<p>Not all flagship or other state U’s are created equally, also. The same material is NOT covered in an AP class as in the U class at UW- Madison, for example in regular (non honors) calculus. A gifted student told her mom a relative ranking of calculus classes that put AP at the easiest, then a 4th tier college, then a flagship (regular), then her ivy. Both students and advisors at UW- Madison have noted that having AP calc for the first semester of calc may mean struggles if going directly to 2nd semester calc.</p>
<p>Momusic:</p>
<p>U of Illinois is one of the top 10 engineering schools in the country, perhaps top 5, according to USNWR.</p>
<p>So I understand. Excellent excellent school. It’s just a much bigger place than say, Rose-Hulman, where I get the feeling they watch over each and every student.</p>
<p>Son still trying to decide what sort of school he likes. Even not 100% sure of engineering. As has been said, just because you like math & science doesn’t mean you’re an engineer! (Necessary but not sufficient conditions.)</p>
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In that case make sure he goes to a school with a decent selection of other non-engineering majors he might be interested in. Larger universities have the edge here.</p>
<p>The rigor of a class depends heavily on the instructor. My wife just took an intro biology class at the local community college and worked her butt off, harder than I ever did in a science class at my mid-sized state university. Of course, better schools will generally have more demanding (and better) instructors. My point is just that any given class could be easier or harder, depending on the teacher, regardless of the school.</p>
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<p>The fourth semester of calculus in my math major was called Advanced Calculus. It was the class that separated the people who just needed to get calc out of the way (i.e., science and technology majors) from the true math devotees. It basically started back at the beginning of Calc I and covered all the same material, except with rigorous proofs from the ground up, sort of retracing the steps of Newton and Leibniz. By the time you were done with Calc IV, you couldn’t just do calculus. You knew calculus.</p>
<p>[Edit: It was a living hell.]</p>
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While many of the freshman at a state school may have only 3s or 4s on math/science APs, this is not necessarily true for the engineering students. You would be surprised how common a 5 on Calc 2 is in top engineering schools at state U’s. As a previous poster pointed out, many of these students turned down top private schools, or never applied in the first place. The range of abilities is wider than at a private school, but there is a large population of very strong engineering students, and the top students are an exceptional bunch. At a highly-ranked public engineering school, it’s worthwhile to investigate the stats of the engineering students, apart from the university as a whole.</p>
<p>jerzgrlmom,
My D observed complete opposite of your D’s comments. She graduated from private HS and at state college now. According to her, college classes are much harder than AP. For example, she had both Honors and AP Bio (5 on exam) at HS. Her very first intro college Bio (she was smart enough not to take AP credit for it) used the same texbook as her HS Honors Bio. It still was weed out killer that made good number of Honors student changed their major. She commented later that it would not be possible to take next Bio classes without this first class.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between difficulty in terms of getting an A and difficulty in terms of what is expected from you. It is likely easier to get the A at a top school, where grades tend to be a bit kinder-- but from my experience the top schools expected a lot more understanding of the material vs. just repeating back what was learned. Part of this is a function of class size, in a really huge class scantron is just much easier to grade. Im not sure that the material that you learn is much different in the intro classes, just what is required of you on the tests and problem sets.</p>
<p>My kids found the college classes at our community college were much easier (little depth, easy tests, tons of “prep” for exams, less demanding than our HS honors/AP classes). BUT that’s not the case for my two kids in 4 yr colleges. Those classes (at very different schools) were like MiamiDAP described. Like your DD, my son had 5s on 9 or so APs in HS and still finds many of his college classes (neuro major) a challenge to get As. But challenge is good and what he wants. </p>
<p>I wish my kids had Mythmom as a CC prof since she says her classes are quite demanding as is her CC in general. Unfortunately our CC teaches down (since many of the CC students were barely C students in non honor HS classes and needed to take remedial classes at CC). The profs tell them exactly what they need to know and expectations are lower than HS. CC is a stepping stone to prepare them for 4 year college classes. Older students say it’s tough to get back into the student mode so these classes are a challenge for them. I can understand that. I’ve seen posts that some CCs offer honors level classes and that sounds like an idea to consider so students have options. I just think it must be a huge leap when these kids transfer for years 3 and 4.</p>
<p>My point was that in my family’s experience, we have found quite varying degrees of difficulty and expectations, depending on the college. I’m not sure it correlates strictly to Tier of schools or public/private so it pays to check into it. BTW, I attended UDel as an Honors/pre-med student and had some very challenging classes (esp science/math), although part of the difficulty came from very large classes with professors whose first language was not English. But those were mostly weeder courses and upper level classes were much better.</p>
<p>Some students we know WANT an easier path and are trying to avoid the more difficult classes/schools. They want a full college experience and don’t want to spend all that much time studying. That’s ok. One should find what will work for them. My kids simply don’t enjoy classes where they aren’t challenged - it seems like a waste of their time. Other kids are looking for the easy A. The OPs question was “are all schools equal in what they teach and how they teach it.” My answer is no.</p>
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<p>This is why analizying not only the profile of lowest tiers of admitted students, instead of focusing only in the average “x” Univ. giu, can be helpful. When they are kind of disastrous (academically), one of two scenarios happen: (1) drop-out rates are high, as less prepared and capable students don’t make it through junior and senior year; (2) standards are lowered so a given class bottom can still thrive at expense of highes tiers potential.</p>
<p>An competent honors program can partially remedy situation (2).</p>
<p>Sometimes it is the speed something is covered. Our “local” well ranked private covers the same material in a 10 week quarter that the nearby ranked state U covers in a long semester. Same text book, same basic syllabus just excellerated. Our friend has taught the exact same class as an adjunct at the private and at the state U. The private classes are smaller and the kids might come into the class a notch stats higher, but at the end of the day they end the class with the same ability to “learn” the same material, the “more rigorous” school is “rigorous” because of the speed not the content.</p>
<p>Maybe engineering is not the best discipline to use to compare - it is a very structured curriculum, in general. I think that writing and critical reading expectations are probably somewhat higher as you move up the rankings.</p>
<p>Agree somewhat sewhappy. Not so much as you move “up the rankings” as much as the caliber of the profs and the core competencies of the college or university as well as the caliber of the students critical thinking skills. If you have a disengaged prof and lackluster group of students whose primary success is an ability to regurgitate what teachers have told them you have lackluster outcomes. But certainly a qualitative major is entirely different than a quantitative based major. This happens in high school too, my oldest had a dreariest bunch of AP English kids…totally turned my son off.</p>