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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Transplant to DC from Western Europe with kids in middle school. I am trying to learn more about college/university life in the US since it is so different from back home.

There is a lot of discussion on this forum about elite schools and the various opportunities they offer outside the classroom, especially professionally. But what I am trying to understand, since I’ll be paying for an education, is what is it about the classroom experience at these schools that provides kids with an elite education? If economics, for example, is taught from the same textbook at Princeton vs Penn State, what makes the Princeton classroom experience elite?[/quote]
At top schools, the peer group is superior, allowing for professors to go deeper and more commonly assign papers for reading rather than textbook excerpts. The homeworks tend to be unique and instructive rather than repetitive. They are also more accepting of students taking advanced courses early even if they don't formally meet the prerequisites. For example, here is a student who took econ 301 without any prior econ experience, despite econ 100 being an on-paper prerequisite: https://www.reddit.com/r/princeton/comments/15wng5o/how_rough_will_eco_310_be_without_any_micro/[/quote]

Let me explain what it is like to take a college course at a "lesser" school. Like mine.  You will pay for/be assigned at least 500-2,000 pages of reading.  If you are smart and it is interesting, you will read and reflect upon it.  What you learn is up to you, because you are doing the reading.  If you like the material, you can read and write more about it.  If you absolutely love it, you can do 4x more work on your papers than anyone in the class.  You can go to office hours. If your teacher socializes with students you can go to bar night and talk even more about the subject.  There is absolutely nothing precluding you from going deeper on the subject.  Just like you will do when you get out of college and no longer have an academic genius to force feed assignments to you.

Perhaps it might even be relaxing not to be assigned a bazillion readings.  I did nearly all the assigned reading for every course in college.  I'm a fast and accurate reader who got a 780 on the SAT Verbal. My 2,000 page estimate above was scholarly articles for Japanese Economics.   And I'm known for having a very good memory.  However, years after college, I only remember some of what I learned about...mainly what I liked the best, the works that resonated with me, and some critical "aha" moments.  I agree with those who say we go to college to "learn to learn" and to become more cultured.  The sheer amount of reading really doesn't matter past a certain point.

And I find that article about how Harvard students aren't reading anymore pretty funny.  The winds of cultural change are blowing...

Also, at my "lesser" school, I remember having class with at least four authors.  One wrote a book selected as a notable work of the year by Phi Beta Kappa.  One wrote a science textbook that was actually intentionally funny - the only joky textbook I've seen that actually made me laugh.  Another prepared a translation of medieval French poetry.  And the fourth had been an archeologist at the Duomo in Florence and wrote a marvelous architecture book about the city my university was located in.

I do not feel sorry about missing out on the likes of large auditorium classes with Larry Summers.  At least my flagship large auditorium professors never implied that women had inferior intellects.[/quote]

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