@bernie12: I wish I understood what point you were trying to make that’s relevant to this thread.
Specifically on Math 55, I had the impression (probably not based on much) that, unlike many Harvard courses, it was not graded leniently with a lot of credit awarded for being smart enough to get into Harvard, and for showing up. The idea was that making it through a couple semesters of that course in and of itself was a widely recognized achievement, without regard to one’s grade, and students capable of that were probably doing just fine in their other courses. Among “the few, the proud” completing Math 55, it would make sense that the grades actually distinguish the real geniuses from the merely very smart and well-educated.
I remember when the kids came home from college, and would compare classes and time spent studying. There was definitely a difference between those at the MIT/Caltech/HYP than others at flagship or local U.
For the record, none of my son’s friends were premed. I know several took the GREs and one took LSAT, but I have no idea of scores.
Note that even among flagships, there may be big differences in rigor.
From online tests that I saw, Rutger’s OS final exam simply wasn’t as tough as UMD’s OS final.
UMD’s was comparable to Yale’s and not that far from MIT’s (though MIT’s had more questions than either UMD’s or Yale’s, and the grade distribution there was skewed towards the top; other grade distributions of OS finals tend to have an equal distribution of A/B/C or a hump around B).
@JHS : That is basically what I was trying to say. I was just saying that rigor is dealt with in different ways. I was also saying that even places with rigorous intro courses are not necessarily doing so because they are weeding courses. There are many ways to have rigor and not necessarily be “weeding” out people. MIT’s university wide 1st year pass/fail and not punishing students who have high ability and decide to use it are not. I am also claiming that the “weeding out” phenomenon is far overblown. Almost any student at any school can claim “ooh its hard because it is a weedout class”. Often they aren’t that hard and courses not on a so called “weed out” system are …much more rigorous.
I think this is very simple: rigor is about challenging yourself without regard to what others think, while rankings are about impressing other people, regardless of whether you are challenged. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but I suspect that a person who chooses a lower ranked, more rigorous school, just doesn’t care what other people think of his choice. People who go for fit win every time.
Weed out classes some times weed out weeds, whether poorly qualified students or folks just not willing to work hard enough or not mature enough or somehow not scared straight by the D on the midterm.
Engineering programs are trying to eliminate the weed out flavor of their first two years. University of Maryland has some info on their website and has won ABET awards. I think this starts with the dread “Limited Enrollment Program” and UMd does allow students who do well in pre-reqs to join engineering later.
It is not really a benefit to anyone to drive down grades of people because they are either not qualified or don’t understand the rigor of their programs. The losers get transferred out with low, sometimes low enough to be asked to leave, GPAs. The winners have a bunch of friends and classmates who they no longer see and probably feel a bit bad for. It is honestly depressing. And those 1000+ classrooms would be better as 300-400 person classrooms with more qualified students.
Private schools often spend more time assessing readiness for math and english classes than public universities which are more sink or swim. You can actually take precalc in college and graduate on time in most engineering programs, much better than taking Calc I two times, first time with a D or F.
un-HappyAlumnus either spent no effort to enjoy or get anything out of UG or has an axe to grind. And substandard-U got him into his dream grad school and possibly his dream job.
@Massmomm That is the kind of the logic I use. I also take into account the fact that “lower ranked” schools (this is usually actually a pretty decent rank in the real world, but low on CC) have big pockets of excellence. For example, the are many students considering elite privates and are into the more Tech side of things but would hardly take a school like Georgia Tech as a serious 1st or second option despite its strengths and how it is known to train unusually well in several disciplines, often using cutting edge pedagogy (such as how their BME program uses BME extensively) not employed at many higher ranked schools. The same could also be said for several public schools, some maybe ranked lower than Tech in USNWR.
All in all, it really just depends on how the student views their college experience. If they value the academic side more than many other students, they’ll find ways to gauge things like rigor and teaching quality. If they value the social experience a bit more and take academics for granted as something that will be similar at most places, then they won’t consider it that much. They’ll attempt to feel out the social “vibe” a bit more than seeing if it will provide particularly strong training in their areas of interests. This latter group may also be more inclined to care about the rank or assume that the rank necessarily means better academics (or again, they may just not care that much). In certain disciplines, perhaps the ranking and prestige is more important (such as in business or any student wanting to pursue something like finance) because those programs have a clear bias towards schools with high ranks…whereas many STEM employers may be more knowledge about or sensitive to which schools provide good training in what, regardless of their overall ranking. They are more about the actual skill-sets and reputation for good academic training than the name or rank itself.
That can be inevitable at less selective schools, particularly community colleges and less selective state universities which have a mission to offer academic second chances to students whose HS records are not that good.
that makes sense, but is kind of why I do believe it isn’t truly occuring at most selectives (are students dropping science, yes, but is it mostly or always the instructors’ faults…I don’t think so). Many/most people in the so could “weeder” courses could indeed do the work (at A or at least solid B level) if they tried. I just think it becomes weeder in that case because many students underestimate the course after having been told they’re perfect all through HS and before. So when something actually challenges them for the grade and working or thinking at the level they did in high school does not work, the tendency is to blame the instructor because we all know that smart students are not supposed to be challenged and certainly not struggle. It should all come fairly easy to them. Often this comes from their view of intelligence where feeling unusually challenged by something = unintelligent. And its worse when their ego is wrapped up in it (and what ultimately equates to the outcome, the grade).
Like hearing of gen. chem as weeders at many schools is kind of laughable to me in retrospect because the course is so basic. Yes, more selective schools’ instructors write harder exams that require a better understanding, but it is asking for a solid understanding of what are often standard concepts. And then there is biology…if you’re an instructor that asks students for more than memorization, recognition, and regurgitation of details, you won’t hear the end of it because what students find difficult is often influenced by their expectations of the course apparently. If a student in HS got by in the course using a certain technique, they expect the same technique to give the same results. If the college course is truly different, be prepared for students to claim: “I took AP, got a 5, and this class was still too hard. Only take if you know biology really well” (I have seen comments on RMP like this). The reality is that the person with the 5 probably knows biology content well but isn’t willing to adapt such that they can apply it at even higher levels than AP required (which isn’t too bad I guess, at least the new one). Secondly, they expected the AP score was a free ticket to a free A when they retook the college version of the course. A trumped up ego leads to a lack of caution and sometimes a lack of effort. I think some students may be better off taking the accelerated or honors offering if available because they’ll at least know to go in with their game face and will have little expectations of ease and whatnot.
Ego has something to do with it. Also, with HS grade inflation and high stats being almost expected to be competitive for elite colleges, few kids would have gotten many B’s before. So that may be a shock.
I wonder if part of the discrepancy comes from the nature of short answer sections on more rigorous exams in college (mainly in the sciences-it is possible social science AP free response sections are actually on average harder than a college social science exam as college is often more about quality writing, mainly research papers) versus those in college. Except for the writing sections (which are more related to social sciences or humanities anyway), the SAT/ACT are multiple choice (I think you still have some math that is filled in, but its purely computational). HS science/math exams are often basic level computation and manipulation on free response sections and in many cases (in a normal level HS) are almost too straight forward. A rigorous college instructor will ask for a little (sometimes a bit) more and maybe emphasize a more conceptual understanding or much more mathematical manipulation to set up the problem. AP will separate a prompt into several parts when they deal with seemingly different equations but an instructor in college trying to challenge students will write a prompt that gives data relevant for one set of equations and then asks for an output that seems unrelated to it. The student, in this case, must basically separate the problem into parts on their own and figure out the set of equations that get them to the output (solution being asked for). The key example that I’ve seen before in chemistry is when the instructor gives thermodynamic data and then asks for a pka or pH for a certain solution. Good luck if you can’t link concepts on your own. The splitting into parts provides a guidance or set of hints that is nowhere to be found in this case.
Either way, the inability to see science conceptually is definitely a problem in something like physics where most students are great at plug and chug but if you reframe it in a conceptual context, students struggle. Often those who have gone beyond AP in the discipline to do research and sit competition level exams have an advantage.
High school tests are usually loaded with easy problems because it is more common for high schools to grade on absolute scales like 90% = A, 80% = B, 70% = C, 60% = D. So the high school test needs to have 70% of its content be easy problems that C students (by high school standards) can get correct. College tests are often graded on a curve, and contain mostly more difficult problems to separate the A, B, and C (by college standards) students, effectively expanding the students in the top of the high school’s range (75-100% at less selective colleges, 95-100% at the most selective colleges) into the whole 0-100% range.
Of course, it can be a shock for a student used to getting 95-100% on every test in high school to get 50% on his/her first college test (even though that score may be curved to a B- or B+ if it is around the median score).
Ha! And some students never get over it or still don’t get it! I remember overhearing a student exiting one of the diffcult ochem instructor’s exams (they have night exams-like 2.5-3hrs) saying: “He knows these exams are hard, he should make them easier!”. I thought to myself: “That would defeat the purpose” and also thought about how entitled the student had to be to think an instructor who has been teaching and testing like that for nearly 10 years (began in the very early 2000’s only recently had Emory become a major research institution) would change for them? If general chemistry instructors were pleased with their 60 something averages, why should the organic instructor who has already won teaching awards let up to give whiny students a nice break? Though admittedly, while grading is one thing, the difference between gen. and ochem w/ a guy like that (or the person I took) is quite a jump and the final grades don’t correlate that well because of it. It’s like the grating continues. A school like Emory selects smart people, the “smarter” (score wise) among them elect STEM courses. Gen chem. professors crush many of them and fit them to the averages you gave. Students who finish in the B+/A in top gen. chem sections self-select for prized, but very difficult ochem instructors (others find the easier sections). Exams crush many of those people (50-60 averages again), and grades are scrambled to some extent with some B grades moving up (maybe because their thinking is more suited to ochem) and some A grades move downward (significantly sometimes) because they are caught off guard. STEM culling can be very interesting, especially at selective institutions.
If I were Happyalumnus, I would have bolted as well, because I see the beginning of the thread and it didn’t go well for them (I didn’t see it initially, I only responded to later comments after being summoned lol). But they kind of contradicted themselves when they said that they didn’t remember anything. This is why a person would want a rigorous education perhaps at a lower ranked school or wherever (they seemed to forget that people can’t necessarily get into higher ranked schools, especially those that see their academics more than “fun”, prestige, and tradition). If they valued learning, they are more likely to remember it. Many of the high ranked places are known for social atmosphere and networking to the point where many treat the academics as hoops (perhaps the OP was this person but went to a rigorous school). But looking at it, interesting they mentioned Furman…I remember for my research post-bacc program, a 1st year student from Furman bragged about how well prepped they were because certain science majors at Furman made students take a proposal/grant writing class. This doesn’t happen at hardly any research university I know of unless you are in engineering and have to do design courses. I personally took them at Emory because I wanted to develop a skill-set, but I was not required to develop such skill-sets. I could have easily gone through both of my majors (chem/biology) and had chosen every easy opportunity possible. Also, I still remember a crap ton of what I learned in both sciences and non. It is probably because I didn’t constantly use easy instruction. It is now paying off in my lab (computer aided drug design) and teaching assistant positions (ochem TAing at several angles, one being to redesign the problem sets for supplemental instruction to be more challenging/ critical thinking oriented).
Also, the OP was comparing (without telling us) a graduate experience (at an Ivy) to an undergraduate experience…weird.
@csdad, an inexact heuristic, IMO. Back in the day and even now, many profs in the more prestigious research universities believe in keeping a high standard, regardless of how many may fail out because of that. Those profs were more interested in providing an education that would prepare their students for graduate school rather than teaching to the abilities of the average student.
On the other hand, at other schools, the profs are instructed to regard the students as customers. So there definitely are discrepancies between rigor and selectivity.
Yes, see @bernie12 's examples about the variation in content and rigor between different instructors for the same course at a highly selective university.
I feel like some tenured instructors and revered lecture track (who have had their contract renewed over and over again or have won awards) instructors can more easily get away with more rigor at selective schools. The people without tenure who are looking to earn it are often the ones, even at selectives, to lower standards because you don’t want to raise any questions by having a low teaching evaluation record (which is destined to happen if you teach rigorously and then start off at most a mediocre instructor, as most instructors will). The other extreme is true as well. Some high caliber researchers may not want to challenge students as much as they could because it would more likely lead to students seeking them out for help on a more regular basis and they don’t have time for it. At the absolute most elite with the strongest STEM graduate programs, a Nobel Laureate can afford to be rigorous because their graduate students are extremely well prepped and perhaps versed in the material at the level that they are teaching, but I know that at Emory, in the chem dept, the harder lecture track instructors choose not to employ graduate (especially younger) students because they don’t know the material at the same level as being taught (they likely were exposed to material at a more traditional level). In fact these teachers employ undergraduates who took the course instead. The top tenured professors just cop out and give easier or medium level courses to save themselves the time of having to manage UG TA’s or whining students.
It seems that lecture track faculty or medium/lower (they are very busy, but don’t often travel as much as the highest profiled researchers) profile tenured instructors are the sweet-spot for being able to teach rigorously at a selective school that isn’t always selecting the most intense graduate students for its STEM programs. Like I can’t imagine Emory chemistry graduate students running break-out sections of more difficult courses like they do at Harvard (the teaching fellow system). However, in the biological sciences, where the recruiting is stronger or more successful, this does happen so you see more uniformity in undergraduate courses over there because the grad. students are capable of aiding in raising the students to the level that a top researcher may want to teach and test. I remember my physical biology course for example where the students successfully ran the additional problem solving sessions- and in non-quantitative biology courses, the primary literature discussion sections. So departmental differences (cultural or academic) play a role as well.
Another problem, @csdad, with the lazy approach of just looking at overall selectivity is that it may not tell you much about any particular department/major. For instance, UMD is far closer to Rutgers in overall selectivity than it is to superselective Yale. However, it also has one of the better CS departments in the country, and when you look at CS course rigor (judging by how hard the OS final is), it is much much closer to Yale in rigor than it is to Rutgers.