Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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”.

Agreed, top 10 is also a thing and it refers to the USNews top 10. But USNews top 3 or in general top 3 is not really a thing in elite college lingo.

+2

must be UChicago parents or YP parents. ridiculous

UChicago...please stop you re killing me ? it is most probably this one though; YP people say top ivy or HYP if they don't wanna be specific.

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

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.

The college frenzy is over the top crazy but I don't know if I would say college life is quite that laid back. A kid's grades and classroom performance will affect how welcome they are in the better study groups, eligibility for clubs and programs, internship opportunities in addition to top graduate school admissions. And in a grade inflated school where A's are the norm, academic pressure is replaced by the need to distinguish oneself with ECs which is equally if not more challenging in its way. IMO competitiveness ratchets up and is much more complex to navigate. Remember as soon as they hit that college campus, their competition for where they may want to go next either attend elite schools or are top of class. That's assuming of course they care about being able to select among the widest possible options.

Also matters if you’re trying to land the plum summer internship or for your first job out of college.

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.

Big 3 to known rigorous private college. From reports, very well prepared in terms of critical thinking, writing, research discipline and proofs. Thought Big 3 on an advanced path was challenging but reports that it pales in comparison with college in terms of rigor and pace. My observation though is that the challenge is really premised on what the student selects to do with their education. All the schools at this level have great academic resources. It's their own inclinations, the peer group influence and faculty advising that drives how aggressively the students pursue higher level coursework.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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”.

Agreed, top 10 is also a thing and it refers to the USNews top 10. But USNews top 3 or in general top 3 is not really a thing in elite college lingo.

+2

must be UChicago parents or YP parents. ridiculous

Anonymous wrote:^ 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.

Some majors are more interested in class rank than others. Pre-med majors are like this because medical school is like this. It's a way for graduate schools to figure out how well your daughter did in terms of everyone else in her class, not by some objective measure of amount of material learned. The best grad schools want the best students in the class; they figure they are all smart enough to learn the basics.

This is very, very different from the grading system in grade school (or most university courses), where there is a certain amount of material to learn, or a certain number of points, and your grade is based on the percentage of that material you have learned. It is so different, that I think we ought to at least introduce STEM students to it in grade school even if we never actually grade them that way, because it blindsides a lot of freshmen.

The closes we come in grade school is class rank, followed by the competition to get into colleges which are based on incremental achievement over other students, rather than some kind of absolute measure of "good enough."

Anonymous wrote:^ 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.

Some universities require grading on a curve. This generally is only done in the sciences, though. Depending on the university, the "center" of the curve will be a "C" (traditional way) or a "B" (because otherwise you have a lot of students fail).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+10000 from what i have heard. never heard much though about where Dartmouth falls re grade inflation.

Is 3.9 at ivy so much harder to get compare to state u? For STEM field?

Went to a big name boarding school. College was by far easier.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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”.

Agreed, top 10 is also a thing and it refers to the USNews top 10. But USNews top 3 or in general top 3 is not really a thing in elite college lingo.

And God forbid a DCUM poster should fail/refuse to use “elite college lingo.” (Hey is “elite college lingo” “really a thing”?)

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+10000 from what i have heard. never heard much though about where Dartmouth falls re grade inflation.

Anonymous wrote:^ 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.

My DC has this quite often in pre-med classes. I think a lot depends on your major. Science classes have been pretty challenging, and I hear that about schools across the board. Same for engineering.

Anonymous wrote:

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”.

Agreed, top 10 is also a thing and it refers to the USNews top 10. But USNews top 3 or in general top 3 is not really a thing in elite college lingo.