Do you think the rigor of your high school greatly affects your college experience (academically)? Some people say that some of their high school classes were harder than their university classes.
IME, not for the vast majority of people. Of course, there are always outliers.
I went to a ghetto high school so I struggled in some of the intro classes at my university.
I think it can depend not just on the high school, but what you did there. For example, some students may take 15 AP classes at their high school, and graduate with classmates who didn’t take any AP classes whatsoever at the same high school. Clearly, they would experience the workload at college differently…
I absolutely believe that’s true. While I went to a STEM magnet school (consistently ranked top ten high schools in the US) I only took 4 APs, one college course, and 2 post-Ap’s in high school. Every single one of my courses was honors or above (other than courses where it wasn’t offered like foreign language, pe, band, etc). Most of my HS classmates took 6-12 APs plus at least 3-6 post APs. My high school’s SAT average is in the 2100s (lol I didn’t break 2000).
I have yet to take a college course as hard as many of my high school courses, including those that weren’t AP. That’s true of the majority of my classmates. The classmates that probably have are one of the many that went to top 50 schools.
I also know students from other high schools that have struggled in their college courses.
Oh, I definitely believe this to be the case.
High Schools differ in rigor. This difference in rigor leads to individuals like guineagirl (above poster), who find college classes much easier, and other people like myself, whose HS classes were not exactly preparatory for the college workload.
I absolutely think that someone’s high school (and their academic experience in high school) can affect their academic experience in college.
For example, I went to a good high school where I was very much on the AP/honors track. I took the most AP classes I could and did well in them and on the exams. I was a very good student but definitely wasn’t at the top of my class. I found college to be easier than high school, mainly because they took away a lot of the busy work and class time so I had more time to learn the way that was easiest for me to learn. On the other hand, I had a good friend that was valedictorian at her school, but her school was much weaker. She only took a couple of AP classes (because there weren’t many offered) and did poorly on the exams (because her school wasn’t as good at preparing students for the exam). She really struggled in college, despite starting slow in many subjects and beginning with the remedial classes. She took the minimum amount of classes to be a full-time student, but the leap between what her high school expected and what college courses suspected was a big leap for her, much bigger than it was for me or for other friends I had who went to more rigorous high schools.
Not to mention, at some schools, there can be a different experience just because of the number of credits you come in with. Someone who goes to a very rigorous high school might come in with more AP/transfer credits than a student who went to a weaker school, and that might create a different academic experience in college. I came in with a lot of AP credits, and I had a lot more flexibility with my schedule and could register for classes earlier because students with more units were given higher priority. Some students might choose to graduate early or double major or do a host of other things because they have more wiggle room in their schedules. That might not be the different academic experience you were considering, but I think in some situations, it does exist.
In my personal experience, absolutely. (Disclaimer: this experience is concurrent enrollment, not full-time college).
I had a hard time at first with Philosophy and Psychology because my high school at the time did not offer rigorous courses involving writing. I’d never had to write anything longer than two pages or so, and not with very high standards for quality. I later caught up, so the source was not the class itself or my own capabilities.
However, I was able to largely breeze through the (far harder) Calculus III (multivariable) having entered that course from a partially self-studied AP Calculus BC (the actual class was AB), which was far more rigorous than any other courses my high school offered. I was therefore more accustomed to lots of math homework, the exam style, memorizing equations, etc.
Looking at the college courses I’ve taken, and at the curricula for the IB program I’m just entering, I can easily see these courses being far harder than early college courses. For that matter, even in normal high school, the community college English I and Trig courses were nearly identical in content to the high school equivalents (if we compare trig to precalc).
My high school was not rigorous at all. I am definitely finding myself to be struggling to keep up with my peers in college. I realize I was never taught how to read/analyze complex texts so I’ve been struggling a lot with all the reading I have to do. Even introductory classes with no prerequisites presume some background knowledge, much of which I don’t have. I rarely had to study for anything in high school, which has made it super difficult to be thrown into situations where I need to study for hours and days in order to succeed.
I went to high school years ago at a smaller, rural high school without the benefit of APs. When I got to West Point, I had some difficulty becuase of poor study habits and not having been challenged. My D is starting at Notre Dame having gone to a reasonably good public high school with 10 AP’s under her belt. Time will tell, but I think she at least has a running start and will not be overwhelmed by the academic workload. Kids who breeze through high school getting by on natural intelligence often struggle, initially, at colleges where everyone is pretty smart
Rigor of the HS has a huge impact. Not all 4.00 GPAs are created the same.
Article in the NYT about how UT Austin with its auto-admit admissions, is struggling to keep high GPA students from low performing schools, on track:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html?_r=0
On the flip side, it is common to hear students from elite prep schools comment that college is easier than HS.
I have heard that “college is easier than my prep school” in some cases.
I have never heard it from an engineering student.
@rhandco Amen!!
There’s literally no way for high school rigor to not affect college academic experience (and I’m including @mommyrocks excellent point about the rigor of the course load you choose within your high school).
I went to a small, extremely elite private school where 50% of the class got 1500+ on their SAT (back when it was out of 1600). About half the class went to the ivy league with somewhere between 20-25% of the class going to HYP specifically and until they got to the upper level courses, it was a pretty universal experience among them - including STEM majors like myself - that freshman and maybe sophomore year in the ivy league was easier than high school - yes, even a couple engineering students.