Prestigious Schools with least Grinder/All Work Culture

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Virtually all engineering degrees are a grind. So at a multi-disciplinary university, differentiating among the various schools of the university would make sense.

Don’t disagree…that said, my kid just landed a great internship in SFO after freshman year and kid’s friends have done the same and assured me that none of the companies asked about grades (though Google did want a transcript after the offer was given…to confirm coursework).

Don’t know if this is CS-specific or what…but that seems to make kids a bit less crazy about their grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bucknell

Yes, so prestigious with that 1170-1370 SAT and 25-32 ACT range.

https://www.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/institutional-research/common_data_set_2023_2024.pdf

Guarantee they send more grads to The Street than your school, geed.

yeah and all back office jobs - big whoop

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yale. By far.

The one kid who was accepted to Yale in the PBS documentary "Dream School:A Journey to Higher Ed," described the culture as competitive, and reported studying 5-7 hours each night and more during the weekends. That sounds like a grinder school to me.

That's called college.

If you are full time student, you usually take 15+ credits, and the expectation is about 3 hours of individual work per credit per week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP. Yale is literally the subject of a class action lawsuit over how miserable it is for students and how harmful to their mental health. The PPs suggesting Yale must have attended in the 1950s. It was probably nice in the 1950s, but that was a long time ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/health/yale-mental-health.html

The students have a choice not to go to Yale. What a stupid litigation waste of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bucknell

Yes, so prestigious with that 1170-1370 SAT and 25-32 ACT range.

https://www.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/institutional-research/common_data_set_2023_2024.pdf

Guarantee they send more grads to The Street than your school, geed.

Geed? Please tell me you're still a college student yourself and not a grown adult who still judges people by their Greek affiliation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Second for Davidson!

Is Davidson presitigious?

[Anonymous]

Son is a biochem at UVA/Pre med. HUGE grind. It depends on your major--surely you must know this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yale. By far.

The one kid who was accepted to Yale in the PBS documentary "Dream School:A Journey to Higher Ed," described the culture as competitive, and reported studying 5-7 hours each night and more during the weekends. That sounds like a grinder school to me.

The kids at Yale work very, very hard.

[Anonymous]

That's called college. If you are full time student, you usually take 15+ credits, and the expectation is about 3 hours of individual work per credit per week.

I don't disagree, and that calculation was quoted during a tour at UVA. But, watching kids party on the lawn, I'm sure there are plenty of kids skating through doing less than this level of work. It is certainly dependent on major and other activities (pre-med, nursing, engineering, architecture, ROTC, athletes). But are all the students spending that much time? I guess that's what OP is trying to discern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would love to hear your top 5, including SLACs

This depends on your major. Having said that I have heard that even grind majors like CS etc are 'easier' at Duke and Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you are a STEM major anywhere, it is a massive grind. If you major in non-STEM it will be pretty easy.

It’s cute how STEM majors think they’re the only ones who work hard in college.

I think humanities fields are generally less grimly competitive than STEM is said to be. There was definitely a feeling of camaraderie and collaboration in my department, and we were mostly all there because we loved the subject. But we all put in many, many long hours of reading, research, writing, and translating dead languages in college.

There’s no shortcut for research and writing if you want to do a truly good job. You have to put in the hours and do the work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you are a STEM major anywhere, it is a massive grind. If you major in non-STEM it will be pretty easy.

It’s cute how STEM majors think they’re the only ones who work hard in college.

I think humanities fields are generally less grimly competitive than STEM is said to be. There was definitely a feeling of camaraderie and collaboration in my department, and we were mostly all there because we loved the subject. But we all put in many, many long hours of reading, research, writing, and translating dead languages in college.

There’s no shortcut for research and writing if you want to do a truly good job. You have to put in the hours and do the work.

Huge difference in amounts of work AND that most classes are graded on a curve. So with the curve in place you have to put in the extra effort to keep your gpa up if you have an exceptionally brilliant group of classmates- which you will have in the T20 schools. Most humanities are not graded on a curve - so regardless of your classmates work you would get the same grade.

Many stem majors don’t have capacity in the upper classes so there are intentional weed out classes early on to ensure upper level classes are not overenrolled. And in many schools if you don’t hit a certain gpa you cannot apply to that subspecialty for engineering.

So overall I agree your ending gpa in engineering does not matter as much as other majors, but you won’t be able to get the engineer degree at most schools if it drops.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Son is a biochem at UVA/Pre med. HUGE grind. It depends on your major--surely you must know this?

Agree. DD was a PPL major (politics, philosophy & law) at UVA and worked her butt off. Paid off - now doing grad work at Oxford.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yale
Dartmouth
Brown
Michigan
UCLA
Vanderbilt
USC
Georgetown
Amherst
Colgate

No to several of these.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin
Middlebury
Pomona
Vandy
Brown

Nope to Vandy. Maybe in 1980 but no longer