I’m a current freshman at Princeton. First off, the university requires less courses to graduate because students are required to do independent research once they are seniors. In this way, there is a greater emphasis on intellectual depth than breadth, though you are certainly encouraged to explore outside of your academic comfort zone. If you’re BSE, you can opt out of a senior thesis and do a semester of independent work instead.
In my opinion, Princeton is definitely very rigorous. In the intro CS class, COS 126, you start coding your own programs during the first week. You learn the entire AP CS material in roughly the first 1/3 of the course, some fundamental data structures / algorithms, and even theory such as intractability. The courses are very fast-paced because the instructors squeeze in a lot of material. I think this is a good thing because COS 126 is a good enough foundation to get through technical interviews for software engineering internships; the next intro course, COS 226, gives you even better preparation.
However, while Princeton courses are very hard, I also think professors take a lot of steps to minimize student stress. For instance, I’m in intro physics and they drop the lowest quiz, p-set, and clicker scores to boost your grade. You can get group or one-on-one tutoring if you find yourself struggling. For CS, you have the opportunity to get extra credit on assignments. For the writing seminar, which every freshman must take, you turn in an ungraded draft before each essay, so the professor can give you helpful comments. Since grade deflation has officially ended in 2014, the avg. GPA has continuously ticked upward every year.
I’m not sure if the depiction of Princeton as a place that “pushes its students to the brink of collapse” is entirely accurate. Princeton is as easy or as hard as you want it to be, but we tend to have a lot of type-A overachievers who try to be the best at everything, and do everything at once. This isn’t Princeton-specific but rather a trend I notice in all top schools, including Yale.
“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.”
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: Really depends on the student in question, his/her psychological, intellectual and emotional makeup, propensity, as well as the chosen field of study. I haven’t seen any evidences yet, though, that the psychologists at Princeton are busier with a longer line of students seeking counseling or treatments than at Harvard and Yale or anywhere else.
According to my average freshman son at Princeton, he studies hard and long most of the time, but he does get a good 8-9 hours of sleep per night, participates in the orchestra as well as in another ensemble group and one additional EC involvement with little time commitment. He socializes a lot but mostly when rehearsing or studying in a group session in a collaborative spirit. He has yet to find fellow students to be “competitive” with one another at all. They all seem to be highly supportive with one another.
In my opinion, if you’re a well disciplined person with strong work ethics and a set of good time management without any propensity toward procrastination and excessive partying, you’ll be just fine at Princeton or anywhere else.
It may be more realistic to compare across schools (a) the standard version of a particular course, and (b) the hardest honors version of a particular course, so that a comparison of minimum rigor and maximum rigor for a given course can be made.
Another aspect of rigor across colleges related to this may be whether “easier” (than standard) versions of certain courses are offered, such as calculus for business majors (versus for math majors), or physics / general chemistry / organic chemistry for biology majors (versus for physics / chemistry majors).
For most students, the old-fashioned classroom teaching by the professors following the textbooks might be the preferred style. Students have clearly-defined material to study, therefore less stressful.
“Rigor”? Someone can always write an orgo exam so half of the class fail and none score above 70. What is the goal for an exam like that? A good exam for a lower level course is such that some people score at high80/low90 while the median is at high50/60/low70 and one quarter (or less) of the class fail. Those people who fail move on to other majors/concentrations. Nobody is good at everything. Princeton also has a large concentration of overachievers (I know one who won a world gold medal of a Science Olympiad competition). If you can’t compete with them or you don’t what to encounter them in the class, it is best to stay away. (or you can accept your relative position in your class, but if you need high GPA, you are in serious trouble.)
Some colleges offer just one version (e.g. Caltech) but some others offer many versions (e.g. Harvard). So it gets complicated pretty quickly. And that’s just for math. For my (admittedly unsystematic) analysis of course rigor, I’ve also looked at physical sciences (primarily physics) at these schools.
Another complication is some of the most rigorous version of the courses are not offered every year. For example, Math 50 at Harvard doesn’t appear to be offered this academic year. Still another complication is programs like Princeton’s Integrated Science Program. There’s no problem set, exam, or even detailed syllabus available online to analyze.
At schools (e.g. Caltech) where the student body is more academically “uniform” (i.e. less dispersed), they may offer a single version (or two) of more rigorous courses in math and sciences, whereas at schools (e.g. Harvard) where the student body is less academically “uniform” (i.e. more dispersed), multiple versions of courses (of varying degrees of rigor) are offered. My feeling is that the top students (perhaps the top decile?) at these tippy tops are probably very similar, but the distinction become more and more obvious when comparisons are made with lower and lower deciles.
There is no Math 50; it’s Math 55, and it is offered every year. But comparing Math 55 year-on-year (or to other schools honors version) is fairly pointless. Math 55 covers the equivalent of Math 25a/b plus “stuff.” The additional topics vary according to the instructor, and the same prof does not usually teach 55 every year. In fact, the course name itself often changes. So the syllabus/PSets/exams will always be different, although the workload will always be intense.
Every school groups topics differently. At most other schools I looked at, abstract algebra (group theory, ring theory, field theory, etc.) is generally offered as a separate course.
IMO - the big difference at selective admission schools is that the students are all, for the most part, the best and brightest. The students that were getting Bs and lower that you were in HS with, are simply not there. This makes almost every class graded on a curve rigorous. Back in the stone ages I lived in a quad. Two valedictorians, a salutatorian, and me (top 3% of a very large public HS but not #1 or 2). Being “average” in that kind of pool requires a ton of work and effort for most students.
It wouldn’t help much to see one. Though Princeton ISC counts for intro physics, chemistry, bio and CS the psets and exams aren’t going to be like anything in any of those courses separately and could only be compared with another similar Integrated program. The curriculum is designed to teach the students to think like a researcher/problem solver.