<p>One thing I worry about Northwestern is the difficulty of classes. Will I spend my 4 years of college constantly stressed at Northwestern? Will I be able to get A's like I expect to when I am sorrounded by geniuses?</p>
<p>I think that depends largely on your major and school. If you’re an engineer, premed, or majoring in something hard like chem, then yeah, you’ll probably be stressed a lot of the time. However, if you can manage your schedule and study efficiently, I’m sure you can lead a well-balanced college lifestyle.</p>
<p>Personally, I haven’t found the classes to be particularly difficult save for maybe one or two. But then again, I’m not majoring in something particularly hard and I’m only a sophomore.</p>
<p>You should also note that while A’s are definitely possible, you’re gonna have to work a lot harder for them than you did in high school.</p>
<p>I’ll probably do biomedical engineering. Almost every person will be used to getting A’s. Is there curves that may result in some of these people getting F’s, or do most people get like C’s and above?</p>
<p>Is your first priority the quality of the education (engineering in particular) or whether you can get As and whether it’s stressful?
Any good engineering school has a rigorous curriculum, and NU is no exception; stress goes with those academic burdens. No school gears itself to having students get Fs; they want their students to pass.<br>
NU has a top flight engineering school (and top flight academics in general). If you are more concerned about stress and difficulty of getting high grades, then engineering is the wrong way to go (it’s easier to do well in Communications than McCormick), but I think the first concern should be the quality of the school. NU ranks very, very high on that front.</p>
<p>Well last year, on average I was up past midnight every day studying, and I was not stressed much because I was prepared. I just wanted to know if schools like Northwestern gave you a lot higher quantity and difficulty of work, or if they just have better teachers, programs, etc. and similar workloads.</p>
<p>Well, I’d expect a better program to be correlated with a higher workload and at an accelerated pace so those things aren’t mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>Twin127,</p>
<p>I was in chemE and the curve was harsher for the intro/foundation classes. Grades were pretty much all/mostly As and Bs for the upper-level classes. But that was chemE, not BME. Environmental engg was the most grade inflated when I was there; there were quite a few easy A classes.</p>
<p>WCAS Parent: I’ve never heard of NU’s flight engineering program and am pretty certain it doesn’t exist/have a large impact.</p>
<p>Twin127,
NU classes in engineering and economics are graded on a curve. A b- median: that means half get above and half get below. It sucks, but that’s how it is. Yes, everyone’s used to getting A’s but now you’ll be thrown in with them so competition is steep. But like WCASParent said, your concern for easy A’s is shallow.</p>
<p>^No, engineering classes do not all have b- median. If that’s the case, the average GPA wouldn’t be 3.1/3.2 (according to a Daily article in early 2000s). Like I said, the intro/fundamentals (including science classes with premeds) may have b- medians but the upper-level (junior/senior year) courses get a lot better. For example, everyone that put enough effort got at least B+ in chemE lab; in design, I remember pretty much everyone got B+/A-/A</p>
<p>Yeah, I was referring to the classes a freshman would take… those are B- averages. Sure upper level classes aren’t graded as hard, but a pre-fresh is asking, they’re not gonna take those classes for a couple years.</p>
<p>okay, so since the less advanced classes are on such a tough curve, do people normally have to start off with a lower GPA and then eventually work it up?</p>
<p>All of my friends that didn’t take science classes had stellar GPAs without really trying. Econ was hard for some of them but otherwise Northwestern isn’t that tough of a school. Once I stopped taking science classes I was blown away how easy it was to get As without doing reading or going to class. Don’t worry about it</p>
<p>If you pick an easy major it’s not that hard. If you want a challenge, it will not be a cake walk.</p>