It definitely was for me, and I really hope it is for my kids. I only had to take one math class in college, which certainly helped. I didn’t like HS, and didn’t particularly enjoy college either. We were told that we should expect to spend 2 hours working outside class for every hour in class; I rarely spent more than an hour per week outside of class per course. I wasn’t a kid with a low GPA but high test scores; my son out scored me on the SAT by hundreds of points. My take is that I am good at skimming and summarizing. I can scan text and pick out the most relevant information quickly, which serves me well as a librarian. But the “close reading” they talk about in education today? That’s excruciating to me. I didn’t really find college any more interesting, so that doesn’t explain why I had an easier time. I’ve heard more than a few people say college was easier, and they didn’t all go to rinky-dink schools. I went to a small LAC that, while not as good a school as the admissions office would have one believe, was probably a step above the local directional state university. How many of you parents had the same experience?
I wouldn’t say college was easier but I was more interested in what I was doing. After the basic math, science and English were done, I could move on to things that interested me. Even the history classes I took in college were more topic specific than general history which made it more interesting to me.
Neatness doesn’t count.
In high school, there are many factors irrelevant to mastering the material that go into the grade.
Sometimes it Is the scheduling in college that helps people to do better. If a person is naturally a night owl and has to get up for a 7:30 or 8 am start at high school, then that person may not do very well. In college the night owl can choose afternoon and evening classes and consequently may do better because the schedule follows their natural rhythms better
College was harder for me than high school, but I preferred college, at least once I got through breadth classes and into my major. And I loved law school! My older daughter hated high school but thrived in college; she found a school at which she could design her own major and have contracts with teachers, instead of having courses graded by tests.
Students who were in IB diploma programs often say that college is easier than high school. I think this is because this is a simple statement of fact.
Also, they can sleep more in college.
Four, or maybe five subjects instead of seven or maybe eight subjects to keep track of makes life easier for just about anyone.
@happymomof1, that’s a good point and one I’ve brought up to my kids. That wasn’t the case way back when I was in HS; I think we needed 20 credits to graduate. I think I took six classes at a time one year, which I also did in college.
My academic workload was definitely much greater in college, and in addition I was responsible for laundry and stuff my mother used to do for me, so daily life also took more time. That said, the lack of group work that used to plague me in high school was an improvement, as was a more positive social atmosphere. I would not have had a great impression of a college that was easier than my high school, and my high school was pretty decent for the times.
It’s 4 times harder for me to adjust. For my kids who are brought up here, it’s not as bad.
In practice, college workloads have gone down since decades ago. This is not necessarily because standards have been lowered; technology has made doing the same work take less time. For example, looking up references used to mean going to the library when it is open, looking for things in the card catalog or microfilm, and looking through the books to see if they contain the desired information (or you may have to request a book through inter-library loan if it is not in your campus’ library). Now, a web search any time of day or night from your dorm room will tell you what books might have what you are looking for. When it comes time to write up your paper or other assignment, you can type it in your word processor and correct errors easily, rather than typing it in a typewriter, using correction fluid or some such to correct spelling errors (and throw out whole pages if you forgot a line or few somewhere). Computer science students no longer have to wait very long periods of time for their computer programs to compile and run, given that a cheap desktop of laptop computer in one’s dorm room has many orders of magnitude more computing power than the computers shared by whole classes of students decades ago.
But still, many students do find college harder than in high school, due to both the need to self-motivate and manage one’s time on one’s own. This is often the downfall of many who relied on their parents and teachers to keep them on track in high school, especially if they go live away from their parents at a residential college with its new social distractions. However, those who were already self-motivated and had good time management skills on their own (i.e. not because their parents set their schedules for them) may find college academics more interesting, since they have a much broader selection of courses to choose from, rather than the relatively regimented selection in high school, where curricular variation among college bound students mainly takes the form of possibly being a year (or more) advanced in something like math or foreign language, choosing an honors course in one’s stronger or favorite subjects, and/or choosing a different foreign language. High school courses may also have a lot of busywork that is uninteresting and useless for the best students.
My son just finished his freshman year at a USNWR top twenty university, and his GPA was higher this year than any year of high school, and his GPA second semester was higher than any semester in high school.
Reasons (in no particular order):
– Only 12 to 15 hours of classes a week. Gives him more time to do homework and also enjoy himself.
– For that reason and many others, he was much happier in college than in high school. He went to a small private high school, and never really found a good group of friends. Much bigger selection of kids to choose from in college. He’s happier, and doing better.
– More of a meritocracy. I think that in high school you develop a bit of a reputation, and get put into a certain academic stratum. His papers were thus B+ papers, because he was a B+ student. He’s had a fresh start in college, and feels like he’s graded more objectively.
– Did I mention that he’s happier?
Standard load at my college was four courses, it was so easy I took five and audited a sixth every year after freshman year.
Why was it easier?
I went to a good prep school where I had to write a 3-5 page paper every single week for English among other things.
I only took courses I was interested in
My major included studio art courses which never felt like work - though they did take more hours
Even the hard courses (physics, comp sci) were things I really wanted to know
Architecture grad school OTOH was ten times harder than college.
My older son a CS major definitely worked harder in college than high school, but also enjoyed it much more. CMU was quite generous with the AP credits so he had very few gen ed requirements to fulfill.
Younger son worked much harder in college. He took a killer course freshman year and always had to put in many extra hours to get Arabic to stick.
It’s all in the perspective. I went to Berkeley and I thought college was easier than high school. It wasn’t that the classes were “easier” so much as it was a relief to me to only have 4 or 5 classes a semester instead of 7. How great was it to only meet for each of those classes 2 or 3 times a week? How great to be relieved from all the daily busy work assigned by 7 high school teachers daily! On top of that, I wasn’t pulled in 10 different directions any longer. I didn’t have all my household chores. I didn’t have the multiple hobbies/talents I’d collected and was expected to foster through high school even though I’d no intention of spending my life as a science Olympian or concert flutist. College felt way easier largely because I had so much more time.
My D found first semester a breeze but over-compensated 2nd semester by adding more classes and committing to a ridiculous amount of activities and projects. She managed to keep her GPA high but lesson learned… she can’t be in college and live like she did in high school.
High schoolers can live a crazy lives. The AP system’s idea of “rigor” has less to do with complexity and depth of material and more to do with massive amounts of paper work. The heights of accomplishment kids are expected to reach in their activities can be insane… especially when kids are expected to reach those levels in 3 or 4 different areas at once. What a relief it can be to go to college and become an adult who only has to do well in school, maybe have some easy part-time job, maybe even be in an intramural sport for fun.
Hmmm, didn’t seem like that when I was in high school long ago, but I only took three AP courses (out of about seven offered, though three of the seven were three different foreign languages, so it is unlikely that anyone would take more than one of these three). But perhaps the proliferation of newer AP courses, many of which take a whole year to cover what a college course covers in a semester, may “need” more “filler” work.
However, it does seem from various posters that IB workloads are extremely high, even though they do not generally get to more advanced material than AP or college frosh courses do.
My personal experience (a million years ago) is that college was much easier…but I went to a very hard high school (i didn’t know that until i went out into the larger world) and I was just a happier person in college.
That said, i’ve been thinking about my kid entering college this fall…she’s a smart cookie but – given the rigorous college she’s attending – it’s going to be a big transition for her. I already told her to take advantage of the free tutors starting week 1 and never take it lightly.
@ucbalumnus Yes, when we were kids AP’s were quite different than today. I took 3 in high school. The only 3 offered and only in 12th grade. Loved the classes. Quality teachers, tiny classes with the strongest students, interesting and challenging assignments, very little in the way of busy work. Still, I had 4 additional honors classes senior year that assigned work and so college still felt like less.
D’s experience with AP’s 20 years later was completely different. Huge classes including students that really weren’t academically accelerated, barely adequate teachers, 4 to 5 hours a night for a single AP class, ridiculous and repetitive work aimed at micro-managing the student’s learning process… and tons of it. Our research on the local AP climate caused us to move our D into duel enrollment and enroll our S into a project based school that doesn’t believe in AP’s and yet sends kids off to all the top schools on a regular basis.
I found my AP’s 20+years ago equivalent to my first year college experience in regards to the work expected but for my D and many in today’s generation, leaving AP’s behind is a great relief and college can be less stressful and thus feel “easier” even if they may actually be dealing with more complex themes and assignments.
I think college classes are harder, but I actually care more in college so I guess it’s easier for me to get better grades?
There were no AP classes in my HS; they started them the year after I graduated. I actually didn’t want to go to college at all, but since I had no mechanical or sales aptitude my options were limited. I took what interested me most, and “most” in my case was “not that much.” Still, right up through senior year I was thinking " I wish I didn’t need to do this." Grad school I didn’t mind as much, since I knew what it was leading to. When I was in college 30 years ago being able to scan, memorize, and summarize was good enough as long as you could write well and add a little interpretive comment.
College was no piece of cake (HS was) for me but I was working towards a real life career which made all the difference. It was finally learning with a purpose.