<p>If an applicant is surely qualified for a very prestigious, top school, (let's say 3.95, 2300) how easily could they attend an average state school, say PSU or UGA, and graduate with a near perfect GPA without putting a strenuous amount of effort forward?</p>
<p>Would it be at all realistic for this person to breeze through 4 years at and average college and graduate magna cum laude, or something to that effect, without struggling and dealing with intellectual competition as they would if they attended an Ivy level school?</p>
<p>No, it is not realistic that such a person would “breeze through” a state university with a 4.0, and there’s an incredible level of arrogance behind the question, as if the classes at state universities were all at the level of 1+1=2 and all the students around you would be intellectual yahoos. There are smart people everywhere and difficult classes everywhere.</p>
<p>No. I don’t think you understand how difficult to graduate at the top of a class of 10,000 people… My dad went to a state school for undergrad and a CC favorite for grad school, and says that it is much more difficult to graduate at the top of a state school than middle of the pack at, say, Harvard.</p>
<p>Depends very much on the major. Look into the concept of weed out courses at big state schools. GPA may be actually much harder to maintain at the big school than the Ivy.</p>
<p>It’s possible if you carefully choose your classes and major to ensure they’re the “gut” majors. However, you seriously underestimate the number of top students, especially in Georgia owing to the HOPE scholarship, that opt to go to their in state public flagship. There are classes and majors designed for those students, and believe me, they are challenging. I worked for a non flagship university ranked about the same as PSU, and many of the classes were extremely difficult, regardless of how brilliant and well prepared an incoming freshman was. </p>
<p>That being said, why would you want to just breeze through college? Grad schools don’t admit people with the highest GPAs and employers don’t necessarily care if you graduated magna cum laude (doesn’t hurt though). They want people they know can do the job. If you went through four years of your life without trying to challenge yourself, what does that say about you as a potential employee?</p>
<p>This is certainly not an insulting question. </p>
<p>I’m not referring to myself at all. </p>
<p>All I wanted to know was how comparable the intellectual competition at a highly ranked school would be in comparison to an average school. </p>
<p>Surely the classes wouldn’t be ‘easy’ at an average level school, but I wanted to know if they would be considerably easier than classes at MIT or Harvard.</p>
<p>Almost every school (including many of the highly selective and prestigious ones) has its “gut” courses and majors, so whether someone can get a easy A grades depends a lot on course and major selection. Getting all easy A grades could be more difficult at schools with heavy breadth requirements that cannot be fulfilled with “gut” courses (MIT is such a school; Harvard does not appear to be).</p>
<p>Yes, at Harvard, there is the famously difficult Math 55a-55b, but there is also Math Ma-Mb (similar to high school AP calculus AB).</p>
<p>What’s insulting is suggesting that there is no intellectual competition at a state school, and assuming that a good GPA and test scores and admission into an “Ivy-level school” makes one intellectually superior. It’s also incredibly naive to assume that everyone who CAN get into such a school wants to.</p>
<p>Is there a correlation between college selectivity and academic rigor?<br>
It’s not necessarily unreasonable or arrogant to assume that if a college admits higher-scoring (and perhaps more motivated) students, then professors will tend teach at a faster pace or at a higher level. Does that in fact consistently happen? I haven’t seen much evidence either way. I’ve looked at a few journal articles that take up this question (or some variation, for example whether examination questions are more challenging at more selective schools). Findings seem to be mixed or inconclusive. In fact it’s been suggested that at “elite” universities, professors tend to cut their students more slack to turn in assignments late or otherwise work around the rules. ([The</a> American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education](<a href=“http://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/]The”>The American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - <a href='https://theamericanscholar.org/author/william-deresiewicz/'>William Deresiewicz</a>))</p>
<p>If more selective does not necessarily mean more challenging, does it still matter? There may be positive effects from greater selectivity that have little or nothing to do with course difficulty. One is what might be called the “Honeypot Effect”. A high concentration of high-achieving students may attract more funding, more (or better) campus recruiting, etc. Another might be called the “Hothouse Effect”. A high concentration of high-achieving students may create more favorable conditions for creating and sharing ideas. </p>
<p>I don’t know if anyone has carefully defined and measured such effects. There’s probably a lot we really don’t know. For example, does institutional size (or location) trump selectivity in employers’ recruiting decisions? Does small class size (or better facilities) trump selectivity in producing strong “hothouse” effects? </p>
<p>It’s hard to tease out these factors and draw objective conclusions without a lot of caveats and weasel-words. Anyway in the long run, wherever you wind up and regardless of the competition, you’re unlikely to succeed without putting in some serious effort.</p>
<p>harvard’s worth is 99.9% in it’s name. nothing more or special is taught there. just a lot of hyper competitive students .you can go to an ivy and do a basket weaving major and have an easy time. or you can go to ole miss major in biochem and you will earn your degree! make no mistake about it!</p>
<p>OP: “Quantity Has a Quality All Its Own”. It’s an old expression but I think it applies to your original question. You are going to find top students at all kinds of schools, and just looking at numbers you may have more top students at a large state school, while the percentage of top students might be more at an an Ivy, or other top private. </p>
<p>And the secret to success at all schools is still the same - work your buttocks off to do the best you can, and be in the right place at the right time which can help you down the career path you want to go. Good luck, and work hard to make your own breaks.</p>
<p>The schools you are talking about (PSU, UGA) aren’t what I’d call “run of the mill schools” and I’d even argue that at least Penn St is likely to be better/tougher at engineering. Many of these schools have a multitude of top scorers (Ivy level) and they don’t all get As, much less easy As (pending major as mentioned).</p>
<p>Go down a bit in ranking (public or private) and things change. Those schools usually have far fewer students with top stats. There is still likely to be a bottom line of info one needs to know to graduate if the school is accredited, but you’re less likely to get as much “in depth” info (pending prof and major). Some lower ranked schools have really good programs in things though. Don’t expect those to be “easy.” They likely pull in top students who want to study with a good program.</p>
<p>If one continues to work as hard as the average decently smart person would have to to attain this kind of qualifications, I don’t see why not, but it wouldn’t be a breeze.</p>
<p>My second child is about to graduate from a big state school. Both of my kids were at the top of their HS classes (one was Val, the other was Sal). They both had to work for their top grades at their state school because they were in challenging majors. </p>
<p>On the Premed forum this subject comes up a lot. Some think that if they are premed at a state school then they’ll emerge with a super GPA. Then reality slaps them in the face. The fact is that the students who are in those pre-med classes (and doing well in them) are all smart kids. they’re all fighting for the limited A’s awarded. </p>
<p>At most schools, professors teaching upper division courses are not handing out A’s for merely showing up.</p>