Elite School Comparative Rigor

College Search & Selection
41

This question is silly because difficulty could differ so much between departments, between faculty, and between different classes in the same college, much less across colleges.

And Student A may find learning a breeze with one subject/faculty/department combo but difficult with another while for Student B, it’s vice versa.

Now if you compare specific subject classes, (such as operating systems), you can at least compare the difficulty and depth of the finals.

But I don’t understand the point of this question anyway. What is the motive? All of the Ivies/equivalents will have mostly challenging classes but some easy ones (other than maybe Caltech, Oxbridge, and perhaps MIT).

42

@dadof4kids since it seems like you’re looking for specific info relating to math courses at Ivies, I found an old comment (2011) regarding calc III (Math 2130) at CU:

"While I am sure 2130 is easier than 2200, it is still pretty difficult. I noticed that we did the exact same topics as 1920, except for the end where we skipped stoke’s theorem and did differential equations.

Homework counts for 30% of the grade in the class (equal to the final) and it is graded for correctness so you have to spend a lot of time on homework. I would spend about 10 hours a week on homework and go to office hours at least once a week as well. The tests were fair but time was an issue (they were given in class, except the final)."

Anecdotally, my S took Calc 2130 his first year at CU. He earned an A in AP calc BC and scored a 5 his senior year in HS. He said that 2130 was tough and it didn’t help that there were so many super smart kids in the class so the competition added to the rigor (and to his stress level). He also agrees with the commentator above regarding the number of hours spent on homework for this class and visits to the prof.

43

@TiggerDad Very interesting distributions. I agree with you that the patterns are consistent with other grade distributions available out there.

44

It is also important to understand that the rigor at a school can vary a great deal depending on the program. I think at Penn, some programs are extraordinarily rigorous. That is especially true in engineering and hard sciences.

The Comp. Science program is very challenging and the project requirements are extensive. I know a lot of people who attend top colleges and I have never seen this level of rigor before. One semester she was averaging 50-60 hours of homework per week. The students that hang in there know a lot. The program does not get a lot of attention in rankings but it does from employers. The last two summers the big tech companies she worked for were very surprised by the depth and breadth of her abilities.

45

Thank you for those of you who actually tried to respond to my question. For those of you who don’t get the point or think it is a dumb question, maybe not taking over the thread would be helpful.

I pretty much agree with all of the tangents that were taken. The question was, and still is, about the comparative rigor, difficulty, workload, etc. between these schools, specifically for a math or Econ major.

Are there bigger differences between Engineering and English than between Princeton and Stanford? Yep. That’s not the question.

I realize it’s all anecdotal. I’m just looking for whether someone had S go to Harvard, D went to Cornell. Both were the same major. When they come home for Christmas, both agree that D has a much heavier workload than S. Or if they think they are getting similar experiences.

46

What you can do to get better information than random anecdotes is:

A. Find someone familiar with math and economics (or one for each subject), such as those who graduated with these majors (for economics, should be someone who took a more math-based path).

B. Find the course web pages of common and representative upper level courses at each college. Examples would be real analysis and abstract algebra for math, intermediate micro and macro economics and econometrics for economics.

C. Note textbooks used and how much of them the courses go through, and have the people you found for A review the course notes, assignments, and exams. They can help you determine whether there are significant differences in difficulty or workload (which are not necessarily the same thing) between each school for the courses in question.

Obviously, this is limited if you cannot find people for A, or if the colleges in question do not make course web pages publicly visible.

Here is an older discussion with a similar theme, where @bernie12 had done this type of inspection of specific courses, though mainly in chemistry and biology, rather than math and economics:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1619090-schools-that-are-considered-to-be-on-ivy-league-level-for-undergrad-p1.html

47

@ucbalumnus Greetings from Utah (I somehow pulled past that masters thesis lol). I would posit that on average, math courses at elites (or non) are more likely to have public webpages. Economics, not as much. Maybe some lower division courses if lucky, but in the case of econ (or math), things like Coursehero are one’s friend.

I also beg folks not to over-emphasize raw “workload” in comparing rigor. What would one student having more graded assignments at one school mean versus a student at another school having less assignments requiring higher levels of problem solving and cognitive skills? What if the latter student was held to a higher standard on exams in terms of cognitive demands? This is often the difference between some key H STEM or econ. courses and the courses at other top tier schools. H courses, when done well, appear to usually stretch the minds of students a bit more in terms of the level of theory or mathematics required. They may end up with less projects or problem sets, but the ones assigned may take most students in the course substantially longer. Some instructors and even schools are known for high graded workloads, but it does not necessarily mean that the professors assigning those workloads are requiring the same cognitive demands as somewhere with less graded work. Hell, there are many STEM weeder courses where instructors give very rigorous supplemental p-sets. And by supplemental I mean not graded, but essentially required to even score near the mean on low average exams. Some giving higher workloads may give a greater number of more “basic” problem sets and sometimes the exams/assessments reveal this to be the case, with the instructor throwing high numbers of extremely similar problems and softballs at students for the sake of providing a perception of “fairness”. Some teachers are not into that method of rigor.

48

Gee, the question’s not silly, but to answer with so much emphasis on gpa, I think, misses the point.

I’m with bernie, I think, sorta. To boil it down, it depends very much on the kid, how he takes to challenges (if he easily lifts his own bar and he’s happy to do so,) what courses, in combo with what others, and which professors.

In other words, there is no standard answer.

A lot will also depend on the kid’s real, true, rigorous and comprehensive prep. It’s harder, of course, to keep up if you’re personally behind the prep of others in your classes. Or weren’t exposed to rigorous thinking and analysis. You need to take a hard look at his real basis.

That has zero to do with hs gpa. Or even scores. Or college gpa.

The place I think you want to worry about relative difficulty is what we characterize as cooperative vs competitive pre med courses/programs. As someone pointed out, some colleges weed pre meds brutally. That’s where you want to choose wisely. But determined kids get over it, do what it takes, get past it, move forward, while others are scared off.

The math kid who would study 3 hours daily at Penn, if he’s properly prepared, coming in, would likely study 3 hours at Princeton. Or pick a number.

49

As mentioned before it can come down to the kid and how much rigor he wants. My D as a perspective Neuroscience major plans to enroll in the Integrated Science Curriculum at Princeton. It’s 2 courses each semester Freshman year that covers intro CompSci, Physics, Chemistry and Biology which would be 6 courses if taken separately. ISC has a heavy math component. It’s notoriously rigorous with 15-20 hours a week of Psets outside of class. Supposedly about half the students drop down to the regular classes after 2 weeks. In 2021 they’ll be students graduating with a Neuroscience Concentration and some will have done the ISC and some will not. They’ll both have the same degree but some students will take a more rigorous route to it. Princeton has a number of these types of things like the Humanities Sequence, etc.

50

The concept underlying the question in the OP implies a monolithic/homogeneous nature of the institutions involved and the students who attend them that doesn’t comport with reality. I have seen that concept several times in different threads here recently which is surprising to me.

This discussion also seems to give credence to the notion that there is a meaningful, objective difference between 1 v 8 in a list that literally includes thousands. I have seen that play out numerous times here so while it surprised me the first time I saw it, I no longer find it so.

51

@Dolemite : Yes, very top schools treat those who want the extra challenge from the very start of their career VERY well by providing tons of more rigorous options across many disciplines. I applaud your daughter for challenging herself that way or at least trying it out. She will get very good training. Even the folks who maybe only do it for a year will. I am not entirely sure, but seems like many private schools (research Universities at least) outside of the top 10-12 schools are less effective with catering to the very top talent (outside of math curricula. Basically all top public and privates seem to offer some honors math sequence for extremely well prepared students, but often the schools I allude to fail to tier and offer such courses in the life sciences like chemistry and biology. My guess is that if most did not have engineering schools, physics would have less tiering as well) though some do have an abundance of instructors who ramp up the intensity (I mean good intensity, high level thinking, not "memorize 1 million things from slide and regurgitate) for the “masses”, allowing for self-selection (especially in multi-section STEM courses) of those who want the extra training. Though to be fair, it seems like the issue isn’t more so a lack of “eliteness” at said schools, and perhaps more so a lack of faculty resources or money, something most top 10-12 schools and large public schools (who also have lots of tiering, honors courses, and special programs for very top freshmen) are hardly short on.