<p>I never studied in HS and succeeded. I found out early that wouldn’t cut it especially for engineering. </p>
<p>The best thing you can do is find others in your class to work with. Go to office hours as well</p>
<p>My advice:</p>
<p>GO TO OFFICE HOURS</p>
<p>^ What 777Blue77 said.</p>
<p>Going to office hours isn’t always necessary for every class, but if in any class you find yourself underperforming or struggling with something, the VERY FIRST step you should take should be to attend your professor or GSI’s office hours as soon as possible. For biology class, I was having trouble with my research paper a week before it was due, went in and saw the professor twice to talk about it, and ended up with an A-. In an anthropology class that I was taking as my “easy” class for the semester, I got a C- on the very first assignment, which was a midterm, then began going in to see my GSI and ended up with a solid A for the semester. Other classes, I managed fine without ever attending. But if there is anything you’re having trouble with at all, office hours should be your first resource.</p>
<p>
No, I am insinuating that graduates of elite high schools tend to be better prepared to handle the rigors of a challenging college curriculum since their own precollege experience was a pressure cooker.</p>
<p>Weren’t you a Cornell ILR graduate student Alexandre? Only someone who has been an undergraduate at two different universities in the same department can compare academic rigor across schools accurately IMHO. Cornell does have the reputation for being a very challenging school to do well in, especially in the STEM areas, but I do not know if there is any truth to that or not. </p>
<p>Based on average LSAT scores of their law school applicants, the top 10 most rigorous undergraduate institutions in the liberal arts appear to be Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore, Duke, University of Chicago, Brown, Amherst, and Columbia.</p>
<p><a href=“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agfr5qu6TB3AdF9pZjZpbHJzdXM4VmxEWDNSbUNtZ1E#gid=0[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agfr5qu6TB3AdF9pZjZpbHJzdXM4VmxEWDNSbUNtZ1E#gid=0</a></p>
<p>Harvard: 167
Yale: 167
Swarthmore: 165
Princeton: 165
Stanford: 165
University of Chicago: 164
Duke: 164
Amherst: 164
Columbia: 164
Brown: 164</p>
<p>U of M clocks it at #34 among all schools and tied for #20 among National Universities so I would say its academic rigor is slightly higher than its USNWR ranking (though some schools like Emory and Vanderbilt are missing from this ranking altogether so people on that law school forum might not have gotten access to their averages).</p>
<p>Unfortunately I don’t have access to average MCAT scores by undergraduate institution to give us a more complete picture (MCAT covers math and science concepts so some schools might do better or worse).</p>
<p>Why base “undergraduate rigor” on only LSAT scores? </p>
<p>That seems really inadequate</p>
<p>goldenboy, you lost me there! LOL! LSAT averages and academic rigor are not correlated. You are assuming that the quality of the students applying to law school is the same across all universities. It is not. Are you suggesting that Brown or Duke are as academically rigorous as Chicago and more rigorous than MIT? </p>
<p>From your LSAT stats, it is obvious that a larger cross-section of students from Michigan take the LSAT than students from universities with higher LSAT averages. Besides, I would guess that in terms of student quality, Michigan is indeed around #20 among all national universities, so having the 20th highest LSAT average stands to reason. But in terms of academic rigor, Michigan is pretty intense. </p>
<p>I agree that students who attend no-nonsense high schools are better prepared for the rigours of college, so from that point of view, you are quite right. But even such students cannot succeed at university with just 4 or 5 hours of studying per week. That would be suicide.</p>
<p>
I agree that it’s hard to extrapolate just based on one data point but the performance of a school’s LSAT test takers does tell you a great deal about how rigorous the university’s liberal arts curriculum (quality of teaching, reading required, and classroom discussion that sharpens a student’s critical thinking and analysis skills).</p>
<p>Why would the quality of a student’s LSAT test taking population be worse than the quality of a school’s future medical school crowd, engineers, financiers, teachers, public servants, etc.? </p>
<p>I do think that Brown and Duke are as academically rigorous as Chicago. I’ve heard that Chicago students are more “intellectual” than their counterparts at Duke and perhaps Brown but that says nothing about the level of work that students have to do at all these schools to get a strong GPA. I can’t imagine that English or Math or Economics is harder at Chicago than it is at Brown or Duke. These schools enroll similar caliber undergraduates after all.</p>
<p>MIT isn’t on that spreadsheet since either too few of their students took the LSAT or it’s one of the schools like Emory or Vanderbilt where an average LSAT score for the school hasn’t been collected. Those who take the LSAT at MIT probably do as well as Princeton and Stanford at worst.</p>
<p>MIT is #3 after Harvard and Yale with regards to average GMAT scores of undergraduate alums.</p>
<p>[Which</a> College Scores Best on the GMAT? - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/blogs/mba_admissions/archives/2011/07/which_college_scores_best_on_the_gmat.html)</p>
<p>Average GMAT Scores by Undergraduate Institution</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard 738.0</li>
<li>Yale 732.0</li>
<li>MIT 731.7
…</li>
</ol>
<p>Yeah. I disagree. Students that apply themselves at good public high schools are taking 6 or more APs or going the IB route. Just a higher % of prep school kids take rigorous courses. But put a strong public school student at a prep school and he may not get more out of it than better college counseling. As always, it’s the student and the attitude of the parents; less so the school.</p>
<p>Goldenboy, I have sat in on classes at Brown and Chicago. Chicago is way more intense. The material covered in Intro Econ at Chicago (the easiest class offered at Chicago) is equivalent to intermediate Econ at Brown (or Michigan for that matter). I also sat in on Mathematics classes at Chicago and Brown. Again, no comparison. Not even close. Chicago is as intense as Michigan in Math, if not more so…which is saying something (Michigan’s Mathematics sequences are notoriously difficult). Chicago is truly insane when it comes to its approach to academics. Their unofficial motto (“where fun comes to die”) is well deserved.</p>
<p>“I agree that it’s hard to extrapolate just based on one data point but the performance of a school’s LSAT test takers does tell you a great deal about how rigorous the university’s liberal arts curriculum (quality of teaching, reading required, and classroom discussion that sharpens a student’s critical thinking and analysis skills).”</p>
<p>No it doesn’t. All it tells you is how strong the students taking the LSAT are. The average LSAT of students at Cal, CMU, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, UCLA, Vanderbilt and WUSTL are all in the 158-159 range, not because those universities lack academic intensity, or a strong liberal arts core, but because a large cross-section of students take the LSAT. You are much more likely to find students with 2.0-2.9 GPAs taking the LSAT at Michigan and Johns Hopkins than you are at Dartmouth or Duke. The academic intensity and quality of education at all those universities is pretty much the same.</p>
<p>And by the way, the average LSAT for MIT students (according to the LSDAS) is 163. I stand by my original statement, academic intensity/rigor and quality of undergraduate education cannot be determined by looking at LSAT averages (or GMAT scores).</p>