<p>My freshman D recently said to me "College is so much easier than high school." </p>
<p>My D went to a very competitive high school and took many AP courses. She's majoring in computer science and math, which is considered to be a rigorous program at her college. She signed up for 16 credits her first semester. After the first two weeks of school, she switched two of her classes (math and comp sci) to more difficult ones. Even though she is a freshman, most of her courses are filled with sophomores or juniors. She said that compared to high school, she has much less homework and is getting A's on all her tests and papers. In addition, her stress level is substantially lower.</p>
<p>I was curious how many parents have students who feel that college is easier than high school? My thought is that it's actually the other way around.</p>
<p>My straight A in high school student is having a very hard time keeping up in college. She rarely gets an A on anything, no matter how much time she spends writing it/studying for it. This weekend, she has two 15 pages papers (due next week) and a 5 page paper hanging over her head, plus 40 upper level calc problems due monday. She is completely overwhelmed, can never get ahead, can only work on whatever is the next thing due. She gets very little sleep (her roommates take adderall and stay up all night), she misses a lot of fun events because she’s in the study lounge. </p>
<p>She was told this first semester, and really the first year, of the honors program was tough, but she is stressed out and busy.</p>
<p>I have a HS junior. Your post gives me hope. We are over stressed. We are over scheduled. We are frustrated. I do not know how to get my son off this merry-go-round. We wouldn’t mind taking him out of the private school, except he has outpaced math, foreign lang and most science at the public school. And in our crazy new requirements, he would need to repeat courses. And, though the academics at public would be easier, the activities schedule and time table are just as bad.</p>
<p>I keep telling him college will be easier simply because the hours in classroom will be less.</p>
<p>Your post is the breath of fresh air I need this week!</p>
<p>LeftyLou – I thought my D’s first semester experience was going to be like your D’s (very stressful). My D is also in the honor’s program at her college. It’s actually a great relief to me that things are going so smoothly for her. If you don’t mind me asking, did she attend a competitive high school also and take AP courses? I feel that her high school did an excellent job of preparing her for the rigors of college.</p>
<p>I think it totally depends on how difficult the high school is and how difficult the college is. No 2 high schools or colleges are the same. I know our high school in contrast to other high schools in the area is considered tough…but it prepares students well for college. Son was ok in high school 3.4-3.5 but that 3.4-3.5 was considered the top 1/3 of the class - no grade inflation for sure. Now, in college he is an engineering major and doing quite well -</p>
<p>Longhaul – I feel for you and your child. The entire college applications process, plus the competitiveness of her high school, was extremely stressful for her. Don’t let it consume you. It’s not worth the toll it will take on your lives.</p>
<p>Last summer, during sophomore orientation at my D’s selective enrollment three-year high school, a parent of an incoming sophomore told me that his older daughter, an alumnus of the high school, had just graduated from Northwestern as a bio major and was about to start a dual-degree MD/PhD program. He said that his daughter had told him that her classes at Northwestern were less challenging than were her high school classes.</p>
<p>I’ve had other alumni of the high school tell me similar stories, of how much better prepared they were when they got to college than were their peers from traditional public high schools.</p>
<p>So no, your daughter’s experience is not unique.</p>
<p>I suspect that colleges, especially very selective ones that sweat retention rates for purposes of their UNSWR rankings, have to dumb down their offerings to the level of the average entering freshman, who has typically been through a not-very-challenging series of feel-good, memorization-based AP courses; and that if they taught at a level your daughter would find challenging, they would lose half their freshman before sophomore year. And that’s not the way elite colleges work. As William Deresiewicz says, “Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out.”</p>
<p>My boys would tell you that college was “easier” for them but in their context it was that they had greater ability to manage their classes and the work and their personal time. My oldest one would tell you that it gets harder every year but once you get in the groove and learn the ins and outs of which classes to take college isn’t “difficult.” Both have had their “moments” and both those moments for them occurred when they took 18 credits and just had a grind of a semester. It might be different if they had gone to an uber selective college where the kids were overtly competitive. Our high school is competitive according to statistics but the kids aren’t overtly competitive and I do think that “helps” kids understand what it takes to get through college. Kids in quality public schools (or privates) are simply used to be around all kids that are as smart as they are and the teachers do teach to that group when everyone is that group.</p>
<p>have to agree with others…college ease seems to be related to the strength of the hs…S2 has said that he is having no problems keeping up and his grades are great…but he went to a math/science school and says that if he had stayed at his local hs he would probably be struggling…his local hs offered one chemistry class (he took 14 chem classes at his math/science school) So far each semester he has taken at least 19 credits and also tutors and has research credits and is not struggling with that load. He feels the courses at his college are very good, tough but taught well and fairly graded so it is not because his college is easy just that he was well prepared.</p>
<p>My D graduated from a traditional public high school, but most of the students were high achievers. People move to our county so their kids can attend our public schools.</p>
<p>A friend’s child is a sophomore at Princeton. Child attended one of the specialized, highly competitive science high schools in NYC. This school is very rigorous with hours of homework every night. The student at Princeton said that her high school classes were harder and her high school classmates were, on average, much smarter than the kids at Princeton. Our own child’s experience at his very rigorous, top 20 university is that everyone there is really smart and works very hard, but the flexible hours (he has no classes on Monday, for example) make things seem easier in a way.</p>
<p>I keep telling him college will be easier …</p>
<p>That is what my parents used to tell me.
Then, I ended up at U Chicago.
I did not hear any of my classmates saying that college is easier than high school.</p>
<p>umdclass of 80-she went to our local public high school, not the best school district in the area, but not the worst. Other than a choir class and a theater class, she took all honors classes freshman and sophomore year and all AP classes junior and senior year (our school wouldn’t let them take AP until junior year, a rule they are just changing now).
She worked hard in high school too, especially when play rehearsals took up a lot of her time, twice a year. She started working part time in her junior year, so sometimes she wouldn’t start her homework until 9:30 at night and she’d be up for hours. </p>
<p>At college, she has a work/study job and is working 10 to 15 hours a week, plus she is in two choirs, reheasals take up about 4-5 hours a week. She was used to not getting a lot of sleep when she was in high school, but sometimes she had the time to just crash and sleep late on a weekend. In college, her roommates hardly sleep, she is in a triple, so she can’t really get any sleep during the day unless they are out or also sleeping.</p>
<p>You haven’t said the name of the college; however, your daughter’s experiences do not ring true for me in terms of liberal arts colleges that place students into grad, law, and medical schools at a high rate. Your daughter should ask about the placement rate of math and computer science students into top-20 math and computer science Ph.D. programs at her school. Even if that is not the route she intends to go, those figures say a lot about the rigor of a program. In fact, placement rates of students into any graduate or professional programs is a good indicator of the academic ethos of a school. My daughter is a Senior at Swarthmore College. My daughter has had to stretch herself further than she has thought possible in every class from day one. As a result, the door is open to any graduate or professional school in which she has an interest. I acknowledge that Swat is at the high end of rigor. But students at any solid liberal arts college (including Earlham where I went) should be challenged from day one. Most college graduates are going to need further education; a rigorous undergraduate education makes students competitive for everything that comes next (and for the full-ride scholarships that are standard at top Ph.D. programs). Your daughter may want to research other schools and consider transferring. She really doesn’t have four years to waste. One other option to consider: summer research fellowships in her field at top schools. I teach at a public university and one of my students who is a computer science major has had fellowships for research at MIT for two summers. There is he surrounded by other outstanding students and is pushed in ways that do not happen on his home campus, where few of his peers are at his level. Numerous universities offer such fellowships on a competitive basis. The fellowships cover all expenses and offer a stipend so that the student does not lose summer job earnings.</p>
<p>Exactly. Also matters what kind of work load and extracurricular load the student takes on in college. </p>
<p>OP says that D is taking a ‘rigorous’ program in college but if the classes are all in areas that the student is comfortable in then I can see how it would be easier. On the contrary most high school students are compelled to have a balanced mix of classes.</p>
<p>My D probably works as hard in college as she did in high school (i.e., as hard as is humanly possible), but I think she enjoys college more because she is more in control of what classes she is taking each semester. And it doesn’t feel like a burden because after all she chooses to do all those things.</p>
<p>Though my kids all found their classes at selective colleges to be more challenging than in a high-performing high school, several of their friends did far better in college. I can think of a few possible reasons other than the college classes being, in fact, easier. (Though I’m not challenging those of you who report that as your kid’s experience - just offering another POV.) College courses selected by the individual are usually more meaningful than required classes in high school. Health, PE, state-mandated credits in English or civics when the school doesn’t offer high-level choices - these are a drain on a hs student’s time and energy.</p>
<p>Some kids do much better when given true responsibility for their own performance. If you’re not confined to one building for 7 hours a day, you can choose to make the most of those hours that don’t consist of gym, health, assembly, study hall, and lunch anymore. College allows a more efficient use of time. </p>
<p>Some kids are slotted into the less-challenging track in high school and never have the chance to handle higher-level work. This happens as early as 6th grade - in our school system, if you don’t come out of 5th grade with an A average, you’re not going to get to take AP Calculus in hs. Ditto with the sciences - you’ve got to get into the accelerated track in 7th grade if you want to take the highest-level sciences later. I’ve always thought that this gatekeeping kept kids from performing at their best as they matured - these are some of my ds’ friends who’ve really taken off in college, where no one has already decided what they’re capable of.</p>
<p>My D’s college has very rigorous core requirement classes. she only has one elective each semester this year (she’s taking the intro to her major). </p>
<p>So, she is taking classes she has no interest in. If she got to choose all or even most of her classes, she’d be having an easier time, I think.</p>
<p>If a student enjoys being “pushed” they may still think college is “easier.” Easy is one of those words that is taken in individual context. I student that doesn’t like to be “pushed” may not think college is “easy.” A kid saying college is easy is entirely different than a kid saying they are “bored” or they “aren’t challenged.” I would not presume that my kid was not being challenged even if they said college is “easier.” Also in college for the most part kids don’t have to take classes they don’t “like” since presumably they are studying what they “like”…they may say college is easier and simultaneously be challenging themselves but it’s “easy” because they “like” what they are doing. Again this has nothing to do with whether they are being challenged.</p>
<p>Cross posted with Lefty…yes you said it more simply than I did.</p>
<p>libartsmom – You’re right, I didn’t mention which college my D attends. It’s not an elite college. She was accepted at Carnegie Mellon, which is rated #1 for their computer science program. However, she decided that it wasn’t a good fit for her. The college she is attending is not a liberal arts college. It’s a research university noted for it’s strong math, computer science, and engineering programs. The kids who go there tend to be very serious students.</p>
<p>You also mention going on to earn a PhD. My D and I actually had this conversation yesterday. She met with the directors of the honors college yesterday for lunch. They discussed her future educational goals. At this point in time, she has no desire to get a PhD in computer science or math. The directors agreed that it wasn’t necessary unless she wanted to do research or teach at a college. Her comp sci faculty mentor (who got a PhD from Harvard) is encouraging her to apply for a Google internship next year. Last year, about 140 students were awarded a Google internship and 3 of them were from her college. I think that speaks highly of the caliber of the comp sci students at her college. She will have no difficulty finding a high-paying job once she graduates. Most employers will also pay for her to go to graduate school.</p>
<p>You also mention a summer research fellowship. Last summer, she interned at a local university research facility where she worked on a very interesting artificial intelligence project. Very few graduating high school seniors are offered an internship there. Her mentor spoke highly of the comp sci program at her college. She has been invited to come back again this summer.</p>
<p>
I don’t believe she is wasting her time. So far, I have been extremely impressed with the college she is attending. She is involved in a fantastic program for women majoring in STEM. She has wonderful mentors who are encouraging her to get involved in research at the college. Just because she isn’t attending MIT doesn’t mean she’s wasting her time!</p>
<p>If that is the case, then wouldn’t it make sense for the student who would find that level of rigor too easy and boring to select a college where more rigorous honors courses are available, at least in those subjects that the student desires and can handle more rigorous courses? Or choose a college where all courses in the subject are taught at what would be considered an honors level at most other schools (although this describes only a few super-elite STEM-focused schools with respect to subjects like math)?</p>