<p>How would you rank the ivy league in order of difficulty?
My question deals with undergrad, and doesn't have to do with admissions for students, but for current students (in terms of how hard it is to get a good GPA,course rigor, etc.)</p>
<p>I don't think anyone can answer your question unless they've transferred from one Ivy to another. Yale requires more course credits to graduate than (all?) other Ivies, so is harder in that sense.</p>
<p>of HYP, I would guess that the consensus is probably:
Princeton (required thesis, grade deflation)
Yale
Harvard</p>
<p>That being said, at each of these three schools, I am sure it is more than possible to put together a really difficult course load or a comparatively easy one.</p>
<p>At all the Ivies, particularly Harvard and Brown, you can make your education as difficult or as easy as you like (an exaggeration of sorts, but you get the general idea).</p>
<p>very true. i know people who like to punish themselves with the schedule they choose. It's insane.</p>
<p>It's impossible to rank what you're asking for. Different majors in different colleges have different levels of difficulty. Almost no students at any college take the exact same course schedule. Different people have to work at different levels to achieve the same results. Few people have any idea what it's like to be at two or three of these colleges. </p>
<p>In short, it's just not a valid question.</p>
<p>I agree with post #4. Cornell University has some very demanding majors and is known as "the easist Ivy to get into & the hardest to get out of" due to the coursework requirements in many subjects. Princeton is tough too--for the reasons noted above. Penn can be quite competitive &, therefore, a bit stressful.</p>
<p>Post #4: I understand that Brown may be a bit easier than other ivies because of the ability to take virtually any course one likes, but Harvard? Isn't there supposed to be the core curriculum thing that Harvard students are always complaining about?</p>
<p>"the ability to take virtually any course one likes,"</p>
<p>science majors still have plenty of requirements, other majors too I'm just using that as an example. just because you can take the class pass/fail doesn't make passing the class any easier</p>
<p>@#7. I would like to bring a new perspective about the Cornell is the easiest-to-get-in-hardest-to-get-out statement. Though it is probably true that Cornell is not one of the easier ivies to graduate (I can't confirm any of my statements/thoughts since I'm still a junior in HS), but maybe there's the fact that Cornellians are perhaps a tad less competitive or academically strong as their counterparts at HYP... Thus they feel their coursework is very heavy while the same HYP student might feel it is actually a moderately heavy courseload</p>
<p>i dont know about that. look at mit and caltech. i know they arent ivies, but its all the same. the students that go there are the smartest in the country, and they say that there work is the hardest. there are figures to back up the fact that harvard gives more As.</p>
<p>By reputation alone:</p>
<p>HY and P practiced the greatest levels of grade inflation.</p>
<p>Cornell and Penn were reputedly the hardest Ivies to stay in because of the more intense academic pace (probably more associated with the size and scope of those two schools than anything else). </p>
<p>Brown allowed a lot of flexibility, hence it was POSSIBLE to skate by but probably few Brown kids took that path. They are generally pretty driven, intelligent students.</p>
<p>Course rigor has as much to do with the course material as with the school's overall policies on grading and graduation requirements.</p>
<p>Reputations aside, a few more thoughts:</p>
<p>1) Grade deflation is a strange concept, which many posters like to proffer up on this board. Either schools' give grades students deserve based on the overall student pool's performance or schools have a policy that - because everyone there is supposedly smart - all students deserve high grades (that is the scandal of grade inflation and it was perfected at HYP).</p>
<p>2) Yale requires perhaps the highest number of classes to graduate among the lib arts programs of the Ivies.</p>
<p>3) Princeton requires a thesis of ALL of its students to graduate</p>
<p>4) Any accredited natural sciences or engineering program anywhere is perhaps the hardest major, regardless of whether it's at Brown, Cornell or Harvard.</p>
<p>5) Penn is supposedly the hard working/hard partying (relative to the other Ivies) school in the group</p>
<p>6) Princeton and Yale (and to a lesser extent, Columbia) are supposedly the most self consciously intellectual of all these places. That creates it's own form of pressure and competition [and therefore potential impact to grades]</p>
<p>6) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the top employers and grad schools - the consumers of alums from these schools - understand the grading policies of these institutions. They all (especially top grad schools) adjust for school and major when evaluating GPA. It's not easy to game the system in that manner.</p>
<p>Hmm, i wonder why you think yale is self consciously intellectual... I mean, it's a very welcoming intellectual enviornment, and certainly the kind of place where you can let your nerd flag fly if you choose, but i don't exactly understand/am a bit suspicious of your characterization of yale as "self consciously intellectual."</p>
<p>That's according to reputations I've heard/read for Yale and the other schools.</p>
<p>I think the general view is that many students at Yale and Princeton (and again to a lesser extent, Columbia) try very hard to make sure people know they are smart, well read and urbane. Perhaps too hard. It's apparently not the competitive/"I know more than you" reflex people comment on so often about Harvard, but it's there nonetheless.</p>
<p>I hope this clarifies my earlier statement (OMG, I sound like a politician)</p>
<p>For what it's worth, I actually think Yale is perhaps the best place in the IL to get an undergrad education (just my opinion), though obviously Penn is better for anything non-lib arts related [I am an alum after all LOL]</p>