[deltaonefour]

No I didn't. I mentioned my anecdotal experiences as supporting evidence but ultimately the thesis is that selectivity is causal to difficulty.

I never mentioned that it was specific to my school. Thus with no specific mention the implied meaning is that it's applied to a generality.

[notch656a]

OK so selectivity is causal to difficulty, everywhere but at the school you attended? Are you sure you didn't study law, because this kind of insane logic is something I've only read in legal briefs.

[deltaonefour]

No I didn't say that.

I made no statement about my school or your school specifically in reference to how hard they are in general. We both did however use our schools as anecdotal supporting evidence for each of our respective opinions though.

But anecdotal evidence is worthless. That's why I moved to numbers. This is what the numbers say:

Selectivity is causal to difficulty in general.

Your school could be an exception and my school may be an exception as well. But given my statement above, by probability, it is highly unlikely.

In short, it's more probable that my school is harder than your school and this probability is only escapable if someone who attended both can give us a more accurate first hand comparison.

[notch656a]

OK so selectivity is possibly causal to difficulty and possibly not? So 99.9% of non-selective schools could be as difficult as peer selective schools while the rare exception isn't? You may be on to something.... At least you finally admit you don't get to feel special about going through something more 'difficult' on account of whatever idea your school had of selectivity.

[deltaonefour]

>OK so selectivity is possibly causal to difficulty and possibly not? So 99.9% of non-selective schools could be as difficult as peer selective schools while the rare exception isn't?

Where the hell are you getting that 99.9% number? I would think someone who went to a good school wouldn't pull random numbers out of thin air.

Selectivity is causal to difficulty. Period. But the causal connection like all things in reality is a connection built upon probability. Think of the luck stat in RPGs. On average the more selective the school the harder. If there's any school that breaks the model, that school is an exception and a minority. Your school might be an exception, but by probability it is most likely not and it is more likely you just think your school is harder.

>At least you finally admit you don't get to feel special about going through something more 'difficult' on account of whatever idea your school had of selectivity.

I never said my school was special or commented about how I feel. If you look at the initial posts, I was telling you that going to a non-selective school ISN'T anything special, because you were the one talking about it.

[notch656a]

Going to a non-selective school isn't special, and neither is a selective one. For one, they can have the same difficulty and SELECTIVITY DOESN'T CONFER DIFFICULTY. You most definitely commented how you felt, including talking about how going from your non-selective school to selective school you felt the difficulty became higher as your peers were something like #1 from their previous less selective program/high-school and now they are just average.

Personally I think you just have a chip on your shoulder thinking a selective program is generally more difficult than a non-selective program. Elitist arrogance.

>Where the hell are you getting that 99.9% number? I would think someone who went to a good school wouldn't pull random numbers out of thin air.

I said could be, because you decoupled by saying now that it merely COULD be that a selectivity influences difficulty, before backtracking to play your devious and treacherous claim you were never talking about the school from which your anecdotes came. YOU pulled the figures like 25% and 50% out of a hat, which is fine because we acknowledged they weren't hard numbers. Don't be a hypocrite.

>Selectivity is causal to difficulty. Period

Selectivity doesn't confer difficulty. Period.

Edit: here's a comment from a student at one non-selective school

"This leads to <<school>> feeling very impersonal for Freshman and Sophmores while the university treats you more or less like an experiment to see if you can handle the pressure. This can lead to people that would normal be denied to being accepted and excelling, but it can also lead to other students who shouldn't have been placed in such rigorous programs having to drop out, transfer, or graduate late. This is from a personal observation and 2 good friends transferring schools and another friend who dropped out his Junior year."

they note the university "Put them in extremely tough classes go start with and weed out those who can't handle the pressure."

This is how it tends to work in non-selective schools. They hold students to the 'selective' school standard freshman/sophomore year until by junior year you're effectively in a cohort that looks like the cohort at the selective school. The difficulty is still there, although it's an independent variable from the selectivity.

[deltaonefour]

>Going to a non-selective school isn't special, and neither is a selective one. For one, they can have the same difficulty and SELECTIVITY DOESN'T CONFER DIFFICULTY.

It does. Because selectivity effects the curve. If all schools had the same curve and the same curriculum and same everything except selectivity then, selectivity influences the curve. I've said it a thousand times. If you disagree you have to counter the logic of the curve which you haven't.

I'm also well aware that choice of a curve is a random variable. You've stated it multiple times. Therefore if it's a random variable then hold it the same when comparing mathematical models. Assume all random variables are the same and only adjust the relevant variable which in this case is selectivity. In this case selectivity is causal to difficulty.

>YOU pulled the figures like 25% and 50% out of a hat, which is fine because we acknowledged they weren't hard numbers. Don't be a hypocrite.

The context around those numbers make it clear that they're just really rough estimates. Additionally those numbers were not used in calculations, I simply stated that the numbers I found are inn-accurate because of several factors and gave a really rough estimate on what i thought the numbers could be (50% and 25%). The subsequent conclusion and calculation were based on the lower more inaccurate numbers which STILL show that selectivity is causal to difficulty.

99.9% is not a rough estimate. It's clearly a really exact number with a decimal point.

>Personally I think you just have a chip on your shoulder thinking a selective program is generally more difficult than a non-selective program. Elitist arrogance.

Well did I insult you in any way to the degree of calling you Elitest or arrogant? I'm just making a point. You're the one crossing the line with insults. I think you have a chip on your shoulder.

>I said could be, because you decoupled by saying now that it merely COULD be that a selectivity influences difficulty, before backtracking to play your devious and treacherous claim you were never talking about the school from which your anecdotes came.

In all of reality and all of science, especially the social sciences all causal connections are coupled with probable connections. Nothing is connected with pure logic. Logic only exists in math and logic games. If I said all men are stronger than women. Clearly the generality is true, but obviously there are exceptions and it is unnecessary to comment about those exceptions. But nonetheless, nobody talks in terms of probabilities. In common human parlance we communicate using absolute statements in reference to topics that are in truth generalities and we assume that the other party has the intelligence to know about the exceptions to the generalities.

I simply brought up the probability because I explicitly wanted you to know that YOUR school might be an exception. But by probability it is most likely not an exception. That is all.

>Edit: here's a comment from a student at one non-selective school

I'm more interested in the comment from a student who went to both a very selective school and a school that's not selective. Many students in an "easy" school think it's hard only because they don't have a point of comparison.

>This is how it tends to work in non-selective schools. They hold students to the 'selective' school standard freshman/sophomore year until by junior year you're effectively in a cohort that looks like the cohort at the selective school. The difficulty is still there, although it's an independent variable from the selectivity.

Again. The curve is not an independent variable from selectivity. Therefore selectivity is causal to difficulty. This is a literal numeric connection. I've said this multiple times. Anecdotal and qualitative evidence is worth considering but this causal quantitative connection far stronger.

Your best bet is to find someone who did undergrad stuff at both MIT and Georgia Tech. That persons anecdotal experience is far more accurate.