<p>^^student14x,</p>
<p>Your idea that the level of challenge is matched, to some extent, to the level of the student is true, up to a point. The OP wouldn’t have been admitted to Caltech if the work were too much.</p>
<p>That being said, I don’t agree that the same effort will yield the same results at different universities. The classes at Caltech are designed for students who are both extremely bright and extremely committed.</p>
<p>I was responding mainly to umaineguy in #11, maya mah in #19, and (to a lesser extent) to nontraditional in #20.</p>
<p>The ideas that if you go to the library and study for a solid couple of hours a day, it will be enough, or that you could work 9-5 on the weekdays and have weekends free just do not apply to Caltech students (with the possible exception of fewer than 10 true geniuses). The idea that “if you really can’t handle the introductory classes, it might be time to consider that college isn’t for you” is possibly true, but not at all applicable to the OP’s circumstances, since she took the introductory college classes pre-college, and is now taking courses that would be higher-level most other places. The idea that 2 hours a day is more than enough . . . well, not at Caltech, not for anyone I ever knew who went there, not even if it’s 2 hours a day per class. </p>
<p>Nontraditional’s statement that if you are in class for 3 hours a week, you’re generally expected to put in 6 hours outside of class is a standard expectation that you may find in course catalogs, and it would apply to some courses in math and science at most large universities (but in other courses, that wouldn’t be enough time). At Caltech, I really doubt that the 2 hours out for 1 in would work at all.</p>