How much is it easier to get, say, a 3.8 at Penn State UP than at for example Tufts?
Are engineering schools at universities that are ‘easier’ to get into (lower admissions standards) objectively easier than more selective schools?
you will find all the challenge you can handle at any ABET engineering program.
If a state flagship seems too easy for you, also consider the accompanying honors college. (Says the very biased rising sophomore at Penn State UP / Schreyer. My first year wasn’t easy by any means, but I pulled a 4.0 regardless.)
There is no hard and fast answer. For example:
—Some schools make intro classes very hard to “weed out” students in the major while others might not.
—Some people do better in smaller classes with more student-teacher direct interaction so might be more successful in a school with smaller classes as opposed to large lectures regardless of selectivity standards.
No, not always. Cornell, for example, is the easiest Ivy to get into, but arguably the hardest to get good grades at. It really varies from school to school, but an engineering degree is generally going to be hard regardless. Don’t chose between penn state and tufts based off of difficulty, there are far more important differences between the two to consider.
There’s no such thing as “objectively” easier. Something that is easy to one person might make another person struggle. There are aspects of selective schools that might make them easier. Large public universities are more likely to be “sink or swim” type places, where students have to compete for time with academic advisors and kind of make their own way through the system. Medium-sized selective universities often offer many academic services to help students. Some students thrive in 300+ introductory lectures and others drown in them. Some students are highly motivated by competition with ambitious, well-heeled classmates and others prefer to come in at the top of the class.
This is particularly true for engineering, because many of the best engineering programs are at large public universities that are ostensibly easier to get into than selective private universities. Engineering is difficult no matter where you go.
Getting a 4.0 at Harvard is really hard…
But I would want to a hire someone from Harvard with a lower GPA than someone with a higher GPA from a state school.
I don’t think this is always the case.
I’m sure a school that admits nearly 100% of applicants is easier than the Ivies, though.
I took undergraduate courses at a state flagship university and an Ivy uni as a regular day student. Overall, the courses were no different in terms of difficulty. The specific subject matter and the instructor have the largest effect on the level of course difficulty.
Not at all! The big state schools are famous for having tough basic science courses that weed out the unready. The Ivy/Stanford type schools are famous for being hard to get into, but then hard to flunk out of. Grade inflation is a problem at some elite schools.
If you compare the SAT Math scores of engineering students at Penn State with those at Tufts the difference may not be as big as you think.
@johnny998 Harvard is well known for grade inflation . . . . Princeton is known for grade deflation (though they are trying to adjust that).
The difference may be what level of courses are offered.
For example, Harvard and Laney College (an open admission community college) both offer regular calculus 1, calculus 2, and sophomore level math courses that are probably fairly similar. However, Harvard offers three levels of honors sophomore level math courses, while Laney offers many more precalculus remedial math courses.
However, offerings do not necessarily correlate to admission selectivity. UC Santa Cruz is less selective than Florida State, Penn State, or Georgia Tech, but UC Santa Cruz’ intermediate economics courses require a higher level of math preparation than those at the other three schools.
I think Cornell’s acceptance rate is deceptive. It lumps together the acceptance to the College of Arts & Sciences with schools like Agriculture, Hotel Management etc. Only the CAS is Ivy League, the others are publicly funded and probably gives a leg up to NY state students. If Cornell were to separate its CAS acceptance rate from the rest of the schools I think it’s acceptance rate with go down quite a bit.
The same thing happened to Rutgers Univ. Before the 90s they used to report the acceptance rates separately for each college. Rutgers College used to have an acceptance rate around 16% but Livingston College where all the football players are enrolled would have an acceptance rate like 78%. Now they report 1 acceptance rate for the whole school and it’s over 50%.
But back to the Op’s question, engineering is hard everywhere, regardless of acceptance rate. Easy to get in doesn’t mean easy to get out, it just means a lot don’t make it out.