<p>I've been at NYU for a year now, and based on my observations, people complain that they have a lot of work and that they study all the time for finals, but when you visit them, they are usually doing "work" with friends or doing stuff on FB.</p>
<p>So my question is, based on what you do or your observations, are top-tier colleges as work-intensive as people say or is it usually (im sure there are classes that actually give a lot of work) due to procrasination?</p>
<p>I don’t go to a “top tier” school, and I hear the same complaints. And, like you, whenever I see them doing their work, it’s usually with their friends or they’re just on FB. If I had to make an educated guess, I would agree that procrastination is involved to an extent.</p>
<p>Depends on majors and professors. But I know many schools, not just “elite” schools, offer a LOT, arguably too much, work. It’s not just procrastination.</p>
<p>You should keep your input to only your school, because you don’t know anything about other schools other than what people tell you or what you read. And as I said, the rhetoric can often be different than the reality.</p>
<p>I think it depends on major. Engineers will work flat out, especially at good schools. I’ve had cs lab courses that take 20 hours a week per course.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t consider NYU as a good school to base workloads on tbh.</p>
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<p>But you said to include observations, no? Your observations of different schools (through visiting campus to see friends, cross-registering for courses, etc.) can be just as inaccurate as your observations of other students at your own school, unless you follow them around everywhere, see all of their grades, and read all of their writings. </p>
<p>That being said, I attended 3 different undergraduate colleges. The most competitive of the three did assign more reading and writing on average per week, and the professors expected much higher quality work and discussions than the lesser two colleges. However, I did not find myself necessarily spending more hours studying/working at the more competitive school. I was sloppy out of boredom at the lesser quality colleges and pulled off the same good grades. Once I felt challenged, I was happy to put a little more effort into my work to prove myself (but again, did not necessarily need to spend much more time). </p>
<p>Also, how often do you really visit everyone? If you’re visiting, they aren’t likely going to sit there and study; they’d probably rather spend time with you. When no one is visiting it is certainly possible that they spend a lot of time studying. So you are not getting an accurate picture based on your observations while visiting.</p>
<p>There’s a correlation between the amount of complaining about work and the amount of time spent on social media. The Twitter/FB drama queens are more likely to complain that, “My professor assigns us sooo much reading! 4 hours down, 2 chapters to go! #RTplz #I’mhungry”</p>
<p>Never mind that the chapters are 6 pages each…</p>
<p>When I say visit, I mean enter their rooms unannounced and finding them “working.”</p>
<p>I would expect assignments to vary more in difficulty than in length.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I have taken classes at 5 different colleges and universities. There was a very clear correlation between the “difficulty” of the work and the selectivity of the institution, but that didn’t necessarily translate into “more time spent on work” for the average student there. (It did however take me longer to complete the more difficult assignments, which isn’t unexpected either.) Stanford students procrastinate just as much as Bryn Mawr students.</p>
<p>I agree on whoever said depends on major! I see bio/chem majors at my school studying at 2am in the lounge for their test. I’ve never done that! well, then again, I don’t procrastinate either (or not that badly, anyway, I always go to bed by 2am!)</p>
<p>Lower schools are usually “harder” because:</p>
<p>a) They’re usually public and underfunded.
b) The student population is more Gaussian-ly distributed.
c) The kids and the schools have less resources. (See a)</p>
<p>Nephew at Yale, D at Harvard .Both say there is a lot of work ,but its manageable .</p>
<p>I had an enormous amount of work at umich. Most of my classes were political science, history, and early british literature. There usually weren’t very many “assignments” that needed to be turned in, but when there were, they were long, difficult, and every class had 1-2 of them due all in the same time frame-- so there were 5-10 20 page papers to write at once plus full books to read and research to do in order to write them. There were also a lot of reading assignments all semester long that were crucial towards your participation grade and ability to write your papers decently, even if you didn’t have anything to turn in, exactly-- those were the bulk of my work. At times I had 500 pages of reading to do for one class in a day or two, and a similar workload for four other classes. I didn’t do anywhere near all of my assigned reading and that still was a lot of work. Plus weekly mini papers and other small projects that, while small and not time consuming, are burdensome when you add them to a pile of work already that large.</p>
<p>Not everybody was as buried as I was, however. I think my particular course load was weighted a little too heavily on the reading/writing side, which lends itself to time consuming assignments. I’d have done well to mix it up a bit more.</p>
<p>For my school, it depends on your major and whether you’re in the honors college or not. I have my honors thesis due today, but only 2 finals besides that, so I’m not worried (too much 
). A friend of mine is pre-med, mechanical engineering, and in the honors college. Needless to say, she truly is busy and doesn’t have time for much besides schoolwork and her extracurriculars.</p>