All state schools are not created equal. Our SUNY system is very strong, but it’s not the place to be if you are looking for big sports (I suppose Buffalo is an exception). It’s also not the place to be if you are looking at aesthetics. Some of our campuses are pretty, but some are downright depressing. I think our kids do well academically, and our graduates definitely enter high paying fields and attend many different types of grad school programs. I am the product of SUNY and CUNY and have no complaints. My CUNY professor was an MIT grad.
We also have SUNY transfer paths to Cornell - not a bad deal. I also just remembered that students who attend SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry actually study on the campus of Syracuse University, which has a beautiful campus. Another good deal!
The one advantage you get at going to a prestigious school is the ability to make connections, which can lead to more opportunities. One difference I noticed between Stanford and more average schools is that at the latter schools, you get a degree with intention of getting a good job. At Stanford, you get a degree with the intention of starting a company. But as far as rigor of coursework, no, I haven’t noticed a difference. Nor have I noticed much of a difference in technical ability between graduates of prestigious schools vs. other schools. I’ve taken graduate level classes at Stanford, and didn’t find them any more difficult than graduate level classes at other schools. The hardest thing about the prestigious schools is getting in in the first place.
A school like Stanford offers courses of varyng degrees of rigor to suit its students with different interests and abilities. I don’t dispute that some of their courses are as plain vanilla as similar ones offered elsewhere. If passing these courses is the goal of some of its students, then I agree that it isn’t probably as challenging as “getting in in the first place” for these students. However, I’m certain there’re other students at Stanford who find better opportunities, including more rigorous courses, to chellenge themselves than at an average school.
In my field there are differences at the graduate level in how classes are taught and how hard the tests are.
I initially attended a small, private school for my graduate degree. I earned a full tuition scholarship and my parents told me that’s where I was going. I hated it. One of the reasons I hated it was because it was just way too easy. I was getting straight A’s without studying…in classes such as neuroanatomy (I am not that smart). I transferred to one of our city colleges and had to study my a$$ off to get a B, and the type of clinicals I was exposed to were way beyond what I would have had at my prior school. There was no comparison, and once I transferred I debated dropping out due to the intensity of the program. Thankfully I stuck it out and have had a successful 30+ year career. Coincidently, some of the students I referenced earlier who are now completing/completed their masters in social work, counseling etc …attend/attended the same school.
NYC has some very rigorous public colleges. My professor who went to MIT undergrad did her PhD at CUNY.
When actual rigor is higher than the admission standards, the college may get a “weed out” reputation, even if there is not any intentional weeding out for capacity limitations or similar reasons, since many admitted students end up having difficulty with the work. The same can apply to certain majors where the minimum rigor level is high but where the admission standards are low (e.g. engineering majors at less selective colleges).
But it also means that “late bloomers” with relatively weak high school records who get their act together in college still have an opportunity to study with rigor in college, rather than being limited in that respect by their high school record.
I agree with you. And “late bloomers” brings up an entirely different conversation (a very important one). There are also those who bloom full speed ahead…and then burn out later in college or shortly after graduation. Thankfully, many do well after taking some time to regroup.
I can’t compare rigor at Stanford to any other schools, but it’s no walk in the park. Our S entered Stanford with very strong HS stats: 4.0 UWGPA (had never received a non-A in his life), 2400 SAT, 3 SAT subject tests with 800. He earned his first non-A grade in his 3rd quarter. He has a framed test for one of the hardest (and most popular) CS classes on Stanford on his wall. The score is something like 63% and he’s very proud of it (granted he was one of three undergrads in a graduate level class)
All schools have their hard and easy classes. The prestigious school will have some classes that are harder than the equivalent classes you’d find at an average school, some classes that are easier than the equivalent classes you’d find at an average school, and some classes that are about the same when it comes to level of difficulty.
That’s really more of an argument for big schools, or schools with specialized programs, than prestigious schools.
Different professors give different styles of tests. Some use the common high school exam system where paying attention in class and basic studying will result in being able to answer ~100% of questions, so professors can use a typical HS like grading scale, such as 90%+ = A. Other professors include questions that most students will not be able to answer correctly. Perhaps nobody in class will get a perfect 100%, and the average grade might be 70%. In the latter class, the average 70% exam grade might be an A.
I had one intro chem class at Stanford where a professor took the latter approach to the extreme. Exams required applying concepts from class in new and original ways that were far more complicated than anything covered in class or the textbook. And there were too many questions for many to finish the full exam in time. This resulted in very low exam grades.
Average grades on exams were usually 30-40%. The highest grade in the class of >100 might be ~80%. However, when a different professor taught that same class in the following year, she used the typical HS 90%-100% exam grade = A scale. While the exams were clearly harder in my class with the average grade = 30-40%, that doesn’t mean the percentage receiving A’s was notably different or the class material was taught more rigorously than usual. It only means the exams differed.
It was my experience that there were a wide variety of different levels or rigor and different grading schemes in different Stanford classes. This is true even in classes where there are not multiple versions of the course. Apparently professors had a lot of discretion to do what they want rather than having each professor teach the class approximately the same way, and do exams approximately the same way. It was my experience, this becomes more true for higher level classes where the professor writes the textbook he/she teaches from.
For example, I had one professor in a graduate level electrical engineering class who mentioned that he didn’t like giving anyone grades below ‘A’ because he didn’t want to discourage students. He tried to make the class a fun and positive atmosphere and inspire students to achieve, beyond just in the class room, particularly in regards to getting students to pursue fields related to his renewable energy specialty. The exams were not challenging, and the class required little studying time.
I also had other classes that were far more challenging and more time consuming, such that the class required a lot of effort to stay above water. I personally didn’t find graduate level classes as whole to be more rigorous or challenging than undergrad. If anything, they were on average less challenging. This may partially relate to being more experienced, and the grad classes typically being similar to my specialty area, rather than being completely out of major.
Sure but that’s a huge difference in the class, unless your point is that everyone gets As and Bs at Stanford, so the outcome is the same. Having too difficult or too easy exams is probably not great in terms of feedback on how much of the material you know, at least for undergrad. I’m sure people at Stanford would this figure this out and just sign up with the easier professor.
May be more of a testament to how students at Stanford see their education. That particular class was CS229 Machine learning by Andrew Ng. It drew over 1000 students.
I wouldn’t generalize like that, Stanford pre-med students have been to know take classes at Santa Clara and other places so their GPA isn’t hurt for med school. Again, which I would expect from Stanford students.
The grade distribution was similar for both the class taught by the “easier” intro chem professor and the “harder” intro chem professor. This was the first class in the chem sequence for freshmen, rather than a specialty. Neither professor wrote the text, so I expect the “easier” and “harder” intro chem professor largely taught from a similar text, covering similar material at a similar level of rigor. If the material, level of rigor, and final grade distribution was approximately the same; is it really fair to call one professor “easier” and the other “harder”? I think it is more accurate to say one gave easier and harder exams, rather than the class being easier/harder.
Students also don’t have the opportunity to sign up for a different professor unless they want to wait another year (or sometimes quarter). Stanford’s (and many similar college’s) usual policy is to have everyone who takes the class that quarter to be in the same lecture, so there is only one professor to choose from who teaches the class that quarter. This particular class had >100 students, as noted in my earlier post. The large lecture is later broken up in to sections led by grad students, for more individual attention.
I would never imagine it was. Also, I know enough Stanford CS grads personally to conclude it’s the excellent program I’d expect it to be. The idea that it’s easier to graduate from a top school than get admitted seems a little silly. It’s clearly true in terms of conditional probability, simply because the likelihood of admission is so low. But few of the students who made it there are slackers.
For that matter, state universities for the most part aren’t that hard. They also have students who just want to go through the motions and leave with a degree–proportionately more of them I think. I made it through Penn State many years ago and spent more time reading science fiction than my text books. Other students may have partied their way through.
I think there is a systemic problem with the very existence of elite institutions since they contribute to a winner-takes-all society. However, I have no doubt about the quality of the education they offer.
Not at all. There was surely another version available that quarter (or the next). What I am saying is that a large number sought out a class known to have challenging content and extremely hard tests in order to be taught by leader in the field. Did the same number flock to other versions? I think not.
There were not any other versions of the class that year, which contributes to the larger enrollment of 882 students (according to Explorer Courses). In 2019-20, there were 3 quarters (Autumn, Spring, and Summer) This reduced quarter enrollment to 375 (Autumn) + 494 (Spring) + 165 (Summer) – similar total, but split over 3 quarters. The spring quarter had the largest enrollment, which was one for which Andrew Ng was not listed as one of the 3 primary instructors. He is only 1 of the 3 primary instructors in the Autumn course.
That said, the enrollment figures sound unusually large. They may be dominated by SCPD professionals working at full/part time tech jobs around Silicon Valley and the world, rather than students. I doubt Andrew Ng’s name or his reputation for giving hard/easy tests has much to do with the large enrollment. I expect it more relates to AI being a hot field in CS.
@WayOutWestMom Don’t medical schools consider taking pre-med courses at a different school from your primary undergraduate school to be an obvious attempt at avoiding rigor or competition in search of easier A grades (whether or not successful)?