Top 10 schools with most stressful academics?

cellardweller
Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:13:46 +0000

The problem with this thread is that it fails to provide a tight enough definition of academic stress. Therefore, everybody has adopted a different interpretation leading to very different perspectives on what schools are more or less stressful.

From an overview of the posts I find at least three different definitions;

**Overall emotional stress: ** Under this interpretation, stress is generated not so much from the academic difficulty as much as it is from the general environment. The assumption is that a boot-camp environment will build strength of character and somehow develop leadership qualities. This is generally where the Academies rank high. Under this rigid model, there are generally few if any electives, no ability to pursue subjects in depth, no mingling between lowerclassmen and upperclassmen.

**Pure academic stress: ** In this situation, stress is an externally generated condition. Factors such as extensive grading on a curve, class ranking, selective honors all promote a certain cut-throat atmosphere where you end up competing against your classmates. There is little incentive for team-work and very little incentive to extend yourself beyond your comfort zone as you will get heavily penalized. While this environment may lead the cream to rise to the top it discourages innovation and often leads to burn-out. Weeding out is the norm. This is the model practiced by most public universities and a number of private colleges and universities.

Pure Academic challenge: Under this view, stress comes from the inherent difficulty of the material taught, the pace at which it is taught and the overall caliber of the student body. The external institutional pressure is minimal. It provides the infrastructure to succeed: great teaching, top notch facilities, mentoring, depth in a particular subject. Courses are generally not curved: everybody can get an A or everybody can get a C depending on performance. Some classes may actually be pass-fail. Experimentation is favored not discouraged. This is more akin to training for the Olympics in running or swimming. **The metric of success is an external measure ** such as time and not whether you beat your classmates. You will actually perform better in an environment where the average level is very high. This is the model practiced at places such as MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge and some of the Ivies.

There is also seems to be a perverse pride among some posters that somehow a higher level of stress is a badge of honor: the more stress, the better. I believe there are good reasons why the elite academic institutions are moving away from the first two models. It really comes down to different educational philosophies: is college education a means of triaging students or a means of learning? If the idea is to use a college education to weed out the chaff from the wheat, then a brutal boot-camp system may be appropriate to select out the best. It makes on the other hand little sense to use such a system when the triaging has already been done at admission.

The first model as used in the military academies is probably the least conducive to an effective learning experience. While this may be the right training format for military commanders who have to act under the stress of battle, there is little evidence that the skill set acquired translates into effective leadership in the civilian world, especially in very technical fields. You lead by showing, not by telling (or giving orders). Just as it would be hard to imagine a chief of surgery who would not himself be an excellent surgeon, it is hard to conceive an effective engineering team led by an individual who was not himself a master in his field. Using the sports analogy, few disciplines have adopted such a boot-camp model, except possibly football, which itself relies on highly programmed plays.

The second model is increasingly being discarded among elite academic institutions. It shows distrust in both the faculty and student body. Faculty is given very little latitude in grading and students few incentives to experiment. It breeds intensely competitive individuals but at a very high cost: high drop-out rates and a high level of stress and dissatisfaction. Such a pure numbers based system may also give students a false sense of confidence: the ultimate level of competency achieved may actually be lower than that required to succeed at the highest levels. By always being afraid of failing you have few incentives to take risks. It also leads to a high degree of waste, with many students failing to graduate on time or at all. A university has failed its mission if a large number of the student body does not complete the program.

The third model is the most individualized model. It assumes that the students admitted have already been qualified through the admission process. The educational objective is to raise the level of achievement of each student to the highest possible level. This helps attract the strongest competitors, the innovators, the non-conformist and the risk takers. It can be stressful at places where the talent pool is very high. A physics or chemistry class at MIT may use the same textbook as a state university but the expectations are vastly different. Your typical test will be 30 pages long, no multiple choice questions and will cover material extending will beyond what you covered in the class room, all in 50 minutes. Memorization is useless as any formulas are generally given out. The bar is simply set at a very different level. It is the difference between running a 4 minute mile and running a 6 minute mile! It is not surprising MIT attracts a disproportionate amount of math and science Olympians. It also attracts highly driven and focused individuals who welcome a challenge. Twice in the past four years, MIT has won the National Collegiate Championship in pistol shooting beating all the academies despite no member of the team having any prior training before enrolling. Same thing with the debate team which regularly beat Harvard’s team and just won one of the biggest international competitions at Oxford.

Those who claim that Harvard is not an academically stressful place have obviously never attended the college themselves. Self-reports on Princeton Review consistently place it among the top ten most academically stressful colleges. Part of the stress is inherent: virtually all entering students were in the top 1% in their class in high school and now half will be in the bottom of their class at Harvard. Even if hardly anybody drops out of Harvard, it is easy to get weeded out of difficult majors. Over 75% of students in science and engineering at Harvard change majors before graduation. I would actually argue that Harvard is more academically stressful than MIT, at least for technical majors. MIT students may spend more time studying on average than Harvard students, but Harvard students suffer greater stress because of the higher weeding out rate, the honors ranking system, mostly curved grading (albeit at a generous B+!) and the entire grade depending on your result on the final test. At MIT you are tested throughout the semester, a big portion of the grade is based on team work and the final may only count for 25% of the grade. There are no rankings, no honors, no grading curves. The stress comes from drinking from a fire hose and having to beat that 4 minute mile.