<p>Is there really that much deviation between, say, a top 50 state university and a top 100 state university? I was just thinking about this now. I figured someone on here would know, so I asked it.</p>
<p>this is what happens, at a top 100 state school, lets say like Univ of Alabama, you will have LARGE lecture classes, with maybe 1000 students in them</p>
<p>and then, they might not even curve it b/c overall, the kids aren't as talented as they are at better schools</p>
<p>so the mean could be a 65 on a test, and that means, 50 percent are getting below that, and they may not curve</p>
<p>at a top 20 school for example, u might have a harsh curve, but the mean in a class will never quite get below a C+/B-</p>
<p>So are you saying the grades will be higher with harder material at a top 20 school rather than a state univ?</p>
<p>its hard to explain, b/c at a school where the average SAT is a 1000</p>
<p>it might hvae an average grade for a math class at a C</p>
<p>however, if ur reallly bright, gettin an A in that class would prob be a joke</p>
<p>at a school where u got brighter kids, its really different</p>
<p>I really don't think that you can say that a class is going to be harder or easier at any given school. It's going to depend entirely on the professor. And that's going to be a combination of how well they teach, how they put together their tests, what they feel is an acceptable grade (if they think a C is a respectable grade for half a class watch out), and just the overall organization of the class.</p>
<p>For example, at the large 2nd tier state school I went to, my organic chem professor, put everyone on a standard bell curve, with the class average as C+. In a class of 200 only about 4-5 people were going to get A's. He didn't really do a complete statistical breakdown, but rather just gave tests that were so huge (1000 points on the final and yet we had ten point quizzes in our recitation) and difficult that people naturally began to separate out. Where the natural breaks were, that's where he changed grades to next level. So at a more "prestigious" school, his class would have been harder (or as it turned out Ochem II was a lot harder because all the people who had to retake Ochem I weren't there pulling down the class average).</p>
<p>On the other hand, you could very easily have professors like most of my sociology profs who made tests that were so easy most of the class ends up with a 90% or better. </p>
<p>I'm willing to bet that most (85% or more) of the content from university to university (at major universities) is going be the same (especially in the sciences, but the Civil War is the Civil War if youre a history major)</p>
<p>I know someone who went to a 2nd tier state school and then transferred to a top 20-ish school, for a humanities-type major (Latin American Studies). He said the professors at the former were just as good as at the latter--the difference was in the quality of students.</p>
<p>I don't know. I'm a business major a very low ranked University, and I hear the difference between this school, and IU is drastic. Like a 3.9 here is equiv to a 3.6 at IU.</p>
<p>I can't say this is representative, but:</p>
<p>My daughter took Calculus III at a local state university while she was in high school. She didn't seem to find it very difficult at all, which puzzled me. So I asked her about it.</p>
<p>She said that in the class they were assigned only the eaiest problems at the end of each chapter. Problems which were exactly like those which had been gone over in class. The problems on her exams were exactly like these homework problems, with different coefficients or whatever.</p>
<p>This is a very far cry from what I experienced taking a similar course at a tough school many years ago.</p>
<p>She received straight "A"s in several college and community college courses prior to leaving high school. Since she has started college full-time, at a more demanding school, she is doing well, but not nearly as well as she did at these other schools.</p>
<p>I have to agree with moneydad on this. Years ago I took a physics class at a cal-state school. Just like moneydad said, the assigned homework was from the simpler problems in the chapter. And it gets better ... After a few weeks a kid raised his hand and said we had too much homework. It was taking more than an hour a nite, sometimes two. Shocking! The prof was concerned, and asked by a show of hands how many people agreed. A bunch raised their hands, and the prof promised to ease up. </p>
<p>Having later attended a UC campus, let me tell you the reaction would have been night-and-day different. My best guess is that if someone complained about spending 1-2 hours the prof would have publicly chastized him for not spending <em>enough</em> time on the class, and added that if the material seemed difficult than obviously the class wasn't doing enough work outside of class and that he'd be sure to increase the future homework assignments so that they'd get more practice and learn the material.</p>