<p>There’s no firm rule about this. Some highly prestigious schools are cakewalks, and some lesser schools work their students to death. It also depends a lot on the department. A department trying to make a name for itself may make students work really hard just to prove to the world how capable they are; an already-established and respected department may be more easygoing because they have nothing to prove. As a professor of mine once said, “The guy in second place always runs harder.”</p>
<p>Hrrm… I have taken classes at both a flagship state university (Tier 1 Research) Top 50 USNWR and a prestigious private Top 20 USNWR. I don’t particularly think the course work at either was more difficult than the next, but the student body “seriousness” is definitely noticeable as well as a much higher drop out rate at the state school, along with much better student-faculty ratio at the private. Something to consider. I have also noticed that some of the GPA requirements for certain state schools are actually higher than at the private (possibly more to prove, public funding issues etc). At the private there were also more actual professors teaching the class vs some at the state that were just grad students. I remember several classes at state that had over 60% failure rates, with plenty of engineering or computer sciences majors turned back to Economics or History just to graduate. I have never seen this at the private.</p>
<p>Long story short, I would think you can get the same quality education at both, in one you (if you are extremely smart) you will be surrounded by many more extremely smart people. In the state you might be surrounded with a bunch of people who are never going to graduate, but you might stand out and get more individual attention, vs just another fish in the sea at the private.</p>
<p>These also might have different weight in the employment market, and academic market whether or not your education was on par or not. Perception unfortunately sometimes rules over reality.
They both have their strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>There seems to be no firm correlation, in my experience or (seemingly) the experience of people I know. </p>
<p>I have attended both Cal State LA (not to be confused with UCLA) and MIT. I can tell you from personal experience that MIT is drastically harder than Cal State LA. The MIT basic intro chemistry class is far more theoretical and mentally challenging than the harder (re: science and engineer version) chemistry class at Cal State LA. I found that Cal State LA was a lot like high school - with homework frequently being practice problems. MIT psets, on the other hand, takes a lot of critical thinking.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my Harvard friends have joked that the hardest part of Harvard is getting in 
Though there are some notoriously difficult classes at Harvard. I’m sure there are variances across fields.</p>
<p>So my take-away would be, don’t assume that a higher ranked school has a more rigorous curriculum. On the other hand, don’t assume that the rigor across schools are the same, either.</p>
<p>*
Let’s use HYPOTHETICAL PUBLIC RANKED AROUND 80 in USNWR, and Cornell, ranked #15. The students at HYPO average 1250 on the SATs and 3.7 weighted GPA in high school, vs. the students at Cornell CAS who average 1435 and 4.2 weighted. Further, the students at HYPO took on average 3 AP classes in HS, whereas those at Cornell took 7.*</p>
<p>That doesn’t really work when you compare a flagship to an elite.</p>
<p>Yes…the mid 50 average at a flagship will be lower, but that’s NOT across the board in all majors. You will find kids with similar stats in the sciences and engineering that you would find in elites. So, no dumbing down is necessary.</p>
<p>BITD I took some summer courses at the state uni so I could graduate a semester early from my private LA college. The first day, the prof handed out his syllabus and used MLA. I raised my hand and asked if he cared whether we used MLA, Stanford or Turabian. He asked if anyone else understood my question. Only 2 other hands went up. He had to explain. And this was NOT a freshman course! And many of the elite schools won’t accept AP scores because so many of their students had not been very successful in the past in the next level courses. My D’s friends who went to state schools (some entered as juniors because of AP scores) all did very well taking upper level courses after AP courses. But even at her elite LA college, there were courses that the kids knew were so difficult it was virtually impossible to get an A, and others where it was easy if you just did all the work. Her school did not distinguish between hours of credit for science with lab courses or for LA courses, but they made labs mandatory in most courses, extra sessions with TA’s, etc., so the hours were similar if not the same.</p>
<p>“On the other hand, my Harvard friends have joked that the hardest part of Harvard is getting in Though there are some notoriously difficult classes at Harvard. I’m sure there are variances across fields.”</p>
<p>With the possible exception of some sciences, that does seem to be true from what nearly every high school classmate said about their Harvard experiences and my own experience taking a few courses there. The summer stats course was especially a surprise because of how so many Harvard undergrads were complaining to the dean about the instructor being so hard and their worrying about flunking the course when I had few difficulties in acing the course. And I was a D-level math student in high school. </p>
<p>I should also mention the textbook used was the same used at my undergrad and several public and private universities.</p>
<p>
That sums it up pretty well. Courses covering the same material are not all taught the same.</p>
<p>Courses may cover roughly the same material, but the depth of coverage, speed with which topics are covered, the amount of coursework, and the difficulty of exams and assignments vary considerably.</p>
<p>The difficulty of exams at my current university is far less than that of my former institution, and they are graded far more leniently (i.e. an A here would merit a C there). I wouldn’t assume that higher ranked schools are necessarily more difficult (e.g. Tulane students did well at Harvard/Brown/etc. during Katrina), but in general a gap in difficulty widens with a gap in selectivity.</p>
<p>One important aspect that you’re overlooking is the quality of the students. One summer while in college I took an English course at a local school, Rider, just because I felt like it. I was a student at Yale. The professor was good. The big problem was the other students. Very few of them ever added anything meaningful to the class discussion. English was certainly not my best subject (I was a math major), but I felt that I could write just about anything reasonable on the papers or the exam and be guaranteed an A. I got the distinct impression that the professor was relieved to have someone in her class with some semblance of a clue (and I certainly don’t pretend to have any more than that in this particular subject area).</p>
<p>A lot depends on the major the student is taking. If its engineering and the college is following an ABET accredited curriculum, the material covered should be similar. For college freshman & sophomore courses, the difficulty can vary, but after that it should be the same for engineering. I know kids who had a more rigorous AP Calc BC, AP Phys C, AP Chem, and AP Biol in high school that covered more in-depth material than similar courses in several junior colleges and 50-100 ranked public universities.</p>
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<p>If this were the case, one would assume there would be lots of Harvard students graduating with 4.0 GPAs, given the caliber of students there (and the number of extremely high-caliber students). However, in fact, it is extremely rare for a Harvard student to graduate with a 4.0 GPA.</p>
<p>Let’s change this theoretical public vs. private debate with a specific example…Berkeley vs. University of Phoenix…Discuss.</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>Univ. of Phoenix is a for profit school that doesn’t compare. How about UCB vs. Princeton?</p>
<p>
Huh? Which ones?</p>
<p>^ That Math 55 or whatever…been on CC long enough to hear all the anecdotal bull…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>whatever4: I don’t think so. The typical Harvard student is passionate about many things outside the classroom. It is not uncommon for a H student’s time to be equally divided between class+homework / life stuff + projects.</p>
<p>The average GPA at Harvard is 3.5. If H students cared more about grades and less about outside interests, the GPA would remain the same, but the work would increase, and the outside of school projects would suffer.</p>
<p>The current balance strikes me as just fine (as does that at Brown).</p>
<p>fwiw, i transferred from a state school to cornell and the workload is VERY different. i get a ton more work here and i didn’t have to study at all at my old school and still got high grades whereas here i will fail if i’m not on top of everything. and that’s just to prevent failing; getting a good grade is something entirely different</p>
<p>If you compare graduate school standardized scores to GPA … dont be surprised that elite schools notorious with grade inflation still score higher than those with higher GPAs at other schools.</p>
<p>I am going to add my 2 cents from personal experience. I transferred from a relatively-expensive but no-name private (about 30k a year if it means anything) to MIT. At my former school, the first semester I was literally the top grade in all of my 7 classes. Consistently. I was literally (no exaggeration, and see how ridiculous this is) the highest grade in every single quiz and exam throughout the whole semester in every single class. </p>
<p>At MIT, I took the advanced standing exams on physics and chemistry to get freshman credit (to move on to sophomore classes). I failed both.</p>
<p>Similar topics come up often with the argument things are equal because calculas is calcuals and they use the same textbook … or the engineering course will be the same etc … and the question is presented as a yes/no dicotamy … and I think there are really 3 options.</p>
<p>1) The course sucks
2) The course is done a perfectly fine level and will prepare you fine for the vast majority of entry level jobs folks in this field get or to get into a reasonable grad school
3) The course is at a higher level than the perfectly fine to get a reasonable job or get into a reasonable grad school.</p>
<p>I would think a ton of schools can provide a fine job or teaching calculus or whatever. However, I also think a lot of schools with a percentage of top students typically teach these courses at a higher level. </p>
<p>I was in the Navy ROTC program my first two years of college and went on a assignment on a ship the summer after my freshman year with about 30 first years from schools from all around the country almost all of which where engineering, math, or science majors. In many cases we used the same main text books … and there was no comparison to the amount we covered in the book, the depth of the coverage, or what was covered outside the textbooks … the expectation at the top 25 or so schools was much higher … and the next 25 or so much higher than other schools. (We didn’t really have students from LACs but I’d assume a similar pattern would emerge). All of had learned Calculus but to believe we all learned the same stuff because we all had Thomas was far from true. </p>
<p>PS - and the comparisons of Chicago to Oberlain or Cal to Cornell do not help this discussion much … they are all top schools. Cornell to UMass or better yet Salem State College would be more reflective of the original question.</p>
<p>It all depends on the school. An education at Cal-Berkeley, Virginia, or U of Michigan is going to be of the same quality that you would get at an Ivy. Period. Stop assuming all state universities are the same or categorically inferior. There must be a thousand private colleges and universities in the USA. Michigan or Berkeley are better than almost all of them, save the Ivies, top LACs, which are equals.</p>