[notch656a]

>I never said it's easy. But it certainly is easier. Let's do a quantitative analysis then. Anyone with a pulse and let's say they fail out 75%. That's equivalent to a 25% pass rate. Then take a look at a selective school with a (in my case 20% failure rate and 10% acceptance). That's about 8% pass rate assuming anyone with a pulse applies (of course this is not the case, better performing students tend to apply).

>By that number alone you know how much harder it is in a selective school.

You really don't. All you proved was that 80% (or whatever) of those who the school selected would pass. You know nothing of what percent of those who they didn't select would pass. You can't possibly make the assertion it would be lower than 25% example you gave for the "anyone with a pulse school."

I don't doubt you probably went to a more rigorous, challenging, and renowned school than me. I don't doubt you are more intelligent than myself or many who did well at my school. The fallacy comes when you conflate entrance selectivity with difficulty.

> I passed top of my class and studied the night before in a non-selective school.

Can you help explain to me why you went from a top non-selective public school to a different top selective school? In my experience after the first couple years everyone but the cream was filtered out, so by junior year it was effectively like I was in a 'selective' school. Or are you comparing a lower tier non-selective engineering school to a top selective school? My point of reference here is one of the handful of non-selective top-10 schools.

>Many top engineering schools have certain programs that are ABET accredited, and many schools with ABET accredited programs are easy.

Agreed. Was just providing some baseline for roughly the curriculum that was covered. You're right that ABET on its own doesn't speak thoroughly to the program, which is why I used a variety of other qualifiers beyond ABET.

[deltaonefour]

>Can you help explain to me why you went from a top non-selective public school to a different top selective school?

Transfer. And change of major. I would say I went to an top 50 school initially, with average selectivity and the same amount of weeder classes in every engineering program. Then went to a top 10 public school with an even more selective engineering program.

The weeder classes for your school filtered everyone out but the people remaining are still only 25% of anyone with a pulse. I'd wager this school has an extremely low amount of high achievers joining, so while you're dealing with smart competition, it's nowhere near the level of what you'd be facing at a selective school.

At a selective school, you have the top 10% of kids from the entire nation, who again get weeded out by about 50%. Yes that's effectively the smartest kids in the country getting cut in half. Nothing here is statistically rigorous but you can't deny that this back of the napkin estimate says something about how hard these schools are.

>You really don't. All you proved was that 80% (or whatever) of those who the school selected would pass. You know nothing of what percent of those who they didn't select would pass.

The kids who were selected overall have a higher chance success and higher work ethic and higher intelligence then those not selected. There are definitely scenarios of people who are great at programming but can't do well in school but these are generally in the minority. Google for example doesn't hire people based off of school, but the majority of their hires have degrees from top schools. It correlates with IQ and general programming ability, but I would say google sort of over selects. They don't need people that strong.

>I don't doubt you probably went to a more rigorous, challenging, and renowned school than me. I don't doubt you are more intelligent than myself or many who did well at my school. The fallacy comes when you conflate entrance selectivity with difficulty.

Never claimed any of these things and who knows? Maybe you went to the better school. I simply stated my credentials to show you that I have anecdotal experience from both types of schools. The difference in hardness is palpable and can only really be truly known by someone who went to both types of schools.

In the first school I attended my mindset was like you. I thought I had a talent and that most people were stupid. That changed when I got into a top 10 highly selective school.

But we did kind of get side tracked here. My main point is that my experience with schooling is more extensive then yours. And from that experience I derive that anyone can learn programming. It wasn't mentioned before, but programming is much easier than school.

I should also mention that this experience is from both extensive experience in school AND work. School experience provides sort of a bubble, a partial picture but not the full thing..

[notch656a]

You compared a top 50 school to a top 10. Of course it was different, and quite possibly more rigorous.

I'm comparing a (my non-selective public) top 10 engineering to other top 10s [engineering]. Near peer selective to near peer non-selective. You compared a top 50 to a top 10 ranked engineering, far from peer schools. Starting with 10% says nothing about the difficulty of the program. You don't even know that they were the best 10% of engineering material, just that they were the top 10% of what the school thought were picks as candidates. Selectivity does not confer difficulty. High (50%+)success rate of your selective cohort does not confer low (25%-) success rate of the non-selected group.

> My main point is that my experience with schooling is more extensive then yours.

It seems we have the same amount of experience with top 10 schools, where N=1 for both. I have been to a 'lower tier' school but not for engineering so I didn't even bother to mention it, and yeah I agree it was a joke comparatively.

[deltaonefour]

>Starting with 10% says nothing about the difficulty of the program. You don't even know that they were the best 10% of engineering material, just that they were the top 10% of what the school thought were picks as candidates. Selectivity does not confer difficulty. High (50%+)success rate of your selective cohort does not confer low (25%-) success rate of the non-selected group.

It does. Like I said the the smarter kids the tougher the courses. Because smarter kids normalize easiness. The difficulty of the program is set by the kids who attend. The school absolutely cannot fail the entire class, they have to set the hardness so that a certain amount pass. It is absolutely a factor especially if most schools grade on a curve. So if any Tom Dick or Jane can join the curve however steep it is, will reflect the quality of those who join.

"Best engineering material" is a misnomer. the smartest kids from other schools correlate with best engineering material. I already stated that sure you can have some miracle kid that succeeds at engineering but bombs at school, but this is rare. Kids who do well in school tend to do well in engineering. Any other thing you see is likely to be an anomaly.

You're basing your argument off the erroneous notion that engineering talent in school is completely separate from all other subjects and therefore selectivity is completely irrelevant. That doesn't make any sense. I'm saying it's not completely separate at all. There is a strong correlation that if you graduated top of the class in your high school you have a higher likelihood of better performance in engineering at a top school. It's not always the case but the correlation exists.

>It seems we have the same amount of experience with top 10 schools, where N=1 for both. I have been to a 'lower tier' school but not for engineering so I didn't even bother to mention it, and yeah I agree it was a joke comparatively.

Sure it's N=1. But read my paragraph above. That's a common sense figure. Person A gets all F's in your classes and Person B gets straight As and takes a bunch of AP courses... by probability person B will be the better engineer. Common sense. We can make a good estimate based off of common sense logic without the need for statistically rigorous data. So based off of that logic, my reasoning goes beyond a N=1 sample size as we can use common sense induction to arrive at a broader conclusion.

[notch656a]

>It does. Like I said the the smarter kids the tougher the courses. Because smarter kids normalize easiness.

False. There is no requirement that the course be made easier, nor that the non-selective school refrain from creating a much harsher curve to reflect a like-achiever performing similarly to like-achiever at a different school.

>The school absolutely cannot fail the entire class, they have to set the hardness so that a certain amount pass.

They absolutely can, and in fact most of the courses I took REQUIRE the teacher to fail everyone who fails to achieve certain ABET designated criteria, regardless of what percent fails to master the material. Although in practical case, this means the non-selective school just fails a lot more people than the selective school at freshman/sophomore level.

>It is absolutely a factor especially if most schools grade on a curve. So if any Tom Dick or Jane can join the curve however steep it is, will reflect the quality of those who join.

Only on the basis of the fallacy that curves cannot vary from school to school.

>That doesn't make any sense. I'm saying it's not completely separate at all. There is a strong correlation that if you graduated top of the class in your high school you have a higher likelihood of better performance in engineering at a top school. It's not always the case but the correlation exists.

How the top 10% or whatever n% performs doesn't say anything about how the bottom 100-N% perform, (other than the top performed better). It merely provides a maximum, which in your example was 50% passing. We've been over this fallacious assertion many times now.

>You're basing your argument off the erroneous notion that engineering talent in school is completely separate from all other subjects and therefore selectivity is completely irrelevant

Selectivity DOESN'T CONFER DIFFICULTY. Say that in your head 10 more times. That 50% of your selective cohort passes doesn't prove that the non-selective cohort will be below say 25% of your baseline "only with a pulse" group. A t best it suggest that they won't exceed the 50% of the favored cohort. I didn't make an 'erroneous notion' about selectivity or talent because I never claimed selectivity increased nor decreased difficulty, in fact that was your 'erroneous notion.'

>Sure it's N=1. But read my paragraph above. That's a common sense figure. Person A gets all F's in your classes and Person B gets straight As and takes a bunch of AP courses... by probability person B will be the better engineer. Common sense. We can make a good estimate based off of common sense logic without the need for statistically rigorous data. So based off of that logic, my reasoning goes beyond a N=1 sample size as we can use common sense induction to arrive at a broader conclusion.

I see no reason why person A and B alike couldn't be held to similar standards regardless as whether they went to a selective vs non selective school.

Your selective program is not more difficult on that basis alone.

[deltaonefour]

>False. There is no requirement that the course be made easier, nor that the non-selective school refrain from creating a much harsher curve to reflect a like-achiever performing similarly to like-achiever at a different school.

>They absolutely can, and in fact most of the courses I took REQUIRE the teacher to fail everyone who fails to achieve certain ABET designated criteria, regardless of what percent fails to master the material. Although in practical case, this means the non-selective school just fails a lot more people than the selective school at freshman/sophomore level.

Of course no official requirement exists. But all schools must do this. Failing an entire class or most of the class is grounds for a lawsuit. It's also extremely bad for business as schools are basically businesses.

The only thing schools can do is grade on a curve and this curve must let a percentage of people through. The quality of that percentage depends 100% on the quality of the group that is in that class. Thus selectivity effects difficulty. If every student scored 99%, then 99% is now a C grade. See the logic? Selectivity is causative to difficulty in classes with a curve AND that is a quantitative inductive conclusion which is incredibly hard to counter with qualitative anecdotes.

I also don't know why you're bringing up ABET when we agreed it's trash and irrelevant.

>Only on the basis of the fallacy that curves cannot vary from school to school.

Curves are different, so are the students going in. But when you look at the whole, by the law of large numbers (aka basic probability) a pattern emerges. Selective schools have smarter people and are therefore harder overall because of these curves. The generality is true despite exceptions that may exist. You can say on average, what I say is more likely to be true.

>How the top 10% or whatever n% performs doesn't say anything about how the bottom 100-N% perform, (other than the top performed better). It merely provides a maximum, which in your example was 50% passing. We've been over this fallacious assertion many times now.

It already does. The top 10% indicates that the bottom 90% failed to perform at the level of the top 10%. That is something right there. Failure to perform. If you fail to be part of the top 10% then you're more likely to fail at other things INCLUDING an engineering curriculum. Correlation and probability. Your assumption which imo is much more far fetched is stating that this correlation DOESN'T exist. Think about it. It's much more logical to assume high performers in high school are more likely to be high performers in university.

>Selectivity DOESN'T CONFER DIFFICULTY. Say that in your head 10 more times.

Say it as much as you want. I am literally telling you that IT DOES.

I said two things that by induction leads to higher difficulty. Literally. Selectivity leads to higher performers in a class. Higher performers effect the intrinsic curve EVERY school has. THEREFORE difficulty increases. As I stated before this hinges on the correlation between performance before entering the university with actual performance at the university in an engineering curriculum. That's the basis of my thesis right there. It is unreasonable to deny that correlation.

>I see no reason why person A and B alike couldn't be held to similar standards regardless as whether they went to a selective vs non selective school.

You hold the standard too high, then nobody passes the course. A certain percentage has to pass, therefore, for a non-selective school the curve MUST be lowered for more people to pass. As I stated before, although there's no official rule stating that schools can't fail everyone, it's pretty stupid for a school to fail everyone. Bad for business and various other things.

Thus by this logic a non-selective school MUST lower the bar or too many people will fail. Keep in mind, selective schools also have high attrition rates, so we can do the math on this if you have statistics about your school. I'm guessing something like Georgia Tech which is like 40% percent dropout rate (could very well be a BS statistic as I've only heard people regurgitate what the dean says) and 75% acceptance, versus my school which is 11 percent acceptance and dropout is 10% (highly inaccurate as this is the overall dropout rate of the entire school... Engineering is MUCH higher).

This leaves Georgia Tech with 45% and my school with 10% of the initial group of people that applied. Assuming that both schools have the same distribution of talented people applying, there's no logic that can justify Georgia Tech being easier than my school. More people of the same level of talent out of this distribution make it through Georgia Tech than they do at my school. Therefore my school is harder.

Of course it should also be noted that my school is prestigious enough that most mediocre students don't bother to apply. So my school weighted towards a group with greater talent.

I don't know which school you went to but Georgia Tech is the only top 10 CS school that I know of that has a reputation for letting "anyone with a pulse" into their online masters program, so I'm using that as my model.

>Your selective program is not more difficult on that basis alone.

Certainly there are exceptions aka Anomalies, but the generality is impossible not to be true. It's an axiom of probability. You could very well be a genius of unparalleled talent that came out of a non-selective program.

In fact by probability, it is actually highly unlikely for anomalies not to exist. Somebody eventually gets struck by lightning.

[notch656a]

>If every student scored 99%, then 99% is now a C grade. See the logic? Selectivity is causative to difficulty in classes with a curve AND that is a quantitative inductive conclusion which is incredibly hard to counter with qualitative anecdotes.

No I don't. The center of the curve ('C') doesn't need to be calibrated around the median. 'F' can be chosen as the median, or you can choose an objective scale (this did happen) rather than a subjective curve. I've seen 'qualitative anecdotes' that the curve isn't centered around 'C' and I reject the notion this anecdote is impossible. I don't know why you can't understand the curve can be adjusted so like-performers across schools get a similar grade, resulting in higher GPAs at selective schools and lower GPAs (initially) at non-selective ones.

>I also don't know why you're bringing up ABET when we agreed it's trash and irrelevant.

Because you made a false assertion everyone couldn't be failed, when in fact at least in the institution it was REQUIRED that everyone be failed if everyone fails to meet ABET designated criteria. It supports that your claim is specious.

>Curves are different, so are the students going in. But when you look at the whole, by the law of large numbers (aka basic probability) a pattern emerges. Selective schools have smarter people and are therefore harder overall because of these curves. The generality is true despite exceptions that may exist. You can say on average, what I say is more likely to be true.

False. Again you depend on the fallacy the curves can't be calibrated around something like 'the average student fails and the course follows the difficulty of <selective school>.' If I give an IQ test to a cohort to a group of lower intelligence people, the 'curve' looks bent and biased towards lower score. If I give it to people of upper intelligence, the curve 'looks' bent towards biased towards higher score. But in the end it is the curve that is objective across cohorts (schools), despite higher intelligence in one cohort ('school') than another. The difficulty is unchanged, even though selectivity is introduced.

>The top 10% indicates that the bottom 90% failed to perform at the level of the top 10%.

That only sets the ceiling. If the 'top 10%' have a 50% pass rate, that doesn't stop the bottom 90% from having a 49% one, well above your 25% threshold for 'anybody with a pulse.'

> Your assumption which imo is much more far fetched is stating that this correlation DOESN'T exist.

My assertion is that all we know is it's likely the top picks may tell us the ceiling for expection of the bottom, but not the floor. And it tells us little to nothing about how difficult the cirricula is, unless we compare to like-kind top picks at another cirriculum (which without selectivity, could be difficult to compare in practice.)

>You hold the standard too high, then nobody passes the course. A certain percentage has to pass, therefore, for a non-selective school the curve MUST be lowered for more people to pass. As I stated before, although there's no official rule stating that schools can't fail everyone, it's pretty stupid for a school to fail everyone. Bad for business and various other things.

> said two things that by induction leads to higher difficulty. Literally. Selectivity leads to higher performers in a class. Higher performers effect the intrinsic curve EVERY school has. THEREFORE difficulty increases. As I stated before this hinges on the correlation between performance before entering the university with actual performance at the university in an engineering curriculum. That's the basis of my thesis right there. It is unreasonable to deny that correlation.

Fallacious reasoning, the two schools could have the exact same cirricula, teacher, everything and merely different students and when graded against objective criteria, or appropriately calibrated (shifted down/up) shaped curves, they can have both equal difficulty and grade parity for performance. The university I went to is NOTORIOUS for having the least grade inflation, much lower than many 'selective' schools, which also helps fix the exact problem you are worried about.

>Thus by this logic a non-selective school MUST lower the bar or too many people will fail.

Not at all. They just didn't give a fuck. Engineering drop-out is their feeder program to the other programs; better to keep the rankings high to bait people in than make engineering easier resulting in lower rankings and lose the bait. Engineering drop-out commonly became successful engineering tech or even successful doctor, lawyer, etc via side-channeling of people who were baited into the university via engineering rankings. They would have happily failed out everyone from what I can tell, and if you didn't meet ABET designated objectives they were REQUIRED to fail you. You can't just wash this away with your vendetta not believing that this can be true -- I saw people with excellent performance fail merely for missing a single ABET criteria. Moreover recall at least one class where I believe the majority failed or dropped out, making the median an 'F' or 'D'. Apparently where you went, you implied the median was a 'C', so there's a difference already. This is a public school that couldn't give a flying fuck if most the undergrads failed out.

> Selectivity leads to higher performers in a class. Higher performers effect the intrinsic curve EVERY school has.

Having higher performers doesn't change the curriculum or necessary even the grading, it simply means those individuals may be better prepared to tackle equal difficulty found at both non-selective and selective schools. If I bring in the population at random to do 10 pull-ups each and seperately bring in a bunch of professional football players to do same, the difficulty is the same despite a massive change in selectivity.

>More people of the same level of talent out of this distribution make it through Georgia Tech than they do at my school.

I'm not terribly familiar with Georgia Tech or your school, and it's possible, I dare say probably even likely, your school was more challenging than both mine and Georgia Tech, but we can't say the delta in difficulty was BECAUSE of the selectivity. I'm guessing the university I attended didn't show up on your radar because you swapped us into the sciences (computer science) instead of engineering, and my university is not so remarkably ranked in computer science. In fact it would be impossible to gain a CS degree there without acceptance into an entirely different college of science (for which I have no basis for comparison).

> only top 10 CS school

I thought we were talking about engineering. I guess we can stop here. At the school I attended, CS is not engineering but rather science (which is in the name) so we don't even have a basis for comparison. It's a bit pedantic on face but it drastically changes everything to be in college of science instead of engineering from the bottom up where I went to university. Are you sure CS was in the college of engineering where you attended?

>Certainly there are exceptions aka Anomalies, but the generality is impossible not to be true. It's an axiom of probability. You could very well be a genius of unparalleled talent that came out of a non-selective program.

Having more qualified people attempt to complete the degree is not same as being more difficult. Moreover, attrition could be so high at the 'anybody with a pulse' institution that by the time junior year comes around the quality of cohort looks the same as at the selective school.