Rigorous classes do have heavy workloads, but they don’t always have heavy physical workloads, i.e., reams of paper filled with text, code, solutions to problems, etc. The wmount of reading also differs.
However, the workload that is considered synonymous with rigor is, indeed, the physical workload. That is because of the pernicious and commonly held notion (in the USA) that the only way to learn something is through repetitive application. That is why when the powers be see that the USA is lagging behind other countries in math, they think that the only way to catch up is to increase the amount of homework.
Some topics do require a heavy physical workload, especially those topics which require a lot of background knowledge or a lot of writing. Any class which is about synthesizing lots of information, or learning how to write extended responses will have a large workload, even if the rigor is not that high.
Other rigorous classes, like theoretical math, have a very heavy workload, but it’s mostly mental. Having to produce one proof a week is not very much by way of writing on the final product, but it requires hours and hours of thinking and page after page of scribbling.
Arguably this is the subject that creates a very heavy workload for some people and very light workload for others. Often times these proofs can be easy if you can figure out the solution and impossibly hard if you can’t.
Great movie. And obviously the movie is an exaggeration. The movie was unrealistic because Will didn’t have the background to tackle these problems.
But the thing is, there is a lot of truth to it as well. Things seemingly impossible for most people are straightforward for those rare few with the background AND the talent.
There is value in society in having an MIT, a Princeton, a Harvard, a CalTech and a few others to find these minds, gather them together, and challenge them in ways that other colleges cannot.
That is not creating an overly heavy intellectual workload for those students. It is simply unlocking their full potential.
I changed subject to math (from natural sciences) because it was a substantially lighter workload: there were no labs, just 12 hours of lectures and 2 problem sets a week. I was reasonably good at math, but far from the most talented and the challenging part was the revision for exams, since you had to memorize every technique you’d learned in the whole year. The problem sets didn’t involve “hours and hours of thinking and pages and pages of scribbling” (although occasionally you’d wake up in the morning having dreamt the answer). In three years I don’t think I ever worked a single evening.
@Twoin18, I would always look at my math problems before going to bed. Solutions would often come to me in the morning shower. I remember struggling one evening with one of my comprehensive exam questions and having a surprisingly elegant proof come to me in the shower the next morning.
I definitely worked at nights. I played on a varsity team (minor sport) but had practices every afternoon and tournaments on weekends and had a job as a research assistant that I took very seriously and wrote junior and senior theses. Plus, had GFs the last two years. I wonder when I slept.
This article from a Harvard student suggests that at Harvard you don’t need to work hard on your classes or even do the readings to get an A. Instead students spend much more time on their ECs. So maybe Harvard is as different to Princeton as the complaining Princeton student suggested?
Perhaps it is more the case that the minimum rigor level of the school overall is defined by the set of least rigorous courses that fulfill all general education requirements.
I have had this debate with my wife. We started our professional careers working 60-80 weeks, with no overtime. Adults entering the workforce now take a different view. If you don’t pay me, I am not working. My view is that the way employers milked every hour out of us 30 years ago wasn’t acceptable but, we accepted it because we had no options. Today’s educated workforce has much more mobility. Wanting balance is not a bad thing. We just have trouble accepting that we were mistreated as an employee group 30 years ago.
You are naive. At a recent Yale conference, multiple speakers mentioned how beginning on day 1, freshmen were angling and strategizing how to polish their applications to Yale Law. That is the current state of affairs, and for those who don’t want to show that they still have the will and spirit to succeed despite passing the first stage of education, they will fall behind. It is a school’s responsibility just like any tester’s responsibility to find and reward excellence. In an environment of ostensibly talented students like Princeton, rigor is required for fairness.
Comparing Princeton and Harvard, I’m sure Physics classes are not easy in either school. However, at Harvard, when I last inquired, a STEM major could meet distribution requirements with known-to-be easy courses (e.g., Celtic poetry IIRC) whereas at Princeton, it would be difficult to find easy courses to meet the distribution requirements. I don’t know if this is still true. However, the author of the originally cited article was decrying rigor not just in the gen ed style courses but in all courses.
I honestly thought the intensity of my undergraduate academic training was great for me. In the mode of “When I was in school, I walked five miles to school in the snow, uphill in both directions,” I took a full STEM/social science-oriented workload, played on a minor varsity team, had a very serious research assistantship job for four years, wrote a senior thesis that was published in the best journal in the field, and had a GF for the last two years and made some lifelong friends. I played intramural sports out-of-season. The whole experience was intense but very rewarding (though I am guessing that there was not much time for sleep).
@MWolf, I’m speculating that @HNH is responding to your statement about how kids ought to view college in contrast to how he/she thinks kids do view college (e.g., not as an educational experience but as one more set of hoops to jump through to win the ultimate prize or at least the next step in the tournament).
As I have written in a few other posts, college should be about learning how to think in a number of ways (like an economist, social psychologist, physicist, philosopher, etc.) so that one can attack problems later in life with a number of approaches. In doing so, one should try to discover one’s strengths and build on them. At the same time, I think of a career trajectory or a life trajectory as a game of conditional probabilities. Each step one takes increases or decreases the probabilities of other events (e.g., getting in to Yale Law School per @HNH’s post). What is lacking from the Princeton student decrying rigor to the Yale freshmen immediately trying to figure out how to position themselves to get into Yale Law School is an extreme lack of perspective about the benefits of education and in particular about understanding their strengths so they choose to pursue a career that matches them and not merely choose the prestigious career paths because other people consider them prestigious. I give a talk about career trajectories every couple of years or so to a group of kids, many from well-to-do families, who have attended excellent colleges and grad schools. (This is not my field but people find the talk very useful and in quite a few cases cathartic). There are always the kids who went to Yale and NYU Law or Amherst and Yale Law and are now working at prestigious firms and saying, “OK. I jumped through all of the hoops I was told are prestigious and this is it? This is what life is about? That’s all there is?” They are wondering how to find a way to get out of what they are doing to something that will be more fulfilling (given the expensive realities of life).
I think there is a false distinction being made between passion and rigor. Yes, people should choose their own passion, but doing so is hard for 18 year olds and even for 22 year olds with little real world experience. Does any 21 year old really know the difference in the day-to-day life of a 3rd year associate at Davis Polk vs. a postdoc at Stanford vs. an analyst at DE Shaw vs. a Radiologist vs. a Neurosurgeon? Yet, they are expected to make decisions, and fast, as there is great advantage to the first movers and longest committed. To delay is to fall behind those who are willing to throw down. Just like youth sports these days, isn’t it? Or instrumental music? How likely is it that someone finding a passion for lacrosse at 14 will be recruited?
Is it any surprise that most talented students choose a secondary target like a prestigious law or graduate school that will give them more time and maturity? And prestige tends to open the greatest number of doors and keep them open, so that’s really the “smart” choice for many of these smart kids.
Disillusionment abounds at Cravath and at Goldman, and at MGH. But there’s a lot you can do with a Yale Law degree or a Harvard Med degree, and you can do a lot of those things better or at least with more credibility with a prestigious degree. At some point, people have to make their decisions, but 18 or 21 is really too early. So, continuing to prove yourself through rigor and achievement until you are strong and experienced enough to pick your passion (and balance family, spouse and budget) looks like the smart play.
In 2023, 52,250 high school seniors, the largest number in the history of Yale may disagree. And the quality seems to be there based on the admissions data. If your point is that the best and the brightest don’t want to go to Yale, I respect your opinion, but you probably know that’s not really a widely-held view.
Yale’s a great place. In my opinion, any student would be lucky to attend and continue to work hard there. Not sure many got in by spending most of their high school years “finding themselves”
@HNH, not sure if you think I am conflating passion and rigor, as I am not. One section of my talk is why the graduation speech advice to “follow one’s passion” is terrible advice as given, particularly to an 18 or 21 year. Discovering and playing to your strengths is actually much better advice.
Per your last paragraph, life is about conditional probabilities. One has to compare the conditional probability of finding a path that is fulfilling in life after getting an HMS or Yale Law degree (including the years and money spent getting them) versus other choices. The right prescription depends upon the individual. The best chocie for some will be the most prestigious path (as defined, of course, by others), but my observation is that this is not the best path for many. Mental health issues are significant for those at prestigious law firms and I believe suicide rates are pretty high. Law is an example so I’m not trying to dwell on it, but young lawyers dissatisfied with their lives do attend my talk.
