<p>Here's a question I have really been pondering for a long time. Sorry if this is naive or has been covered before, but here goes ...</p>
<p>Are the actual classes really that much harder at the Ivys and the super selective top schools than at a decent state school? Or is just harder to get in there, so you are competing against smarter kids, but the rigor of the class is essentially the same? Especially in the first year or two before you get deep into your major ...</p>
<p>I mean isn't Economics 101, or English 101 the same class at Harvard or Penn that it is at University of Your State? OR are the exams harder at the top schools because the professors know the kids are top notch, so they expect more?</p>
<p>I can't believe there is THAT much difference in these beginning pre-requisite classes, but perhaps I am wrong.</p>
<p>In many cases, yes, the classes are harder. In other cases, the material may not be harder, but because most classes are curved, it takes significantly better mastery of the material to get a certain grade at an Ivy, because one is competing against much more driven and often more intelligent students.</p>
<p>This is a very good question, because it's something that many students fail to think about when they make their college choices. The elite schools are much more difficult academically. It is true that the material they cover is similar to other schools, but the class moves at a faster pace. The exams are also extremely challenging in many subject areas, and as someone else has just stated the curves can be brutal. So while almost everyone passes and can graduate, it's often difficult to get high grades.</p>
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This is a very good question, because it's something that many students fail to think about when they make their college choices.
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<p>If your student is considering accepting an offer of admission from a school that made the offer because the student is a recruited athlete, a legacy, or a member of an underrepresented minority group, I think it's especially important to take this factor into consideration. The student who is accepted for one of these special reasons and whose academic credentials are not quite as good as those of the average student at the college in question may face some tough academic challenges.</p>
<p>In general, the more selective the college, the more difficult the classes (or at least, the more brutal the curve).</p>
<p>There are exceptions, however, and English 101 or Economics 101 may be two of them. Why? Because many colleges accept AP credit as a substitute for these courses. The college has to make sure that students who go into the courses for which these 101s are prerequisites are able to succeed regardless of whether they took the college's introductory course or the AP course. Thus, it would not make much sense to make the college's introductory course substantially harder than the AP course.</p>
<p>But most of college does not consist of courses that have AP equivalents. It's not just English 101 and Economics 101 that you should be thinking about; it's the whole four-year curriculum.</p>
<p>At some colleges, especially state universities, there may also be another phenomenon affecting course difficulty. I noticed this with my son, who attended a flagship state university. He found most of his introductory (freshman/sophomore level) courses to be quite easy, but once he got to upper-level courses, the difficulty increased greatly. I think this reflects the fact that within a state university system, it has to be possible for people to transfer to the flagship from smaller regional colleges or community colleges after the first two years. Thus, the courses taught to freshmen and sophomores at the flagship cannot be appreciably different from those taught at the less selective regional or community colleges. But once you get to the junior/senior level, this restriction no longer applies.</p>
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I mean isn't Economics 101, or English 101 the same class at Harvard or Penn that it is at University of Your State?
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<p>No. The way I check this is by looking at course syllabuses online. More selective colleges have much more challenging courses, even if the courses are the "same" in their names and course numbers.</p>
<p>I have two children, one is at a public school (not the flagship adv. ACT score of 25) and one is at a selective private school that accepts around 30% of those who apply. I don't know the adv. scores but it is much higher than the public university. Both are engineering students.</p>
<p>My D who is at the selective private school notes that the kids are her school were much better prepared than she was and she was very prepared. She got a 5 on her Calc AB exam and went right into Calc II. She claims that she is the only one her her class that is taking Calc II for the first time, all of her friends have already taken Calc II and are way ahead of the curve and so it's hard for her. </p>
<p>Her introductory engineering class is all programming and many if not most have had programming in HS or college classes and this is review for them also. She also started out programming in C++. Her brothers introductory engineering class had very little programming and it was in excel, which he claims is easier than C++. C++ is offered as a separate class.</p>
<p>It extends to all of their classes. My S found very few who took the classes before with the exception of Calc I. He found the curve more generous in his classes than his sister is finding.</p>
<p>I will say that even though my D found things harder at first as many of the students were taking the classes as review, as the classes are getting harder and everyone is experiencing new material, things are getting much easier for her. She's a smart girl and she's doing fine now.</p>
<p>My D also says that all majors at her school have a lot of work and work hard. She says that the same is not true for her boyfriend who does not have as much work as she does and that his classes have easier requirements. He's at our local university. She also said that the professors at her BF's school cancel classes quite a bit and she never has professors cancel classes. </p>
<p>I hope this helps as my kids are both in the same area of study.</p>
<p>When I was in college we used to joke that Harvard was hard to get into, but once you did, graduating was a breeze. Our school (U of Chicago) on the other hand was easier to get into but almost impossible to graduate. ;)</p>
<p>I will say that I recently looked at the graduation requirements in a particular major at U of Chicago and at my local flagship public, and there is no comparison.</p>
<p>Both my S's took Economics 101 at top tier schools. My oldest was an English major and found it extremely difficult. The professor who was teaching it that semester decided he wanted it to make it more like a grad school class. The class was more mathematically oriented than the course description and a lot of students did very poorly. My math major S did very well in his class which indicates that his was very mathematically oriented as well.</p>
<p>From the mom of a transfer student (top public to top private), the classes are more demanding; and while there are sharp students at both schools, the overall student body is academically better prepared and more driven at the later.</p>
<p>I can only speak for language courses. I took German 1 at Harvard and then quite a few years later took the second semester of German 1 at a CC in California. Grammar-wise there wasn't a huge difference. The book in the CC was somewhat more practical in that we learned a more useful to tourist vocabulary. The big difference was that at Harvard we we read a German mystery novel (Der Richter und sein Henker by Durenmatt), while at the CC we were not expected to try to read a novel.</p>
<p>I have one at a top LAC and one in the honors program of a regional state u. Both are freshman. I believe the one at the super-selective LAC has a heavier reading load (both have lit and philosophy classes so I'm mostly comparing those), but the one at the public college has had to do more writing and more rigorous research. I have read both of their mid-term papers for their philosophy classes, and the state school kid's was better written, and the grading was far tougher than the grading of the LAC kid's less well-written paper. On balance... for us at least, I don't think there has been a huge difference. In quantitative courses the kid at the LAC has harder classes, but they are also higher level classes because the two have very different academic backgrounds in the math/science areas.</p>
<p>I'm sure the LAC kid is surrounded by more high-acheivers, but they are also in the honors classes at the public, just not as many of them.</p>
<p>This is just the first semester, though. I think I'll be able to better compare the experiences they're having after a couple years and a broader selection of classes.</p>
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When I was in college we used to joke that Harvard was hard to get into, but once you did, graduating was a breeze.
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<p>My D's take: it may be harder to fail, but you have to really shine to get an A in a class. Not only were the kids in her class really smart, but the kid sitting next to you may be a dang genius!</p>
<p>I want to go against the grain a little here. I believe that in many cases, the course material (and faculty) at a good public university are close equivalents to what is offered at an elite private. I think this is especially true (a) in introductory science and social science courses, and (b) in advanced courses in any field. English 101, interestingly, will be the complete exception -- no elite university accepts AP credits for that, and the expectations of student performance there will be much higher and more sophisticated.</p>
<p>The difference will really be with the students. Not that all the students at the elites will be great and the students at the state school mediocre. Far from it; almost every state university will have a number of students who are indistinguishable from the students at elite privates. But the concentration of really strong students at elite privates is greater, and the atmosphere tends to be one of universal dedication to high-level academics, whereas at the state universities academically ambitious students constitute one of many subcultures within the student body.</p>
<p>I don't think there's any question that in most fields you can get an equivalent education at a good state university. But you may have to be a disciplined self-starter to do that, and relatively more willing to adjust your interests to the interests of the strong faculty there. (I say "relatively" because even Harvard isn't strong in every aspect of every discipline, and if you want the best it has to offer you have to start by asking what it wants to teach you, not necessarily what you want to learn.) In some fields, like engineering, the academic equivalency may be very close, so that it is only the social environment in and out of the classroom that differs.</p>
<p>Finally, in lots of public universities, introductory or intermediate courses can be quite demanding, as a strategy for weeding out students who are not really interested in a field and willing to work. Public universities tend to be comfortable with losing students along the way, or with shunting them into less-academic programs. That doesn't happen to anything like the same extent at elite privates.</p>
<p>When I moved to Washington, I had to reapply for teaching certification. Among other things, I had to find courses at Washington's public universities that covered the same material my MIT courses had covered. </p>
<p>In most cases, my MIT courses covered in one semester what was covered in two quarters at a Washington public university. In one particular case, one MIT science distribution requirement was matched by a third year physics course AND a graduate level chemistry course. My son, who also went to MIT, estimated that he covered 1.75x the material that his friends at the University of Washington covered in the same major; in addition, his research opportunities were significantly wider. I would estimate that his MIT engineering degree is the equivalent of a master's at most state universities.</p>
<p>It is my opinion that MIT, at least, is both harder to get into and more challenging once you're in.</p>
<p>No, they are not hard. To keep the high GPA of their students, these schools inflate their grades so everyone will get A's and B's.</p>
<p>"The elite schools are much more difficult academically. It is true that the material they cover is similar to other schools, but the class moves at a faster pace. The exams are also extremely challenging in many subject areas, and as someone else has just stated the curves can be brutal. So while almost everyone passes and can graduate, it's often difficult to get high grades."</p>
<p>This is one misinformed person. This is totally not true. First of all, there are no curves, there is no competition, and everyone get A's or B's. C is quite rare.</p>
<p>As an adjunct professor, I gear my course to my students. If the caliber of the students is high such as at an elite university, the level of the course and the speed with which the material is covered is significantly different than if I have to review basic concepts.</p>
<p>btp092 is probably right that elite university grading distributions skew higher than at public universities, and dead wrong if he or she thinks that curves aren't used in basic science and math courses, or that Cs in those courses are rare.</p>
<p>Thank you, OP. This is an excellent question.</p>
<p>I don't have any thing to contribute because our first is only on her 1st Q in college. She handled 5 AP in a competitive HS w/o too much problem but she has to work very hard now. She did tell us how smart her classmates are. </p>
<p>Every decision season before May 1st, there will always be a lot of discussions of "which one to go". So, this discussion is very helpful. </p>
<p>All the parents know that if they put their super kids in a regular class instead an AP class, the kids may be supper bored. If, indeed that classes at elite schools are more challenging, does it worth some additionAL $$ to send your super kids to there?</p>