<p>Not all colleges teach the same amount of material in the same amount of time (friend covered more in a quarter as a TA than she was expected to cover as a professor in a semester elsewhere). This applies to different tiers of public schools within a state system a well as to elite versus nonelite schools. Think of calculus- AP, podunk U (private or public), top flagship- regular/honors, top elite (college kids rating past experiences at various places). Doing well in AP calculus doesn't mean you learned as much as you would in a first semester calculus course, or be well prepared for a second semester course at some colleges (CC opinions on a college site). However, when choosing the school to attend attention must also be paid to courses and majors offered. Not all elite/Ivy private schools offer all of the majors or courses found at some top flagship U's (I checked on linguistics courses once). I also noted that required textbooks for courses at elite schools may have been authored by scholars at nonelite institutions when checking out bookstores at some schools. Of course no one is thinking cost per credit has any bearing on quality/quantity of learning, as private schools are found in all tiers.</p>
<p>anneberm- I find that hard to believe. Will you name specific schools?</p>
<p>aneberm, I am wondering if your H graduated at a time when it wasn't so competitive to gain admissions at an Ivy. Has he had any recent experience at his Ivy? If not, then how can he compare today's college students and course offerings vs what he experienced back in the days.</p>
<p>Wisedad, on #4 (quality of food) my kids are having the opposite experience. I've eaten at both their schools and I hear about food frequently. My son's top tier LAC has really mediocre food. At the no-name regional state U where my daughter is this year, great food. Just sayin...... ;)</p>
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<blockquote> <p>He says the quality and breadth of course offerings far exceeds what he experienced as an undergrad and grad student at an ivy.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>I don't know about the quality issue, but the breadth of course offerings (and majors) at large schools can be breathtaking, especially in the sciences. I had a parasitology class (including a pretty involved lab) when I went UG to a large school. In our immunology class, we injected rabbits with antigen and then harvested antibodies. Didn't see anything like that at my D's ivy.</p>
<p>Of course, there were 200 people in my organic chemistry class...</p>
<p>My sister-in-law is a famous professor in her somewhat esoteric field, teaching at a large public university. She has been a visiting professor at an Ivy League university, a non-Ivy elite, and a top-5 LAC. She says that the quality of the students in her (advanced) classes has been the same at all of the colleges. The big difference is that the students at the public university tend to be poorer, and thus more dependent on serious part-time employment, and not as exclusively focused on academics as the private-institution students.</p>
<p>A natural extension of OP's question is "so what?" </p>
<p>If the elite schools do cover more materials, should the students from them be preferred by graduate schools? I know there have been many individual cases reported on CC that so and so got into top graduate school from tier 3 or tier 4 UG school. Do we have any professors here who could offer some ballpark figures. </p>
<p>Is there more graduate students at top schools who come from the top UG school? I know this is subject dependent etc. I just want to have a general sense about this from the professors here. This thread has shown that CC has so many professors of top schools.</p>
<p>Ivy</a> League - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia </p>
<p>Just defining terms here. There are exactly eight colleges that are literally in the Ivy League, no more.</p>
<p>Two of my kids went to a highly selective prep school where the average SAT was 1370 out of 1600, and the kids routinely scored very high on the writing section of the SAT ( I believe 700 was the norm, but can't swear to that). The grades there are seriously deflated as compared to our public school systems here which make the best high schools in the country lists. No 4.0, and a 3.4 is very, very good at our school. The top colleges do take this into account as the college acceptance stat at such schools are excellent given the lower gpas. My son got into an ivy and a number of top 25 programs with a 3.0 average. Clearly, the difficulty of the school and courses are taken into account. This high school does not brag about getting kids into the selective school, however, but warns that sending a top student here is not necessarily a boost into getting into such colleges, and such kids may well do better in that endeavor staying in the public school system. What they say, and they say it in writing all of the time, is that their graduates are better prepared for college. The college graduation rate is high for these kids, even in those colleges where most of the kids are top notch and the curriculum is difficult. Their graduates are ready to start college level work, even difficult work with a running start, and this goes for nearly every single kid. </p>
<p>I believe that. My two boys were not seriously motivated students, but they were clearly well prepared for college. They had read all of the background material that is often mentioned. They had no trouble writing that first paper and doing well. It was a very smooth academic transition. My son is currently taking an advanced math course and reports that though a lot of his classmates are pounding salt with it, he is having no problem. He knows all of the review materially very well, and had even learned enough of the new stuff that he has to expend little energy to figure things out---yet. Water will reach its level soon, I'm sure.</p>
<p>My H went to a school with a tough academic rep and really sucked it down the first year. He had catch up to do as his high school did leave a bit of a gap. Standards were much higher at college and he had to learn the new rules. But by the time he was a junior, he was right up there with the best of them and graduated with honors. But it was a very rough first year, he will tell you. His public high school clearly did not prepare him more than adequately, and he had to make up the difference. He says in many ways it was an advantage because when stuff got difficult later on in college, he already knew how to work, study hard and to get through material where he was gapped. Some kids who always had background ready, had some real problems when they got into the upper level courses where even they had to hustle. They did not know how to do so, and had become lazy.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Is there more graduate students at top schools who come from the top UG school? I know this is subject dependent etc.
[/quote]
The top feeder schools to my biological sciences PhD program (one of the top programs in the field) are MIT, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.</p>
<p>(For those who care: using data from the last three years, adjusting for biological sciences bachelor's degrees given by each school -- although for these top four, the adjustment is not necessary, as they lead in absolute numbers as well.)</p>
<p>Courses at the most selective colleges & universities are much more demanding than equivalent courses at non-elite schools because the students are brighter & work harder (by habit & necessity) and faculty tend to teach to the level of the students in the class.
The request to compare flagship state schools honors programs/colleges to the Top 20 or so colleges & universities can be answered quite simply in that you get what you pay for. Many honors programs/colleges are very dependent on year to year funding. As honors programs/colleges grow in popularity, budgets remain stagnant or decrease. The result is that many honors courses fill up quickly, forcing the honors program to expand the once promised small classes of less than 30 students to classes with over 50 students--some of whom are not even in the honors program. Many honors programs/colleges do not deliver as promised; many universities' honors courses are simply regular large lecture courses in which the honors student is able to make an agreement with the professor to do more work for honors course credit. And this varies from school to school, year by year. With a poor economy, I suspect that public university honors programs/colleges will be overcrowded.
The main, verifiable benefits of many honors colleges are merit scholarship money, superior honors housing & priority course selection. Better advising is also typical.</p>
<p>P.S. Post #40 may be referring to Computer Science programs.</p>
<p>"She says that the quality of the students in her (advanced) classes has been the same at all of the colleges."</p>
<p>I believe that. Any public flagship will have a core of students who choose the hardest classes in a demanding major, and those kids are likely to be very sharp and motivated.</p>
<p>This is what one Ivy league graduate had to say:</p>
<p>"I have an Ivy League degree, and you'll be surprised at my answers below. (hint: I wouldn't do it again).</p>
<p>Here are some pros/cons of Ivy League educations:</p>
<p><em>Faculty</em> The faculty that are recruited to Ivy League schools are supposed to be the best. The problem is, most of the best researchers are the worst teachers. They're the best because they like research, not teaching. So the idea that you'll get a better education is only in theory.</p>
<p><em>Prestige</em> Yes, you can tell people you went to an Ivy League school. But that's honestly the extent of it. It will not automatically open doors, and you will not automatically be given jobs as a result. It can help you get that first job, but any employer will tell you that experience counts more than where you went to school.</p>
<p><em>Competition</em> In theory, if you get good grades, you must be intelligent because some of the brighest students attend Ivy League schools and those are the students you're competing with. But to maintain a high GPA for all their students, most of these schools inflate their grades, giving most students As and Bs.</p>
<p><em>Debt</em> Unless you're filthy rich, you'll need loans to attend. I'll be paying back my loans until I'm in my 60s. I thought an Ivy League school was an investment that would pay itself back. I'm wrong.</p>
<p>In short - if you can afford it, and want to attend, great. But if you want to attend because you think it'll benefit you in some way later in life, know that the rewards aren't as great as you think."</p>
<p>As flagship state university honors programs increase in popularity & size, the best benefits are found in the super selective honors such as the Univ. of Georgia's Foundation Fellows or the University of Alabama's University Fellows; both programs are more difficult, or as difficult, to get into than most Ivy League schools and each rewards the student with much more than you pay for.
The concept of Honors Programs & Honors Colleges as a small elite school within a large university setting is enticing, but the realities can be quite different. There are benefits in all Honors Programs?Colleges, but the actual--as opposed to the promised--benefits require one to enter with their eyes wide open. The single best source are the honors students themselves.
Everything that I have written with respect to honors programs/colleges in this thread refers only to front end honors programs/colleges. ("Front end means that the benefits are primarily focused on the first two years of college).</p>
<p>P.S. Post #40 may be referring to Computer Science programs & teaching students at the Univ. of Michigan, although I am not certain of this.</p>
<p>'rentof2, more important than the quality of the food at the schools I'm thinking of is that the system of dining halls is arranged so that faculty, grad students and undergrads are encouraged to eat together, especially at lunch, and at various places around campus, encouraging cross-disciplinary socializing. </p>
<p>The food must be acceptable to adult faculty members, so it cannot be terrible. What I appreciated more than the food was the way that such practical arrangements for feeding people could be used to encourage intellectual development outside of classrooms and lectures. You never knew what serendipity might bring you in the way of dining companions at my grad school, whether visiting faculty or prominent alumni or guest speakers. I once met an undergrad friend for lunch at one of the halls. Just before we were to meet she was asked to take a visiting member of congress to lunch, so he joined us and we had a very interesting lunch. A few years later he became a cabinet secretary. This kind of thing happened regularly to me at that school.</p>
<p>This reminds me of something I forgot that we both thought very significant about the Ivys we attended. So one more point of distinction in response to tokenadult's question:</p>
<p>7) The quality and quantity of the outside speakers and conferences brought to top private campuses is an important part of the educational offering at these schools. We had heard great, stimulating speakers at our publics, but nowhere near the number and prominence of what we experienced at the Ivies.</p>
<p>But isn't the job placement essentially the same at a great public university and a private one? Especially if the classes are easier where a student can maintain a higher GPA... and im not talking about ivy league schools here, but schools (public and private) that are ranked around the same in a program. Let's say, for example... UNC-CH and Boston College or Wake Forest or an equal business program along those lines.</p>
<p>Notice how though, according to USNWR, 7 of the top 10 business schools are public universities...</p>
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Back in the 80s my husband got his undergrad engineering degree from Cal, and his masters degree in engineering from Stanford. He found the classes at Stanford much easier than the classes at Cal. <snip>he never got below an A at Stanford
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With all due respect to your husband's accomplishments, this isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison. Undergrad engineering is going to be hard anywhere. At the MS level, though, the program at Stanford is strongly geared towards part-time students from the local industry in Silicon Valley. Furthermore you are required to maintain a B average in the MS program to continue on; needless to say, the profs are aware of this and classes are graded accordingly.</snip></p>
<p>They don't really offer a comparable degree at the UC schools. On paper they have the program, but their website says
[quote]
Though we offer a MS only, it is very difficult for students to get into the program this way as we are primarily a research institution and the MS only is a industry-oriented degree. It is normally a two year program. Also, unlike the PhD programs, we do not guarantee any sort of financial support for MS only students.
Degree</a> Options Explained | EECS at UC Berkeley
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The way I've heard it explained, for most disciplines at the UC school the Masters is a consolation prize; if they decide they don't want you in their PhD program anymore, they issue you a Masters and wish you well in life...</p>
<p>As fo</p>
<p>"Husband teaches in a science field at a public flagship. He says the quality and breadth of course offerings far exceeds what he experienced as an undergrad and grad student at an ivy. " </p>
<p>There is a huge difference in the caliber of the students at Ivys today compared to when your husband went to school. There is a pretty big difference over the last 5 years as these schools have become ultra competitive to get in. There is obviously a big difference in terms of course offerings at a large elite school compared to a small school. Not only this, but in all schools the number of courses have exploded so that students have more choice. My d goes to an elite and I teach at a pretty decent school -there is a world of difference between the students.</p>
<p>I think the point made above is very important: one must compare students TODAY at school A with students today at school B, and similarly compare facilities, programs, and services on a contemporary basis.</p>
<p>I thought this was an interesting question - "are the classes harder?" I would guess that the smaller schools cover the material faster. This was true 30 years ago and I suspect it's true today. For example, the textbook used for Organic Chem at my school was identical to the textbook used at Flagship U, but we covered the same material in half the time. So yes, perhaps the classes are "harder" . Hard to value if "faster" means "greater depth of learning." Do I think that a selective college education is better? Depends on the major. Depends on the profs. But I DO believe that most parents who are forking $20,000 and up for the selective school fervantly hope that the classes are "tougher", the kids are "smarter" and the education is "better."</p>