Agree with @blossom. It’s hard to imagine that someone who has reached middle-age and gone through HLS is so . . . . naive about how thw world works. But then again, it could be as @jym626 said.
But even in that case, would the reaction in this thread not have been expected?
I know I’ve been blocked so I can say what I want. It must be a dork siting on the other side of a computer. Happy alumnus my A. Get a life.
And the Daily Beast is your font of “information”? Seriously?
Just because Furman is self-proclaimed rigorous, do you actually believe their marketing spin with a quarter of the class with test scores <600 and a B+ mean GPA?
In reality, your question is really about the “value” of LAC’s, a topic of which, there are thousands of posts on cc.
Wow, and here I was walking the dogs when I should have been making popcorn!
OP, I went to an okay UG, but I had my reasons. For a few years I wondered what might have turned out differently had I been more careful in my selection. I reserve my few regrets in life for much more important things than which UG school I attended.
Delete.
To start with you need to consider why the school is “most rigorous,” Looking at a random list without considering methodology is essentially useless information. The actual methodologies for the Daily Beast’s list and top colleges are summarized below for 2011 and 2013. Note that the list is completely different in these 2 years since the methodology varied… I certainly would use a very different criteria than either of the listed years, if I was trying to find out which colleges were most rigorous.
2013 - - Admissions selectivity: 25%, Student faculty ratio: 25%, Niche survey of smartest professors: 25%, Niche’s work manageability survey: 25%,
2013 Top 4: Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, Princeton
…
2011 — College Prowler’s Most Manageable Workload List: 40%, Student faculty ratio: 25%, Rate My Professors Comments: 25%, Lower than expected graduation rate: 10%
2011 Top 4: St. John’s, Furman, Middlebury, Franklin and Marshall
Assuming you actually have reliable information about which colleges are most rigorous and that increased rigor is consistent across all departments/majors/programs, some students are not trying to graduate college with the least amount of effort possible and instead are looking to develop skills and change their life for the better, even if it involves rigorous work. Developing skills and improving lives is not synonymous with USNWR ranking. In many cases, students who go through the most dramatic changes are not the ones who attended the most selective colleges that top USNWR rankings.
i don’t get it.
I just looked at the 2014 Daily Beat 25 most rigorous and they’re all great colleges. No hint of Furman.
The OP went to Davidson.
If the most rigorous is one of the personal criteria for choosing the college while ranking is not a personal criteria at all, However, I wonder how is it determined that the college is more rigorous than another? The same student took the same classes at different colleges? I do not understand this statement. I understand that some majors may require much harder work as a college student at the same college than the other majors. And in certain majors they have to “kill themselves” in the very challenging classes on the tracks that require very high college GPA. Where they attend for these majors is irrelevant, it is simply very challenging everywhere, including the un-known lowest ranking colleges and the rank of college is irrelevant for their ultimate goal in these majors.
MiamiDAP: I might very well agree with you that being a biology major at a second-tier public university and MIT may be equally effective for purposes of getting admitted to medical school. But that does not mean that the what a biology major at, say, Indiana University of Pennsylvania learns and does is the same as what a biology major at MIT learns and does.
I also think it’s possible to overvalue the difference between MIT and Indiana University of Pennsylvania (or some other misleadingly-named college). A motivated, hardworking student can get a great education at either college, or either type of college. But if you are making your decision based on education rather than cost-to-medical-school-admission, they aren’t equivalent.
I always laugh at the STEM groupie posts which essentially state that where the STEM kid goes to college doesn’t matter.
Do you think that a college where the average math SAT score is 550 and the upper quartile is 650 is teaching chemistry with the same quantitative and analytical rigor as a place like Cal Tech?
I won’t even touch the third rail, i.e. the humanities. But ask a professor of European History if his/her course is the same for the kids with the 500 verbal vs. the kids with the 750 verbal.
Not everyone views life through USNWR rankings glasses.
Truth be told, there are many colleges out there that offer strong academics and an excellent student experience that may not be nationally ranked (or not be in the top tier). Some people are not slaves to the rankings… they are aware of the fact that with the exception of a small percentage of employers out there, rankings mean very little.
Speaking for myself, I went to one of these rigorous, but not highly ranked colleges. I had an absolute BLAST there, and ended up with several great job opportunities upon graduation. I don’t regret it one bit!
Caltech is an outlier in the rigor department.
Some time ago, @bernie12 discussed course rigor at various schools based on comparison of syllabi and final exams. See replies #2, #14, #17, #19, etc. of http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1619090-schools-that-are-considered-to-be-on-ivy-league-level-for-undergrad-p1.html . It was not necessarily true that higher admission selectivity meant higher course rigor or better quality of courses, or that the comparison applies to all departments or courses (e.g. he was impressed by the content and rigor of Berkeley chemistry, physics, and biochemistry courses relative to those at Emory and some other more selective schools, but did not think that introductory biology was that good at Berkeley).
Another example of rigor not matching selectivity is in economics is that the standard intermediate economics courses at Florida State, Penn State, and Georgia Tech do not specify a calculus prerequisite and are probably not well suited for students looking to continue on to PhD study in economics. But less selective UC Santa Cruz requires multivariable calculus for its intermediate economics courses, which would likely better prepare its economics majors for PhD study in economics.
“Indiana University of Pennsylvania learns and does is the same as what a biology major at MIT learns and does”
-no program is the same. But how anybody can claim that one is more rigorous than another. Did they take the same classes at different places? I do not understand this statement at all. .
Introductory classes are designed differently at different places. Some of them (correctly so) are specifically designed as weed out killer classes sometime taught by 2 -3 professors simultaneously being in class at every lecture to teach their own sub-specialty. Does it mean that classes like this one are only offered at MIT? I cannot say that I think so, as using the proper language, I ABSOLUTELY KNOW that such classes are normal at state publics. And they work very well, only letting the most determined to continue in challenging majors.
Again, there are many different classes offered in the same subject as intro classes at the same college. Take Chem. There is Chem for Bio majors, Chem for engineers, and several others that are still intro classes. The same goes for Physics, there is Physics for pre-meds, a different one for engineers, there is calc based and non-calc based, all at the same college. So, how you compare? Do you compare entire set of intro Chem and entire set of intro Physics to a set of such classes at different college? That means that you actually took several intro Chem. classes at one UG, then took the same exact set at another college? …Or should I just assume that the name of the place led you to certain conclusion? Well, I do not buy the last way of making conclusion in very uninformed and non-scientific way. Somebody else might be perfectly OK at making conclusions based strictly on the college name. They can keep their opinion as long as they want, I am not changing mine based on what they say.
Folks, it’s the Daily Beast.
@MiamiDAP : No that’s the problem and chemistry is NOT a good example. Most schools, even several of the selective privates only offer a catch-all general chemistry sequence that caters to science majors in general (including prospective chemistry majors) and needless to say, this course is stuck in the past. The schools better at catering to a higher range of talent offer more “general chemistry” options for those who come in with better. And some are better at giving extremely high level stuff to the masses. Like Harvard does not even have the “stuck in the late 19th and 20th century” general chemistry course anymore (I think it, some LAC’s and WashU have broken away from this model in their own ways. Washinton University’s looks kind of like an intermediate thermo and quantum course for example). Instead they offer life sciences 1a which combines general chemistry concepts with biochemistry, organic, and molecular biology. Some schools do things COMPLETELY differently and it isn’t because of their selectivity (maybe money more so than anything else). You don’t compare them one by one neccessarily (though a course description or syllabus will often make it clear who the course caters to), I just look at the department, if I can’t see the actual materials, and base it on how well it tiers intro courses, which you were mentioning. Some schools don’t offer much tiering at all. Another thing I like to look at is also how intermediate level courses are taught. Like in chemistry, is something like the materials in organic just an extension of the way they learned general chemistry (usually basic problem solving and a basic level understanding of some not too provocative concepts) or does it take it a step beyond and ask students to pursue more rigorous problem solving and applications. The latter could look like: A heavy emphasis on MO theory (HOMO-LUMO), a heavy emphasis on forces and things relevant in biochemistry or in the lab. Believe it or not, many organic chemistry sequences, from what I saw, are taught by instructors who still choose to emphasize memorization and lower levels of problem solving. And unfortunately, even at some selective schools, no instructor or section went well beyond this level even those considered as “hard” by students did not stack up to the top instructors at schools with more notorious reputations for the course such as Stanford, WashU, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, and Emory for example. These places didn’t have the course win that reputation simply because students whined a lot. There actually was a difference in that most of the sections (IF there were multiple) focused less on memorizing facts and reactions and more on mechanistic and conceptual ideas and thus had instructors known to throw several “curveballs” on exams, with these curveballs being problem types not really emphasized in class or problem sets but were instead something where students more or less had to extrapolate and make a connection. This requires more creativity than a “normal” ochem exam. I personally think that is sad that it is an exception to the rule and not the rule.
MiamiDAP: If you look, you will see that MIT offers only two introductory physics courses, one that is calculus based and one for students who are already taking math at a higher level than calculus. (It has four courses in the catalog, but one is simply a spring version of the regular fall course taught in smaller sections, and the other is a course that covers the same material in an extra month to allow remedial help for students who have not already taken calculus in high school. That course, when completed, appears on a student’s transcript simply as the regular introductory physics course.) Every student at the institute has to take one of the courses or to test out of it. MIT grades first-year students pass-fail, so no one is weeded out by the course unless they really can’t pass it. It reflects a radically different educational philosophy than the curriculum you describe.
@JHS : There are also the schools that accomplish the same thing by heavily tiering and then “grade inflating” the upper ranges of the tiers to encourage students who are capable of challenging themselves. Harvard does this for math and physics for example. They aren’t trying to punish those taking math 55 or math 16, or physics 16a/b. Also, weeders are known for lower grading more so than tough content. They just choose A) not to curve or B) in the case content and exams are indeed difficult, curve to lower than normal levels. They basically let the intro. course grades settle at or be curved to something lower than upperlevel courses. Like if it is common for intermediate and upperlevels to yield a B/B+ average, then the lower division will yield something like a B-, maybe even C+/B-. Sometimes it is because some students are not prepared and sometimes it is indeed artificial (as in the course is just graded harsher than int/adv courses that give similar level material and exams). I honestly feel like the “weeder” philosophy is kind of overblown. Most intro courses I’ve seen seem to be at a level that is accessible to the students they get. Only a few schools are trying particularly hard to push their students at a particularly high level in an intro. course.
The notion that you can measure rigor in a college just seem ludicrous to me. Caltech and to a slightly lesser extent MIT are notorious for making you feel like you are drinking from a fire hose. I knew people who worked their butts off at Harvard. I didn’t. My son will tell you Arabic at Tufts is more rigorous than many other colleges. How does he know this? Because he spent a year in Jordan and saw how well prepared students were when they arrived. The Arabic teachers at Tufts cover more material in two years than any of the other colleges who sent students to the programs he was in (three in all).