<p>"Bush & Kerry may have been unmotivated students, however they are probably innately more intelligent than at least 96% of the population, and that provides them with better ability to “wing it” than many other people possess. "</p>
<p>Funny you say that as I have an uncle who attended Yale at around the time W did. </p>
<p>From his account, to get a C- average as W did, you really had to either be “brain-dead” and/or completely blowing off your classes by not showing up to class and/or never hitting the books to study. He won’t deny that it was hard to get As…but by the same token…it was nearly impossible to get anything below B- unless you were really going out of your way to slack off on your courses or your intellect was well below the national average. </p>
<p>Moreover, Kerry and W were both part of an “earlier generation” whose admission was much more heavily weighed toward legacy status, family name, connections, and wealth and not as much on academic merits compared with later entering classes like my Uncle’s. A reason why he recalled a “wide social gulf” between earlier classes like W’s and his own…on average…the earlier and later generation classes had very little in common beyond being Yalies…and each had contempt for the other because of the differing attitudes towards academics and social status.</p>
<p>I think there is a correlation. The curve is harsher at the more prestigious schools because you are judged vis a vis your peers. Although the work may not be harder, the grader sure is.</p>
<p>Case in point: DD took a course at our local state school over the summer. Grade? A+. He said the level of performance required of him might earn him a C at his parent institution if he was lucky.</p>
<p>I would say it depends. Let’s imagine a fictional “ranking” of schools; we can use the US News rankings if you’d like. If you compare the 3rd best school to the 6th best, I doubt you’d find any significant difference. If you compare the 3rd best to the 20th best, I think there’d be a difference. 3rd best to a community college, of course. No brainer.</p>
<p>Some posters have correctly observed that some classes, introductory science classes in particular, will teach the same material wherever you go. Yes, you will learn Stokes’ Theorem in any multivariable calc class ever. The difference is the level of expectation from the students. For a specific amount of proficiency, state school students will get a higher grade return than will Ivy League students. More is expected of the latter. It’s just a fact.</p>
<p>I’d imagine it is, but I guess Swat kids work hard b/c their graduating gpa is as high as Harvard. Maybe it’s hard to get a solid A there, and the workload is high, but there are clearly a lot of B+/A- grades at Swarthmore. It is easier to say that Princeton students are really working for good grades since the “deflation” policy started. They peaked at 3.41 graduating gpa, now it’s 3.26. So I would suspect Princeton to be harder. And we know MIT is more difficult. Again, most non-Ivy leagues seem to be amongst the more realistic graders, though they are still inflated. As for 3rd (which happens to be grade deflated Princeton) vs. 20 (we’re always between 15 and 20 and currently 20). That makes sense, but do you think this is the case for 10 vs. 20. For example, I have a friend at Duke (was 10 last year and 8 my freshmen year when we discussed it), and he says it isn’t much different. We compared the biology material. And their grading was nearly identical. And honestly, I would expect John’s Hopkins (one of the lower average gpas amongst the top 20) to be more difficult than many of its peer institutions, especially in sciences. </p>
<p>Again though, amongst Ivies, over half of them are clearly inflating in an unrealistic manner whereas many of the peers (say other than Stanford) are not doing so quite as much. Sources claim that the gpas at Harvard linearly correlate to the SAT scores, but how is that good? The SAT has often been shown not to be the best predictor in that area. Also, linear correlation would indicate what I mentioned before. Harvard has not changed the curriculum to measure up to the changing caliber of the students. Once the relationship becomes linear, something needs to change, rather it be the grading or the curriculum.<br>
Also, that thing about the A at Swarthmore was proven/shown by Berkeley law admissions that would rank rigor. However, this would probably reflect grading in the social sciences and humanities more.</p>
<p>Also, about Bush and Kerry, I thought they attended the Ivies when the average gpa was still a C+. That was overall, now the average in science courses is a B- at similar institutions and the amount of As in social sciences help students in such majors buffer tremendously. This clearly was not the case back then. Wouldn’t that indicate that they were merely average amongst students there at the time, and that the Ivies were actually challenging to most students back then? I get the feeling that most of us now, even given the change in SAT scores should only be between 3.1-3.3. That would reflect the actual difficulty of the material better. When 45% of a graduating class (this was Emory class of 2010, their average was 3.38, which is high) has a 3.5 or higher, one cannot tell whether students were challenged at all. Surprisingly, this was one of Emory’s bragging points during and around commencement time. I don’t think that’s a good thing, but I’m willing to bet most of them did not come from the sciences, so I’ll be less affected by its implications.</p>
<p>"I dare you, dare you, to get an A a course here. It involves not just “hardwork” instead, sheer determination with a pinch of luck. For example, I spend over 15 hours on a paper in Lamont library, only to receive a B. I thought I was just an idiot. Nope. The comments were: “Great job overall. This is flawless, etc.” </p>
<p>“You won’t do WELL without really working. And while sometimes it isn’t too difficult to get a B, getting A’s requires either working hard and being smart or just being a freaking genius.”</p>
<p>“Speaking of the grading system, I’m not sure whether you should call it a grade inflation. True, most people do not get anything below a B-, but that’s because people here work their heads off. Yes, even when they “brag” about procrastinating and being unproductive etc.”</p>
<p>"Also, about Bush and Kerry, I thought they attended the Ivies when the average gpa was still a C+. "</p>
<p>Bernie12,</p>
<p>Keep in mind that both of them were admitted in an earlier time when admissions were much more determined by legacy status, family name, wealth, connections, fame, etc. Academic merit was not prioritized nearly as much back then. Only starting in the mid-1960’s did that start to change according to my Yalie uncle and a Yale university publication I remembered reading a while back when Yale changed its admissions policy to emphasize academic merit and dial back the legacy status, family name, wealth, connections, fame, etc. </p>
<p>In short, while the average was a C+…the atmosphere among Yale students in Kerry’s and W’s time was far less serious than in classes entering in 1965-66 onwards. A reason why upperclassmen from earlier classes like Ws and students from my uncle’s graduating had very little in common and worse…had mutual contempt for each other. In short…snobbing over family legacies, connections, wealth, name, fame, etc vs. who was smarter/more intellectual…</p>
<p>I have a daughter at an elite private school and another at an excellent state school. The caliber is definitely different. At the private school she has all out professors and the writing and cluster requirements assure a well rounded curriculum. The math level required is extremely high. At the state school, my daughter is a junior and has never had a class with less than 500 kids (with break out sessions with teaching assistants, some of whom are only seniors in college). My niece is at the same school and some of the courses are online! I am a bit disappointed as it is very $$ for the state school as well. Am really thinking about where to send #3 kid right now…</p>
<p>I have taken classes at Rice, Santa Clara, and De Anza community college. The classes at Rice were significantly harder than anything I took at the other two schools. The student body at Rice was more intense and the exams were graded on a curve which made it much harder to get an A. Plus, the education was better because I had more access to professors when I didn’t understand something. I had a B avg at Rice and made straight A’s in the graduate program at Santa Clara. The level of students I was with was not the same. At De Anza it was a mixed bag. Some students seemed smarter than I was, but, others struggled to understand material that was incredibly easy to me. However, regardless of the bright students attending, the exams at De Anza were easier than the ones at Rice. The questions asked you to regurgitate information from the textbook and the homework. At Rice the exams usually covered material outside the book and homework. You were expected to apply what you had learned to different scenarios. My husband also went to Rice and then on to Berkeley for graduate school. He observed the undergraduate work at Berkeley and says the work at Rice was much harder and the same courses covered more material with less busy work.</p>
<p>In high school, I was dual-enrolled at Penn State (which, while not the best is still top 50), and I am now enrolled at Georgetown. It’s not just making fun of people who don’t go to higher-ranked schools, but there is a huge difference between 21 and 47 on USNWR, in my experience.</p>
<p>Classes really do move faster and cover more material because the students can and should be able to handle it. Grading for the most part here is also pretty difficult, though it depends on the professor, still. </p>
<p>Sure, calculus and economics use the same textbook, but even then, there are completely different things taught. I repeated one class from PSU at Georgetown because I was not given credit for it, and we covered the entire PSU class in the first 6 weeks and then proceeded to move onto more complicated things later on in the textbook. At PSU, people struggled to get through this class (which was extremely slow and had very easy tests), while at Georgetown, people struggled less even with the quick pace and higher expectations. I easily got 100% in the class at PSU without studying, but only a 91% at Georgetown. Keep in mind that this was an intro class.</p>
<p>In another class that I took at Penn State, the professor flat out said that most people in the class had no culture and that he couldn’t do what he wanted with them because they did not understand. He tried making references that very few people understood, in addition to trying to use what people should know as examples and analogies, but he was only frustrated when the students didn’t understand it. His teaching style was hindered by the lack of strength of the students in the class. Additionally, I sat in on classes for a few days at Williams, and the students there were simply brilliant and inspired other students to share or even made them think in different ways - the classes there that I sat in on were nothing like what I have at Georgetown, even.</p>
<p>I doubt that I’ve simply taken the hardest classes at Georgetown or the easiest at Penn State (admittedly, an intro psych class threatened to kick my butt there), so I feel that it’s not just an assumption that higher ranking or more prestige = harder courses. Surely for some classes this just isn’t true, but I think that for the most part, the strength of the student body can change everything.</p>
<p>I would call that grade inflation: it’s practically impossible to actually flunk out of Harvard. I agree that it’s difficult to get A’s. But practically everybody is going to pass. Everybody is going to graduate…the only ones that don’t are the ones who find something better to do, such as Mark Zuckerberg or Matt Damon. </p>
<p>The basic problem is that grading is stochastic. Grades do not perfectly reflect the quality of your work or the knowledge that you have. Surely we can all think of examples of students who knew the material well but just had a bad day during an exam. If that happens to you, you will receive a bad grade. But that ‘bad grade’ at Harvard or other top schools means that you’ll still pass, even if barely. At other schools, that bad grade could well be a failing grade.</p>
<p>A good professor is going to gear the level of the class to his students. He is going to make certain that the material is understood before he goes on to the next step which means slowing down and not covering as much. There is no point in teaching all the material out of a textbook if the students do not have a basic understanding of what is going on. In the same school, I cover different amounts and at different levels the same course from 1 year to the next if there is a significant difference in the quality of the students.</p>
<p>"A good professor is going to gear the level of the class to his students. He is going to make certain that the material is understood before he goes on to the next step which means slowing down and not covering as much. "</p>
<p>Depends on what the Professor/teacher’s definition of what’s good. Some Professors/teachers I’ve had in high school and college seem to proceed on the idea of teaching to the top-half or even the top 10% of the students and allowing the rest to sink or swim according to their own devices. </p>
<p>Heard this was very common in introductory science courses where the Profs/instructors go out of their way to do this in order to “weed out” the less serious or weak students at the beginning of their college careers.</p>
<p>Also, several Professors and friends’ parents who attended flagship state universities during the 1950’s and 60’s said that it was a common practice to make admissions easy, but to cull the large incoming classes by having Professors grade so strictly that up to half the incoming class would be gone by the end of sophomore year.</p>
<p>^^the criteria should be for students to learn - plain and simple - anything else is bogus and a disservice to students paying to get an education.</p>
<p>^^the criteria should be for students to learn - plain and simple - anything else is bogus and a disservice to students paying to get an education. </p>
<p>I agree- sink and swim method is not the ideal form of education IMO.</p>
<p>I think it’s funny that everyone here is talking about grades as a measure of which schools are comparable. Grades really mean very little compared between schools, or even departments. But let’s take the example of what is theoretically the same class, and how it is taught.</p>
<p>Class 1: Intro Geology at a top 10 LAC, taken as undergrad
Mixture of science and non-science majors, not very specialized but in general engaged and enthusiastic. Start going out to outcrops within a week the first day of class, learn how to make cross-sections based on topographic maps and walking to identify specific rock formations, then predicting based on topography where that same formation will next appear, critical assessment of provenance of mixed glacial sediment deposits, discussion of philosophy of how to approach a new outcrop (how best to convey information in sketches, to be a lumper or a splitter?), learning fossil identification from specimens pulled from local roadside ditch.</p>
<p>Class 2: Intro Geology at top public flagship university, in a department known for being particularly strong in this area, taught multiple times as a grad student TA
Almost exclusively non-science majors, despite being a course specifically listed for majors, all looking to get an easy, non-chem non-physics non-bio A. Spent first 6 weeks memorizing minerals and rock types from hand samples - students complaining constantly that learning basic identification of 6-10 rocks was too much workload. Students unable to grasp simple relationships among rock types, which probably made the identification harder - a random list to memorize is much more difficult than a suite of related material. A few stand-out students quickly caught on to these relationships, and breezed through, while looking relatively bored. No outdoor labs, despite having a nice little stream about a block from the department doors, quite a respectable rock garden, and an entire campus with facades made of an assortment of local rock formations.</p>
<p>These courses both used the same textbook. Class 1 had about 25-30 students, whereas Class 2 was a discussion section of 15 (out of a class of maybe 200). Technically, they covered much of the same material, and I strongly suspect the grade distribution was comparable, with the exception of a small but notable percentage failing Class 2. However, I would not have become a geologist if my first exposure was to the class I taught, rather than the one I took. Part of this is probably a LAC/research university difference, but to say that rankings are meaningless is a comfortable fallacy.</p>
<p>Then apparently many (probably most) professors who teach engineering weeder courses are bad professors, as those courses are notorious for teaching the material at a pace where the bulk of the students have no idea what is going on and are desperately trying to hang on for dear life. The goal of those courses seems to be to not actually learn anything, but simply to survive being weeded.</p>
<p>Let me give you an example. I know one guy who took a weeder course in chemical engineering thermodynamics. He scored a 30% on the exam…and celebrated. Why? Because the mean of the exam was a 25%. He had no idea what was happening in the exam - heck, he barely even understood some of the questions. But at least he knew more than most of his classmates, who knew even less. It’s not about understand the material, because nobody really understood the material; even the highest score of that exam was something in the 50’s or 60’s %, meaning that even the best student still misunderstood a vast swathe of the material. All that students care about is surviving the curve. In fact, in such courses, it’s actually beneficial if other students do not understand the material, as that lowers the curve for you. </p>
<p>One major part of the problem is that many of the concepts taught in engineering weeders utterly defies any intuitive physical interpretation. For example, I have not met a single engineer in my life - including some with PhD’s - who actually knows what the Maxwell Relations actually mean. It has nothing to do with the math, as the math is tractable. What is inexplicable is what the relations actually mean. For example, what exactly does it mean, from a real-world perspective, for the partial derivative of Temperature with respect to Volume at constant Entropy to be equal to the negative of the partial of pressure with respect to entropy at constant volume, and for both to be equal to the double partial of internal energy with respect to entropy and volume? Nobody knows! Nevertheless, as an engineering student, you’re forced to manipulate equations such as them that you don’t really understand what they actually mean, lest you be weeded out. </p>