Schools where most of the students do most of the readings most of the time

College Search & Lists
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<p>(I started this thread as a spin-off to another thread I just posted on).</p>

<p>A lot of times on CC, we talk about quality of education. This argument often leads to a dead-end with respect to prestige, as many colleges in the Top 50 (both Uni and LAC) have similarly gifted and devoted faculty. </p>

<p>So sometimes the argument for why choose an elite college takes another turn: at an elite school, your peers will be smarter and you will learn from them.</p>

<p>My question is: what will you be learning from your peers in an academic sense by attending an elite school, and is there a way to measure or quantify that? (I think somebody could make the argument that an elite school will grant you the opportunity to learn from your peers in a social and extracurricular sense, but I’m setting that off to the side for now).</p>

<p>So I want to ask another question as a means of getting at that nebulous “quality of education” measure. And, in pure CC style, it’s a measure that itself is problematic and will probably be asserted through anecdotal evidence more than anything else.</p>

<p>My measure is: how many students do most of the course readings most of the time.</p>

<p>This measure probably doesn’t apply to large lecture classes (then again, are large lecture classes the best way to receive an education?) but it does apply to any and every discussion class. I’m sure we’ve all been in discussion classes where smart kids who don’t do the readings say things that sound very smart but are actually garbage. Then there are the kids who might not necessarily know fancy phrases, but they have done the readings carefully and can point to specific textual examples. It is these kids I want to learn from and I think others want to learn from too, not the kids who can breathe out a lot of hot air.</p>

<p>In my high school English class senior year, I would say that the students who did all of the readings all of the time are now at schools like Wesleyan, Tufts, Pomona, Miami, and Vanderbilt. Top schools, but not the top of the CC throne. The kids who almost never did the readings are at schools like Columbia, Dartmouth and Yale.</p>

<p>This is not to indict those three schools, but it is somewhat of a rumination. Of course due to my small sample size, it could potentially be the case that more students at Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale do more of the readings more of the time than students at Vanderbilt, Wesleyan etc. But stuck in the back of my mind is the thought that if I chose Yale solely based on the quality of education I thought it would give me, I would encounter at least some students (like my classmate in high school) who never opened a book for class, and I think that would upset me.</p>

<p>Any thoughts on what schools have more students doing more of the readings more of the time?</p>

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<p>The PrincetonReview rankings: Their Students Never Stop Studying.</p>

<ol>
<li>Reed College</li>
<li>Olin College of Engineering</li>
<li>CalTech</li>
<li>The University of Chicago</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd College</li>
<li>Bennington College</li>
<li>Wabash College</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Swarthmore College</li>
<li>Middlebury College</li>
<li>Marlboro College</li>
<li>Grinnell College</li>
<li>College of the Holy Cross</li>
<li>Haverford College</li>
<li>Davidson College</li>
<li>US Military Academy</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Carleton College</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr College</li>
<li>Whitman College</li>
</ol>

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<p>Most LAC’s I’d imagine?</p>

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<p>During my undergrad, I often felt that the free time to do all of the readings was somewhat of a luxury I couldn’t afford.</p>

<p>I think I’d do all of the readings for my seminar type classes, of which I guess there were only a couple (one philosophy, one history, and one econ), but in my engineering and science classes it was nearly impossible to do all of the textbook readings, so it usually turned into “skim the text as fast as possible to find important equations and know what they are.” Most of my friends had a pretty similar attitude.</p>

<p>Even now at grad school it’s the same deal with reading the text, though I’m doing my best to go through all of those books and understand what they’re talking about before my candidacy exam in the spring. :(</p>