Ivy league difficulty?

how hard is the actual workload at an ivy league school once you've been accepted? students insight who go/went would be greatly appreciated. thanks

Ivy league difficulty?
Yale is hard: everyone studies in secret so that they can shine and get the best recommendations for their summer externships/graduate school. Putting a lot of effort into your writing will take you a long way, since most seminars are paper-heavy. Students are pretty intellectual and well-read because they tend to come from rigorous private high schools.





U Penn is pretty easy. Lots of big lecture courses and overworked graduate teaching assistants mean that tests are not carefully graded and grade inflation is rampant. More kids from public schools attend and there is a somewhat more business-like atmosphere. I would not say intellectualism is highy prized here, which makes it easier on everyone. Lots of showing off (especially of New money), whereas at Yale showing off is not at all cool. You wouldn't know someone in your residential college won a Rhodes scholarship unless you read it in the papers.
Reply:I went to Cornell. It was very cut-throat.





The professors were very friendly and always available, but that's really true about any private school and not limited to just the Ivy League. The grading however was a bit rough. Professors give hard exams, hard enough that the mean is sometimes in the 40's or 50's.





Because of such low means, a lot of classes were curved to B- or C+. However, when everyone in the class studies, it's tough for any 1 person to get so much higher above the rest, to get an A.





From my experience there, you will definitely graduate in 4 years if you're serious about studying, and do your work as you're assigned it (ie. no procrastination). However, you can't stress out about your GPA. Since everyone there is smart and is from the top % of their HS, everyone studies, and the average student would receive a B- for what may be A+ coursework in other schools.
Reply:I'm sure the difficulty level a person experiences is directly related to: 1) how intelligent s/he is, 2) how rigorous a course-load s/he took in high school, 3) the type of study skills s/he developed in high school, etc.





One answer surely doesn't fit all in this case.
Reply:At Brown it's not too hard. You can take what you want - so if you want to punish yourself you can. I have to write papers quite a bit and even though they aren't very long you can't BS it. Lots of reading which is pretty deep. I think sciences people put in more time than I do though. They also likely make more money.





I also went to a community college for 2.5 years so to compare it that it is MUCH harder. But it's still doable.
Reply:It's actually pretty easy. Everyone says that the hardest part about the Ivies is getting in; from there, you're coasting--and have way less work than your counterparts who got into other top colleges (ie. Williams, Amherst) that weren't Ivies.


However, Columbia DOES have a lot of work.

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