<p>Here’s my opinion:</p>
<p>The material you get taught is largely the same. Electron orbital shapes are the same whether you learn them at Harvard or at Podunk CC. </p>
<p>The difference is in the work you do, and the tests. Having sat in lectures at multiple top schools, as well as seen assignments/tests from a wide variety of school prestige, I can comfortably say the work that I have here at Cornell is considerably harder than my friends’ at UT Austin. Hell, my junior year of high school I sat through a Chemistry lecture at McGill, and understood every single bit of it. McGill is a top 25 Uni in the world according to US News. (Not that I put much stock in rankings, but when talking about prestige that’s really the only thing anyone cares about, so I’m using it). I came here to Cornell two years later after having taken more Chem in high school, and when it came time for the same subject as I sat through at McGill here at Cornell, I was floored at how much more advanced things were. </p>
<p>It’s not that they’re teaching you more advanced material, it’s what they ask you to do with it. A lot of average schools are still much like high school. You memorize the crap, and tests are often just asking whether you read the material and learned it. Here, I am asked to do that, then apply that to situations/scenarios and use critical thinking to figure it out.</p>
<p>That’s where the differences lie. Every school teaches you the stuff. The top schools push you to think.</p>