<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>Princeton has specific policies in place regarding how many A's may be given out... but I've also heard tales of terrible grade deflation at Cornell Engineering. I hear similar things in SEAS at Columbia (which I attend), but given that I'm Applied Math and not something like MechE, I can't really speak to that.</p>
<p>i dont think anyone in the world is qualified to answer this question since you would have had to take classes at all eight institutions to actually have a valid opinion.....not to mention this question is stupid, irrelevant and silly</p>
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i dont think anyone in the world is qualified to answer this question since you would have had to take classes at all eight institutions to actually have a valid opinion.....
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<p>That's BS. One can arrive at some conclusions about the relative difficulty of the Ivies without having attended classes at all 8 schools. The problem is that the information necessary to make those conclusions isn't readily available. If you had access to grade distributions for all the classes at these schools, you'd probably be able to come to some interesting opinions.</p>
<p>Cornell has grade distributions posted, or at least the median grade posted for each course. I think it's on their registrar's website, but I'm not sure.</p>
<p>"i dont think anyone in the world is qualified to answer this question since you would have had to take classes at all eight institutions to actually have a valid opinion.....not to mention this question is stupid, irrelevant and silly"</p>
<p>Don't be such a troll Shraf. Besides the ideas Columbia2002 gave, you can also take a random sample of 10 students who have attended these schools, whether through online websites such as myspace or if you have the energy and want to know so bad, take a trip to each of these schools and survey the students on their work ethic and the grade compensation they receive from it. I think it's possible to know.</p>
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Don't be such a troll Shraf.
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<p>excuse you! (i think you also need to look up the term "troll" on urbandictionary) </p>
<p>and way to completely miss the point....</p>
<p>in the case of C02's "ideas" this is only good if you believe that lower grades = harder classes....lower grades could mean less motivated students and higher grades can just be a result of overly generous professors so those are actually very bad indicators of the difficulty of the coursework.</p>
<p>house of london's "idea" is also really silly....first of all a random sample of TEN students is clearly way too little to make any sort of generalization (don't even try to argue with this point).....</p>
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r through online websites such as myspace
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<p>how is this a random sample exactly? this is called a convenient sample and its wrought with bias</p>
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survey the students on their work ethic and the grade compensation they receive from it
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<p>what the hell is that gonna tell you? there are kids who do no work at all and get As and kids who work their asses off and just suck at the material...this happens more in lower level science classes......not to mention there are classes you can get away with doing very little cause the professor is lenient etc etc etc........oh and how the hell are u gonna quantify "work ethic"</p>
<p>so i still stick by my original post</p>
<p>shaf, you clearly are clever -- but I still think you're wrong. It's not impossible, though it's very difficult to find out this information. No need to attack the question so personally.</p>
<p>I think grade distributions would give a good answer, or a student survey. I mean, generally speaking I've heard that Harvard is easy, Princeton + Cornell are hard, Columbia SEAS is hard, yale and dartmouth aren't bad, etc. so i think that it is a perfectly reasonable question, and i was just merely looking for conjecture, not somebody who has gone to all 8 ivy league schools as an undergraduate. thankyou everybody who has helped to make an attempt at answering my question, any further input is greatly appreciated.</p>
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higher grades can just be a result of overly generous professors so those are actually very bad indicators of the difficulty of the coursework.
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<p>God. This is really sad. If professors at a particular school are overly generous and thereby give students higher grades than they deserve, that means that IT IS EASIER TO GET A GOOD GPA AT THAT SCHOOL. And that's the very question the OP asked. </p>
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so i still stick by my original post
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<p>Dude, you should quit. And why attack the straw man myspace post from the other guy and ignore my points?</p>
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And why attack the straw man myspace post from the other guy
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<p>if he actually made the argument its not a straw man</p>
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that means that IT IS EASIER TO GET A GOOD GPA AT THAT SCHOOL. And that's the very question the OP asked
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<p>nooooo, the OP asked whether it was more difficult....and gave good gpa as only one component...as it should be. At the same time though theres no way to quantify how generous a prof is with relation to the rigor of the material. there really is no way to answer this with facts....sure you can give your opinion but theres little chance u can back it up with actual evidence....</p>
<p>also we shouldn't be encouraging such questions....this is just like all those "columbia vs. x university" threads.....its like how the hell should we know??</p>
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also we shouldn't be encouraging such questions....this is just like all those "columbia vs. x university" threads.....its like how the hell should we know??
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<p>Because difficulty of a college is somewhat quantifiable, whereas where one should go to college is totally subjective. </p>
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nooooo, the OP asked whether it was more difficult....and gave good gpa as only one component...as it should be. At the same time though theres no way to quantify how generous a prof is with relation to the rigor of the material. there really is no way to answer this with facts....sure you can give your opinion but theres little chance u can back it up with actual evidence....
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<p>GPA data is certainly evidence of a school's difficulty. And it's probably very good evidence of such. However, it's not conclusive evidence. You seem to be unable to accept the fact that reasonable conclusions -- that go beyond the level of opinion and guesswork -- can be drawn without having conclusive scientific proof.</p>
<p>If one wanted to do an even better comparison of the schools' various difficulties that goes beyond GPA distributions for individual courses, one could model the GPA distributions along with other controls. Perhaps those controls might be things like students' entering SAT/GPA (to account for variability in intelligence among the students at the various schools), the number of hours a week students report studying for the courses (to account for variability in the rigor among the courses at the various schools), etc.</p>
<p>Think outside the box, dude.</p>
<p>you guys are overthinking this. i basically just meant rank where its' easiest/hardest to get a good GPA. this is an objective matter -- its not me saying "choose where i should go to college"</p>
<p>You really want an answer to this stupid question? I shall refer you to the old adage. </p>
<p>"Harvard is the hardest Ivy to get in and the easiest to stay in. Cornell is the easiest Ivy to get in and the hardest to stay in."</p>
<p>I thought that statement was just something Cornell students made up to feel better about themselves, but since graduating, I have asked many Harvard students about their experience and all have said that once they were in Harvard was a real cakewalk. It is almost impossible to fail out of Harvard. Cornell does not have such cushion safeguards. Obviously, at Cornell there are certain disciplines that are also cakewalks. Apples to apples, however, it seems Harvard students do get an easier ride. </p>
<p><pause for="" appalled="" gasps="" from="" prestige="" mongers=""></pause></p>
<p>So there. Two schools down. Perhaps you can sleep well at night.</p>
<p>Have you gone to college yet, oh aptly named SATmaster? If so, certainly you would have learned that the difficulty of a class cannot be measured one way or another by a grade. More so, the intelligence of a student certainly cannot be captured by a test taken when he/she was a child of 16 years.</p>
<p>Testing measures a certain type of mind and hurts more philosophical, analytical, and creative minds.</p>
<p>i think the op would be most interested in average gpa's at the various schools, which is information that i believe can be researched with a little bit of effort, which i am not willing to put in. yale is notorious for grade inflation with an average gpa of around a 3.6, while columbia i believe is closer to a 3.2-3.3. princeton i think is about the same as columbia i think.</p>
<p>Suggesting that Shraf think outside the box is almost as outrageous a demand as suggesting him to stop embarrassing his alma mater by so readily dismissing other peoples' questions and arguments. </p>
<p>Although it's never a good idea to make sweeping generalizations, it's very possible to assess a college's difficultly based on the sort of curriculum it has--without bias, hopefully.</p>
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You really want an answer to this stupid question? I shall refer you to the old adage.
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<p>Hooray for thread necromancy!! Good job, this one was just about a month old and doesn't add any real value to this board!</p>
<p>...and i love how kwu had to jump in and find any opportunity to take an unwarranted unprovoked cheap shot at me....classy</p>
<p>Wow. It was a month old. There's a more current one started by the same person elsewhere and I think I stumbled on this one instead.</p>
<p>My sincerest apologies.</p>