How do you know how rigorous a college (overall or in a specific subject / major) is?

Parents Forum
1

How do you know how rigorous a college (overall or in a specific subject / major) is?

In some cases, external accreditation can enforce a relatively high minimum standard (e.g. engineering majors), or licensing requirements for a profession can require a relatively high minimum standard for that pre-professional major (e.g. nursing).

But in the absence of such, how do you know, at least for the vast majority of colleges that are not well known in this aspect? It seems common among these forums to assume that admission selectivity or ranking / prestige necessarily correlates to rigor. For example, it is commonly assumed on these forums that community college courses are less rigorous than four year college courses or high school AP courses covering similar material, simply because they are offered at open admission community colleges. Another example is that while hospitality majors generally are looked at with disdain, Cornellā€™s hotel major appears to be more respected.

1 Like
2

You need to look at the course list, course content, the name of the professor, and talk to kids that have taken the course to know what is what. Companies that care (and there may be a handful in this bucket) spend time to figure this out.

1 Like
3

Employers evaluate transcripts, assess the requirements for different majors, have relationships with professors in different departments.

There are colleges (some with a strong reputation) which will ā€œelectā€ students to various honor societies as long as their GPA is 3.0 and above. There are lots of majors where 3.0 is quite respectable- but if 75% of the class is putting that honor society on their resume, that tells you something about the grading standards and expectations.

Students can do lots of things to enhance the rigor of their education regardless of where they are attending. Option to write a senior thesis, vs. become social chair of your fraternity? Choice of spending the summer editing and fact- checking a professorā€™s book vs. going back to your HS job selling frozen yogurt? Take the statistics course that science majors take, vs. ā€œBuyer Behavior for Marketing Majorsā€? Retake a class you already took in HS (a surprising suggestion often given on CC, allegedly for ā€œGPA protectionā€) vs. continuing in the sequence?

You arenā€™t doomed if you end up at a college known for low rigor. YOU need to put your shoulder to the wheel and take advantage of the resources that are there.

Every college has its ā€œgut coursesā€ with easy Aā€™s. And every college has itā€™s notorious ā€œtough to get in, cherish your Bā€ courses. Grad schools know the difference. Employers know the difference.

2 Likes
4

To get beyond the well known rankings and be able to basically create your own rankings list - you need to know what you value. And what priorities are most important to you.

Iā€™m not sure many/most people are actually interested in whether a program is rigorous. I think most people are more concerned with whether the programs (be it AP credits, community college courses, or 4 year college/university degree) - will get them where they want to go, at a price they can afford.

There are ways to determine the rigor of a program but Iā€™m pretty sure they would be considered way too labor intensive for most people to want to engage in.

For example, D20 knew she wanted to go to grad school, so we looked at grad school placement (fully funded offers only) when we looked at schools that made her initial list. It became pretty easy to look at the departments she was interested in, ask professors where students had matched recently and also read newsletters put out by departments that also shared info like that, as well as awards and honors that often correlate with grad school admission.

Some schools are much better at placing students in grad schools than others and have a lot of resources and expertise in that - usually points to rigor in the departments - whether the school has a brand name or not. For specific classes she was interested in she looked at syllabi - were the readings from primary sources or not? How much reading and writing is expected? How many students taking the class go on to other courses in that subject? And how many grads from that department continue in that field?

She also looked up the professors she was interested in working with. Found out where they did their undergrad and graduate degrees, as well as read some of the articles/scholarship if it was in her field(s) of focus.

This was all pretty labor intensive, and requires someone willing to contact lots of people and ask very specific questions. But if you are looking for rigor, I would assume you would already be comfortable with doing research.

Ultimately, I think it helps a lot if a student knows what they are going to college for, and I donā€™t necessarily mean what degree they want. If youā€™re going to college for the benefits of prestige and a name brand, your metrics for a successful admission cycle may very well be quite different than someone going to school to get a specific certification, versus someone going to school to have a ā€˜life of the mindā€™ experience.

From my own experience at a school most consider one of the ā€˜most rigorousā€™, I can say there were plenty of people just looking to skate by and get a piece of paper with the schoolā€™s name on it. And a much smaller number actually interested in pursuing the rigor offered and looking for ways to make it even more of a learning experience.

2 Likes
5

Of course, if the student is financially constrained, the choice may be made based on finances.

Yes, this seems to be a very common recommendation on these forums that I do not generally agree with. However, some colleges may be (perhaps not intentionally) encouraging it with highly competitive or high GPA required secondary admission to major and the like.

But do parents and high school seniors know or can easily find out the difference?

Based on the assumptions around these forums that rigor follows selectivity or prestige / ranking, it seems that even those parents and students paying more attention to college selection than typical may not know or can easily find out the difference.

6

Interesting topic. My mba roomie at ASU had a buddy at Wharton. His sole job was to literally find a job, from day one. Our work was far more rigorous. I remember my roommate Aiways saying - dang so and so is barely doing anything.

My daughter has a ton of work at C of C. Her BF at DU skis 3-4 days a week and coasts. But heā€™s business and itā€™s less reading etc.

Some is likely the major. My kid in engineering is a science and math whiz yet itā€™s brutal.

Some the kid. Thereā€™s just certain subjects they struggle with while others may zoom through. My daughterā€™s majors have tons of reading but Chinese is insanely rigorous for her. Itā€™s not like Spanish or French because the letters and shapes are different than what English uses.

I donā€™t think the reality is that a high ranking school means high rigor or a non ranked school means less rigor.

The other thing is - some kids just ā€˜get itā€™ while others have to work hard.

2 Likes
7

I donā€™t know a lot of parents/students who care. But thatā€™s on them.

Itā€™s not hard to find the information now that course catalogues are onlineā€¦ you can quickly see that the History of Modern Russia taught at College A requires reading 20 different primary sources, has both Euro History AND Intro to Poli Sci as pre-requisites, and has a final research paper. History of Modern Russia at College B requires readings from four different textbooks, has no pre-requisites at all, and has a final exam which is multiple choice and one essay question.

YMMV. The information is not hard to suss out.

8

Yes, and if History of Modern Russia has a prerequisite of fluency in Russian - youā€™ll have another indicator of the rigor expected.

1 Like
9

Thanks for the very timely correction!

1 Like
10

It depends on many factors, including how you define ā€œrigorā€. Some correlate it with a in depth review of the subject matter. Some correlate it with a large number of requirements. Some correlate it with a relatively small portion of students receiving A grades.

Further complicating the matter, larger colleges often have several different possible course sequences/options with different levels of rigor, rather than everyone who attends the same college or has the same major has the same level of rigor. Contrary to popular opinion, I do not think most highly selective private colleges, like HYPS, have a high minimum bar for rigor. One can certainly choose to take highly rigorous classes, but most students do not choose to take the most rigorous course options. Grading distribution is also often high, with the vast majority of students receiving A grades. For example, in the most recent Harvard senior survey, the median reported GPA was ~3.85.

A parent or student could get some idea about rigor from what courses are required for the major, grading distribution, and general student comments via various online sources.

2 Likes
11

I agree with @blossom that grad schools and the employers who care do know the differences, because they have access to lots of information via multiple channels. But do most students and parents care enough to go beyond the superficial (i.e. rankings and such)? No, they donā€™t. In fact, some of them are looking for the opposite. Premeds, for example, often look for the easiest courses to take that meet their requirements and boost their GPAs. Even for those students and parents who care, itā€™s highly challenging and time consuming for most of them to compare similar courses across different colleges under consideration. Unlike superficial rankings, there isnā€™t, and will never be, a third party service to provide them with analysis and guidance in this area.

3 Likes
12

This is such an interesting (and important) question and am so glad that you have posed it, @ucbalumnus! In particular, this is something that I have struggled with when thinking about possible schools for my kid. Some schools have their ā€œreputationsā€ which have been built on or solidified with highly selective/rejective admissions and thus all incoming students are extremely strong academically. Even that, however, does not guarantee that good teaching is happening in the classrooms. How often are there professors who essentially just phone it in so that they can go back to doing what they really want to do (research, writing, etc)? Or maybe theyā€™re not trying to phone it in, but theyā€™re just not that effective? The kids get the ā€œgoodā€ grades or learn the material, but itā€™s because of their own efforts outside of the class rather than because of who the teacher was?

For me, rigor doesnā€™t have to mean that my kid is studying 10 hours for every one hour spent in class. But it does mean that my kid progressively gets better at reading increasingly complex texts (either texts that are just dense and/or noticing more levels and nuance and allusions, etc, in a reading), writing (voice, clarity, and gaining and maintaining the readerā€™s interest), and analysis (making connections across more areas of study/time/space, improved analytical ability with more complex data sets, etc). It also means that whatever major my kid decides on, my kid will be prepared to continue on to the next level in that field (be it grad school, passage of a test for certification, or full-time employment requiring a college degree).

I know thereā€™s a test some that colleges will have their students take (at least at college entry and exit, donā€™t know if itā€™s done on an annual basis). Itā€™s supposed to be something of a pre-test/post-test to see what the effect of the collegeā€™s instruction has been. Unfortunately, most colleges keep the data private. That, however, is data that I would love to see and feel would be very informative.

In looking at some of my in-state publics (in a state that does not boast a great academic reputation), I was looking at the faculty members and where they received their degrees from. A number of them had their graduate degrees from institutions that were very well-regarded in their fields (and/or from highly rejective colleges). Itā€™s a reminder of how competitive academia is. So many people with their PhDs, especially in non-STEM fields, are happy to get a full-time job (preferably tenure-track) that thereā€™s not that big of a difference, at least on paper, between very well-known schools and schools not known for much at all. All that to say, Iā€™m not sure whether looking at the faculty will be that much of a tell in terms of the rigor of the college, unless all the doctorates are from one college only, or mostly from online diploma mills, or something like that. But Iā€™ve yet to come across a non-profit college like that, and Iā€™m known for looking in unexplored (in CC world) areas. :wink:

Paging a few folks with ties in academia, should they care to weigh in: @dfbdfb, @ProfSD, @ColdWombat , @2plustrio, @UCDProf

4 Likes
13

I wonder too, about regional differences during the pandemic, whether class of 2024 would see some shortfalls in achievement and rigor due to shutdowns and online classes.

And, are public colleges with increasing number of adjunct instructors able to deliver rigor?

How much rigor is needed for an IT major or accounting major, for a basic entry level job?

14

However, if the student wants to go into employment or graduate school after college, the student may want to know what the rigor expectations of employers or graduate schools are, and which colleges would meet such rigor expectations (or implied expectations based on how employers or graduate schools select employees or graduate students).

15

Iā€™m not sure that employers know which schools or major have rigor.

Most are seeking certain majors or degree types - and I donā€™t think they are differentiating between schools. Some niche employers might - i.e. high end, specialized fields - but I think to most a degree is a degree and thatā€™s it.

4 Likes
16

My H has been heavily involved in training new grads over the bulk of his career, at different companies, and around the country. They have relationships with certain schools and programs but basically they want young people who are prepared. At his last job they stopped recruiting at two universities that get a lot of love on CC (and donā€™t ask Iā€™m not throwing them under the bus), because the students didnā€™t have the right skills that the company needed.

When our D was looking at schools, H had her do a very deep dive on the First Destination Survey information. He told her to look for a big range of employer types, locations, industry partners, etcā€¦

Same info can be found for grad school placement rates.

The other thing she looked out was depth of electives in her intended major, available minors/concentration, and the ability to take grad level courses as an undergrad.

If parents are worried about grade inflation, there are many articles out there naming the schools that have seen the most over the years.

1 Like
17

We most certainly do, else weā€™re not doing a good job of understanding the (fresh talent) market. We learn this from experience interviewing candidates over many, many years. We learn what courses most candidates from a particular school have taken, what their grasp of the underlying material is, how advanced they are by the end of their sophomore year (we offer internships to rising juniors), what opportunities exist at their school to pursue advanced classes, etc.

It depends on the role. If itā€™s a generic software developer job, rigor may not matter. If the candidate passes coding tests and other screens, that will often suffice. But for more advances or specialized roles, rigor matters.

At the leading CS and engineering schools - yes. Even if thereā€™s a variation in teaching quality, the top students know which sections to enroll in.

1 Like
18

I said some niche employers might.

But in general - when youā€™re an insurance company or retailer or whomever and youā€™re hiring grads from 50 or 100 or 200 schools etc. Engineering jobs want ABET but is the rigor at schools the same ?

Iā€™m not talking about consulting or IB etc.

But general - Iā€™m guessing, maybe incorrectly, in all of society, that most donā€™t. That youā€™re in that niche group.

Some seek a major. Others any major.

They donā€™t know if Pittsburg State in Kansas vs Nebraska vs Randolph Macon vs Birmingham Southern.

I would say some may see patterns of whom they have hired successfully. But that doesnā€™t mean they can determine rigor.

My son just interviewed with 20 companies from across wide swaths of the country. Some Iā€™ve heard of, some not. Iā€™m guessing most donā€™t have firsthand knowledge of his school as they were in places like Massachusetts and Ohio. In fact, one told him heā€™s the first they interviewed from the school (at least this person said so).

My guess is if most see a resume that meets their need, thatā€™s a good start. If they interview them, then theyā€™ll determine whether the school is right. Not if their course load was rigorous.

Again, right or wrong but thatā€™s my hypothesis.

19

At any given college/university (including ā€œeliteā€ schools), rigor is going to fluctuate depending on the course material and the professor. Some material is intrinsically challenging regardless of what school a student is attending; other coursework may be more or less challenging depending on who is teaching it -and at what level.

2 Likes
20

The student probably should start with the minimum requirements (for colleges with such requirements) of the college and the major. Take a look at the courses that can meet those requirements, not only the synopses but also the actual courses taught in previous years (which are often available online) with required readings, homework assignments, and even exams in some cases. If they canā€™t digest all the information, they may have to rely on post-graduation first destination surveys for their majors, with all their shortcomings.