<p>Don’t mean to offend anyone, but is chicago REALLY that hard ??? or perhaps, is the “difficulty” attributed to a weaker class academically?</p>
<p>Here, try some problem sets:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~abert/moore/moore.html]Math[/url”>http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~abert/moore/moore.html]Math[/url</a>]</p>
<p>What? hm?</p>
<p>Chicago has always been challenging and has always been doable. The students who are admitted are able to do the work; the students who attend want to do it. Some people have this idea that Chicago is an academic hellhole of sorts and that work is excruciating… it really isn’t. Unless you want it to be. In which case we’ll make it as hard as you want, and then some.</p>
<p>(That link to the honors calc problem set is a perfect example of choosing to do difficult work-- most students opt for much less rigorous calc sequences).</p>
<p>Class profiles are getting slightly stronger numbers-wise every year, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to argue that this slight upwards shift means a more academically passionate, “smarter” class. I think the upwards shift has to do a lot more with our changing image and our increased selectivity than the relative academic brainpower of the people who have attended this institution over the years.</p>
<p>…Yes…No…</p>
<p>um, this place is hard whether you want it to be or not, no matter how hard you worked in high school, and no matter the courses.</p>
<p>
I agree. </p>
<p>There are a lot of factors involved here, too. Required humanities classes may not be very difficult for someone who want to be an English major, but they may be quite challenging for a prospective math major. The quarter system means that a semester’s worth of material is covered in 10 weeks; we take fewer classes, but the term feels very “intense” overall. (We take 3-4 classes; at many schools on the same system, students always take 3 classes, which is another thing to consider.) Then there’s the grading issue… There aren’t really any “easy A” classes, and I think it’s more difficult to get the highest grades here than at some other top schools, given conversations I’ve had with friends and siblings at other schools. Then you face questions about the different student populations: Do U of C students tend to study more? Do they choose to take classes that challenge them more? etc. I have no idea, but it’s something else to think about. </p>
<p>Anyway, the work is tough but manageable and depends a lot on the classes you’re taking (especially in relation to your own skills).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Or even better, a midterm or two:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~ryzhik/MATH207-07/midterm-sol.pdf[/url]”>http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~ryzhik/MATH207-07/midterm-sol.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~ryzhik/MATH207-07/midterm2-sol.pdf[/url]”>http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~ryzhik/MATH207-07/midterm2-sol.pdf</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hmm… most of the math majors I know are getting As or A-s (and even an A+ <em>gasp</em>) in their HUM core sequences, and I know a few lit majors getting Bs.</p>
<p>scom, i looked at the continuum, and that seems like pre-alg to me…Not that hard!</p>
<p>You must’ve gone to a REALLY good school to have learned that in pre-algebra. haha I think it’s pretty challenging, but I know what you mean though. My teacher gave me something eerily similar to that (from MIT) for math team .</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolutely. There’s obviously no way to know for sure, but after talking to students who picked up Russian <em>for fun</em> or a graduate student seminar in Art History <em>for fun</em> or the student who is taking French literature <em>for fun</em>, it’s hard to determine who has the right to complain about the workload that they might have!</p>
<p>I think a LOT also has to do on what you think is “hard” versus “rigorous.” Me? I like “hard,” and prefer to think of it “hard” as “rigorous.” Other people may want to take it a little bit easier. You can’t really make it that easy.</p>
<p>I went on course evaluations and took a “random” sampling of classes to see how much time students report spending on them.</p>
<p>-Introduction to Biochemistry: 6.6 hrs/wk (Standard Dev: 2.07)
-Human Being and Citizen (one section of humanities core): average time on homework: 6 hours a week for a 3 hour/wk class. 38% of the class expects a A, 55% a B.
-Power, Identity, and Resistance (a section of social sciences core): average time on homework: 7 hours a week for a 3 hour/wk class
- Philosophy of Mind and Science Fiction: average time on homework: 4 hrs/wk for a 3 hr/wk class. 71% of the class expects an A, 28% a B
– History of European Civ section for civ core… average time on homework: 7 hr/wk for a 3 hr/wk class, 9% expects an A, 72% a B, 18% a C.</p>
<p>Do with that sampling what you will.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s not pre-algebra. Those are real number axioms that you learned a long time ago but don’t understand. Try proving them yourself and you’ll see that they’re not that obvious.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, for some reason, it seems to me that the average math major is significantly more intelligent than the average humanities major.</p>
<p>P.S. I’m not a math major.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>NTSC, anyone?</p>
<p>Actually: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/413762-grade-inflation-deflation-2.html#post4898381[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/413762-grade-inflation-deflation-2.html#post4898381</a></p>
<p>I hope we’ve made our point with these maths assignments. These are difficult classes, because while you might have been able to, say, appreciate the field axioms in secondary school, it is unlikely you were asked to deduce other important facts about R or some other set of numbers with + and * from them. There are easy classes, as CesareBorgia has pointed out; that doesn’t mean the school isn’t ‘hard’.</p>
<p>Where’s the data that shows that Chicago has a “weaker class academically”? Support your claim, CNI. I wouldn’t say that the SAT/ACT distributions are sufficient data, as those tests are not necessarily accurate indicators.</p>
<p>On the first exercise sheet, I remember proving two of those in pre-calc (not pre-alg, dear god no) last year, but I don’t remember how. However, I’d really like to know what happens to the lions.</p>
<p>Sorry, I just had to throw that out there.</p>
<p><em>wanders out</em></p>
<p>that lions problem is more like an economic model. you define the constraints of your economy and ask “what happens if…”</p>
<p>thricedotted – yes, induction and irrationality proofs are introduced in secondary school. The first three weeks of that course seem geared toward consolidating much of the class’ advanced mathematics knowledge and beginning to look at what we ‘know’ already in a more rigorous way. Things get really fun around the 23 October problem set.</p>
<p>(It’s important to note that 16100, section 50 isn’t strictly taught, but rather a quarter-long Moore method approach to the real numbers.)</p>
<p>The students in the inquiry based section class adore it. You kind of have to, or else you’ll fall apart. The non-inquiry based sections are difficult enough.</p>
<p>And as far as the “easy A” classes, Cesare, corranged and I discussed following your comment how a class like Nat Sci (heard it’s being discontinued?) or Core Bio is not intentionally difficult, but how many still find it challenging.</p>
<p>The “data” I provided from course evaluations earlier in this thread attempted to show what I think is a pretty accurate distributions of grades earned and average time spent on homework. As you can see from the information, demands and grading curves vary from class to class and from professor to professor:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A good deal of ABD grad students teach in core, and it’s my impression that grad students tend to be more lenient graders than professors. Of course, that isn’t that consistent either, as when I get back a paper with comments and grades from both my discussion section leader grad student and my “hard grader” professor, the prof grade is sometimes higher than the grad student grade.</p>
<p>SCO- I totally agree with you on the point that SAT doesn’t correlate with academic intelligence, and quite frankly, it’s pretty difficult to defend the idea that U of C students are a slight notch below those of HYP. But, just as it’s commonly accepted that those math problem sets are difficult, I think the same principle applies when analyzing two schools.</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at. I’ve always felt that there are a lot of smart, talented, amazing people out there, many more than could ever fit into an incoming class at Harvard. Assuming that these amazing people tend to gravitate to elite schools (a hard thing to assume, as I’m sure many go to public schools for financial reasons), I would say that all of the elite schools are more similar than different in terms of the quality of student who attends.</p>
<p>What’s the elite cutoff? I have no idea-- you tell me. Certainly Harvard and U of C are included, wherever you may decide to draw the line. But as long as some of my most academically minded and intellectually stimulated friends go to schools like Oberlin, Vanderbilt, Wesleyan, and Wash U and have an easier time finding likeminded people than my friends at Harvard, I’m not so sure what the big difference is.</p>
<p>There might not be a big difference, but that sort of leads to my question if U of C’s curriculum is “really” that much tougher than similar schools, or if it’s just relatively the same level.</p>