<p>Last night, I asked my D to elaborate a bit on her statement that “college is so much easier than high school.” Here is what she said:</p>
<p>“There’s a lot less work. In high school, the teachers assigned lots of busy work. In college, there are only a few assignments for each class. The tests are a little bit more difficult compared to high school. There’s less reading because I’m not taking any reading-intensive classes. I’d say that most of the scholars in my program, as well as my friends, are of equal intellectual caliber compared to my friends in high school. I would say that the people here study more and are a little more focused and try harder.”</p>
<p>Her last sentence caught me by surprise because most of her peers from high school are now attending elite or Ivy schools. Her college does not have the prestige factor. However, she feels that her college peers are equal to or superior to her high school peers intellectually.</p>
<p>5 classes= full course load and not many class hrs. each day. Lots of free time to do homework, study and have fun time too. If course material is straightforward: read, highlight, class, test, it is easy.</p>
<p>High school- 9 periods a day -7 AM-2PM. My kids rarely had a lunch period and opted
to have classes all day, every day. Add to that 4-5 APs in the mix, and they had lots of homework each night.</p>
<p>Son is engineering major. Nothing is easy about it at all. All 5 classes every term are tough, with lots of reading and problems to do each night.</p>
<p>If she’s in the honor college at her school (I can’t remember if she is) then her statement is very likely to be true. In many state flagship honors college programs there are students who, for one reason or another, chose to stay in state even when they were accepted at various Ivies and Top 20 schools. The stats at my son’s program are very much on par with any of the Ivies. </p>
<p>High school busy work drove my son crazy. Smart kids often don’t see the need for all that homework when they can master the material by simply reading it or listening to a lecture. He’s much happier in college.</p>
<p>Yes, she is in the honors program at her college, but it is not our state flagship university. She is also part of a group of very bright kids majoring in STEM who received merit scholarships. Most of her friends and peers at college are majoring in engineering (computer, chemical, mechanical, electrical), computer science, math, physics, or pre-med. She loves being around like-minded students. Many of them are what you would call “geeks.”</p>
<p>^That makes sense. My son reports that it seemed like 75% of his freshman classmates in the honors program last year were majoring in engineering. He’s toying with the idea of a science major himself. He’s really good at it and likes it. Also is considering medical school, so a science major would be a good plan B for him. He considers himself a ‘non-geeky’ geek. He might be right. He and his roommate (a fellow friend from hs who turned down several top 20 schools to go to the state honors college for free) were voted the ‘coolest kids’ in the honors dorm last year.</p>
<p>S1 went from high-intensity science/math magnet program to UChicago. Was invited to take Honors Analysis, though chose IBL for its methodology instead. Went directly into graduate CS courses first quarter of freshman year. His GPA in those two areas has been outstanding and he feels his HS prepared him well. Math classes are challenging, but he enjoys the work. He has had regrets about not going to MIT, but he chose Chicago specifically because he wanted to be challenged outside his comfort zone. To no great surprise, it’s the Core that has kicked his tail (esp. the foreign language requirement), though since taking off one quarter to regroup, his GPA has rebounded. </p>
<p>S2 went from the insane IB program Marian mentioned to Tufts. Felt last year was easier than HS, mainly because he was used to working that hard in seven classes, so having only four felt much more manageable. A couple of his courses have used texts he studied from in IB. College GPA has been comparable to HS GPA and he made Dean’s List last spring. What we are finding now is that he is totally burned out. It started midway through senior year and progressed to migraines, then his GF broke up with him in January, and now it is a real struggle to stay afloat. Not that the classes are hard. He is just exhausted. A sabbatical is likely on the horizon. </p>
<p>When S2 was having migraines senior year, we wound up seeing five doctors in the course of pinpointing the issues. EVERY ONE of them told us they had seen stress-related illnesses from kids in this program. Makes me glad he chose Tufts; at a certain level, he feared Chicago would be like four more years of IB.</p>
<p>Beware the sophomore slump. Has happened to both my kids now. Both have found that the life strategies that had served them well prior to that point started to fail them, and have had to regroup and do some hard growing up.</p>
<p>CD, funny you mention Tufts. That’s where one of the kids I know who is thinking HS is easier goes. He petitioned to get in higher-level math classes, and they wouldn’t let him. They didn’t count the MV he took in HS and wouldn’t let him take a test to place out of it, so there he sits, bored. I think he’s just taking four classes but is acing them all. A far cry from his As and Bs and the occasional C in his eight classes a semester in HS. I still think part of it is maturity and just being so happy to have more control of time and schedule.</p>
<p>Ds1 is finding college as challenging as HS. His grades aren’t as good. I think part of it is the trimester system with 15 weeks of work crammed into 10. You really hit the ground running and can’t let anything drop.</p>
<p>S2 was not taking a light load at Tufts last year (was also in the all-consuming course mathmom mentioned). It’s not that the courses were easy, but that he said after freshman year that the transition from HS to college was pretty seamless. Sorry to hear about the math placement issue. That was one thing UChicago was VERY good about with S1. He had lots of college-level courses at his HS and while he didn’t get credit (which was fine, as he had maxed out just on APs), he got placement, which was the important thing as far as he was concerned.</p>
<p>Was that course a “native” high school course, or a dual-enrollment course with college credit? It seems problematic to take a post-AP course as a “native” high school course (even though it may be offered at an elite high school), since universities may be unwilling to accept it for placement without college credit being associated with it.</p>
<p>^I don’t really see why. Carnegie Mellon gives credits for AP exams, but they also give a math placement test. If you’ve forgotten the material from AP Calc you have to retake it, if you know more than expected you can jump ahead, but as far as I know they don’t give credit for high school courses except AP courses. (Our high school does offer a few dual credit courses with Syracuse U. which you might be able to try to get credit for, I don’t know as my son didn’t take any of them.) He did take a linear algebra course and was not forced to retake it.</p>
<p>Do you think there are no courses at Northwestern more challenging than the HS? A well prepared student has the opportunity at almost any college to to find and take challenging course work. Some elect an easier course. That is a personal choice. Even if they are setting the curve in the premed courses, there are graduate courses available at a university they could take.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe this. But even if you do believe it, I think you have to acknowledge that elite schools probably have appropriate level coursework for all students, if the students will only seek it out.</p>
<p>Regardless of rankings, a student is going to have to sign up for appropriate coursework wherever they end up attending college.</p>
<p>I have no direct knowledge of the courses open to this student or the courses she chose to take (nor, for that matter, do you). However, it seems to me that the fact that she was admitted to a dual degree MD/PhD program would indicate that her course selection was not loaded up with the “physics for poets” courses that ucbalumnus is so fond of deriding.</p>
<p>And the larger question - why are there ANY courses at a so-called “top 20” university that are easier than high school courses, even high school courses from a rigorous, selective high school? Especially, why are there any SCIENCE courses like this? Your answer:</p>
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<p>if true, would indicate that elite schools indeed have dumbed-down courses to make sure that their retention and graduation rates stay up there right where there USNWR masters expect them to be.</p>
<p>Getting into an MD/PhD program, med school, law school or graduate school probably means a certain level of achievement was obtained. It doesn’t necessarily mean the student challenged themselves in college. If the student wanted a challenge, it was there. While I do not know the student you are talking about, I know current MD/PhD students who were not really challenged by the pre-med curriculum at their elite schools and so either did graduate level course work or double majors or both in addition to lab work and publishing lab results and sometimes other completely different ECs related to the second major. </p>
<p>This is not a major problem Usually a premed curriculum is challenging enough anywhere! I am only talking about a really small group of students.</p>
<p>I don’t believe the elite schools really have the dumbed down courses you are imagining. I am waiting to hear what you find when you do the class visits.</p>
<p>Courses intended for students who intend to major in that subject or a closely related one need to be highly rigorous. Courses intended for non-majors do not need to be that rigorous – and in fact, should not be, if their purpose is to give non-specialists an overview of the field rather than preparing them for higher-level courses. </p>
<p>From the point of view of a chemistry major, for example, the chemistry course offered as part of general education to students majoring in, say, English or business may appear dumbed down, but it is an appropriate course for its audience and serves a legitimate educational purpose.</p>
<p>For all I know, this student did those things, and the father’s comment referred to the standard curriculum courses she was required to take. Which is itself an indictment.</p>
<p>However, some pre-med students have a reputation of seeking out the easiest possible courses (other than the required pre-med set of courses) to keep their GPA up. Some pre-law students also have that reputation. The need to get a GPA as close to 4.0 as possible for medical school or top 14 law school admissions may deter such students from choosing more challenging courses that they would otherwise consider taking.</p>
<p>Obviously, a pre-med would not take “physics for poets”. But “physics for biology majors” is acceptable for pre-med purposes, so most pre-meds avoid the more rigorous “physics for physics and engineering majors”.</p>
<p>Thank you Marian for that comment. I was going to say something similar.</p>
<p>My son is a Computer Science major at Princeton. He is dreading having to take a history class and write a long research paper. This for him is very very challenging because he is easily overwhelmed by these types of projects. Computer Science on the other hand, is fairly easy…not easier than HS by any means, but it plays to his strengths.</p>
<p>He is looking for the EASY history class that will meet his distribution requirement and will probably take it pass/fail. </p>
<p>I am sure most History majors would feel the same way about Computer Science.</p>
<p>In some (many?) schools, biology majors and pre-meds can take a less rigorous chemistry and physics for biology majors, not the more rigorous chemistry for chemistry majors and physics for physics majors. However, they should still be more rigorous than typical (as opposed to elite) high school courses.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t see courses for non-majors, where they have the opportunity to explore a different field, as “dumbed-down courses” Usually they seem to me to be different focused courses than those for majors but not courses for “dummies” ymmv</p>
<p>:) edit: I think it makes sense to have a variety of level of courses</p>