<p>No I'm not talking about sucides. So what is it? Why?</p>
<p>If you are talking once you enter the school, it really depends on the major. </p>
<p>At UC Berkeley certain majors like engineering and pre-med are as cutthroat as they get. Others majors which I shall not speak of are all full of cutters and stoners where it is really easy to get As.</p>
<p>The term "cut-throat" is an ugly and pejorative term that suggests that the students are in such intense competition with each other for high grades that they hope their classmates do worse than they do, or even worse, act in a way to sabotage their classmates' success. This makes for an AWFUL atmosphere, but it is not the same as a "rigorous" college where the curriculum is challenging and the students compete only with themselves. </p>
<p>Off the top of my head, Cornell, MIT, Caltech, Swarthmore, Chicago, and JHU are known for their academic rigor.</p>
<p>I think there are very few schools that deserve the designation "cut-throat".</p>
<p>Yeah, there are a lot of rigorous schools out there....but most have friendly student bodies. It's the people that end up on the wrong side of the bell curve that blame their failure on the success of other students.</p>
<p>based on workload or student competition?</p>
<p>princeton review lists:
"These Students never stop studying:"
Reed
Webb INstitute
Cal Tech
Olin
Harvey Mudd
St Johns (NM)
Wabash
Marlboro
Middlebury
MIT
Carleton
Grinnell
USMA
Haverford
Swarthmore
Bryn Mawr
Davidson
USAFA
Rice
Whitman</p>
<p>MIT. Just a guess.</p>
<p>Most rigorous colleges:</p>
<p>Caltech > MIT > Cornell = Swarthmore = Berkeley (engrg) > Chicago</p>
<p>rtkysg:</p>
<p>I think your list is fairly close for rigor, though why you used Berkeley's engineering program to compare to Swarthmore and Chicago I simply do not know. I can assure you that the average student at Berkeley can find a way to get through without working very hard at all. This is not so at CalTech, MIT, Swarthmore,and Chicago. I would put Cornell a step below those.</p>
<p>My interpretation of "cutthroat", like SorGirl's, is that students are in competition with each other, and that they will even do nasty things to each other to ensure their own good grades and good standing.</p>
<p>Although MIT is a challenging school, its environment is assuredly not competitive -- it's incredibly collaborative, cooperative, and friendly. I mean, problem sets are often so difficult that students have to work together, so there's little point in trying to compete with other people -- you need their help.</p>
<p>Ok I might have to say maybe Harvard. I've never been there and this is only hearsay so this isn't my personal opinion people...</p>
<p>JHU, large and good public schools, MIT, Cornell, Reed, Chicago, Swarthmore, CalTech</p>
<p>Academic rigor does not at all translate into cut-throat, sabotaging activities. While all the schools that bob mentions are known for their academic rigor, except from minor anaecdotal evidence about JHU and Cornell, I've never heard about any others being at all overly competitive or cut-throat.</p>
<p>I agree with most of the opinions expressed so far. I can say with certainty that Cornell engineering is not "cut-throat" in the sense that students try to undermine each other's efforts. On the contrary, although the vast majority of work (problem sets) and all of the exams are individual efforts, students are glad when others do well. Colloborative projects are kinda fun, everybody does their share.</p>
<p>But, Cornell engineering is demanding and rigorous. Even the brightest students are pushed to the limit. It's rather painful, stressful, exhausting. There is no grade inflation in engineering. I would guess the average gpa is about 3.0.</p>
<p>On the other hand, during the process of applying to grad schools, I heard positive comments from graduate faculty at other universities about the lack of grade inflation at Cornell. One said the Cornell faculty were "excellent educators". One reviewer said the committee take's into account the tough grading in Cornell engineering.</p>
<p>However, I also know that at the large publics (Illinois and Michigan and Berkeley for example) they have a gpa cutoff as part of their initial screening. The Cornell gpa could hurt you when you apply to the top 5-10 large publics, or any grad school that has an initial gpa filter. The cutoff at Illinois was 3.6. Illinois had 1270 PhD applicants in electrical engineering alone. </p>
<p>There are quite a few genius types coming out of Cornell engineering with less than 3.6.</p>
<p>As Golden Bear suggested, it depends on the major or field of study as much as the college. It also depends on if the course is graded on a curve, which many of the large intro bio or chem courses are. I doubt an English major at Swarthmore or Reed will see "rigor" the same way a pre-med or engineer would at Cornell. In the sciences at both Chicago and Cornell, you will have to work very hard to get an A; you might even need to jeopardize your health. Both schools pride themselves on this, and it starts with the professors whose syllabi are very demanding. They do not give A's out like candy at some other schools, but this does not translate into being cut-throat.</p>
<p>No grade inflation at cornell? That is a joke. Any school or major where the average GPA is above a "B" is inflated. One needs to be careful, one cannot go to a school with inflated grades and then talk about how academically rigorous the school is. It's pretty much an either-or situation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.highereducation.org/cros...igh_marks.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.highereducation.org/cros...igh_marks.shtml</a>
"Despite this, A's and B's now account for 80 percent of all grades awarded at the University of Illinois, up from 63 percent in 1967. At Cornell, the proportion of A's has more than doubled in the last three decades, even though "most faculty would be hard pressed to argue that today's Cornell students are demonstrably better than Cornell students in the past," as vice provost Isaac Kramnick told the campus newspaper. "</p>
<p>To put a plug in for the Service Academies (West Point, Naval Academy, Air Force Academy), your GPA not only comes from class scores but also physical and military scores -- including grades from the required trips during the summer to work in the military.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No grade inflation at cornell? That is a joke. Any school or major where the average GPA is above a "B" is inflated. One needs to be careful, one cannot go to a school with inflated grades and then talk about how academically rigorous the school is. It's pretty much an either-or situation.
[quote]
</p>
<p>either-or??? This logic is so faulty that it's not worth the effort at correcting.</p>
<p>But we must also remember that the caliber of students entering Cornell in the past 30 years has increased dramatically.</p>
<p>The caliber of students entering Cornell has not increased dramatically in the last 30 years. After accounting for the 1995 recentering, the avg SAT has risen 30 points in the last 20 years. This is something, but wouldn't call it dramatically better to the point that the whole grading scale should be reconfigured.</p>
<p>i would say Canegie (****ing) Mellon...they are soo damn picky to say that they are only ranked 22...which is good ...but not ivy league..lol
Their avg. gpa of incoming freshy is 3.95!</p>