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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Heck yeah!

DS went from a private HS that was (in retrospect) insufficiently challenging to a highly selective science and engineering college, and he feels like he was thrown in the deep end. You mean schoolwork isn't supposed to be easy? I actually have to work hard? Oh noes!

Ha - this sounds exactly like me, 20 years ago. Also did private high school to selective STEM college (is there an HYP equivalent for STEM? MIT, Caltech, and maybe Harvey Mudd? Then I went to an MCH). The first year was rough, but I got it figured out somewhere in the 2nd year.

My kids aren't there yet, but what I've observed from friends going off to college: the coursework is faster paced and more challenging, but the external competition and pressure is lower. Some kids are self-driven and that's fine, but there's no external force saying that you MUST get As instead of Bs or the world will end. In high school, it's all about GPA for college admittance. Once you're in, you just need to graduate - nobody ever asks you what your GPA was, or cares if you got a few Bs at Stanford. I guess this is different if you're planning on law school or something, though.

I can think of 3 instances where grade matters:

- getting your first job (grade + other exp, but grade does play a role)
- applying to grad school
- most importantly, applying to post college programs, particularly med school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Heck yeah!

DS went from a private HS that was (in retrospect) insufficiently challenging to a highly selective science and engineering college, and he feels like he was thrown in the deep end. You mean schoolwork isn't supposed to be easy? I actually have to work hard? Oh noes!

Ha - this sounds exactly like me, 20 years ago. Also did private high school to selective STEM college (is there an HYP equivalent for STEM? MIT, Caltech, and maybe Harvey Mudd? Then I went to an MCH). The first year was rough, but I got it figured out somewhere in the 2nd year.

My kids aren't there yet, but what I've observed from friends going off to college: the coursework is faster paced and more challenging, but the external competition and pressure is lower. Some kids are self-driven and that's fine, but there's no external force saying that you MUST get As instead of Bs or the world will end. In high school, it's all about GPA for college admittance. Once you're in, you just need to graduate - nobody ever asks you what your GPA was, or cares if you got a few Bs at Stanford. I guess this is different if you're planning on law school or something, though.

ummm there is an external force... try getting into one of those medical schools with 2% admission rate...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

hahahaha - by the final is 100000 harder than a final at US college. midterms and homeworks make studying easier not harder.

and yes you can repeat je final but you can fail a whole year if you don't pass it in time. Repeating finals is extremely risky and time consuming and very few people do it to improve the grade (you can also lower your grade - there is no guarantee your grade will go up or even that you will pass it the second time...)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Heck yeah!

DS went from a private HS that was (in retrospect) insufficiently challenging to a highly selective science and engineering college, and he feels like he was thrown in the deep end. You mean schoolwork isn't supposed to be easy? I actually have to work hard? Oh noes!

Ha - this sounds exactly like me, 20 years ago. Also did private high school to selective STEM college (is there an HYP equivalent for STEM? MIT, Caltech, and maybe Harvey Mudd? Then I went to an MCH). The first year was rough, but I got it figured out somewhere in the 2nd year.

My kids aren't there yet, but what I've observed from friends going off to college: the coursework is faster paced and more challenging, but the external competition and pressure is lower. Some kids are self-driven and that's fine, but there's no external force saying that you MUST get As instead of Bs or the world will end. In high school, it's all about GPA for college admittance. Once you're in, you just need to graduate - nobody ever asks you what your GPA was, or cares if you got a few Bs at Stanford. I guess this is different if you're planning on law school or something, though.

I can think of 3 instances where grade matters:

- getting your first job (grade + other exp, but grade does play a role)
- applying to grad school
- most importantly, applying to post college programs, particularly med school

There is a fourth.

- you are truly interested in learning and want to do your best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Heck yeah!

DS went from a private HS that was (in retrospect) insufficiently challenging to a highly selective science and engineering college, and he feels like he was thrown in the deep end. You mean schoolwork isn't supposed to be easy? I actually have to work hard? Oh noes!

Ha - this sounds exactly like me, 20 years ago. Also did private high school to selective STEM college (is there an HYP equivalent for STEM? MIT, Caltech, and maybe Harvey Mudd? Then I went to an MCH). The first year was rough, but I got it figured out somewhere in the 2nd year.

My kids aren't there yet, but what I've observed from friends going off to college: the coursework is faster paced and more challenging, but the external competition and pressure is lower. Some kids are self-driven and that's fine, but there's no external force saying that you MUST get As instead of Bs or the world will end. In high school, it's all about GPA for college admittance. Once you're in, you just need to graduate - nobody ever asks you what your GPA was, or cares if you got a few Bs at Stanford. I guess this is different if you're planning on law school or something, though.

I can think of 3 instances where grade matters:

- getting your first job (grade + other exp, but grade does play a role)
- applying to grad school
- most importantly, applying to post college programs, particularly med school

There is a fourth.

- you are truly interested in learning and want to do your best.

Not really. Your best may well exceed the standard for an A. So if the grade is what matters to you, you’d be underperforming. Or you are genuinely interested and working hard but your current background/skill set puts a A out of reach. Should you then give up and switch to a field where you can “do your best” gradewise? Or you are taking a great class, learning a helluva lot, but being evaluated in a way that doesn’t capture what you’ve learned (e.g. one or two tests where there is serious time pressure and no other assessments).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

[Quoting to keep all the professor comments together]. When I taught at Hopkins in the Humanities I noticed that many of my most academically prepared students were excellent technical writers and understood that you need to show up and do the work, but they weren't willing (I assume they were able) to the work of demonstrating intellectual curiosity and independent thought. An intellectually exciting but rough paper and a technically adept but rote paper both get a B.

[Anonymous]

My DS is a freshman at a well regarded university. He did well in high school, but his first semester grades are quite a bit lower than we have seen before. However, I don't think it's due to being too academically challenged. I know that he got a bit crazy with his new independence, partied a lot, pledged a frat, etc and the effort wasn't there. I'm hoping he got it out of his system and his grades go up. He is a business major and needs a good GPA to get his first job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

[Quoting to keep all the professor comments together]. When I taught at Hopkins in the Humanities I noticed that many of my most academically prepared students were excellent technical writers and understood that you need to show up and do the work, but they weren't willing (I assume they were able) to the work of demonstrating intellectual curiosity and independent thought. An intellectually exciting but rough paper and a technically adept but rote paper both get a B.

Oh yeah! (Another former JHU Prof, but in a different non-STEM field). I tended to give the intellectually exciting papers slightly higher paper grades (and their authors lots of editorial help). And my sense was that “do the work” didn’t really include doing most (much less all) of the reading. For most students, it just meant writing the papers and studying for exams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

Hilarious post and very wrong. UK universities specialize from the start, none of this Math, science, language crap which is just an extension of high school. If you take A levels you have a very in depth knowledge of 3-5 subjects which then for instance, allow you to go straight into medical training. Yes, that's right. NO US university can do that because none of the high schools teach to that level. Now go away you idiot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

Hilarious post and very wrong. UK universities specialize from the start, none of this Math, science, language crap which is just an extension of high school. If you take A levels you have a very in depth knowledge of 3-5 subjects which then for instance, allow you to go straight into medical training. Yes, that's right. NO US university can do that because none of the high schools teach to that level. Now go away you idiot.

European universities are awesome!! Here ya go!
http://abcnews.go.com/International/swiss-university-offer-degree-yodeling/story?id=52932138

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

Hilarious post and very wrong. UK universities specialize from the start, none of this Math, science, language crap which is just an extension of high school. If you take A levels you have a very in depth knowledge of 3-5 subjects which then for instance, allow you to go straight into medical training. Yes, that's right. NO US university can do that because none of the high schools teach to that level. Now go away you idiot.

European universities are awesome!! Here ya go!
http://abcnews.go.com/International/swiss-university-offer-degree-yodeling/story?id=52932138

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

Hilarious post and very wrong. UK universities specialize from the start, none of this Math, science, language crap which is just an extension of high school. If you take A levels you have a very in depth knowledge of 3-5 subjects which then for instance, allow you to go straight into medical training. Yes, that's right. NO US university can do that because none of the high schools teach to that level. Now go away you idiot.

European universities are awesome!! Here ya go!
http://abcnews.go.com/International/swiss-university-offer-degree-yodeling/story?id=52932138

And they're not wasting their time on math or science or writing. All yodeling, all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

Hilarious post and very wrong. UK universities specialize from the start, none of this Math, science, language crap which is just an extension of high school. If you take A levels you have a very in depth knowledge of 3-5 subjects which then for instance, allow you to go straight into medical training. Yes, that's right. NO US university can do that because none of the high schools teach to that level. Now go away you idiot.

European universities are awesome!! Here ya go!
http://abcnews.go.com/International/swiss-university-offer-degree-yodeling/story?id=52932138

if this happened the US students in all majors would be able to take yodeling to fulfill requirements. here it's a degree awarded to a small number of students who specialize in it. it's no different than some of the rare instruments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:American colleges are not known to be academically demanding until graduate level.

This is an utter and complete lie that I have heard perpetuated a few times. They are definitely more rigorous compared to european universities, where you usually do not have homeworks and midterms only just a final, which by the way you can retake to improve your grade in many cases. Also at most UK universities first-year grades dont count.

Now if you compare US to Asian universities, yes they probably are less demanding.

Hilarious post and very wrong. UK universities specialize from the start, none of this Math, science, language crap which is just an extension of high school. If you take A levels you have a very in depth knowledge of 3-5 subjects which then for instance, allow you to go straight into medical training. Yes, that's right. NO US university can do that because none of the high schools teach to that level. Now go away you idiot.

European universities are awesome!! Here ya go!
http://abcnews.go.com/International/swiss-university-offer-degree-yodeling/story?id=52932138

that's right. because they recognize that if, music is your profession, math and science are a waste of time.

And they're not wasting their time on math or science or writing. All yodeling, all the time.