<p>Talk to your sister and to some of the other graduates from your high school who have gone on to college. Is your sister’s situation unusual, or did most of them struggle? If they struggled, can they figure out why?</p>
<p>Some high schools do not provide good preparation in certain subjects. Others have curricula so easy that few of the more capable students need to learn good study skills. Either of these situations could be an impediment in college – but it’s a problem that can be overcome. </p>
<p>If you find out, for example, that the problem is that math is very badly taught at your high school, then you can review math on your own, work with a tutor, or maybe take a community college math course or two before going to college. If you find out that the problem is that your high school is generally too easy, then you can get some books on study skills and learn how to develop the study habits you will need in college.</p>
<p>That said, you don’t have to go to the most rigorous college that will admit you. But you don’t have to go to Third Tier State College if you have the credentials for Yale, either. What you might want to consider, though, is going to a college where your credentials place you in the top half, instead of one where you would be among the least qualified freshmen on campus. If you are concerned about your preparation, you might be more comfortable at a school where you know that you are as well prepared as most of your classmates.</p>
<p>Michplusdich, college can be as easy as you want to make it. Quite simply if you want to do well in college you will have to study I have seen many people go into college and think they they can get bye without studying… WRONG!!! In college you most important asset will be studying but unfortunately like many other students you might not be able to study efficiently enough to make college easy like it should be. Fortunately i have found a great web site that will help you with studying , efficiency, and rest which make your college ride a smooth one. the web site is studyprof.com</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think college is that stressful.</p>
<p>Sure, there are times when you have a large work load, but you also have LOTS of time to devote towards your classes. If you have good time management skills, show up to class/pay attention, and put effort into your assignments - you will do fine.</p>
<p>I thought college was stressful, then I graduated and joined the real world, and please believe me - the working world is much more stressful.</p>
<p>College can be as stressful or as rigorous as you make it to be. It all depends on your goals and standards in academics.</p>
<p>Just because a university is lower ranked doesn’t mean it’s less rigorous. College is supposed to be hard. It all has to do with your major. Of course if you are doing nursing, it will be harder than doing an English major.</p>
<p>The difficulty of your college experience, as many others have pointed out, depends heavily on the school you’re going to, the major you’re attending, your inherent talents and abilities entering college, and that of the students you are competing against.</p>
<p>While I suspect many people do slack off in college, I don’t think I studied any less in first year as a freshman than I did my senior year of high school, and I did significantly worse.</p>
<p>I should mention that I am an engineering student.</p>
<p>I’m just adding an additional data point for you to look from. I like how so many people are offering advice, however ultimately, you will have to use logic to figure out whether your reach schools really are significantly harder than your safety’s and whether you’d want to go to your reach school.</p>
<p>You are not your sister. You do not have to follow her path, but you can learn from it. </p>
<p>If you attend a college populated by people from more rigorous high schools that yours, you will need to work hard for the first couple of semesters to catch up. It’s true; my son had to do just that. But it is doable. You just have to decide if you are willing to do it.</p>
<p>Why do the people in this thread think they’re reassuring the OP by telling him that college is easy? By telling him that college is easy, you imply that, because his sister failed miserably, that either:</p>
<p>A) His sister’s work ethic is terrible
b) His sister’s IQ is terrible</p>
<p>and since both of these are largely genetic/cultural, it thus follows that you are implying that he, too, will do poorly in college - no two ways about it. Your anecdotes about high school being easier than college are ridiculous and completely contrary to objective reality - ditto for the workplace. If your white-collar job is hard, then you are the exception, not the rule. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but certainly 51% or more of jobs out there are quite easy. If you think your job is hard, then chances are you lack aptitude and have a strong GPA to match. </p>
<p>If you want to improve the OP’s chances of succeeding in life, you should tell him to study more, not make him feel like it’s okay to study less. Poisoning his brain with lies will hurt him in the long run.</p>
<p>As mafool and I have noted/implied, it doesn’t really matter what ANYONE thinks about the rigor of college except for the OP given that their experience will be unique. “Anyone” includes us, his parents, his sister, colleges, the government, and oprah.</p>
<p>An ACT of 21 is about average for HS students taking the test. That is a tough place to be and succeed in university, even in a watered down vocational major like nursing. It suggests that OP’s sister had other problems. Inability to prioritize or study efficiently would be my leading guesses.</p>
<p>OP – look yourself in the mirror honestly, and you will know your answer.</p>
<p>Would any of you consider Boston University a dream college? I’m in CAS, which I got into as a safety school. Since this is a safety for me, would the college itself be “easier” as opposed to the reach I got into?</p>
<p>I don’t agree with that at all. You shouldn’t judge a person’s capability by a standardized test score. Some people just don’t do well on standardized tests but do fine in the classroom. Standardized tests serve one purpose only: to get you into college. Once you’re there, your test scores can’t help you. I scored 300 points lower than the average student admitted to my alma mater, and that’s just for CR and Math, yet had no trouble graduating on the Dean’s List. Standardized tests cannot measure MOTIVATION, and motivation trumps just about everything else. </p>
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<p>BU is a dream college for some, a match for others, and a safety for others. It depends on you. Is it easier than your reach? Again, that depends. Some reach schools are pieces of cake to get through because of grade inflation. I can think of two or three Ivies that are “easier” than my state’s flagship public U Honors College. But you have to get in first. Was your reach school easier? I don’t know which college was your reach, but it could be easier.</p>
<p>Academically difficult ?.
Algebra I, one year of HS chemistry, no physics define a nursing degree.
Watered down intro survey courses in microbiology, physiology, pharmacology.</p>
<p>The curriculum does require covering a large amount of material superficially. Lack of conceptual understanding makes for a lot of rote memorization. There is a lot of public pressure on schools to graduate nurses to fill a worker shortage, so schools are non-selective and teach to a low common denominator. This can get extreme – a friend of mine is a nursing teacher, who was told he <em>may not</em> flunk a nursing student.</p>
<p>Plainsman, you are the exception to the rule. You also did not say what major.
I agree that motivation is <em>extremely</em> important, and will make up a fair amount of raw talent deficit. This is why I said that prioritization may have been an underlying problem in the nursing student’s poor performance.</p>
<p>Grade inflation is so rampant in US schools, that without more information to have an idea about breadth and depth of study grades by themselves mean very little. For high schools AP tests are probably the best metric for public schools. Private high schools and colleges are much more difficult to judge, although class rank in selective schools is a pretty good measure.</p>
<p>My son was taking upper level engineering classes at our local non-selective flagship public Uni this past year as a dual-credit HS student. Class mean test scores for the students were in the low 60’s, brought up to passing grades by 15 points of grade inflation. It is sobering to think that a good 1/4 of the engineers this Uni graduate actually did not pass the classes without … ‘help’. As an anecdote, my son’s vector analysis grade was 105. It becomes silly after a while.</p>
I know nothing about this particular class, but I reject your implicit proposition that grades below 60% are automatically failing grades. I have taken several exams which were designed with the expectation that most students would score below 50%. Not to weed out weaker students, but to challenge the very top ones. Then the grades were scaled upwards so that most students earned passing grades. </p>
<p>Anyway, I think the problem is not grade inflation per se, but the privatization of postseconday education. Colleges are businesses that need income. Failing students drop out and don’t pay tuition, which is bad for business. In most countries universities are publicly funded and regulated. Public funding makes them independent of tuition dollars, and national standards enforce a certain level of education and performance. High standards are aided by the relative scarcity of university spots.</p>
<p>Of course, the open market for postsecondary education and research also has its upsides. There’s a reason that Harvard, MIT and Stanford are located in the US and not in Europe.</p>
<p>Eric, grade inflation may well be rampant at some schools, perhaps many schools. But those who are busting parts of their anatomies at other engineering schools (and whose gpa’s will be compared with those from the grade inflation schools) will BEG to differ with the generalization above.</p>