<p>if you enroll in schools with honor colleges.... they can be rough.</p>
<p>I'll be going to Georgia Tech this fall so I don't have any firsthand experience, but the students I talked to there always talked about how unbelievably hard the school is, and how it was rare to graduate in just 4 years. Five or six years to graduate is apparently much more common. It wasn't just the 'lower end' of the students I was talking to who though that either, one guy I talked to was a President's Scholar who had similar comments about the difficulty of GT, and to get that scholarship you could probably get into any school in the US.</p>
<p>Our grading is pretty brutal here at Wake Forest too. The problem I think is that we aren't an engineering school (we don't even have an engineering major), and engineering GPA's are usually lower anyway.</p>
<p>Murderous 5 course per term schedule. Comprehensive language exam requirement. Tight course requirements for first two years. Student body of hyperkinetic overachievers that is as talented as any other university in the world.</p>
<p>don't they have the sort of grading system where only a certain % of students can get A's, B's, C's, and D's at Wake?</p>
<p>Caltech is hell. No other school even comes close.</p>
<p>I don't know if no other school even comes close, but I would agree that Caltech is definitely one of the most intense.</p>
<p>i would agree that engineering schools are crazy, but i think a lot of it is that math and sciences are almost always harder than humanities.<br>
Also, i will agree that the top engineering schools are extremely tough even aside from my above statement.</p>
<p>Sklog,
Your comment reminds me of my Ap psych class. It is insane. It is the first year it had been taught at my school, and so the teacher makes it really hard. I mean we have a lot of smart people in my class (and the other period), and 2/3 of the Class has a C,D, or an F. The girl i sit next to has a C this semester and she is going to Brown next year (which is obviously saying somethin). I got a B both terms, but it is insane. Our tests made the AP test look like a joke. Anyway, Yeah there were 4 As last semester out of 76 students. final grades arent in (tommorow is the last day of school for me) but 5 kids have As right now, and they are all less than 92% A-.</p>
<p>Super hard. If college was that hard for me i would die (but i dont plan on going somewhere that hard).
(and i think one of the kids in the other period who is going to stanford got a B).</p>
<p>And i learned like crazy in that class and probably had a few hours of studying a night (not homework, just studying...and im not in a private highschool). and i barely managed a B</p>
<p>Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley's Law School) had a pretty good scale by which they could assess the difficulty of getting an A certain schools. Schools with higher numbers mean it is more difficult and thus are relatively grade deflated: </p>
<p>Swarthmore 89.5
Williams 89.0
Duke 88.5
Carleton 88.0
Colgate 88.0
J. Hopkins 87.5
Chicago 87.0
Dartmouth 87.0
Wesleyan 87.0
Cornell 86.5
Harvard 86.5
Middlebury 86.0
Princeton 86.0
Bates 85.5
MIT 85.5
Haverford 85.0
Pomona 85.0
Virginia 85.0
Amherst 84.5
Reed 84.5
Vanderbilt 84.5
Wm & Mary 84.5
Bowdoin 83.5
Tufts 83.5
Vassar 83.5
Bryn Mawr 83.0
Hamilton 83.0
Oberlin 83.0
Rice 83.0
U. Pennsylvania 83.0
Clrmt. McK. 82.5
Yale 82.5
Brandeis 82.0
Northwestern 82.0
Colby 81.5
Michigan 81.5
Notre Dame 81.5
Wash. U. 81.0
Barnard 80.5
Columbia 80.5
Stanford 80.5
Brown 80.0
Georgetown 80.0
Smith 80.0
Wellesley 80.0
Emory 79.5
U. North Carolina 79.5
Whitman C. 79.5
Rochester 79.0
UC Berkeley 78.5
UC San Diego 78.5
Illinois 78.0
SUNY Bing 78.0
Texas 78.0
Trinity U. 77.5
Boston College 77.0
UC S. Barbara 77.0
Wisconsin 77.0
Florida 76.5
U. Washington 76.5
Santa Clara 76.0
Geo. Wash. 75.5
UC Davis 75.5
UCLA 75.5
Colorado 75.0
Michigan State 75.0
Boston University 74.5
Cal Poly SLO 74.5
Massachusetts 74.0
Penn State 74.0
Iowa 73.5
Purdue 73.5
SMU 73.5
SUNY Albany 73.5
BYU 73.0
Minnesota 73.0
Ohio State 73.0
Oregon 73.0
UC Irvine 73.0
Indiana 72.5
NYU 72.0
SUNY Buff 72.0
SUNY Stony 72.0
Mills 71.5
American 71.0
Arizona 71.0
Loyola Mary. 71.0
Maryland 71.0
Fordham 70.5
Kansas 70.0
Syracuse 70.0
USC 70.0
Arizona St. 69.5
CS San Diego 69.5
Catholic U. 69.5
Oklahoma 69.5
Pacific 69.5
Hofstra 69.0
UC Riverside 68.5
Utah 68.5
CS Chico 68.5
Miami 68.0
New Mexico 68.0
San Diego 68.0
CS Northridge 67.0
Pepperdine 67.0
CS San Fran. 66.0
CS Sacramento 65.0
Hawaii 64.5
Denver 63.5
CS Fullerton 63.0
CS Hayward 63.0
CS Long Beach 63.0
CS San Jose 63.0
CS Fresno 62.5
St. Mary's 61.5
CCNY 59.0
CS LA 58.5
Howard 57.5
San Francisco 57.5</p>
<p>Also, there have been many studies into grade deflation, althought this is relatively tricky wording. Most schools in the nation have experienced an increase or "inflation" of grades. Some more than others. While most schools are grade inflated, it is better to talk about relative grade inflation. What would be consdered deflated schools (Chicago, MIT, Hopkins, Cornell, Swarthmore) in reality have no to some grade inflation. While more inflated schools had a more marked inflation.</p>
<p>As someone explained already, the difference in difficulty between majors is much greater than that between schools.</p>
<p>Baolt Hall "study" is pretty useless. They should stick to what they know: law; leave this to statisticians, actuaries, or advanced business students/profs with strong statistical analysis background.</p>
<p>Also, grade distribution is heavily dependent on major. The little Baolt Hall study doesn't capture any of that. Cornell is high on that study but look at the kind of median grades for the AEM school: <a href="http://www.registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeFA06.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeFA06.pdf</a></p>
<p>Wow. That's pretty outrageous. Not only were there virtually no classes where the median grade was in the C range, there were classes with 30+ people where the median grade was in the A+ range, and many classes in the A range. That' s just out of control. (I'm referring to the link posted above)</p>
<p>university of chicago is NOT as academically rigorous as it is reported to be, the average GPA there is a 3.26, almost exactly average for a university:</p>
<p>nice find coolguy</p>
<p>and norcalguy, i would say that makes perfect sense. Science/engineering majors are definitely some of the toughest</p>
<p>elsijfdl, i dont know if i will believe your claim. Because the impression i get from everything i read about U of C is that everyone works their butts of all the time to get their grades. </p>
<p>I will be able to comment on that for sure in a few weeks, because i am going there for summer school on june 16-july7</p>
<p>and yeah, that cornell study must be ridiculous. I guarantee more than half of those classes are have A- medians or greater.
that is ridiculous</p>
<p>
[quote]
elsijfdl, i dont know if i will believe your claim. Because the impression i get from everything i read about U of C is that everyone works their butts of all the time to get their grades.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>first of all it's not a claim, it's corroborated by the article i linked to (a U of C article, mind you).</p>
<p>secondly, just because kids there don't go out doesn't mean they are working harder. You really think kids at u of c deserve their grades more than kids at northwestern, cornell, etc. with very equivalent SAT scores and equal college GPAs but who also know how to have fun?</p>
<p>Ummm, but one big difference between the similarily bright and intelligent students at other top schools is that they arent going to the school with the motto "where fun comes to die".</p>
<p>Also, im not trying to go all ranking on you, but Princeton ranks university of chicago as #1 best overall academic experience for undergrads. It beat others on the list including reed, columbia, stanford, swarthmore, middlebury, amherst, MIT and harvey mudd.</p>
<p>I try to stay away from rankings and all because rankings usually dont mean anything on proving wha tcolleges are better than others, but when every book i have ever read on different colleges, articles about university of chicago make it seem notorious for being as intellectual as Hell. </p>
<p>Once when my uncle asked me where i would like to go to college i said u of chicago, and he was like " Whoooahhwhooahwhoah. Ur not going go go there. That school is the hardest school around."</p>
<p>And he went to columbia undergrad. He told me that he sat in on some classes, and spent a day in the shoes of a U of Chicago student when he was looking at schools back in the 80s, and said it was too intense. </p>
<p>My uncle is one of the most intellectual guys i know, and made it through columbia fine (with like a 3.6 or somethin), and said chicago was crazy.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, im not trying to go all ranking on you, but Princeton ranks university of chicago as #1 best overall academic experience for undergrads.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>northwestern was #1 three years ago, uchicago wasn't even on the list last year, that "ranking" is completely worthless, it's based on a limited number of student surveys for that year, and completely changes year to year</p>
<p>
[quote]
articles about university of chicago make it seem notorious for being as intellectual as Hell.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>intellectual, yes, more deserving of A's.. no.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My uncle is one of the most intellectual guys i know, and made it through columbia fine (with like a 3.6 or somethin), and said chicago was crazy.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>with all due respect, your uncle is not an authority on this issue, and he obviously adheres to the perception outlined in that article as 'innacurate'</p>
<p>Chicago gets the students in with the lowest GPAs (on the nation scene) into med school. That says something about the curriculum difficulty, no?</p>