Did your child find college to be more academically challenging than high school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Big 3 to top 3. Yes. Was well-prepared, but curriculum is more challenging and faster-paced. More responsibility for your own learning. And if seems like a majority of the college classmates are academically comparable (brains, effort) to the top 10-15% of HS class.

Big3??top3??LOL,

Know your audience!

[Anonymous]

I'm a college professor. If you go to every class meeting, even if you do almost nothing else besides turn in required assignments, you should be able to make a C. If you go to class and keep up with the reading and turn in your work, you should be making Bs.

For a bright kid with a strong academic background, there is nothing that would make college academics particularly difficult, unless the school somehow allows people to skip prerequisites.

What is hard is getting yourself out of bed every day and going to class. I can't tell you how many students I've seen waste 30K+ of someone's money to rarely show up and end up on academic probation.

If they know their job is to go to class, even if they don't feel like it, and even if they haven't done the reading, they will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Big 3 to top 10. First year was easier, 2nd year is more difficult (and more interesting, but very manageable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a college professor. If you go to every class meeting, even if you do almost nothing else besides turn in required assignments, you should be able to make a C. If you go to class and keep up with the reading and turn in your work, you should be making Bs.

For a bright kid with a strong academic background, there is nothing that would make college academics particularly difficult, unless the school somehow allows people to skip prerequisites.

What is hard is getting yourself out of bed every day and going to class. I can't tell you how many students I've seen waste 30K+ of someone's money to rarely show up and end up on academic probation.

If they know their job is to go to class, even if they don't feel like it, and even if they haven't done the reading, they will be fine.

I am a college professor too - and that's a way oversimplified view.

I taught at a USNWR top 20 school and at a school with an 80% admission acceptance rate. It's all about the competition. As a prof, you shoot for the median grade to be a "B" - well, at Top 20 that exam is going to have to be way harder than regional state U.

In fact, if somebody asks me about the number one difference between colleges - it isn't buildings or faculty or special programs. It's the daily grind of the competition - just how motivated and how many brain cells does the average kid at the place have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you answer, please give a sense of the high school they left and the college they went to. Thanks!

Top 10 high school in Michigan - followed by Notre Dame.

ND was way harder... and why not? Not everybody in top 10 MI HS was in top 2% of their class. At ND, if they weren't (which wasn't many) - it's because they did something else great.

At a minimum, you are cutting out the bottom 80% of most of the HS competition at these colleges. And given how many HS valedictorians they rejected just to get a balanced class, they probably could have easily eliminated 98% of the bottom of your HS class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a college professor. If you go to every class meeting, even if you do almost nothing else besides turn in required assignments, you should be able to make a C. If you go to class and keep up with the reading and turn in your work, you should be making Bs.

For a bright kid with a strong academic background, there is nothing that would make college academics particularly difficult, unless the school somehow allows people to skip prerequisites.

What is hard is getting yourself out of bed every day and going to class. I can't tell you how many students I've seen waste 30K+ of someone's money to rarely show up and end up on academic probation.

If they know their job is to go to class, even if they don't feel like it, and even if they haven't done the reading, they will be fine.

I am a college professor too - and that's a way oversimplified view.

I taught at a USNWR top 20 school and at a school with an 80% admission acceptance rate. It's all about the competition. As a prof, you shoot for the median grade to be a "B" - well, at Top 20 that exam is going to have to be way harder than regional state U.

In fact, if somebody asks me about the number one difference between colleges - it isn't buildings or faculty or special programs. It's the daily grind of the competition - just how motivated and how many brain cells does the average kid at the place have.

I've taught at colleges at every level. The entire student body is selected for the level of the school. A bright kid with a strong high school background, as I specified above, will not have difficulty passing his/her classes if he goes to them. I stand by that. If they want to be high-flyers, then they need to work for it.

[Anonymous]

Depends entirely on major.

[Anonymous]

DD went to a large public "W" school and is at a top 20 (according to USNWR) where the majority of kids major in STEM/engineering areas. In her freshman year she has found the science classes extremely challenging, the math classes about the same, and she has breezed through the humanities with relatively little effort compared to HS. We were somewhat surprised by her humanities experience because she's more STEM oriented. You always read on here about how much better prepared private school students are in English and writing, and there are a lot of private school kids there. Maybe it's the case that some of her college classmates focused on STEM to the detriment of other subjects in HS?

Overall, she's finding college much more enjoyable than HS. She was on the typical 10-12 AP treadmill in HS, and even though she's had to work incredibly hard to get good grades in some of the college science classes, she no longer feels like she's doing the work just to check boxes.

[Anonymous]

About the same. Holton to Top Ivy

[Anonymous]

College is easy if you want to graduate with C avg

College is f'king hard if you want to graduate with near perfect GPA - 3.9+

[Anonymous]

Kids graduated from MCPS schools where they worked their butts off. In College, they are working just as hard, if not harder and doing better. than high school. Not sure if the work is harder, there is more of it, both or neither. They seem to be extremely well prepared for college, thank goodness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College is easy if you want to graduate with C avg

College is f'king hard if you want to graduate with near perfect GPA - 3.9+

Depends on the major and also the school. STEM is much harder to get a top GPA. Since we are talking about ivies and elites here, at Harvard, Stanford, Brown and Yale, it is not that hard to graduate with a 3.8+ with all that grade inflation going on. If you wanna graduate from Princeton, Cornell, Penn or Columbia with a 3.9+ you need to work insanely hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Big 3 to top 3. Yes. Was well-prepared, but curriculum is more challenging and faster-paced. More responsibility for your own learning. And if seems like a majority of the college classmates are academically comparable (brains, effort) to the top 10-15% of HS class.

Big3??top3??LOL,

Big 3 when it comes to HS is a thing that people in the DC/VA area understand. Top 3 re colleges on the other hand is not, hence the confusion. Most people would recognize “top 4” as HYPS or “top 5” as HYPSM. “Top ivy” also is a widely known term referring to HYP. But i have never heard a widely established definition of what is “top 3”.

[Anonymous]

Big3 to state research u. Double degree (not major) in math and physics. Runs circles around the other students in writing. Near perfect grades in theoretical math classes (honors). Getting her A__ handed to her in physics. Advisor says her grades are fabulous.

[Anonymous]

^ just to add to comment from professors above. DD got a B in a 400 level physics class. Professor decided the average was too high and lowered all grades one grade so she ended up with a C. This was after thinking she was doing well the whole semester.