Ivy League... be prepared

But it’s a cost benefit also where you have to put 30-40 hours of outside work just to get that grade and anything else will truly lead to a failing grade. There’s definitely a curve in ISP but since you can drop down at basically any point they have no problem failing you if you don’t put in the work.

“when he is speaking on a subject I am familiar with I find a lot of flaws in his logic, which of course makes me question everything else…”

Same here. He argues that Harvard should use a lottery to choose among the qualified candidates and assumes that it would continue to have anything like the same level of interest from outstanding applicants after instituting the lottery. Of course, it would not. People would stop placing so much value on the admission if it were handed out by lottery. Applications would plummet and the top students in the world would choose other universities where admission still had its cachet.

“its bottom quartile is 170, a number that the vast majority of Amherst students could achieve with solid prep.”

What makes you say that? I’ve never seen a median LSAT for Amherst above 164, or for any school above 166. Do you think a lot of Amherst students/grads are taking it without any prep? That has not been my experience for students at top colleges – they understand how important the LSAT is, and they prepare before they take it.

@Dolemite : I get all of that, but I am saying the same thing can be said any advanced or challenging class. I also doubt that for all (or most) students that 30-40 hours is some threshold between a A/B and completely failing or getting below a C. I find that students love to use hyperbole to convey how much more challenging the option is than others, and trust me I do believe it is significantly more challenging to most with primarily just AP/IB backgrounds, but if I had to put an hour tally on it, I doubt that would be it. I would rather one simply say: “There is high attrition because it is much easier for them to an A/B elsewhere” than "They left because they knew anything below 30 hours would get them an F. The latter isn’t very realistic or nuanced. In addition, why talk about extremes such as Princeton ISP, Harvard math 55/physics 16/Life Sciences 50 which are usually designed for extremely ambitious students who at least feel that they are definitely planning pursuing graduate school in those fields AND typically have more preparation and exposure than just AP/IB credits. Usually there are lower options that are still higher than the standard introductory options that many students still refuse even if they qualify. Usually these other tiers do not require “30-40 hours” from “most” students, and are simply more appropriate considering that they already have a solid amount of experience. You can get a bigger push than the standard version and perhaps pick up some high level analytical skills than in the standard offering without necessarily dying or having to trade off their social lives too much. But again, many students are just obsessed with comfort and things never feeling particularly challenging.

What is nice about a place like Princeton, Harvard, and its super elite ilk is that usually there are more students who at least feel enough confidence and ambition to try the higher tier offerings in STEM depts than at many other elites. Whether they all make it through or continue is a different story, but the demand for that level of academics exists and is well enough subscribed to such that it is something to be proud of in comparison to other elites who lack such offerings for beginning students. This is one thing that makes such schools stand out from the tons of elites that now have similar SAT/ACT ranges. A larger % of students are generally more willing to at least entertain the those options. Indicates more academic ambition or at least more diversity among the STEM students (as in, instead of them literally being all pre-med, there is a large minority considering graduate school who recognize the use of such high level training early on). I personally think a true marker of student body quality is the ability to implement such curricula/courses and to hold on to them over time. Such tracks like Princeton ISP and Harvard’s honors courses have gotten such a reputation that they have become part of attracting and training future undergraduate talent in key fields.

Other elites seem to think having students with super high SATs is sufficient. Perhaps because they cannot really cater much, academically at least, to students who want to do an ISP or a Harvard level honors course at the beginning of their careers. And to be blunt, I don’t think they try catering to this crowd, perhaps realizing that there isn’t really much demand for that type of training (I am being slightly shady by suggesting the crowd is comparatively small, but I suspect I am right. When the couple of students like that, they just have to send them to graduate level courses, which may or not be the level of an ISP or H/w/e top 10 honors course). They stick to recruiting high scorers who desire “much better than average” level academics, but not as many who demand much more. What has sold well at many of these schools is:“I want much better academics than X non-elite state school, but I want extremely nice facilities and amenities, as well as an extremely vibrant social life that is somewhat like the state school”. Admittedly, among them there are some more undergraduate focused places that do try mimic a little of what HYP/Most top 10s schools do academically for very top talent (who can often care less about a super vibrant social life), but it tends to be those with smaller UG populations and maybe the D-3 schools and most do not have formal honors courses or special tracks like ISP. It is more like: “We have some professors that teach at those levels and they are in demand” (or in the case of WUSTL, forced as it is common for them to only have 1-2 sections of a “standard” STEM course run by a single faculty member).

Either way, I am not trying to knock P’ton students or belittle their issue with ISP. Princeton students should be proud that has great enough students and academic resources to support such tracks. I can see some getting in over their head attempting ISP, but I believe in departments like chemistry, physics, and math (most other non-top 10 or so elites have the math tiering, but usually physics is not as robust/doesn’t go as high and chemistry tiering is non-existent. biology, absolutely forget about it!) , Princeton has similar intro. course tiering to its near peers, so I still would encourage the more experienced and prepared students, even if pre-med, to try some of the non-standard levels even if not the very top level. I just think some need to let the fear of being challenged in a different way go as early as possible. Who knows, it may actually make the transition to upper division courses much easier than if they did the regular versions, either because of extra content exposure or better skills. However, thinking longterm is hard when you are a scared frosh pre-health being told not to over-extend oneself. Even a somewhat harder than average course could seem daunting amidst all the peer pressure.

I brought up ISC because it teaches students to think in ways that certain areas of the MCAT test and at least in that area it would be beneficial to pre-meds but due to the rigor generally no traditional pre-med take it though I’m sure there are pre-medical researchers that do.

Anyhoo I think you misunderstand what ISC is. It’s NOT an honor’s version of Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Computer Science. My D didn’t have any AP/DE classes and preparation in those subjects would be less than those that did have AP/DE classes. About the only thing she did have was some experience in that kind of thinking.

@skieurope
How does an ivy league student have enough time to post over 32,000 messages on one forum?

@Huskymaniac Maybe its a sociology experiment?

• Effective time management
• A chunk of those posts are from when I was in HS
• My count, and that of every other moderator, is inflated because posts we make behind the scenes (e.g. resolving flagged posts, communications with admins) are included in the count; I actually have not made 32K public posts. @Huskymaniac

Not with no prep, Hanna, but just not with intensive, exclusive prep. Many applicants still take the LSAT as a college Junior, so they are juggling coursework at the same time.

The LSAT is very learnable, with 3+ months of hard work, and no other distractions. Few applicants have the opportunity to focus solely on the LSAT (which is too bad, since a great score can result in thousands of dollars of tax-free merit money).

My rule of thumb to clear 170 is demonstrated testing skills, and to me, that means 1400+ SAT score. Amherst has loads of those students, as do the other top colleges. Clearly, the SEC does not (outside of Vandy).

In the early 2010 Harvard and Yale used to publish number of students from various colleges matriculated at their law school. I was surprised how many HY UG students they had relative to other colleges. Now one may argue that students at HY were better at LSAT testing, but I would have to think many top 50 schools students would be just as good. Nowadays law schools only show UG schools on their profile, not number of students from each school, so it is hard to gain any insight.

I was curious and clicked on Peterson’s sample LSAT questions. I did the first 3 and got them all right, and trust me, I am no genius. And maybe those were particularly easy sample question as well. I’m thinking with reasonable intelligence and a decent amount of prep, good LSAT scores are very doable?

Of course they are; the undergrad Admissions Officers select out poor testers. On cc somewhere, there’s an old list of LSAT scores by undergrad.

If I recall, H was 166, Y&P were 165, and the other highly selective undergrads were close by. Unlikely that it has changed much.

But note, the top undergrad average was only 166. I would suggest that that vast majority of Harvard (and Y&P and…) students could readily clear 17x with effort. They have demonstrated that they have the ability to score high (via SAT/ACT scores). They just need to ‘learn’ the LSAT.

@Data10 I just wanted you to list them all… =D>

The title surprises me so much it makes me laugh. You think because someone got into an Ivy League school that it will be a straight out and get degree? I’ve seen the calculus exams from Ivy League and honestly it’s really not bad at all. I go to a public university. If I can do the exams that Ivy League gives out to their students I could receive a degree from them.

I would though that Ivy League schools would give their students hard material, but if I a student from a public university can do those problems. Why is it hard to get accepted?

Presumably you have only seen a small sample of all the exams that are given at eight different schools over several semesters each year, and you have not seen them in a real testing environment. It’s easy to look at a question (or perhaps a question and a given answer, as my professors often gave my classes the answers to old exams for practice purposes) and say “I can do that,” but not very easy at all to complete it without mistakes in 50 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever the testing period is.

And I’m from a public university background so this isn’t an Ivy-biased post, I’m just saying unless someone has actually taken a given class they don’t have the full story. You might say my Orgo classes were easy too if you saw the exams. Orgo 1 was multiple choice, how hard can it be? Hard enough that the cutoff for an A, the top grade possible, was an 83% in the class.

Well if you do a deep search on google like me I found many calculus exams given by the eight different schools.

The number of highly qualified applicants greatly exceeds the space available.

Regarding those calculus exams, all of the Ivy League schools have fairly standard calculus and second year math courses that are similar to those at other schools. However, some of them (and some other schools) offer significantly harder honors versions as well.

Ivy league and other highly selective colleges often offer a variety of math sequences at a variety of different starting points. Freshmen usually take a math placement test to determine what courses would be a good fit. The lowest level intro course is often quite basic, with focus on pre-calculus topics, like algebra and trig. The highest level math courses can be extremely advanced and rigorous in some cases. Havard’s Math 55’s rigor is almost legendary, as described at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1999/1/6/math-55-rite-of-passage-for/ . Exam difficulty and corresponding curve also vary wildly. Some exams have almost simple questions, so students might need to get scores of above 90% to get ‘A’. Other courses have mostly challenging questions where a score as low as 50% could be an A. It varies depending on who is teaching the class. Whether you can answer the questions on one exam in one class is not a good representation of the entire university, or even what grade you’d receive in the class.

That said, the criteria for acceptance to an Ivy League college is not being able to do the work in one class or even being able to do the work in all desired classes. In the article at https://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/harvarddean-part1/ , the Dean of Admissions at Harvard says 80-90% of applicants are academically qualified. The overwhelming majority of applicants would do fine at Harvard, yet Harvard still rejects them. And the overwhelming majority of those who do attend Harvard do fine, including hooks with lower stats and weaker academic preparation. Harvard’s 6-year graduation rate is on the order of 98%… almost everyone graduates. Mean GPA was ~3.65 a few years ago, with very few having below a B average.

Also note that plenty of public universities do offer rigorous courses. It’s quite common for some public university classes to be more rigorous than some corresponding ivy league classes. Many public universities also offer special more rigorous/honors versions of classes. However, the range of rigor tends to start lower at less selective colleges and end higher at more selective colleges. You have the option to take less rigorous courses at most less selective colleges, and you have the option take more rigorous courses at most highly selective colleges.

thanks