@ucbalumnus doesn’t look like it because there’s a lot of science and math required. Gen eds are easy if they’re humanities. So probably easier at Columbia
Some people do not find humanities to be that easy, so humanities general education requirements may be difficult for them.
S would trade an extra semester of calc for a class that involved writing a paper in a heartbeat.
However, if the student in question is a potential math or economics major, could it be that s/he sees extra math or similar courses to be less difficult than humanities courses?
In any case, a college with no or minimal general education requirements like Brown would allow the student to avoid any out-of-major course that may be difficult for him/her.
My S would probably trade any of his ~11 quarters of required humanities classes with any advanced math, stats, or CS classes. But, I’d probably be able to talk him out of it.
Even if we could agree on a definition of “rigor”, I doubt adequate data is available to measure it objectively.
For example, the data at gradeinflation.com is not up-to-date for some of the Ivies. The last average GPA it shows for Columbia is for 2010; the last one for Yale is for 1978.
The NSSE has tried to assess aspects of rigor such as the number of short papers and long papers assigned per term. Last I heard, none of the 8 Ivies chose to participate in the NSSE assessments. (http://nsse.indiana.edu/)
I suspect we’d find there is more variation within each of the 8 Ivies than we’d find between the “average” rigor (if we could determine such a thing) at any two of them.
We do know, however, @tk21769, that by self-admission, Harvard does have grade inflation problem:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/3/grade-inflation-mode-a/
^^ grade inflation has nothing to do with rigor. How much work did it take to pass the class vs. passing the class elsewhere based on the same student is the only (and impossible) measure. A vs. A- vs. C means nothing.
Sure. I’ll take Harvard with A- average grade over Princeton’s B- with a relative same rigor.
@tiggerdad Are they the same rigor? Princeton walked away from their deflation limits in 2014…seemed that they just couldn’t get by with only 35% A’s.
From what I’ve been hearing directly from several Princeton students that I know that, although Princeton stopped their grade deflation in 2014, the old habit is apparently disappearing very slowly.
And none of them have ever taken a class at Harvard.
It is my sincere hope that both schools deliver rigorously stimulating opportunities to all of their students, but arguing which is more difficult or correlating grades between two schools is pointless.
The best way to get any sense of rigor is through transfer students. It’s not perfect, but students who move between schools are a good measure of relative difficulty. The two recent examples I know personally have gone from Ivies (Cornell and Penn) to LAC’s (Swarthmore and Amherst), and both believe that the rigor and breadth of material covered are greater in the LAC’s.
The OP wants to know where it’s hard and where it might be a bit easier. As a general rule, I’d suggest anyone looking for a better work/life balance attend an Ivy.
However, transfer students take lower level courses at one school and upper level courses at the other school. So it is not surprising that the students found the courses at the second school to be more rigorous than at the first school, because they took upper level courses at the second school versus lower level courses at the first school.
Some might suggest graduate students as other examples who experience more than one school. But a student taking an undergraduate course seeing the material for the first time may find it more difficult than when s/he is a PhD student TAing that course at another school after having lived and breathed that general subject for years.
@ucbalumnus - agree about the 100 vs. 200-400 class issue. They also have to take requirements that are 100 level. It’s a sample size of 2. As I said before…this is a generally pointless discussion. There are no answers, only myopic perceptions of vastly different majors with no baseline for personal ability.
“It is my sincere hope that both schools deliver rigorously stimulating opportunities to all of their students, but arguing which is more difficult or correlating grades between two schools is pointless.”
I agree, but grade inflation does exist, and I hope you’re not just dismissing it even in face of Harvard’s own self-admission in the link provided above. In fact, I wonder how much of Harvard’s reputation for grade inflation is impacting its high yield rate (emphasis on “wonder”).
It most certainly has an impact, but how much is just a guess.
I’ve taken classes at Stanford, didn’t find them any more rigorous than classes I took at other schools. The difference was the teaching at Stanford was better, and the students were more engaged. That makes for a better atmosphere in which to learn.
I work in the tech biz. Just from people’s output and productivity. you can’t tell who went to an elite school, and who didn’t.
I’d say that Princeton’s requirement that all students complete a Senior Thesis adds to it’s rigor. I’m sure you you can complete a Senior Thesis at Harvard or Yale but I don’t believe it’s required. That being said if my D was attending Pitt should could get a Bachelor of Philosophy and have to do something similar so as I mentioned before you can find rigor or try to avoid it all at the same institution.