U of T harder than Harvard??

[Guest UofT Student]

What do you guys think of this recent article in the Globe and Mail?

 

Harvard versus U of T

 

By SARAH BROWN

 

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A16

 

New York -- Re Why Harvard Hates Straight A's (April 22): Having attended both Harvard and the University of Toronto, I can state that there are two differences between the schools: Harvard is much more difficult to get into, whereas the University of Toronto is much more difficult to get out of -- with a degree and decent grades, that is.

 

At Harvard, undergraduates have to take only four full-time courses per year to earn a degree, and they have a longer school year in which to prepare for their exams. At U of T, five full-time courses must be taken, and the school year is much more condensed.

 

The atmosphere at Harvard is quite "country-clubish" and leisurely, while at U of T it is a downright pressure-cooker.

 

At U of T there is an unwritten policy in most classes that 20 per cent of the students in every class will receive a failing grade. At Harvard, most students receive a minimum of A- grades. In fact, to receive anything less than a B, one would have to miss exams and not hand in assignments.

 

As far as getting into Harvard goes, the most significant factor is whether or not you are a so-called "legacy," meaning that if your father, mother, or sibling went to Harvard before you, you can still get in, as hundreds do, with mediocre grades in high school.

 

I'm not surprised that current Harvard students feel that they deserve A's for their $100,000 investment; if they were forced to compete with students at the U of T, many would receive only C's at best.

 

Find the full link at:

www.globeandmail.com/serv...ts_start=1

[Guest Retic2002]

Lots of people are talking about the article at U of T. Maybe its true and maybe not!

[Guest UT]

Hi all,

 

I can only make comments regarding UT undergrad, since I've never attended Harvard. I am currently a 4th year immunology student at UT. Immunology is one of the toughest programs at UT and it is VERY competitive. Even for our fourth year IMM courses (taken only by IMM specialists), the average is still a "B". Keep in mind that there are only 30+ IMM specialists (and we started off with 1800+ science people in first year), and we are obviously not dumb to make it this far. Yet, the professors still try to keep the average down to a "B".

 

However, I think for other programs, the program requirements are not as stringent, so you can take lots of bird courses. It I were to have the choice to do it all over again, I would just enroll in an easy program, and get stellar marks without putting in that much effort. Even within a school, the level of difficulty of different programs varies.

[Guest UofT Student]

UT, I don't think that you can necessarily get higher marks in so-called "easier" programs. In fact, my lowest marks come from the widely known "bird courses". The problem with these courses is that the workload is small, but the marks of the class consistently fall between the 70s and low 80s (while science courses can range from failures to high 90s). So if you took an easier program, yes, you would have an easier time. But would your marks be in the 4.0 range? Probably not. Of course, this is all assuming that you're not usually getting 60s and 70s. In that case, of course an easier program would bring your marks up.

 

And there's also the fact that if you take easy programs throughout your undergrad, IF you make it to med school, you'd probably get squashed because you're not used to real work volumes. The way I see it is if you are genuinely interested in Imm, then you'll probably get higher marks doing that.

[Guest UT]

U of T Student,

 

I think my marks would be in the 4.0 range if I were allowed to take more easier courses. My marks are in the 3.9 range because of hard courses required by the IMM program. When I took courses such as economics and statistics, I didn't have to study for them at all and I got a 4.0 easily. On the other hand, for courses like MGB311 and BCH321, the wordload was much heavier.

[Guest UT]

Hi U of T student,

 

I do believe that my marks would be in the 4.0 range if I were to be in an easier program and be allowed to take more easier courses. My marks are around the 3.9 range. When I took economics and statistics, I did not have to study for them at all and I got 90+ in those courses easily. However, I found that I had to spend way more time for courses (ie MGB311, BCH321) required by the IMM program.

 

The hard part about med school is getting in, since once you're in, you're a future MD for sure (no one fails in med school). So, even if you take easier courses and have a tougher time initially in med school, you'll still be a doctor in the end. What do you call the person who finishes last in med school? A doctor!!

[Guest UT]

That last line was gold. You make a great point.

[Guest Gumby]

That article is rather intresting, however, I feel that some information is left out that should have been there.

 

Firstly, Most people who get into harvard have a minimum of 1400 on their SATs and really good extra-curriculars. As a result, we can conclude that MOST people who attend harvard are SMARTER than the people who attend UT--for god sakes, you can get into most programs at UT with an 80% high school average!!!

With the smarter people attending the school, the class averages should be higher as well. Also, the tuition at Harvard is around 10X that of UT, so there is no unofficial weeding system in place at the school and I bet that the professors are a lot more willing to help you, since most classes at Harvard have 20 students as opposed to the 1000+ student classes at UT(1st year phych or bio at UT for example).

Harvard students can take 4 courses per semester, but their courses are tougher. I saw the syllabus for some of the 1st year courses, and some of them cover the materials that are in Honours level courses at Canadian universities.

 

So in the end, I think that students at Harvard have no "real" advantage in terms of getting better grades than students at UT(other than getting the profs' help) because we have to keep in mind that the average entering percentages of UT students are considerably lower than that of Harvard's students.

[Guest cheech10]

First let me say that I have NEVER seen a course at UofT where 20% of the students fail. Ever. Not even close. On the other hand my MAT 137 course did hava a D+ average, but that was a more difficult course than the core MAT 135 course.

 

Second, there are a number of easier courses at UofT, like Stats 220 (I got 100 in it), semiotics, symbolic logic, anthropology, ECO 105, geography, and more. So it's not an impossible school if you can find the easy courses.

 

But as for Harvard, the problem of grade inflation there is well documented, and IMO the higher standards of entry do not fully account for the extremely high averages seen there.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey there cheech10,

 

I took the last iteration of CHM240Y (Organic Chem) last summer at UT. We started out with over 200 students in the class (230, I think); we ended up with ~130. I'm not saying that 20% of those who stayed in failed, but the two term tests did a nice job of clearing the lecture room, with their respective 61% and 54% averages. Given that the prof was apparently instructed by medical schools not to use the bell, it's not really surprising that there were so many fatalities. Now, I don't know what the final marks panned out to be but I don't think it was pretty.

 

Perhaps it was simply because the weather was too alluring!

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest cheech10]

Kirsteen,

I should mention that I've never taken summer school (except this summer, sociology for the last UWO credit). I think the average summer class has a different student profile from a fall class, with more people re-taking the course, or taking it to avoid having a low mark show up in their transcripts (since most med schools ignore summer course marks). Also, especially if your professor was Skonieczny (or, more recently Dicks), you should know that it is a policy of CHM240 to not bell curve marks, since the questions are of a standard type year after year and only the specific reactions change. As for drops, you're right, there probably are significant numbers of students that drop along the way, and they *might* be able to make up the 20% failure rate alluded to earlier.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey again cheech10,

 

(It's far too easy to come on here and natter a bit about CHM240 and procrastinate a little from studying for my other, upcoming chem final!)

 

You're probably bang on with respect to the motivations of the population of students taking orgo in the summer. I know that there were at least a couple in the class who had failed the course the year previous and were back for some more entertainment.

 

Dr. Skonieczny was my prof (and a great one too), and whether he was masking the truth or not I don't know, but he mentioned repeatedly that they would not bell marks due to professional school directives. Whatever the actual reason, I don't think it had much to do with the standard question types however, as both of our term tests and the final exam seemed radically different (pardon the pun) from each test and exam given previously (which were offered as study aids). Perhaps he was trying out some new approaches and question types for his new course, (and yes, there were some of the "old regular" type questions), but others truly were quite wild and previously unseen.

 

On other classes, it would be interesting to see how people do. Does UT post any such stats that you're aware of? For example, what about first year chemistry, e.g., CHM139? Looking at some of the averages for those tests, there also seem to be a whole whack of people who are on the unfortunate side of the normal distribution.

 

Cheers, and thanks for providing some diversion,

Kirsteen

[Guest cheech10]

Hey Kirsteen,

 

Interesting. I had Skonieczny in the fall term right before you (I think), and that's when he talked about the standard questions. But I think for the summer term they may have had rather different questions, which I noticed from the old test package.

 

As far as I know, UofT doesn't post final result breakdowns, but you can get an idea from the class distributions on each test, and few tests have had 20% F's, so I surmise that the final grades are also F's in less than 20% of the cases. The ASSU anti-calendar surveys do have a section for your expected grade, but I don't think the results are reported for this question, and the accuracy of it would be questionable.

 

Glad you enjoyed the discourse,

Chris

[Guest mying]

Just a reminder:

 

You CAN fail med school.

[Guest YongQ]

UBC 2nd year organic chemistry had a 50% failure rate when I took it 2 years ago. It happens!

[Guest medwant2b]

Hi Kirsteen:

 

Last summer I vaguely remember a woman in CHM240 telling me she had already finished an MBA, so I'm quite sure we've met. Actually, I think we might have even been in the same Thursday lab group!

 

Your post certainly brought back the memories. I can certainly remember the 'I don't take crap from any one... and there is no bell curve' speech. He did it like every second lecture!

 

The weather was alluring, but I don't think that is the reason so many dropped the thing. I think it was the fact that the course required lots of memorization and some thinking. He actually alluded to this at the beginning of the course and at one point said '...many can memorize and many can think... few can do both!'

 

As a whole, I really liked the course.

 

 

My $0.02 Worth on Harvard:

 

There are two groups of people at Harvard -- the very rich and the very smart. George W Bush is an example of the very rich. He bought his entrance to Harvard after being rejected by U of Texas Law; an unflattering article on Bush touches on this -- see the last couple of paragraphs.

 

Cheers! medwant2b

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey there medwant2b,

 

It seems like it's a microscopic world, yet again. Yep, I was in the Thursday lab group so it could have been me (I've since run into at least one other meds hopeful in UT sciences with an MBA). Where were you hanging out in the lab/lecture hall?

 

I was just joshing re: the weather; he did seem to love to select some of the quite minor reactions for some of the tests, so I could see how they could appear pretty scary and aid to deplete the class population. However, akin to you, I thought orgo was a good challenge and heck of a lot of fun.

 

Are you still at UT now? If so, what program are you pursuing? Lastly, did you apply to any meds programs this year?

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest J]

Considering med schools (or is it just an Ontario thing?) don't even count summer courses in your GPA, I don't see why people would be whining for an adjustment in marks. In fact, lots of people purposely take courses like orgo in the summer because they are aware of this fact.

[Guest coolD]

I don't know about UT, but orgo chem at UBC has a 50% failiure rate.

 

Also, my other premed friends at SFU tell me that their orgo chem class' midterm average was like 44%!

 

WTF

[Guest UofT Student]

I think that U of T might not have the 20% failure rate, but thats more than made up for with the drop rate. Many of the tougher classes start off with a full enrolment, but end up half-empty by the drop date. Do you think they would drop the course if they were doing well in it? Most of these people were probably doing very poorly, so their dropping the course makes the average jump up. A kind of natural selection if you will.

 

Also, about Cheech10's comment about there being many easy courses at u of t ("Stats 220 (I got 100 in it), semiotics, symbolic logic, anthropology, ECO 105, geography").. I think alot of that depends on which professor you get. For example, in symbolic logic, there were 2 professors for it in the year I took it, and the class averages were more than 10% apart. Also, I wouldn't necessarily say that courses such as anthropology and geography are easy to get high marks. Some of my geography courses have had only 1 or 2 people over 80% (and low 80s to boot), and I know people with 90% averages walking out of anthropology with low 80s as well. I think it all depends on your professor, which particular course, and if you have a certain innate knack for it. On the other hand, I think semiotics has the reputation for being the easiest course at U of T, but that's compensated by the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to find a spot in that course.

[Guest medwant2b]

Hi Kirsteen:

 

In the lectures I was one of a triumvirate that almost always sat at the back of the class and on occasion asked questions. In the lab I was far from the fumehoods and to the far right (when viewed from the perspective of the fumehoods). I think you were pretty much in the opposite corner. If you were in my lab group Ghotas was our TA. He was pretty cool about things.

 

Currently, I'm doing a bit of post-MASc work and hanging out at the downtown hospital I did my research. Aside from that (like many here) I'm hoping I'll be one of the select few that gets a fat (acceptance) letter in June. I assume you're an applicant as well. It would be nice to see you at a med school near here in the not-too-distant future.

 

Cheers, medwant2b

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey again medwant2b,

 

Yep, we definitely were in the same orgo sphere then--I agree, Ghotas was a coolio. You're right again, I was in the opposite corner from you although I don't recall all of the folk way over on the other side. Och well.

 

If you're in the MASc. program you may know one of my pals--Julia? She's in the same program as you and has just finished up her thesis; she has also applied to meds this year.

 

Where have you interviewed thus far--did you stay within province or send some apps into the beyond too?

 

Best of luck,

Kirsteen

 

P.S. Wait! Did you wear a slightly older looking lab coat and often carry your lab notebook over when Ghotas gave his pre-lab chats? Also, do you have light-ish blondy/brown hair? If so, then I think I've located you.

[Guest cheech10]

Obviously individual experiences may vary, but:

 

- you can choose your professor (generally), so you could go for the symbolic logic prof with a history of higher marks

 

- not all geography courses are easy, but some have a (well deserved) reputation for being easy

 

- I know science students with 70 averages that got 90s in anthro, so I can't in all honesty say it's a hard course, IMO

 

I would like to say that taking a course because you'll get a high mark is IMHO a foolish reason, especially if you don't like the subject. And even in JLM349, BCH321, CHM240, and *any* other big core science course there are students (at least 10, from the test distributions) that get mid 90s. Sorry, but I just haven't found UofT to be as hard as has been suggested on this forum a number of times.

[Guest CoolM]

Now that everyone's mentioning easy courses, does anyone know of any really easy courses at UBC?

[Guest UofT Student]

I think the difficulty of the course also has alot to do with the TAs. For example, in marketing geography, widely known as one of the easiest courses at U of T, the TAs marking your assignment have a huge play in your mark, seeing that assignments are 60% of the course. The year I took it, nobody got over 85% on assignments, and this year, I know about 10 people with the same TA who all got between 70-75% no matter what they wrote. I've also heard the same TA bias in physiology lab courses, and also in JLM349. This is sad, since one mark in the low 70s can jeopardize a successful application to U of T. Its especially sad that some of these TAs get a power complex and perhaps enjoy expressing the bitterness of their sad lot in life by taking it out on students. Its just luck who you get, since you can't pick your TAs like you can sometimes pick your profs. As for the students you say who got 90s in anthro and 70s in science, perhaps they are in the wrong field and would be much better suited to an arts program?