RE: Is Ivy League Course work more Difficult than State Schools and other schools?

Where do you get the notion that everyone that goes to an Ivy is very smart? That is not the case at all. And no...the coursework is not harder than state schools. The hardest class I ever had was at Miami Dade Community College in Contemporary Literature, it was for my final three credits to graduate, I was doing an internship. I am well read and smart and barely got a C in that class. One of the best taught classes I ever had, the instructor was amazing.

HSsenior not ready for college wrote:

If everyone at an ivy school is smart, how do professors get the desired "bell curve" with grades and not have everybody end up with As? Are the exams just extremely, extremely hard so that even very smart kids get Ds and Cs???

As a 1996 grad of princeton, let me state a few things.

1) I always said the hardest thing about Princeton is getting in. Getting out is much easier, particularly if you aren't in the sciences. How hard is it to be a history major? I had a roommate at Princeton who went to less than half of his classes and basically had straight Cs. Now, writing a thesis was an issue obviously. The independent work is the killer at Princeton.

2) Despite point #1, it's way harder. Two kids I used to coach at Cornell are running 5th years this year (one at Ohio State - one at Florida State). I'm not going to say which one told me but one of them said school was WAY WAY easier. Something along the lines of, "I didn't realize how hard COrnell was until I got here. I just thought all colleges were that hard."

Of course, Cornell is the hardest Ivy so i don't know that oompares.

But their stories remind me of a story i heard in colllege. A buddy of my brothers at Yale was on the track/football teams. He was viewed as your partier ivy league jock with like a C average. He went to visit his buddy at a florida school and took a large econ exam for his buddy. Don't ask me how. All I remember is he said the exam was so easy he started missing questions on purpose so people wouldn't become suspicious.

3) To answer the OP's question, i don't think there are lots of kids getting ds and cs at most of these schools. The average GPA is well over 3.

But my wife wen to Cornell law and the just graded on a curve. Lots of the sciences do it as well. They literally say top xx% is a, next x is b,e tc.

I've heard of ridiculous engineering exams at Cornell where like 35% is an A (but there are still geniuses who get like 95%).

I've attended 2 Ivies, one community college, and two state schools over the course of my undergrad education (started taking college courses in high school, went to an Ivy, did some post-baccalaureate work at another Ivy and a state school for a career change) and definitely did find the Ivies to be tougher overall. Sure there will be an easy class here or there, but ultimately you're being graded against the people who would all get As at the state school, and the academic quality of your average student is much higher as well.

Harvard in particular has a reputation for enormous grade inflation so I don't think that's a good case study. Others such as Princeton and Cornell have a reputation for being tough. At Princeton, for example, they set limits so that not more than 30% of any class gets some version of an A. Let's say that a few people slid into Princeton that shouldn't be there, but I think it's safe to assume that at least 90% of Princeton students would be getting As at your average state school. So at least 60% of students in any particular class at Princeton will be getting a lower grade than they would be at a state school. Spread that out among multiple classes, and pretty much all Princeton students have a lower GPA than they would at a state school. That's pretty much common sense.

So that's grading, but realize that that's an entirely different beast than the amount of work. It's possible to do more or less work at any college, and I'll be the first to tell you that it's possible (and laudable!) to study 24/7 at a state college to work really hard to ensure the A. At any school it's possible to do the maximum or minimum. But in my experience it's easier to slide by with passing grades at the state school than it is at the Ivy.

Overall, I'll just say that my high school, state school, and community college GPA was 4.0, and I didn't really do any work for any of them. My Ivy GPA was definitely not 4.0, and I worked much harder for that than I did for the state school. I absolutely hate the elitism some Ivy Leaguers perpetuate and often find myself arguing the opposite side when I'm with some of my Ivy friends as an attempt to bring down the level of pomposity (note this is just a few people; not everyone!), but the reality I'll share as an anonymous Letsrun poster is yeah, Ivies are harder.

And like rojo mentioned the difficulty of your courses will really depend on your major. History, for example, is an easier major than physics, and I think your average history major will typically have a higher GPA than your average physics major. I'd certainly accept that studying physics at an excellent state school known for its sciences would be more difficult than studying history at Harvard.

I attended Ivies for undergrad and grad school. One, there is definitely significant grade inflation in undergrad; the previous poster is correct about that. Two, I have noticed that my younger brother's coursework (from what he's told me),at a well regarded state school, is every bit as difficult as my coursework was. The important thing to remember is that college, for the most part at most schools, is as difficult as you make it. You choose your classes and you choose how much effort you will put into your work. If you are reasonably intelligent and a motivated person, you should be relatively successful wherever you go.

not unless you're a women and gender studies major.

Ivyguy wrote:

That was then. Since then, all--as near as I know--of the Ivies have experienced considerable grade inflation.

I graduated undergrad Penn Wharton 1996, and most of the finance classes had the 50th-percentile be the B/C cut-off. If there has been grade inflation, then it's only been within the past decade or so. I hear that Wharton MBA's aren't even graded anymore.

Harvard via Penn wrote:

I attended Ivies for undergrad and grad school. One, there is definitely significant grade inflation in undergrad; the previous poster is correct about that. Two, I have noticed that my younger brother's coursework (from what he's told me),at a well regarded state school, is every bit as difficult as my coursework was. The important thing to remember is that college, for the most part at most schools, is as difficult as you make it. You choose your classes and you choose how much effort you will put into your work. If you are reasonably intelligent and a motivated person, you should be relatively successful wherever you go.

This may be true about your brother, but I'd be interested in seeing how the coursework was evaluated. I remember one class from undergrad when we got a sample exam, and it looked easy enough so I felt pretty confident going into the real thing. I didn't realize that yep, it would have been easy if I had been given three hours to complete it, but I was only given one. And then it was graded much more harshly than it needed to be.

So for working the same amount and knowing the same amount, you're still going to get the better grade at the state school.

I know this is a hot-button topic because you have a few different types of people here:

1. Those who went to Ivies and want to tell everyone how hard they are

2. Those who went to Ivies but want to be cool and tell everyone how Ivies are the exact same as state schools

3. Those who went to state schools who want to insist that their school is as hard as an Ivy

But nobody here is quite right. As usual, the correct answer is a moderate balance. Yep, of course they're harder on average. It would be ridiculous to deny this. But there are excellent students at state schools who could have gone to Ivies, and some students who somehow slid into Ivies and shouldn't be there. Difficulty is a spectrum and you'll find more Ivies at one end of the spectrum, that's all. So we should all get along and sing kumbaya and not judge books by their covers. I'm not sure why this has to be hashed out; I'm pretty sure this is going to turn into a competition between the three groups I outlined above.

So this is the writing quality Princeton produces?

Find Malcolm Gladwell's talk about going to Ivy schools or others of their ilk. While I do not agree with everything he says, he makes some very good points. A key one is some people will leave an Ivy League school feeling dumb which is not good.

However, depending on what you want to do, the connections there can be invaluable.

I also had a friend who made a good point years ago: If you grew up in a state and want to stay there, the connections from going to the state U might be more beneficial.

To some extent after a few years of working, where you went to school becomes less important.

Finally, if you are not ready for college, then why go? Seriously? I know the job market is tough, but it might be better to stay out a year or so and learn about life as a working stiff. If the parents are pushing you, then take some general classes at a local community college. Also, do not ignore technical jobs that might just require a 2 year degree. Nothing wrong with being an electrician. A lot of computer science jobs can be had with a 2 yr degree. I would think the certs are more important as is what you can do.

rojo wrote:

I've heard of ridiculous engineering exams at Cornell where like 35% is an A (but there are still geniuses who get like 95%).

It sort of scares me that an engineer who is building lord knows what only gets 35% on a test in an engineering or physics class.

Well...I went to an Ivy League school. I'd gotten just high enough on a Spanish achievement test that I didn't have to take any foreign language classes there. I took the absolute easiest course I could to satisfy a requirement of four science/math courses.

I became an English major and took as many creative writing and tutorials as I could. In tutorials, you actually get to know the professor, and it's harder for him to write you off as an idiot (unless you really ARE an idiot).

I didn't do much work at all, and my grades were fine. My only problem was in courses that were also part of the Drama major where the tests basically demanded that we memorize individual lines that I might have actually only read once. The "actors" were a lot better at that than I was.

luv2run wrote:

It sort of scares me that an engineer who is building lord knows what only gets 35% on a test in an engineering or physics class.

Don't be. You have to understand that these tests are made as difficult as possible to differentiate people, and don't necessarily reflect real-world practice - unless you're being held hostage by a terrorist civil engineering firm, there's never a problem that needs to be solved in 60 minutes without the use of your notes. What's more, you need several years of work experience before you can take the engineering licensure exam, which is 8 hours long and only has ~60% pass rate. So it's exceedingly unlikely that anyone is building things without knowing what he's doing (barring bozos like the unlicensed demo guy who took out 6 people in Philly).

luv2run wrote:

rojo wrote:

I've heard of ridiculous engineering exams at Cornell where like 35% is an A (but there are still geniuses who get like 95%).

It sort of scares me that an engineer who is building lord knows what only gets 35% on a test in an engineering or physics class.

I kid you not, I once got a 41 on a Cornell biomedical engineering test, and it was an A+, because the mean on the test was a 25.

It wasn't so much that the questions were completely impossible, it was just that we needed at least twice the amount of allotted time if we were ever to finish them.

I apparently realized this fact faster than my classmates, and just went through the whole test feverishly writing down everything I could think for each question. I'm not sure I actually completely answered any of the questions, but as soon as I got the least bit stuck on one question I went and wrote down everything I could think for the next one until I got stuck again. Basically, I managed to get more stuff written down than everyone else.

In general, Cornell engineering tests had class averages of 65-75 and they'd curve it such that some percentage of the class got an A. And it's not that most students only know 70% of the material that they taught in the class. The test questions usually ask you to apply the stuff that you've learned to some completely new situation that you'd never have thought of, and figure out how to do that in the high pressure situation of an exam. Most tests also only have ~4 questions, so if you can't figure one out in time....boom, 75%.

You just become completely desensitized to the absolute number at some point, and just start worrying about your grade compared to the class mean.

I absolutely worked my tail off for a 3.75.

I did grad work at Purdue and Penn State, and I did see a difference in difficulty. The best example was at Purdue, I took a biochem class with junior and senior undergrads - mostly premed. I thought the first test was cake - direct questions, nothing hard, just a bunch of crap to remember and regurgitate. I got something stupid high like a 98%. The mean on the test was in the 70s. Even some of my fellow grad students scored near the mean - these were people that had been accepted into an engineering PhD program, so ostensibly they were not dumb. I was just better prepared, because I was accustomed to having to be that prepared to just be slightly above average. There, if I was that prepared, I was wrecking the curve.

I didn't go to an IVY but I did go to MIT. One summer I took a class in advanced organic chemistry at my local state school, spent only 30 mins/day on the homework, and got an A. The only other time I got away with cruising through a class like that was in high school.

Granted, in the end we probably learn the same facts, but the value of a challenging course and institution is that it forces you solve difficult problems... skills that are more applicable to real life than fact recitals.

Cornell grad wrote:

I kid you not, I once got a 41 on a Cornell biomedical engineering test, and it was an A+, because the mean on the test was a 25.

I go to a public school on the east coast that most of you guys think is a joke, but it's only a joke depending on the courses you take. I took Linear Algebra and in an in class test the highest grade was a 32, the average being a 24. Does that make that my school better than yours? (the answer is, I don't think so: the test was 8 proofs in 75 minutes, we didn't have enough time, plus a couple of people in my class were real dipsh*ts.).

My Calc III professor (who is the head of the Math dept at my school) claims that a Calc III student at Princeton sent him a copy of a final from a few years back and he claims that our final was just as tough as the one at Princeton. The reason why my grade was decent on the final was because of the curve in my class. Would I have still gotten an A- in Calc III at Princeton? I highly doubt I would be in the top 85% of math students there, I wasn't even in the top 85% of math students in my own high school.

My point is sometimes the numbers can be misleading. It depends on who is in your class.

Is this a serious question

mysonisafootballplayer wrote:

Where do you get the notion that everyone that goes to an Ivy is very smart? That is not the case at all. And no...the coursework is not harder than state schools. The hardest class I ever had was at Miami Dade Community College in Contemporary Literature, it was for my final three credits to graduate, I was doing an internship. I am well read and smart and barely got a C in that class. One of the best taught classes I ever had, the instructor was amazing.

My data point of one contradicts yours. Nine of the easiest classes I ever took were the math & statistics courses at a community college, state university, and private non-Ivy university that I needed for background when changing careers.

My previous undergrad work was at Yale, and can think of maybe one class at that was easier there - a seminar in which we had to research and present on various topics. Other than that I would put every Ivy course above every non-Ivy course.

I'm sure the basic material is the same, but the exam questions were more obvious and the grading more generous at the non-Ivies.

What I've learned is that for most careers it does not matter where you go to undergrad. Wherever you go, just do well and that will be enough to get you an internship or entry to grad/professional school. Wall Street really loves the Ivies, but that's one profession out of many.

Comparing Cornell to Florida State is a small sample size. I'll guess that Florida State is easier than a lot of schools.