I'm record as saying that by and large the science classes are more "challenging" than the liberal arts ones are. There's no doubt about this when we are talking about the averages. However, THAT realization does not translate into the more robust statement that grades will tend to be higher in these liberal arts classes.
I agree that putting forth any sort of effort at all will likely secure some form of a B in just about any liberal arts class. But isn't the same pretty much true for most science classes as well. I don't know how it was at your school, but just about every science class I took at my school defined an A at 85-87%, and a B at 75% (or thereabouts). Even though i worked my ass off to make sure I got the highest grades I could, I came away from most of these classes thinking that even a slight effort at studying should secure at least a B in any science class no matter how hard it was.
Now I know, I know. . .A whole trainload of you people are going to come on this thread and argue with me "At MY school, Northwester, Princeton, Cornell, etc., etc., NOBODY gets an A, and the cutoff is a strict 93%" or some other such nonsense designed to convinced the rest of us unwashed masses that you worked harder than the rest of us, that its harder to get an A where YOU go to school, and that its a MIRACLE within the context of your NO GRADE INFLATION undergraduate institution that ANYBODY gets into medical school, and that THANK GOD everybody who goes there simply works hard enough, and more to the point, harder than anybody else, to rise above the background noise created by the standardless science classes taken by everybody else. But I don't buy it for one minute. I've no doubt that you had SOME science classes with a traditional 90% A- cutoff (my General Chem was like that), but i don't think the majority did. The trend among ALL schools at this point is to decrease the scores needed to get some form of an A in a science class. And I think that applies ALMOST equally across the board. If I have to hear one more time about how at school X only the top 5% of the people get A's, I think i am going to puke.
[off my box]
In my estimation the MAJOR thing that seperates science classes from many of the liberal arts classes (including many upper level ones) is a lack of any sort of accountabilty and standards for those liberal arts classes. Let me give you an example. I took a number of upper level philosophy courses (like "existentialism and hermeneutics" or "Derida" or somesuch) where the subject matter was extremely difficult, and where a great deal of "knowledge" could have been tested on an exam. BUT, for those of you who have had upper level liberal arts classes know, many times the final grade (perhaps even the only grade for the whole class) would come down to a "paper" on a topic of our choice (provided it had some relevance to the course). I can't tell you how may times we'd spend an entire semester diving into the minutia of this philosphy or that concept only to be asked to write a 20 page paper on "whatever". In that case, there's little in the way of accountability for what one was expect to know from taking the class in the first place.
Anyway, just my take.
I've been through a liberal arts undergrad (and masters), an decent law school, and a premed post-bacc stint (as well as a few extra science classes) and while I think on average the science classes required more accountability, it was about equally hard to get the same grades in all the classes.
I will be interested to see how med school classes turn out. I suspect it will be much of the same.
Judd