t new. You lower the cut-offs until a certain distribution is achieved)
Princeton: Come on, this place had a recommended grade distribution policy. It certainly scales (you can do this by adding points to cut-offs or by simply having a grading scale that already accounts for difficulty essentially building in the curve at least for STEM courses. It results in grading where something more generous than say, a 93 is an A. Usually an instructor using this system removes the competitive aspect but ultimately yields the same type of grades you see in curved courses).
Yale: http://yalescientific.org/thescope/2015/03/a-reflection-on-freshman-orgo/
Alludes to curve, you can find many (STEM mainly) syllabi at Yale that straight up say: “grades will be calculated using a curved distribution”
And again, even those in very challenging courses who don’t use a regular curved distribution of grades usually find some method to optimize students’ chances of doing okay in the course. Some may just have more pedagogically sound methods. Here is an example: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1207841.files/15ainfo.html
These places are tough, but most instructors are not out to get students. They just want some rigor in their course. Professors who do not curve usually have high means on various forms of assessment to begin with and their grade distribution is already “fair”/“consumer friendly”.
Dean’s List criteria are also different at different schools, so I’m not sure how you can compare.