<p>how difficult is Northwestern?</p>
<p>Cornell is definitely one of them! From what i hear...u chicago and johns hopkins too...cornell has the reputation at many other schools of "having one of the most rigorous academic programs"</p>
<p>A few thoughts that may help:</p>
<p>a) Any top school can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. Course selection and how you approach school are key factors. If you really enjoy your courses, then the workload can be demanding and you won't mind. </p>
<p>b) The tech schools are hard because science and engineering courses anywhere are hard and that's mostly all you'll be taking. So yeah, overall, they are really hard.</p>
<p>c) The reason Swarthmore is hard has nothing to do with grades. It's because a relatively high percentage of students (now and historically) enjoy the courses and want to be challenged. The profs (over time) pick up on that and challenge their students. So the courses are demanding, but that's why people go there. The biggest complaint about visiting professors is that they don't push the students as much as they like.</p>
<p>On top of that, the classes are so small that there is nowhere to hide. Going to a seminar with 12 students without having read the assignment is kind of like that dream where you go to school without having put on your pants. There's no "back of the lecture hall" where you can go unnoticed.</p>
<p>Another reason is that Swarthmore's unique honors program is seriously demanding in terms of seminars, senior thesis, and oral and written examinations by outside experts. Rather than the "Anywhere else it would have been an A" motto, a better one for the honors program is "Anywhere else it would have been a Masters". </p>
<p>Having said that, any reasonably intelligent student who actually does the assignments, contributes to the discussion in class, and makes an effort on the papers can expect B's (or better). It's not like the work is impossible and you don't have to be a genius. For most courses, you'd really have to try to flunk, as in not do the work.</p>
<p>One small correction: Swarthmore's graduation rate is a little lower -- in the 92% range on average. I think the reason is that if you don't want to actually study in college, it's a tough place and you'll probably transfer. On top of that, anything below a C- is a failing grade at Swat and you have to have a C average to graduate. Many schools are more lenient. For example, a D is a passing grade at Yale. To graduate at Williams, you have to have gotten a C- or better in half your courses. So if you are a serious slacker trying to scrape by (or in the rare case where you find yourself truly over your head for whatever reason), you may come to the conclusion that you aren't going to get a diploma and decide to transfer to somewhere with a little more of a "cruise-mode" option.</p>
<p>So, can we infer that the tough part of going to HYP is getting in to begin with? And that after you are in, you have a near certainty of graduating with an inflated gpa? (why do employers and graduate/professional schools think that this is good?)</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>why do employers and graduate/professional schools think that this is good?<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Possibly because they believe that the top schools selected many of the top students in the first place. So if they look to HYP grads chances are they are going to get one of those top kids - who are still going to be smart, and possibly high achieving, whether they were subjected to tough grading in college or not.</p>
<p>I'm not saying this is neccessarily actually true, but it may explain HYP the employers' and grad schools' motivation.</p>
<p>Well, I can say my state school-educated professional family assumes HYP are the hardest schools. I constantly try to correct them but I don't think they believe me.</p>
<p>Northwestern University is DIFFICULT! Swarthmore may be difficult, but itsn't it pass/fail the first year?</p>
<p>Swat is pass/fail first semester. Even still their average GPA is above 3.0, but I think they do tend to recruit very smart, motivated students. I know the average reading for a discussion course seems to be like 200 pg/week, and that's more than a lot of schools, though not impossible.</p>
<p>My D goes to carnegie mellon in mellon college of science and i think you need to study all the time and incorporate that into your social life....and while she is a girl, the boys DO NOT go to Pitt or Duquesne to socialize..why should they when they have the brainiest and cutest girls on campus!</p>
<p>My favorite parts about this thread have been the excuse that a school is hard, but is a public school, so therefore must not be as hard. As to the hardest school, well, academically, doesn't that depend on many, many things? Do you all just assume that science is no matter what more difficult than the wishy-washy humanities? I'd love to see how well the kids at MIT and Cal Tech do at St. Johns or Reed. Both are difficult in different ways.</p>
<p>And St. Johns, although not as hard to get into as the elite liberal arts schools, should definitely be on the list of most difficult. Their very unique programs makes you read, think, and communicate well to get out alive. You have to be educated in many different fields, from music to literature to physics and natural science.</p>
<p>All good engineering/Hard Science schools basically</p>
<p>Case western is pretty brutal as well</p>
<p>I may not be the brightest crayon in the box, but Cornell, was like a track coach that wanted you to run extra laps after the race and then took you over to the cross country course. People who thought they knew how to study, found a whole new reality. Time warps - so you can take four hours of class, three hours of home work for every hour in class, eat(while reading...and sometimes sleeping) attending guest lectures and study some more... I went to Cornell with better than 20-20 vision and left with bi-focals..</p>
<p>The other side to this...
One year while I was there - felt like a suicide a month..not including the traffic accidents. Nothing like being a 20 year old failure because your grade level slipped below a 4.0, remarkably sad.</p>
<p>i think it depends on what grades you want to make. i also think it depends on departments at schools. I know a girl left Swarthmore b/c she didn't find the profs/classrooms high-caliber enough. she likes UChicago better. She's in anthro. I think Swarthmore is more rigorous/work than UChicago for Polisci. I'm not sure about sciences. UChicago is perhaps not particularly heavy in writing, but similar book-a-week reading and tough math/sciences. I'd like to h ear more about this...</p>
<p>Chicago is known to make its students write.</p>
<p>Yeah those tech schools seem to keep the work coming all the time.</p>
<p>Anthro is combined with the Sociology dept. at Swarthmore. Sociology is very strong (the top undergrad per capita producers of Sociology PhDs in the country). Interestingly, the three colleges in the Tri-Co consortium (Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr) are 1, 2, and 3 in that order in per capita Sociology PhD production in the US.</p>
<p>There are not many Anthro majors at Swarthmore. Someone seriously into Anthropology at Swarthmore would probably want to take some upper level courses at Bryn Mawr, where it is a particular specialty. Bryn Mawr is the top undergrad producer of Anthro PhDs in the country and second place isn't even close.</p>
<p>"Bryn Mawr is the top undergrad producer of Anthro PhDs in the country and second place isn't even close." </p>
<p>You kept "per capita" until this point. Is it no longer the case, by this do you mean that Bryn Mawr is the top undergrad producer of Antrho PhDs in the country full-stop?</p>
<p>No, per capita, sorry. Bryn Mawr only averaged 288 graduating seniors per year over that period of time. There is no way they could lead in raw totals.</p>
<p>Raw totals, they were tied for #9 with the same number of Anthro PhDs as Chicago and UPenn. One less than Stanford and UCLA. Two less than Yale and UColorado. </p>
<p>Here are the top ten in raw totals. The first number is the total grads over the ten year period. The second number is the number of future Anthro PhDs over that period.</p>
<p>University of California-Berkeley 56,363 / 119
Harvard University 17,855 / 79
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 53,612 / 66
University of Texas at Austin 73,365 / 51
Yale University 12,941 / 50
University of Colorado at Boulder 41,410 / 50
Stanford University 16,662 / 48
University of California-Los Angeles 54,970 / 48
Bryn Mawr College 2,879 / 47
University of Chicago 8,270 / 47
University of Pennsylvania 25,853 / 47</p>
<p>The PhD totals for some of the academically-oriented small LACs is really quite stunning when you see the differences in student body size in black and white.</p>
<p>BTW, there are many things that PhD production doesn't tell you. But, I do think it is an excellent "proxy" for how "hard" or "academically-rigorous" a school is. When you look at the overall per capita PhD production, the correlation with schools that are known to be academically challenging stands out.</p>
<p>Just clarifying. And yes, the LACs are stunning for, amonst other things, their placement and PhD production per capita.</p>
<p>not to say the top LACs aren't rigorous, as in you probably learn a lot, but i definitely think part of the reason LACs produce more PhDs is b/c w/ friendly profs and plenty of guidance towards research opps academia seems less intimidating -which in a way is sort of the opposite of challenging, again not necessarily bad or good but different from the day-to-day reality of a research scientist</p>