I don’t know if this is a dumb question to ask or whether any of you guys actually come from Montgomery County (probably, since we’re one of the most competitive counties in the nation) but I was wondering, for those of you that come from really competitive counties, how does the college workload compare to the workload in high school? I figure it must be harder, but earlier today I saw some people saying that for many classes, Harvard just hands out As.
I’m not from Montgomery County, and I hesitate to sound obnoxious, but I’ll post my experience anyway. Please don’t take offense, CC. I went to high school in one of the most competitive districts in MA. I went to a small public. I worked much harder in high school for my grades. Part of that is taking 5-6 classes a semester in high school versus taking 4 in college, but I also noticed that the threshold for good work seems to be lower in my experience in college. Papers I turned in for sociology that would get Bs or B+s in my high school get As at my university. Exams in all of my classes are much easier than the exams I remember from high school.
Now, I’m not in the engineering school. My classes weren’t all STEM. If I was, it might be a different story. But they also weren’t classes designed exclusively for freshmen, and they weren’t “BS” classes (no basket weaving). I was genuinely surprised this semester- I was expecting to get straight Bs. I was not at the top of my university’s applicant pool- I had a 33 ACT. I did a club sport, wrote for the newspaper and was an active participant in several clubs.
Another thing I want to put out there- I was cross enrolled because one of the classes I wanted to take at my home institution was full. The school I was dual-enrolled at was “below” my home university in terms of prestige and selectivity. However, the class I took dual-enrolled was by far and away my hardest class, with the most homework, the most difficult exams, and the strictest grading.
Things like this are highly individualized. My experience won’t be yours; I can only speak for myself. If you’re admitted to a college, they know you can do the work. If you’re from a competitive high school and were at the top of your class, your chances of doing well are pretty high. I wouldn’t worry about it now- I worried about it for no reason a year ago.
Some colleges may be particularly demanding even for the accomplished students who attend them. These schools, for example, appear as the top ten in a Princeton Review category, “Students Study the Most”:
- U.S. Military Academy
- Harvey Mudd
- Reed
- UChicago
- Carleton
- Grinnell
- F. W. Olin
- Cooper Union
- Hamilton
- Carnegie Mellon
https://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings?rankings=students-study-most
I’m assuming you’re speaking of Montgomery County, Maryland.
I’m from one of the “lower” schools in Moco, and the alumni who come back always say that they struggle greatly to keep up with their course loads. Of course, this will vary from school to school, and among the different teachers you have. While Moco is known for being competitive, the general consensus now is that it’s truly hurting students more now by taking away finals and inflating grades.
Hope to hear from other people!
My son is in a somewhat similar situation as he went from a top 10 London British school to a top 50 US college. As he did well in his A levels he has found the college course work pretty easy so far, as have most of his US buddies, most of whom are from fairly strong Northeastern public and Catholic high schools. The exception are the kids in Engineering who have been working flat out to do well since the first week. My son and most of his friends are either in A&S or the business school.
My two-cent conclusion to this is not that college work is easy per se. I think that at many schools (after you get below the top 20 os so) the freshman intro courses are just not that hard. The reasons are two-fold: 1) much of the freshman material has already been covered by kids who took A levels, IB or lots of APs; 2) universities are striving very hard now for diversification in 3 ways, geographic, socioeconomic and racial. The last think these schools want is for a subset of these kids flunking out or quitting after freshman year as they find the work too hard or time consuming. Typically the work will then ratchet up sophomore year so the kids should be able to handle the work at that level.
My D graduated from the #1 high school in MA, an IB school, a top student in her class. She found her freshman year at a top 50 LAC quite easy with the exception being OrgChem, and managed to take 18 credits each semester and maintain a 4.0. This past semester she had a 300 level math class which gave her a run for her $$ but still thinks she might eek out with an A- (90/91) average in that class if she’s lucky. She fully expects going forward now that many of her classes will become much more difficult, especially her math classes and will try to mix her classes based on difficulty.
In a nutshell, I’d say the workload her freshman year was equal or less than her junior/senior years in high school. Her third semester about the same and now the real work will begin 
Her high school prepared her very well for college.
I go to one of the “better” schools in MoCo, and I’ve been wondering this exact thing!
I went to a high school in Montgomery County. I’m currently a junior majoring in chemistry at Michigan State. In terms of material difficulty, my college classes are definitely harder than my high school classes. I’m studying a lot more than I did when taking 3-4 AP classes a year in high school, but I guess that I find the grading in my college classes to be kinder than in high school.
Remember that in high school, you are taking more classes and often ones you don’t care for or that don’t play to your strengths. In college, you have fewer classes and presumably ones you chose because they interest you. Rigor of high school aside, the experiences are rather different.
Went from one of the W schools in moco (12 APs, ~3.85, not top 5%) to University of Michigan (~3.93).
All my Bs in HS were English or Spanish, got an A+ (100%) in freshman English and an A- in fifth semester Spanish. My Micro class covered less than my AP Micro class - I ended up not going to lecture halfway through the year and pulled an A. So far, yes, my classes in HS were harder than my UM classes. Moco prepares you well.
There is no one answer to this question. Depends on which MoCo school, whether a magnet program, what classes taken, the student, and the college (among other things)… I expect that the average level of preparedness from MoCo schools is better than in many districts elsewhere, but the range is huge. It is a very large school district. Best to ask recent graduates of your HS/program. And while getting in to an Ivy may be harder than doing well there, no respectable school just hands out A’s.