Academic differences between better colleges & worse colleges.

College Search & Selection
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<p>I go to a top 20 school and I find my peers to be extremely interesting, motivated, and intelligent. I realize we could debate the whole "what do rankings really mean? (if anything)" question, but there is no question in my mind that (in general) my peers have more academic potential/talent than students in at least some other schools.</p>

<p>I'm not sure if this is a stupid question but here it goes. How can you go to a school with an average ~2200 SAT average (just an estimate) among students and get a degree in, for example, mathematics, and have another student with much lower test scores, perhaps no honors/AP classes, and mediocre grades in classes go to school as a math major as well at another school. I was a math major at my previous institution (a top 30 school) and did pretty well, but I don't think I could survive as a math major at my current institution.</p>

<p>My question is how can an institution of lower caliber students (in general, again, of course there are exceptions) and institutions of higher caliber students award the 'same' degree? They must have differing class rigor. Even if you compare varying degree requirements among schools, you can clearly see this. And how does the whole "whatever undergrad school you go to doesn't matter, go to a good grad school" argument play into this?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

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<p>The classes people take are supposed to cover the same material. Having a degree in math means you have completed certain math courses and generally have a basic understanding of those courses. </p>

<p>For this reason, people general esteem math degrees from certain schools “better” than others. For example, many business schools in the United States are ranked to determine the quality of education students receive at their schools. Usually business degrees from UVa or UPenn are considered “better” than business degrees that come from other schools.</p>

<p>Hope I answered your question!</p>

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<p>The requirements for awarding a degree in this country are pretty minimal. State and regional accreditation associations basically are only concerned with whether the school is viable financially.</p>

<p>But, obviously the smarter the student, the higher the class curve is going to be in most instances. And here there are two schools of thought. One is that it doesn’t matter - within certain parameters - what college you go to; your natural intelligence trumps everything in the long run.</p>

<p>The other school of thought is that the college you choose acts as a kind of signal to others, including employers, grad schools - even who you eventually marry -as to just how smart you really are. My hunch is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.</p>

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<p>“My question is how can an institution of lower caliber students (in general, again, of course there are exceptions) and institutions of higher caliber students award the ‘same’ degree? They must have differing class rigor. Even if you compare varying degree requirements among schools, you can clearly see this. And how does the whole “whatever undergrad school you go to doesn’t matter, go to a good grad school” argument play into this?”</p>

<p>Well all high school diplomas are not the same, even ones that come from the same high school. The differences in the education that students receive at US schools varies tremendously, from preschool onward. And it matters a lot where you go to school, from preschool onward. Open enrollment colleges typically spend $6000/student/yr on direct educational costs. The 400, or so, selective schools spend $27,000/student/yr on direct educational costs. This is a significant difference in the level of investment, and it shows in the product, even when the students are the same.</p>

<p>I think what people believe that it is the school that grant the highest degree earned that matters most to your career. I suppose there is some truth to this. But where you go to school before you earn that highest degree, for many people, determines whether or not they get the chance to try for the higher degree. Partly just because of the expectation of your cohort and partly because of what you were able to show in school. For example I received financial support for graduate school based on the quality of my undergraduate education. I went to a small college that prepared its students for graduate work. It is possible that if I had been really motivated and I had attended a larger state school I would have excelled and gotten the same award. This is what people mean when they say the college does not matter. It doesn’t seem like the truth to me. I know don’t know that I would have been pushed as hard if I was driving my own education, and I don’t know that I would have questioned so much if I had not been at such a hard school.</p>

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<p>I hope that what you seem to be saying (that you are horrified that you will have to share a degree from your “top 20” school with all of those nitwits at the bottom) is not what you are saying. Yes, there are some rock-bottom schools, the kinds talked about in Brandon’s book “The Five Year Party” in which there is no critical mass of curiosity, learning, or research among the student body, just drinking and a useless degree at the end. But there are a few hundred schools, maybe more, all of which have excellent faculty, at which one can get just as good of an education as almost anywhere else. Maybe the entering SAT scores aren’t as high as those at the “top 20,” perhaps because not all of the students paid to take courses to juice their scores. Not every graduate from Bryan College, Alma College, or Messiah College, will be “extremely interesting, motivated, and intelligent” but many will be, and many will go on to the big names in graduate school because of their personal qualities and intellectual uniqueness.</p>

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<p>They do have differing class rigor and anyone who thinks different is deluding themselves. </p>

<p>Sometimes you get what you pay for.</p>

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<p>The degree will be the same but you will get to say it is from your “top 20” school which in SOME cases will make you the better applicant for a job or grad school. But it is somewhat true that your grad school is more important than you undergrad.</p>

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<p>There is a difference in content and academic caliber of students overall (allowing for individual exceptions). Most jobs, however, end up doing the bulk of their training “on the job” so all one really needs is the basics combined with good people skills. People skills are not limited to top colleges. Many will argue that they tend to be better at lower level schools (that match more of the population). ;)</p>

<p>Even med school does the bulk of the training at med school, not from undergrad… one only needs the basics from undergrad and you can get the basics almost anywhere. Med schools are looking for top students but opt to use the MCAT and GPA to find those students (and interviews, of course), not the name brand of the undergrad chosen. It really doesn’t matter how deep Bio 101 goes.</p>

<p>Those jobs that tend to depend more upon undergrad learning do tend to have their preferences for hiring. That don’t always mean Top 20 (in general) though. It only means Top 5 - 10 (give or take) in the employer’s eyes. The vast majority of engineers around here come from Penn St or Va Tech…</p>

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<p>An excellent question.</p>

<p>Generally speaking, accreditation requirements ensure that colleges offer programs which meet minimum standards. And those minimum standards are generally pretty high as they are created based on feedback from researchers, professors, and industry representatives. Industry wants to see a certain level of competence from college graduates, therefore accredtiation boards ensure that graduates have the skills they need to succeed in a work environment. Researchers and professor feedback ensures that graduates will have the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in graduate school and beyond.</p>

<p>That all being said, the answer to your question really comes down to hard work and dedication. Students who graduate high school with lower test scores and cumulative GPA have to perform at a higher level in order to catch up with the rest of the class. This means that, while the high performing HS student is studying Calc 1 material, the lower performing HS student is studying Calc 1 material plus some miscellaneous algebra, trigonometry, and possibly basic math in order to fully understand what’s going on with the calculus.</p>

<p>That’s really what it all boils down to. A mediocre student in high school can still do very well in college, as long as the motivation and work ethic are there. The goal of a good college is to ensure that a graduate who did well in high school will be equally as capable and competent as a graduate who was mediocre in high school, assuming their college GPA’s were the same. The difference is that the high performer in high school will likely have an easier time keeping up with the workload since he/she will not have to keep backtracking.</p>

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<p>The high performing high school student may have completed calculus 1 (or beyond) in high school, while the normal track college bound high school student may have completed precalculus in order to take calculus 1 as a college frosh. But less well prepared students may have to retake algebra, trigonometry, and/or precalculus after they get to college.</p>

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<p>However, if you were previously in lower division math courses, but are now looking at your peers’ upper division math courses, note that upper division math courses (usually mainly focused on proving mathematical theorems) are often seen as much more rigorous than lower division math courses (usually mainly focused on applying math to solving problems, unless you take honors courses).</p>

<p>Note that most people in lower division math courses are taking them as needed for solving problems in subjects like engineering, economics, or science. It is mostly math majors (with some students in other majors like physics, economics, statistics, and computer science) who take upper division math courses.</p>

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<p>I thought you were asking a different question, so I typed a long response that makes no sense now, lol.</p>

<p>The answer is that the rigor of two different degrees is not necessarily the same - even at the same school. For example, a math major at my current institution (Columbia) could choose to take easier applied classes because they like math but want to take it into industry and don’t really care about the advanced stuff, whereas a serious math student who wants an MA or PhD can take the more rigorous research-related courses or even some graduate courses to satisfy degree requirements.</p>

<p>I can see the differences. My mid-ranked LAC had a small math major and I took some classes; the classes went more slowly than the math classes here, with more questions and class discussion and more time spent in recitation. My LAC prided itself on group-based learning, so people studied in pockets and much of the learning happened in class. On the other hand, I took a cal II class here at Columbia and had to drop it because it was too fast-paced and I wasn’t prepared for that (I was studying for my PhD quals and doing research at the same time).</p>

<p>Here, they expect most of the learning to happen at home. The professor comes in, lectures in a mildly disinterested tone, and leaves. You then have a monster problem set to do at home, and if you need help you go to the math help room where graduate students and advanced undergrads help you figure stuff out. You don’t go to the professor (who might be an adjunct). The 2-hour lecture may have 2 or 3 questions, mostly for clarification, whereas a 1 hr 15 min class at my undergrad could have 5-10 or more depending on the subject, some of them discussion-oriented. And at my undergrad, if you needed help you went to the professor and asked, or maybe a senior math major you knew.</p>

<p>But at the end, you still know the same math. It’s just taught in a different way. And honestly, a math major from my undergrad who persisted and took some graduate classes at a nearby university (Georgia Tech and Emory were in short driving distance) and did research with professors might be better prepared for a PhD than a math major at Columbia who maybe had a higher aptitude at the beginning, but chose mostly applied classes, no grad level courses and did no research.</p>

<p>That’s why top grad programs will have students from a range of different schools - from Ivies and top LACs to places of which you have never heard. The students all do different things. Maybe a lower-ranked place requires more effort on the part of the student, but they can still adequately prepare themselves for grad school.</p>

<p>To answer your last question - one of my colleagues went to Michigan, and I went to my mid-ranked LAC. Another colleague four years behind me went to Harvard. However, all of us will have a PhD from Columbia. We may have had different preparatory backgrounds to get into Columbia. Let’s even say that I was less prepared than my friends from Michigan and Harvard (which I don’t think I was at all, but for hypothetical’s sake). We still have to complete the same work, so if I’m less prepared I need to work real fast and real hard to get up to speed to complete the work that they may have been better prepared to do.</p>

<p>However - in the end, if we all get the same PhD - it’s because we had to complete the SAME work. If I finish, that means I was just as capable as they were of doing it, and thus probably just as capable of doing whatever work required the degree in the first place, all other things being equal. That’s why undergrad doesn’t matter once you have the grad degree.</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>There are no national/international standards for performance, therefore degrees are based on the requirements set down at the individual schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Thanks to ‘grading on the curve’ your peer group does effect your personal outcome grade-wise but not necessarily in the content that you do or do not absorb.</p></li>
<li><p>Your questions are part of the reason that grad schools have standardized testing requirements. Presumably, you and your brilliant friends will outperform the slack-jawed mouth-breathing sloths who ■■■■■ dumber campuses when it comes time to take GREs, MCATs and the like.</p></li>
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<p>I know for engineering, we have an accreditation board (ABET) as well as a fundamentals of engineering exam (FE) exam that you have to pass to be considered an engineer-in-training. I attend an ABET accredited school (Clemson) and have passed the FE exam. Is my degree (when I get it in December) less valuable than someone who graduated from say UC-Berkeley? Who knows but I’ve done everything that’s been asked of me and I think I’ll be a successful engineer.</p>

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<p>Based upon the engineers I know and have worked with, as well as the many posts on cc from engineering hiring managers, I don’t believe for one minute that your Clemson degree will be less valuable than one from say UC-Berkeley. This fact does drive the more status-seeking posters a bit crazy but once you’ve graduated you’ll find that successful engineers come from all sorts of schools. I think that you are going to be one of them :)</p>

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<p>And then of course there are those students who party their way through the top tier schools (maybe 'cause they are legacy students, maybe not) who graduate with a 2.0 GPA. Is his/her education better than someone who attended a lesser valued college after working his/her butt off and earning a 4.0? It’s all relative.</p>

<p>Both of my kids attended lower ranked schools (one state, one private). Ultimately, for each of their jobs, it isn’t the college degree or the name on the diploma, but how they scored on their certification exams (PRAXIS for one, PANCE for the other) that matters when it comes to finding employment.</p>

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<p>The existence of ABET accreditation means that the variation in “quality” of engineering education is much narrower (for industry job purposes, at least) than in most other subjects. It is also why, at less selective schools, the washout rate for frosh engineering majors is high, as many students at less selective schools cannot handle the rigor of an ABET accredited engineering major. But those who complete the major and attain a bachelor’s degree in engineering will have proven themselves in the eyes of employers.</p>

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<p>There’s a high baseline for ABET but it’s easy to compare the rigor of various intro courses. Look up MIT’s Intro Chem course (the non advanced one) and compare it with that of UCI’s. They’re not the same. MIT expects that students will have a rigorous grounding in physics and thus exposes the freshmen to the whys and hows of chemical bonding, radiation, etc. UCI only glosses over those details because professors cannot make the assumption that students will understand wave interference, vectors, etc. So sure they cover the same thing, but one covers it far more comprehensively than the other. </p>

<p>Of course engineering is a bit more narrow than most fields in terms of differing expectations. There are some schools which simply demand much more of their students than others. For instance, the thought of taking a factual recall test in history at my previous school would have been seen as ludicrous. Yet at my much less selective one, that’s the norm for intro history courses. Of course they have a few papers sprinkled in, but they seem to demand far less critical thinking and synthesis than those at my previous school. </p>

<p>I just don’t see how anyone can argue that Stanford undergrads are graded to the same standard as those at San Jose State. If they were, the average Stanford GPA would probably approach a 4.0 rather than whatever it stands at now.</p>

<p>Professors tend to teach to the median. If that median is high, their expectations will probably be much higher than if they taught at a less selective one.</p>

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<p>At MIT, professors teach to the top. </p>

<p>Everyone else is along for the ride, and what a ride it is.</p>

<p>I’m sure that there are other “hard” schools that do this.</p>

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<p>I have no doubt that there’s material covered in MIT classes that aren’t covered in Clemson’s classes. Other than that, there is basic material that is covered in all classes regardless of what school you go to. I wonder how much of an advantage the difficulty of MIT classes really is. </p>

<p>I was at a professional conference the other day and went to a session tailored towards college students and what I remember hearing from some employers in my engineering field was that they can teach you technical skills on the job but what really differentiates you from other applicants is not your GPA but your communication skills.</p>

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<p>The average Stanford GPA actually does approach a 4.0 (3.55 as of 2005). The average San Jose State GPA is much less (2.85 as of 2008). Of course, this by itself does not say anything either way about the rigor of courses at each school.</p>

<p>[National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/)</p>