<p>I’m at my final college decision (WPI vs. RIT) and I’m really wondering how I can effectively determine how difficult and deep classes are. </p>
<p>I mean, I’ve taken community college classes that are WATERED DOWN, and I am seriously trying to avoid that going into college. I want classes that are comprehensive, relevant, and deep. I’ve taken the hardest courseload at my high school (after I realized that I loved physics), but I still haven’t felt like I’ve “maxed out” so-to-speak, and I want to have that experience in college. </p>
<p>But my problem is this: whenever you ask a college or a person who goes to a college how hard it is, they always say “It’s hard, but if you really like the material and study a lot you’ll get through it”. That’s great, but the problem is that the student quality varies from school to school, so an MIT student thinking “Difficult but doable” is in a different ballpark than a community college student thinking “Difficult but doable” (not to bash people who go to a community college, just pointing out that their academic preparation is probably not on the same order of magnitude as an MIT student’s). </p>
<p>One could say SAT scores, but when I asked an admissions officer about the low median SAT scores, they explained that the school had low retention rates, since the classes were so tough relative to the student body. </p>
<p>US News ranking could be proposed as a solution, but I seriously doubt that the difficulty of a school like Harvey Mudd is even close to a school like Rose Hulman, even though they’re tied for first in US News undergraduate engineering rankings. </p>
<p>So - how do I know how difficult the classes are? How do I know whether the classes will go into all the details or just skim over the difficult parts? How do I know if the projects in an engineering will be basically lightweights or real, substantive work?</p>