<p>Which university requires their students to study 24/7, has a very rigorous curriculum, etc.?</p>
<p>Oxbridge are the most prestigious (don't know who wins). There's no gen ed curriculum across the pond, so I don't know how you'd weigh difficulty. :)</p>
<p>I've heard that people who go to IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) view Harvard/Cambridge as their safeties...</p>
<p>They had a story on 60 minutes about IIT, and said some guy who applied didn't make it, and settled for Cornell, making a big deal about how an IIT hopeful and an Ivy League school as his safety.</p>
<p>Except that doesn't really make any sense. If you got into Yale, but not Princeton, you wouldn't say that Yale was your safety school, would you?</p>
<p>Yea.</p>
<p>the rigor of the curriculum and the difficulty of the work of a school doesn't necessarily correlate with its prestige. actually, far from it.</p>
<p>off the top of my head, swarthmore, uchicago, reed, and st. johns college (md, nm) are a couple of the most intellectual colleges in the nation. there is major grade deflation at swarthmore, and uchicago's curriculum is very rigorous. reed and st. johns are special cases and i won't go into them, but most of the ivy league have grade inflation (except for cornell).</p>
<p>When it comes to Harvard vs. Yale, I think many Harvard students viewed Yale as a safety. When I went to a Harvard vs. Yale Football game the Harvard fans were yelling safety school lol. Ivy League School a safety = crazy.</p>
<p>Indian Institute of Technology is definitely the most prestigious university. My dad has a PhD from there, and he says that his colleagues who were in America applied but were denied admission...so they settled for Harvard and some others...</p>
<p>The competition is so intense over there (India) that they have specific IIT "prep schools." You enter them 2 years before you will be applying to IIT, and class starts at 4 AM everyday until 8 AM. Then of course you go to your normal college/high school... And if you are late to the academy, even at 4:01 AM, they lock the doors on you. It's very strict discipline that they employ over there. But believe or not, the 80%+ graduates from those prep schools end up getting admission to IIT.</p>
<p>Of course, shash_rao has told us that the competition is ramped up by those preparatory schools, for the actual test is not as difficult as some of the prep questions.
Japan's University of Tokyo is also ridiculously difficult to get into.</p>
<p>IIT is harder to get into than any university in the world, I believe I read somewhere that only 1 in 650 gets in.</p>
<p>While it does not have the name of Harvard or Oxford, it is extremely difficult.</p>
<p>so most prestigious in America is prolly Harvard, but hardest in the world is prolly IIT and still Harvard (cuz the name is so popular).</p>
<p>w/o any doubt the Indian Institute of Technology - agree</p>
<p>I remember reading some Time or BusinessWeek article about ITT awhile back and how some man set up a special prep school that accepted talented people with potential from rural villages at a young age. And then they spend years just prepping for the exam or something. Wow.</p>
<p>^ crazy...... i guess in India, the exam is EVERYTHING? eh/</p>
<p>From Wikipedia:
"The IITs were ranked third-best worldwide for technology, after MIT and Caltech"</p>
<p>ITT sounds very nice, but I doubt most prestigious or most difficult. Difficulty is based on who you are, or what you do. If you are talking about the amount of work, I highly doubt anyone here can say which college gives the most work, as that depends on your courses, major(s), etc. If you are triple majoring at the Colorado School of Mines, you will obviously have much more work than someone single-majoring at Harvard.</p>
<p>What's up with these Indian fanboys and their IIT's. IIT definitely lacks in the prestige department. Stacked up with Ivies and other top American colleges, IIT lacks US recognition and even less global recognition (save India, ofc). </p>
<p>Studying 4 hours a day, on top of regular schoolwork, for preparation for a test is pretty pathetic. IIT's end up taking people who study the hardest and can master the IIT entrance exam and not necessarily the most talented. (At least it's not affected by affirmative action crap that promotes for traits and not achievements). </p>
<p>IIT is cool and all. They are definitely good schools, but I don't see IIT being more rigorous than serious majors at top US colleges (no econ, polisci etc. bull****).</p>
<p>Anyone else in any higher level science in high school? Then try to do some of the problems on the IIT test for admission-</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mathiit.com/PDF/IIT/IIT2004M.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.mathiit.com/PDF/IIT/IIT2004M.pdf</a></p>
<p>If these problems don't indicate the rigour, I don't know what will. These problems are for HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS and I doubt that these are insanely hard even for college people.
Enjoy!</p>
<p>When I first read the title, I KNEW that this thread was gonna be filled with IIT fans - all filled in with how HYP is NOTHING compared to it, and all that jazz.</p>
<p>And the link. I knew there would be a link. With math problems. And the person saying how difficult it is and how some noble math genius professor from harvard couldnt even solve it and how indian highschool seniors have to solve millions of these kinds of questions.</p>
<p>But I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with it. Indian pride. If Seoul national university was all that fancy, I'd talk about it like that as well (korean pride)!</p>
<p>Peking (Beijing) University has been recognized as the best university in all of Asia.</p>
<p>Yeah so how many people actually looked at the link. Now how many people actually thought through how to do the problems? I'm a senior here in the US (granted Indian, and dad went to IIT) and I can do the majority (90%) of hte problems. Now the problem is </p>
<p>A) Time, I would finish a little over the time limit, but I'm confident I could nail it down if I actually studied this enough.</p>
<p>B) small things. There is a little different terminology you will notice here or there, but that kind of thing would never be a problem if you were in a prep school.</p>
<p>IIT and HYP are very different. IIT will give you a good technical training, but HYP will teach you how to succeed in a people world. I'd also say that MIT is better than IIT overall. This is because kids often get into MIT because they know how to think through near impossible problems, not because they are good at nailing out problem sets (although they are generally excellent at that).</p>
<p>Holy s*** I could never do those problems ever. Well I havn't taken physics yet and that advanced math stuff but seriously that looks hard.
This summer I went to France and this girl from Latvia was there and she was like "I want to go to Harvard because in my country it i considered the best university in the world... and second to Cambridge"</p>
<p>I think prestige and rigor of a college are two different things. In China, some of the most famous schools are Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, and MIT. (Other schools such as Caltech, Stanford, and Yale are also well-known). If you asked a random person if they knew IIT, I'd say there would be a high chance of him or her having no idea at all. On the other hand, if you ask them about Harvard or Cambridge, they immediately recognize that name. In the prestige department, I don't think IIT and Harvard/Oxbridge can be compared. I don't know why, but that's just the way it is in mainstream culture. </p>
<p>Anyways, in terms of rigor, I have heard that the process of getting into IIT is RIDICULOUSLY HARD. In fact, I just took a look at those problems on <a href="http://www.mathiit.com/PDF/IIT/IIT2004M.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.mathiit.com/PDF/IIT/IIT2004M.pdf</a>
To be honest, the only section I could understand most of the problems was the chemistry section. Even in that, I am guessing I could do about 5-6 of the problems. In the mathematics section, I took a quick look over the problems, and there was only one question where I could immediately see how to get the solution (Question 19).</p>