<p>This might be a dumb question but please bear with me. An example would be like comparing a state university to Cornell. How much of a difference would the difficulty in schoolwork be? No matter what college you end up at, it’s still hard right?</p>
<p>Well schools usually are considered prestigious because of their higher levels of academics, so it would make sense that the coursework would not be easy at any top school and will probably be more challenging than most state schools. But at the same time, you can get just as functional of an education at many state schools as you can at a more “prestigious” school</p>
<p>No. Prestige is a nebulous concept that doesn’t directly correlate with any measurable form of course rigor (though there may be marked differences in the quality between broader “tiers” of schools). </p>
<p>Swarthmore, for example, is a liberal arts college known for a rigorous education, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone outside of academia who has heard of it.</p>
<p>Usually its the opposite haha. i think the top 25 schools have similar workloads except Cornell, Chicago, MIT, Caltech and maybe Northwestern/JHU being more rigorous than the others.</p>
<p>so maybe a true match school is the best option…while most want to get into their reach schools. Is it really better off to get into a reach and possibly struggle?</p>
<p>I usually laugh when people online confidently assert that “this school is stronger than the other school.” Most schools use the same textbook and similar coursework material. They might dumb the material a bit depending on the quality of students. But thats it. Your community college is going to be teaching the same general chemistry class as Harvard, even though you might be taught the gen chem class by a nobel laureate</p>
<p>Don’t think there is a good correlation between level of prestige and difficulty of coursework. </p>
<p>Had one classmate who transferred from Georgetown University to Oberlin with a 3.5+ college GPA and ended up graduating with a C+/B- average in poli-sci and complaining about the workload. </p>
<p>Conversely, knew someone who transferred out with a 3.0 GPA who ended up graduating with a 3.7+ GPA from UT-Austin’s honors program. </p>
<p>There was another classmate who did a 3-2 engineering program with Columbia engineering. Said the difficulty were about the same even though the last two years were all engineering related.</p>
<p>All good answers.
I’d add: the “difficulty of the schoolwork” is often a direct reflection of the students the school serves. Ie, the breadth and depth of their education and the level of their analytical, interpretive and writing skills.</p>
<p>
This is so so wrong and why people don’t get it.</p>
<p>My S,on leave from a top LA school, had to take classes at our tier I state school while on medical leave. He easily got a 4 gpa and was the top student in every one of his classes. He took some of the hardest classes we offer ( my PhD H and I work there). One professor, currently nominated for the noble peace prize,told my S he was the only student to get 100 on a midterm in all his 30+ years of teaching.</p>
<p>My S said there is no question that the work load is easier at the state school. He had no trouble getting a 4 gpa.</p>
<p>My D, an Ivy (Cornell) grad, took a course I teach. Hers was much more along the graduate level. I would have to fail the majority of students if I taught it at the level she learned.</p>
<p>I teach a course for community college transfers at our state school. It is is suppose to be a refresher and up to date of one of our first year courses they already had. I fail a large percentage of these students causes they do not know s…t.</p>
<p>My S said the work load so so much easier it was a joke.</p>
<p>To suggest that the courses and work load are the same no matter where they are taught is ridiculous.</p>
<p>That is why certain employers only recruit at certain schools. A gpa at one school is worth a whole lot more than a gpa at another, rightly fully so.</p>
<p>It’s really up to the prof as to how hard he/she is going to make the class. That can happen at an elite and it can happen at a public.</p>
<p>Conversely, my friend’s son is at Yale and they think that too many of his profs are too easy.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, I think the difference is in the volume of work required. D at an Ivy may have to hunker down in the library and read 120 pages and complete 2 hours of calculus problem sets each night. 3-5 hours in the library daily seems pretty typical. Also, bear in mind the dumbest kid in you class scored a 31 on his ACT. S at a flagship state school may cover the sam concepts, but not in the same depth.</p>
<p>"Generally speaking, I think the difference is in the volume of work required. D at an Ivy may have to hunker down in the library and read 120 pages and complete 2 hours of calculus problem sets each night. 3-5 hours in the library daily seems pretty typical. Also, bear in mind the dumbest kid in you class scored a 31 on his ACT. S at a flagship state school may cover the sam concepts, but not in the same depth. "</p>
<p>Depends on the Ivy in question. Cornell, Princeton, and sometimes Columbia have heavier than average workloads which to some may justify their admissions difficulty. </p>
<p>Then again, other Ivies and sometimes Columbia have far less workloads than what one may encounter at a comparable or even lower ranked small liberal arts colleges and at some public universities (Especially Berkeley, UVA, or UMich). </p>
<p>“Conversely, my friend’s son is at Yale and they think that too many of his profs are too easy.”</p>
<p>Heard the same at Harvard. Also, took a summer stats course there and was surprised to see so many Harvard students complaining to the dean that the instructor was “too hard/demanding”, the portion who were repeating the course saying he was harder than the regular stats prof they failed during the regular academic year, and that they were panicked about actually failing the course. While the instructor was challenging, the course was manageable and I aced the course even though math was one of my worst subjects in high school.</p>
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<p>Maybe true for introductory physical science courses at most schools. Not so true for introductory social science courses, and not true at all for intro humanities courses. Not true at all for most fields beyond the 101 courses.</p>
<p>At Chicago, Columbia, and I assume at many other selective schools, even in the introductory social science and humanities courses, most classes use primary source materials most of the time. Not textbooks. At Chicago, it used to be the case (and may be still) that material for certain introductory courses was selected by the faculty for printing by the university press.</p>
<p>The first science course I took at Chicago, an introductory Core course, was on crystallography and symmetry in nature. I doubt there was another undergraduate course quite like it at any other school.</p>
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<p>I meant that the materials and everything used in most schools are the same. The difficulty and quality depends on the strength of the student body. Professors adjust instruction and teaching quality to reflect the caliber of students. So its impossible to judge how strong a department is relative to another one. </p>
<p>So what your anecdote basically justifies what I previously said.</p>
<p>In engineering, math, and physics at Cornell, the coursework was considerably more advanced than at other colleges. For example, you cover in two semesters of calculus what is covered in three semesters of calculus at other schools (a second-tier private and a SUNY). This is probably true in other majors as well.</p>
<p>Professors taught at a higher level at Cornell.</p>
<p>My D1 took a Calc III course at a local state university while she was still in HS.
The textbook for the course was the same one as my alma mater was using, so I thought the same thing: "how different could the course be if they are using the same book?</p>
<p>I was more than surprised, during the semester, that she was doing very little work in the class and was getting an “A”. So at some point, near the end, I asked her what was going on.</p>
<p>It turned out that, in each chapter, they did only the easiest, most representative problems in the text. And the exams were just like the sample problems, which the teacher went over in class, just changed some numbers. I imagine they also covered fewer chapters of the text than my alma would have covered.</p>
<p>So that answered my question How could the courses be so different? That’s how.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Was this a local directional state? </p>
<p>I doubt this would happen at a flagship. My H has looked at what my kids are doing in math and physics as undergrads and he says he wasn’t doing the same concepts until grad school.</p>
<p>By “prestige,” I assume you mean academic selectivity. Faculty tailor the coursework they assign to the abilities of their students, so a more selective school will generally have more demanding classes than a less selective school. That doesn’t mean every single class will be more demanding, just that on average the classes will be more rigorous, because they can be. However, the differences are insignificant when the differences in selectivity are also slight. Thus there isn’t going to be a big difference between a school ranked #1 and a school ranked #8 (or if there is a difference, it will have more to do with the culture of the school than with its academic selectivity). But there is going to be a big difference between a school ranked #1 and a school ranked #250.</p>
<p>
Yes, this is common sense when you think about it. </p>
<p>Let’s use HYPOTHETICAL PUBLIC RANKED AROUND 80 in USNWR, and Cornell, ranked #15. The students at HYPO average 1250 on the SATs and 3.7 weighted GPA in high school, vs. the students at Cornell CAS who average 1435 and 4.2 weighted. Further, the students at HYPO took on average 3 AP classes in HS, whereas those at Cornell took 7.</p>
<p>So, you’re the professor at HYPO PUBLIC. You organize the lecture around, let’s say, the person at he 60% of your class. If you go higher, too many students will fail to assimilate the concepts, and fail the class… or maybe not. You can adjust the tests such that the 20% student passes. After some time, the students in the top half adjust their effort to the level of their competition in the class.</p>
<p>So, at HYPO, a student who WOULD HAVE fit in the middle at Cornell will see lectures that are shallow and obvious, with little stimulating discussion. This same student at HYPO PUBLIC will hit the books perhaps 2-3 hours per day instead of 5, as this is the amount necessary to get an A and be high enough in rank to get the Professors’ attention and mentoring at HYPO.</p>
<p>Is this a bad thing? Maybe not. Perhaps this student at HYPO who could have been an average student at Cornell would actually learn more from the access he/she gains to Professors, research, and dare I say social excursions than had he/she been at Cornell studying twice as hard, getting a full letter lower grade, feeling inadequate, and not getting any access to Professors.</p>
<p>You can take the same comparative analysis with a school ranked #40, and Cornell, just adjust everything up a little… Cornell probably serves as a placeholder for any of the top 16 National Unis (except maybe Brown and Harvard), and any of the top 10 LACs.</p>
<p>"At Chicago, Columbia, and I assume at many other selective schools, even in the introductory social science and humanities courses, most classes use primary source materials most of the time. Not textbooks. At Chicago, it used to be the case (and may be still) that material for certain introductory courses was selected by the faculty for printing by the university press.
"</p>
<p>Not sure about Chicago, but I do know for a fact textbooks are used in some lower-division courses at Columbia depending on course and major. </p>
<p>For instance, they used the same modern Chinese history textbook I used at Oberlin for both the undergrad and grad survey modern Chinese history courses. Of course, both schools also made it a point to assign journal articles. Primary sources were more tricky in the undergrad course, however, because of language issues and the thorny issues around using translated sources.</p>
<p>“If you go higher, too many students will fail to assimilate the concepts, and fail the class… or maybe not. You can adjust the tests such that the 20% student passes. After some time, the students in the top half adjust their effort to the level of their competition in the class.”</p>
<p>Some state university campuses with relatively easy admissions stats, especially for in-staters used to keep the instruction level high deliberately to “weed out” most of the weaker students in the incoming class so half or even most are gone by the beginning of their junior year. Not sure if this still happens today, but I heard it was common at many state university campuses up until the late 1960’s.</p>