<p>In your opinion and knowledge, please rank these nine schools in terms or rigor. Thanks!</p>
<p>Based on a combination of student body quality and difficulty, from hardest to easiest I would go with</p>
<p>Princeton
Harvard
Cornell
Columbia
Yale
Stanford
Dartmouth
Penn
Brown</p>
<p>Princeton
Wharton
Yale
Cornell
Columbia
Harvard
Penn
Dartmouth
Brown</p>
<p>Bump…</p>
<p>How would I know, I would have to take a sampling of courses, look at the syllabi,tests & problems sets for the same courses given at each university, who would know that really?</p>
<p>Someone who has attended more than one, or someone who has taught at more than one of them, might have some insight I suppose. but only for those few schools and departments they have direct experience with.</p>
<p>Differences in rigor among majors/ departments is probably greater than differences among these universities as a generic aggregate. Asssuming such generic differences could even really be discerned.</p>
<p>I can’t really say I know either since I haven’t gone to any of them… well I haven’t gone to college yet.
But from people I know and what I’ve heard Princeton is stingy with grades and most Columbia students are in the middle of a competitive group of people.
Of course it depends on major, Wharton kids study a lot as do premed student at all those schools.</p>
<p>I can say that Cornell is very demanding in terms of workload but students generally get good grades because they are bright and work hard. It is certainly easy to get a D or F at Cornell if you don’t work hard.</p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have been criticized for grade inflation. I am not sure how true that is. The students there are brilliant so it is not surprising if they get good grades.</p>
<p>Brown has a reputation for being easier because of the flexible curriculum but other posters have said Brown is nevertheless quite demanding.</p>
<p>Princeton actually practices grade deflation, so yeah those claims are pretty much bunk.</p>
<p>Princeton
Wharton
Yale
Cornell
Dartmouth
Columbia
Penn
Harvard
Stanford
Brown</p>
<p>LOL at people ranking Wharton so high…just LOL.</p>
<p>LOL. Differences between classes at all of these schools is larger than the difference between these schools by such a tremendous amount that even someone who had taken classes at both institutions couldn’t answer this meaningfully.</p>
<p>Based on Average grade at each school from <a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/:[/url]”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/:</a></p>
<p>Princeton: 3.27, 2006
Cornnel: 3.36, 2006
Dartmouth: 3.39, 2006
Columbia: 3.42, 2006
Penn: 3.44, 2004
Harvard: 3.45, 2005
Yale: 3.48, 2006
Stanford: 3.55, 2005
Brown: 3.59, 2006</p>
<p>The rigor is in the order listed. It is no surprise that Stanford and Brown are two of the hottest schools around these days.</p>
<p>This is consistent with the GPA required to get into medical schools from some of these schools:</p>
<p>Applicant’s Undergraduate School: Average GPA to get into medical schools
Princeton: 3.532
Dartmouth: 3.542
Harvard: 3.601
Stanford: 3.605</p>
<p>More rigorous school has a lower GPA to get into medical school. As you can see, the MD admission people are not completely fooled by the grade inflation.</p>
<p>Princeton has a deflation policy. Dartmouth shows the median grade on student transcripts for each class, which deters grade inflation somewhat.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Princeton pre-Med students, the difference between the “Average GPA to get into Medical Schools” for Princeton and say, Stanford, is no where near the differences in average grades at these two schools.</p>
<p>3.605-3.532=0.073</p>
<p>v.</p>
<p>3.55-3.27=0.28</p>
<p>The question arises: Does the more rigorous education at Princeton train the student to get higher MCAT scores than the schools that are less rigorous?</p>
<p>This is for Med School entrance…the most important factor, however, should be where he gets the best education to prepare him for successful and happy future.</p>
<p>^^ good point. That’s why I said “not completely fooled”, but they are still fooled. Princeton’s deflation policy definitely hurts its students in medical school admission.</p>
<p>One has to take into account that 20% of Brown classes are taken SNC. Also, the notion that grade inflation translates to rigor or lack thereof is crazy. These grades have no institutional consistency, forget about interinstitutional meaning. Grades at none of these schools accurately map to a concrete set of leaning outcomes achieved. Don’t create meaning in data where meaning doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>
Those are the data from 2005-2006. What happened then. Do people just realize this? Maybe people just realize Dartmouth is not so worth going, for some reasons.</p>
<p>None is as rigorous as MIT, Caltech, Swarthmore, or University of Chicago.</p>
<p>Princeton
Chicago (I know it’s not one of the options, but it’s WAY harder than most of these schools)
Stanford
Harvard
Columbia
Yale
Dartmouth
Brown
Penn
Cornell</p>
<p>Y7, tell that to the Physics, Math and ChE. majors at Princeton</p>
<p>
</p>