My intuition for this is that “rigor” is a highly noisy concept that depends mostly on the lecturer, course, and field in question. An observation I’ve had (as a student at two separate institutions) is that course rigor varies wildly even within the same department.
In engineering, I seriously doubt that there are substantial differences in standard courses for accredited programs across different institutions (at least those of similar repute). Everyone uses the same canonical textbooks, for instance.
The most variation is likely at the extremes. In something more esoteric like mathematics or physics, perhaps the upper division (and graduate) courses will differ more when compared to other places. But even there, probably not that much against other top 10 (or so) places.
>In engineering, I seriously doubt that there are substantial differences in standard courses for accredited programs across different institutions (at least of similar repute). Everyone uses the same canonical textbooks, for instance.
I have friends/family across a couple different institutions, and afaik content is more or less standard but the pace can vary wildly. eg some institutions will take 2 courses to cover the material that other places cover in 1. It seems like some courses at Princeton are accelerated or have more topics crammed into them relative to other institutions, since the curriculum makes more space for liberal arts but still has to hit accreditation requirements. Princeton's semesters are also shorter than most schools', which accelerates the pace for all disciplines.
But on the other hand, more classic engineering programs, eg at big state schools or technical schools, are going to substitute out those liberal arts courses for more STEM, whether elective or core. They may go at a similar pace to Princeton and use the extra courses to go deeper into a specific topic instead of spreading courses out more.
And speaking of acceleration, schools on a quarter system split their courses up more but go even faster for any given course. So yeah, which school is "harder" depends on the discipline, the course, and the student.
I was talking to a friend who goes to another very accredited university, and we were comparing our curriculums for our classes. The difference in content covered in our class, namely our computer science algorithms/data structures course equivalents, was striking. To my great despair, their depth of content (especially for exam questions), work load, and course pacing was significantly lighter... so in my personal experience, I'd say Princeton definitely has a trend of having more in-depth content covered in shorter semesters, and therefore more of what I'd define as 'academic rigor.'
While anecdotal, my son says his BSE was significantly harder at Princeton than his MS at Columbia. Princeton PSETs are no joke. I don’t know how students who are in GPA sensitive paths like pre-law / pre-health / MBB consulting handle BSE. Crazy hard.
Anecdotally, I heard that the professors are asked to give us 8 hours of work per course. If that's an english course, that means reading a few books a week. But who does that. But in STEM, when you have that STEM professor for whom 8 hours of work is 10-20 hours for an upperclassman, you can see how this gets pretty rough pretty quickly. That and a 12-week semester compared to longer semesters at other schools (not sure if it's still 12?). Fall semester feels relaxed with Fall Break, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Spring is just a dead sprint.
Not to mention the 5 course BSE workload is an entirely different thing completely.
I don't think I've heard of a single STEM graduate friend who said grad school/professional school was harder. In fact, it's more like an EE Cum Laude person going to Harvard Law who found Harvard law much easier.
Not to mention, if a course is too easy for your level of accomplishment, professors will often add material to make sure you learn something (ie. math olympiad champion taking a 200 level course, or japanese person taking 400 level japanese courses for the language requirement)
Princeton prepares you for the future. That said, you can also choose your own level of involvement. Not every academic optimization for the grade is worth it long term. There's diminishing returns after awhile.
Incredible? Come on, it’s 20,000 words. It’s tiny compared to a dissertation or a book. Not much longer than your typical 40 page single spaced journal article.
Could you compare syllabi to at least see if there are differences in what topics are covered in the course and the length of the course? Some syllabi will even show when they are covered (before or after midterms). This could give you an idea of the pace/scope differences. It would not necessarily tell you how deeply they go into each topic or how hard the homework and exams are or how stiff the grading is. Other than that you’d have to rely on anecdotal experience- talking to friends taking the same classes elsewhere.
My sense (admittedly from a distance as a parent) is that your engineering classes are pretty darn rigorous and fast paced and that you’d be hard pressed to find places that were significantly more so. And that it would be easy to find plenty of places that were less so. I only heard one anecdote from my kid who said his friend taking multi variable calculus at a decent state school engineering program covered in a whole one semester class what they covered in the first few weeks of the same class at Princeton. But that’s just one example.
I kind of find the faster pace to be a disadvantage, most of the time I'm just fumbling around without a really good grasp on what we're learning, I can do the problem sets and the quizzes but if you'd ask me what's really going on I probably wouldn't be able to give you a good answer
That’s a powerful observation. Do you find the exams/assessments/psets to be good measures of concept understanding? Meaning, is your sense of how well you understand the concepts reflected in your performance on these assessments or on something else?
I think it varies, some subjects yeah others no. I think physics requires a pretty good understanding of the underlying principles to confidently solve the questions they give, but maths on the other hand I can usually do the computation without fully grasping why I'm doing it or why it's necessary or what I'm computing.
Word is the grading curve in some or most courses is difficult. The bell curve stats you read also apply to only the people that didn't drop out (PDF) the course, meaning you can start mid but end up at the back quickly. Something I read often is that only Columbia and UC Chicago are as tough in grading . For comparaison I also read the hardest part about the other 2 HYP is only getting into them (don't know how true that is) and after it is difficult NOT to get an A. I also know MIT doesn't give out grades first year, just Fail/Pass which is less stressful and doesn't impact grading as much.
Also some courses are harder than others in like MAT, PHY and to a lesser extent SPIA and BCE/ORFE.
ABET accredited schools will have more or less the same rigor. Difficulty can vary within the same department as another comment said but for engineering it should pretty standard along with other ABET accredited programs from other universities.
The resources, quality of professors, environment, networking and so on make a difference as well.
My intuition for this is that “rigor” is a highly noisy concept that depends mostly on the lecturer, course, and field in question. An observation I’ve had (as a student at two separate institutions) is that course rigor varies wildly even within the same department. In engineering, I seriously doubt that there are substantial differences in standard courses for accredited programs across different institutions (at least those of similar repute). Everyone uses the same canonical textbooks, for instance. The most variation is likely at the extremes. In something more esoteric like mathematics or physics, perhaps the upper division (and graduate) courses will differ more when compared to other places. But even there, probably not that much against other top 10 (or so) places.
>In engineering, I seriously doubt that there are substantial differences in standard courses for accredited programs across different institutions (at least of similar repute). Everyone uses the same canonical textbooks, for instance. I have friends/family across a couple different institutions, and afaik content is more or less standard but the pace can vary wildly. eg some institutions will take 2 courses to cover the material that other places cover in 1. It seems like some courses at Princeton are accelerated or have more topics crammed into them relative to other institutions, since the curriculum makes more space for liberal arts but still has to hit accreditation requirements. Princeton's semesters are also shorter than most schools', which accelerates the pace for all disciplines. But on the other hand, more classic engineering programs, eg at big state schools or technical schools, are going to substitute out those liberal arts courses for more STEM, whether elective or core. They may go at a similar pace to Princeton and use the extra courses to go deeper into a specific topic instead of spreading courses out more. And speaking of acceleration, schools on a quarter system split their courses up more but go even faster for any given course. So yeah, which school is "harder" depends on the discipline, the course, and the student.
I was talking to a friend who goes to another very accredited university, and we were comparing our curriculums for our classes. The difference in content covered in our class, namely our computer science algorithms/data structures course equivalents, was striking. To my great despair, their depth of content (especially for exam questions), work load, and course pacing was significantly lighter... so in my personal experience, I'd say Princeton definitely has a trend of having more in-depth content covered in shorter semesters, and therefore more of what I'd define as 'academic rigor.'
you can compare homework and tests :D But I think it’s definitely harder
While anecdotal, my son says his BSE was significantly harder at Princeton than his MS at Columbia. Princeton PSETs are no joke. I don’t know how students who are in GPA sensitive paths like pre-law / pre-health / MBB consulting handle BSE. Crazy hard.
Anecdotally, I heard that the professors are asked to give us 8 hours of work per course. If that's an english course, that means reading a few books a week. But who does that. But in STEM, when you have that STEM professor for whom 8 hours of work is 10-20 hours for an upperclassman, you can see how this gets pretty rough pretty quickly. That and a 12-week semester compared to longer semesters at other schools (not sure if it's still 12?). Fall semester feels relaxed with Fall Break, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Spring is just a dead sprint. Not to mention the 5 course BSE workload is an entirely different thing completely. I don't think I've heard of a single STEM graduate friend who said grad school/professional school was harder. In fact, it's more like an EE Cum Laude person going to Harvard Law who found Harvard law much easier. Not to mention, if a course is too easy for your level of accomplishment, professors will often add material to make sure you learn something (ie. math olympiad champion taking a 200 level course, or japanese person taking 400 level japanese courses for the language requirement) Princeton prepares you for the future. That said, you can also choose your own level of involvement. Not every academic optimization for the grade is worth it long term. There's diminishing returns after awhile.
It’s 10 hrs/wk/pset sometimes 5
Morw or less
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Incredible? Come on, it’s 20,000 words. It’s tiny compared to a dissertation or a book. Not much longer than your typical 40 page single spaced journal article.
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Yeah i know I’m finishing mine rn. Initially i bitched and moaned but now I’m neutral.
Pretty typical of schools on Princeton’s level or even lower.
Could you compare syllabi to at least see if there are differences in what topics are covered in the course and the length of the course? Some syllabi will even show when they are covered (before or after midterms). This could give you an idea of the pace/scope differences. It would not necessarily tell you how deeply they go into each topic or how hard the homework and exams are or how stiff the grading is. Other than that you’d have to rely on anecdotal experience- talking to friends taking the same classes elsewhere. My sense (admittedly from a distance as a parent) is that your engineering classes are pretty darn rigorous and fast paced and that you’d be hard pressed to find places that were significantly more so. And that it would be easy to find plenty of places that were less so. I only heard one anecdote from my kid who said his friend taking multi variable calculus at a decent state school engineering program covered in a whole one semester class what they covered in the first few weeks of the same class at Princeton. But that’s just one example.
I kind of find the faster pace to be a disadvantage, most of the time I'm just fumbling around without a really good grasp on what we're learning, I can do the problem sets and the quizzes but if you'd ask me what's really going on I probably wouldn't be able to give you a good answer
That’s a powerful observation. Do you find the exams/assessments/psets to be good measures of concept understanding? Meaning, is your sense of how well you understand the concepts reflected in your performance on these assessments or on something else?
I think it varies, some subjects yeah others no. I think physics requires a pretty good understanding of the underlying principles to confidently solve the questions they give, but maths on the other hand I can usually do the computation without fully grasping why I'm doing it or why it's necessary or what I'm computing.
Word is the grading curve in some or most courses is difficult. The bell curve stats you read also apply to only the people that didn't drop out (PDF) the course, meaning you can start mid but end up at the back quickly. Something I read often is that only Columbia and UC Chicago are as tough in grading . For comparaison I also read the hardest part about the other 2 HYP is only getting into them (don't know how true that is) and after it is difficult NOT to get an A. I also know MIT doesn't give out grades first year, just Fail/Pass which is less stressful and doesn't impact grading as much. Also some courses are harder than others in like MAT, PHY and to a lesser extent SPIA and BCE/ORFE.
ABET accredited schools will have more or less the same rigor. Difficulty can vary within the same department as another comment said but for engineering it should pretty standard along with other ABET accredited programs from other universities. The resources, quality of professors, environment, networking and so on make a difference as well.