<p>I have read about a guy (this might have been thegradcafe) who TAed at Berkeley as a grad student, expecting the chem e curriculum to be hard, and the students smart, but it was the opposite. Because the classes were so large, the class was assigned only two problems per week, and they were easy problems too.</p>
<p>I can attest to a similar situation at my state school. When I took physics, all the exams had to be multiple choice, because that’s the only way the exams could be graded on time. Not really the case in our chemistry department though. First midterm is this wednesday, the exam is mostly calculations, we have over 1200 enrolled, and we have to stay after the exam to grade until they’re all inputted into the database… ****!</p>
<p>Anyways. The situation varies. I’ve taken glimpses of chem e lecture notes on the mit website, and their content has a lot more theory. There are a lot of variables, but the bottomline, in my opinion, is to just not think about it…</p>
<p>What’s interesting about it is that, although there’s usually way more work at the higher ranked colleges, they also graduate at higher rates than your typical commuter/lac. All things being equal (same class), yeah you have to write more in less time, harder math problems in less time etc. Some do fail under the pressure and take it badly. Someone I know of who went to Duke dropped out, saying the work is obscene there. There are some exceptions, for example with classes most take pass/fail, you see some slacking off. </p>
<p>There seems to be a growing realization that, although most students at top schools thrive and do graduate, they’re also overworked and so profs are more willing to help out with things like outlines and review. Not with things I’ve seen at lesser ranked colleges though like 10 points off for plagiarism, re-do exams, group work for the most trivial assignments.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Those higher ranked colleges are more selective, so they have better-prepared students.</p></li>
<li><p>Most higher ranked colleges have students mainly from wealthy families, so they do not have to worry as much as those at commuter schools about having to drop out due to running out of money, or taking the slower part time route because they have to work.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’ve never seen anyone take a “redo exam” or even heard of one at a “lesser ranked college”. At least not in my part of California. </p>
<p>At the community college level (at least at mine) if you plagiarized you did not just get a slap on your wrist. Even cheating a few students in my french class were expelled after one instance. </p>
<p>My chemistry community college assignments were taken from some honors curriculum at some other school. It was not easy. All of my physics teachers were graduates of UCLA (Phd’s) and taught the classes as if we were students from there. It was not easy. One even had his own book and honestly needs to get out of that community college because he is still doing research in physics and publishing papers. I know they recently had the Discovery channel come by. Now, a ton of my other non-technical classes felt like high school all over again with zero need to study. </p>
<p>When I hear other people saying that they did a bunch of matrices for Linear Algebra, my jaw drops. My whole community college class on Linear Algebra was 90% proofs. I transferred to a no-name college in the rankings (Cal Poly), but I don’t honestly believe that it’s going to be easy getting through everything here. It may be harder elsewhere but is by no means easy with easy grades with trivial assignments. Not all lesser ranked colleges are easy. Some of them, sure (Cal state LA). But no hand-sweeping generalization can be made. I believe it’s the professors that make the rigour, not the type of school you’re at. It’s not necessarily easy to get by a State university such as mine when we get worked like dogs from people who previously taught math at Harvey Mudd or went to MIT/Caltech as undergraduates or graduate students.</p>
<p>One of my classes at CC had redo exams. And in fact, after that, I over heard the instructor talking to people who did badly on the redo exam, telling them they could make up lost points by correcting their exams. These exams were not difficult in the slightest either. I’m not saying it’s typical at all… Just providing an anecdote.</p>
<p>Engineering, physics, and math are likely to have narrower ranges of rigor level, due to prerequisite sequences – if freshman calculus is not rigorous enough, then the students will be unprepared for multivariable calculus, physics, etc…</p>
<p>CCs may also aim to emulate the more rigorous lower division math, physics, etc. courses found at the various state universities, since the CC students may transfer to any of them – if they only emulate the less rigorous courses, then their courses may not be approved to transfer to schools with more rigorous courses.</p>
<p>I chose Beloit for the reputation of its anthro department. So far the workload seems manageable…I’m not in any sports or anything…my first anthro quiz is on Friday and I’ve heard that her quizzes are brutal…anthro is a difficult major here…so wish me luck!! On the other hand my roommate has a prof in the anthro dept who assigns a few hundred pages a night…eventually I might die. He wants them to skim, but still…</p>
<p>Also, Swarthmore carries a reputation as a very difficult school with harsher grading and coursework than most, along with places like UChicago… The smalled med-school acceptance rate might be due to some grade deflation occurring but that’s only my guess.</p>
<p>rbouwens, I would agree. I am glad you are having a good experience at Beloit so far. It is a great school. And I know Beloit grads do very well getting into very good medical schools. (Not that you are necessarily worried, as an anthro major.) :)</p>
<p>As you can see by the range of responses you are getting, people’s opinions on what constitutes “rigor” vary wildly. It’s a pretty subjective topic.</p>
<p>Grad schools definitely know about Beloit. Don’t go by what the average person in your town thinks. Most of the schools they’ve heard of are only known to them because of their sports teams anyway.</p>
<p>Re med school admission rates: I don’t know the pre-med scene at Swarthmore, but I can think of a few not-necessarily-bad reasons why a college’s med school admission rates might be low.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The college supports all of its students who want to apply to medical school, even students whose odds of admission are low. Some colleges strongly discourage their weaker students from applying, which raises their med school admission rates.</p></li>
<li><p>Students might not be interested in lower-ranked medical schools. I don’t know if this is a common attitude in pre-med circles, but I have met plenty of people who chose only to apply to top-ranked law schools or top-ranked business schools or top-ranked graduate programs. They didn’t want to go deep into debt for a degree that wasn’t going to put them into a good position to achieve their goals. An all-or-nothing attitude would result in lower admission rates too.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>b@r!um, I think most LACs strongly support their students who want to apply to medical school. And they start preparing them freshman year. I have never heard of the “culling” you describe (although I suppose it’s possible). </p>
<p>As for your second point, I’d be surprised. We have a growing shortage of doctors in this country and a large number of reputable medical schools. Plus, remember that healthcare markets are local, to a large degree. If we all insisted on being seen by doctors who were trained at Johns Hopkins and did their fellowships at Sloan-Kettering, we’d be waiting a long time.</p>
<p>Aware but uncaring. From what I understand med schools don’t care how smart or hardworking their students are, just that they have stats that help them move up and stay up in the rankings. USNews being the biggest and using admissions statistics in their evaluations.</p>
Most labor markets are local. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a small elite at the top which plays by different rules. </p>
<p>
Really? Mine started discouraging students from their first year on campus. “Got a B in gen chem? You might not survive medical school, on the off chance that you’d get accepted at all…” Well, not literally, but in the same spirit. It’s not clear to me to what extent that’s good advising and to what extent it’s protecting institutional statistics.</p>
<p>^I agree with your second statement. That’s what the early “weeder” classes are for. But I don’t know what you are saying about the “small elite at the top which plays by different rules.” I don’t think people want doctors who are playing by different rules. I think they want good doctors. And, like undergraduates, they can come from a variety of educational backgrounds.</p>
On the other hand my roommate has a prof in the anthro dept who assigns a few hundred pages a night…eventually I might die. He wants them to skim, but still…</p>