I have seen many people claim that Princeton is one of the most rigorous schools in the Ivy League (and America), while Yale and Harvard are two of the easiest. However, Princeton requires 31 courses to graduate, while Yale requires 36 (Harvard 32). Moreover, a lot fewer graduate with honors at Yale than at Harvard and Princeton. What is it about Princeton that makes it so difficult, even with fewer classes than Harvard and especially Yale?
There is an old thread http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1476066-stress-at-princeton.html you could get a lot of information.
This current Princeton student also feels a bit of stress – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ea8Zq4mic&index=35&list=LLV2cA5C9PtyxnIgxJy7SlKA&t=0s Watch his video to see why.
Depending on one’s standing in the class, everyone will have a different view on how stressful they are but statistically you could refer to WSJ/THE’s engagement index (http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21707056/#Comment_21707056) to get a general feeling.
This is the engagement ranking for the WSJ/THE top 20 schools (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2019#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats):
[ol] school – (engagement index ranking)
[]Harvard University – (142)
[]Massachusetts Institute of Technology – (304)
[]Yale University – (68)
[]Columbia University – (170)
[]California Institute of Technology – (601-800)
[]Stanford University – (52)
[]Brown University – (6)
[]Duke University – (68)
[]Princeton University – (501-600)
[li]University of Pennsylvania – (106)[/li][]Cornell University – (52)
[]Dartmouth College – (25)
[]Northwestern University – (34)
[]University of Chicago – (499)
[]Rice University – (34)
[]Carnegie Mellon University – (16)
[]University of Southern California – (6)
[]Washington University in St Louis – (34)
[]Vanderbilt University – (68)
[li]Emory University – (170)[/li]
[/ol]
I encourage you to look into WSJ/THE’s methodology to see how they obtain the engagement index. They are derived from the input of the current students and the samples are not self-selected like NICHE. As you can see, Princeton students in general are less engaged than students from most other schools. (except CIT)
A parent of a current student told me Princeton’s math courses are very difficult. I believe it is true because this straight-A student has finished a college math course (also A) from a school on the list above before attending Princeton.
Therefore the engagement rankings from “most engaged” to “least engaged” among the WSJ/THE Top 20 :
-
USC
-
Brown
-
CMU
-
Dartmouth College
-
Northwestern University
-
Rice
-
WashUStL
-
Stanford
-
Cornell
-
Duke
-
Vanderbilt
-
Yale
-
University of Pennsylvania
-
Harvard
-
Columbia
-
Emory
-
MIT
-
Univ. of Chicago
-
Princeton
-
Caltech
Princeton students have to write a thesis their senior year, which is a very rigorous endeavor. https://admission.princeton.edu/academics/senior-thesis
These are great resources. Of course the OP brings up something which goes directly to the common CCanswer, it depends. Some kids are going to fly through and others will struggle a lot. It really depends on what you bring to the classroom and what your major is. Of course, how a student applies themselves is also critical. So, IMO, it is meaningless to compare Princeton to Harvard or Caltech. You can imagine yourself at any of the three and think about how you would potentially do. But you cannot attend all three at the same time. What you could ask is, what is the course rigor for my chosen major/concentration? And compare those across the board.
There are going to be people at any school who are doing the most difficult courses and those who will chose the easiest path. At any of these schools you will find an extremely high level of achievement and focus, else they would n’t be there.
Is there a high degree of correlation with rigor and “engagement” as defined by the WSJ/THE survey? Most rigorous is the least engaged or vice versa? I am not sure this score can be used as a proxy for rigor which is OP’s question.
According to WSJ:
The engagement score in the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings—measured mainly through roughly 189,000 survey responses over the past two years—monitors how challenged and inspired students feel inside and outside the classroom, as well as the breadth of courses their schools offer.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-colleges-where-students-feel-most-engaged-1536188185
@ccdad99
Yes appears so, there’s no way USC is harder than Catech so more rigor equals less engaged.
@emorynavy If what you are saying holds true for every school on the list maybe WSJ/THE should rename this category because it certainly does not sound like that is what they are trying to quantify with their engagement score.
For a more detailed analysis of grade distribution at various schools over the years including the ones OP is asking about, check this out.
I recently looked at some required math and physical science courses (problem sets/exams/syllabus, etc.) at some tippy tops as prompted by another thread on CC. I didn’t look at humanity and social science courses as those are harder to judge (and for most students, the math and physical science courses are probably the hardest). For those courses, in terms of rigor, here’s how I would rank them:
Caltech > Harvey Mudd, MIT (tie) > Princeton > UChicago, Harvard (tie)
For schools that offer optional versions of more rigorous/honor courses, I used them instead of the regular versions, even though they aren’t required courses.
I think using the index of the engagement score instead of the actual score numbers is inflating differences and by only looking at the top 20 you’re projecting correlations that don’t exist. Some of the other schools with identical engagement scores to CalTech include Montclair State College, Lincoln Memorial and DePaw. And there are about 10 pages of schools more rigorous - including University of San Diego.
Notice that their methodology in measuring engagement includes “number of accredited programmes” which clearly disadvantages schools like Caltech and Harvey Mudd.
Which specific courses? At Harvard, there is an enormous difference between Math M and Math 55 (with numerous intermediate levels of rigor).
@1NJParent You must have spent hours looking at all that data. What criteria did you use when you ranked these schools- depth and breadth of course, difficulty level and the volume of problem sets, grade distribution of exams, etc?. Were there other schools in your analysis?
I agree with @Darcy123 that engagement score is not the same as rigorous index. But usually students only care about their overall experience (engagement score). According to https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372, in the fall 2018, “13.3 million will attend 4-year institutions”. The total number of undergraduate students on the top 20 list probably add up to around 200K which is less than 0.3 million in the 13.3 million. College students will have very different rigor in their courses. But for those top 20? We are pulling hairs here, they are all rigorous. But due to school policy or principle (core/open curriculum, etc.), students have different perceptions. Also some schools are full of graduate students, while others don’t. You would think Columbia will rank quite low on engagement score (http://features.columbiaspectator.com/news/2016/04/14/are-columbia-students-the-most-stressed-in-the-ivy-league/) but it seems that students in NYC have a lot of fun to balance it out.
Also, grade inflation (which Princeton reputedly has less of than many other super selective colleges) can contribute to differences in student perceptions of rigor (even if the course material is of similar difficulty), particularly for students in highly-GPA-dependent paths (pre-med, pre-law).
I think OP is asking why Princeton is considered more rigorous than peers, all in the top 20.
@nrtlax33 Since you brought up Princeton’s lower engagement index in your response, I was hoping to understand the connection you seem to make between the two.
I am more interested in Social Sciences and Humanities, though. I have read that at Yale, one can expect to have to read one book and write one essay per class per week, which I find mind-boggling. If this is true, and it is also true that Yale is one of the “easier” elite colleges (despite 36 vs 31 classes), then one has to be superhuman to be able to handle the Princeton workload. I guess what I am asking is whether this notion that Princeton pushes its students to the brink of collapse at the expense of happiness, mental health and extracurriculars, while Yale is a jolly, collaborative community, is true. This is obviously terribly generalizing, but stereotypes typically come from somewhere. So, to what extent is this difference in rigor and academic culture true? I suspect that stereotypes like these tend to be very much played up on fora like CC.
@ucbalumnus For Harvard, I looked at the math 23-25 sequence for math.
@ccdad99 I mainly looked at the difficulty levels of problem sets/exams and course materials, but not the results/grades. The only other school I’ve looked at so far but forgot to include is Stanford, which I’ll rank lower than the ones I listed.
@1NJParent Thank you