What exactly makes community college science classes easier?

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thisismyacct

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You always hear people say "don't take or retake prereqs at a community college". What is it about community college that makes it easier than a 4 yr university?
 
Usually the homework/exam questions are of lower quality than those at a similar course at the university level. Faculty anywhere are pressured not to give out too many bad grades because that reflects poorly on the program (who wants to go to a school that boasts a 60% failure rate?). Considering the demographics of CC-level courses compared to those of university-level courses, the average grades should be categorically lower in CC courses. If the population is of lower-quality but the grade distribution remains the same, then the grades of the low-quality population are artificially inflated.
 
aldol16 said:
Usually the homework/exam questions are of lower quality than those at a similar course at the university level. Faculty anywhere are pressured not to give out too many bad grades because that reflects poorly on the program (who wants to go to a school that boasts a 60% failure rate?). Considering the demographics of CC-level courses compared to those of university-level courses, the average grades should be categorically lower in CC courses. If the population is of lower-quality but the grade distribution remains the same, then the grades of the low-quality population are artificially inflated.
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ok that makes sense. Now then why are some departments at some universities allowed to fail such high amounts of students? I've heard that chem and physics departments are notorious for this.
 
thisismyacct said:
ok that makes sense. Now then why are some departments at some universities allowed to fail such high amounts of students? I've heard that chem and physics departments are notorious for this.
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Went to a big state university. Average for the first orgo exam was in the mid 30's. But he started the curve at 50+ so anyone who got <40 pretty much failed the first exam. I dropped that course and took it in the spring with a different professor.
 
Nothing, necessarily. My CC science courses were way harder than my 4-year university science courses (I took half of my pre reqs at each). It varies so much that there's probably no point in even trying to generalize about difficulty at different schools.
 
walloobi said:
Yeah I was surprised too. No, a mid-tier UC. I'm sure better schools would be much more challenging
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That's a nice surprise though 🙂 I work at a university and the STEM students here don't know what the words extra credit mean, haha.
 
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Ya these debates are worthless... At my two year school all ten of us scored in the 90th percentile on the ACS organic chemistry final (ya my class sizes were never more than 10).... I went to the cheapest school in my state! The variance in these situations are crazy!
 
thisismyacct said:
ok that makes sense. Now then why are some departments at some universities allowed to fail such high amounts of students? I've heard that chem and physics departments are notorious for this.
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Variety of reasons. The department could simply not care. It might be so well known and prestigious that people will attend even if deflation is a huge issue. For graduate school, one school is notorious for failing a substantial portion of students in my field. Yet, students still attend because it's prestigious and gives them much better job opportunities. Or the faculty who are teaching particular classes are tenured and high-ranking so they don't care. It's usually the associate professors and lecturers who can be pressured by the administration. The high-level faculty know that even if they fail 40% of the class, there's not much the administration can do to them in terms of whipping them back into the party stance.
 
EODguy said:
Becasue that's the way it is.

My CC classes were more rigorous than my UG classes, by a long shot. However, I made sure not to take any pre-reqs there, cuz I don't make the rules.

To blanket statement that all 4years are harder than all 2years is silly. Every school everywhere is good or bad from class to class, professor to professor. An ethics class I took at my 2year was taught by a prof who retired from one of those "top" schools with shrubbery growing on their buildings and it was decent. Best professor I ever had was fresh outta grad school. Learned a ton, probably made me a better person. Won't list it on amcas.
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I took one course at a CC, but it was definitely on par with my university courses. The professor was not involved in research, however, so he was able to just focus on teaching. That made the class easier actually, because he was a very effective instructor compared to some of my uni profs who only taught because they had to.
 
The one CC course i took was seriously the biggest joke of a course i took in all my 160 credits of undergrad....followed by a few pointless gen ed online things.
 
CC courses are a joke. The material is watered down and definitely isn't as hard because you're going against people who aren't as competitive thus the tests are easier. Now how different is your local CC from your local state school? Prob not that much of a difference but where I go (Top LAC) it's like a different world from a CC in terms of pre-req difficulty
 
doesn't matter if it's actually harder or not, you can take a harder physics class at a cc than Harvard, but people will still say it's easier because of the stigma. They're not all the same, varies between professors.
 
I went to a mid tier UC and did some of my courses at community college. I didn't have any extra credit opportunities in CC and I never knew what a curve was. Classes are very similar in the way material is taught between the two. The main difference is the way exams are made. At CC if you know the material you did well and the exam reflected that, no need to set a distribution. In university the professors deliberately make exams more difficult to distribute students. In the end they curve and boost everyones grade by a grade and a half (sometimes more) which is just really stupid for me. I wish they would instead write reasonable exams and allow that to distribute students. For the life of me I can't understand how a 40% is a B-. I thought CC was more difficult because if you messed up you didn't have leeway with a curve. Your raw score is your actual score. I'm not sure if CC's vary by state but the UC's are pretty strict in material/chapters overlapping the same way. We even used the same textbooks as the UC's (Bio, Ochem, Biochem). I would say the GE's might be really easy at community college but I've had science classes at my UC that are a walk in the park (Pathology class - no exams, just weekly summaries of what we learned, a take home final essay). Another class had averages of ~82% and still had a curve and extra credit. Another upper div bio had weekly quizzes that averaged out to >90% in the class. No exams, just one group project as a final.. safe to say everyone got A's and maybe a few B's.

If you do well on your MCAT then that can speak on how well you know the pre-req material (ochem, chem, bio).
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
I took one course at a CC, but it was definitely on par with my university courses. The professor was not involved in research, however, so he was able to just focus on teaching. That made the class easier actually, because he was a very effective instructor compared to some of my uni profs who only taught because they had to.
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This. I had professors with PhD's that didn't want to do research anymore and taught at CC's instead. Others worked at the UC/state schools and taught at the CC. My favorite professor was for my physics lab who was an engineer. He worked for the state and supervised the bridge constructions in the Sacramento area. I didn't believe him so I googled him and sure enough he was employed by the state and was making a huge salary as an engineer. He said he wanted to teach on the side when he retired so he was getting his foot in the door while he was still working as an engineer. Really nice guy who knew so much about everything.
 
I scored a 140% on my community college A+P final exam after the scale...

I still remember, when we were learning (*memorizing the names of) the cranial nerves someone complained, "why do we need to learn this? It's not like we're going to be doctors". I didn't say anything...
 
On the contrary, I took cadaver anatomy at a CC and it was definitely the most difficult undergrad course I've taken...
 
wb100 said:
I went to a mid tier UC and did some of my courses at community college. I didn't have any extra credit opportunities in CC and I never knew what a curve was. Classes are very similar in the way material is taught between the two. The main difference is the way exams are made. At CC if you know the material you did well and the exam reflected that, no need to set a distribution. In university the professors deliberately make exams more difficult to distribute students. In the end they curve and boost everyones grade by a grade and a half (sometimes more) which is just really stupid for me. I wish they would instead write reasonable exams and allow that to distribute students. For the life of me I can't understand how a 40% is a B-. I thought CC was more difficult because if you messed up you didn't have leeway with a curve. Your raw score is your actual score. I'm not sure if CC's vary by state but the UC's are pretty strict in material/chapters overlapping the same way. We even used the same textbooks as the UC's (Bio, Ochem, Biochem). I would say the GE's might be really easy at community college but I've had science classes at my UC that are a walk in the park (Pathology class - no exams, just weekly summaries of what we learned, a take home final essay). Another class had averages of ~82% and still had a curve and extra credit. Another upper div bio had weekly quizzes that averaged out to >90% in the class. No exams, just one group project as a final.. safe to say everyone got A's and maybe a few B's.

If you do well on your MCAT then that can speak on how well you know the pre-req material (ochem, chem, bio).
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California seems to have a decent cc system, it is not so here in Pennsylvania. Same with your multiple UC campuses, PSU, Pitt, Temple, etc all have other campuses (satellite campuses) that are an absolute joke compared to the main campus. The UC system is an whole other ballgame, though, which I understand but that was the closest analogy I could come up with 😛

Allergic to Toradol said:
On the contrary, I took cadaver anatomy at a CC and it was definitely the most difficult undergrad course I've taken...
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Anatomy is just hard in general but sheesh! (We did cats and sharks in anatomy at my UG) Cadaver anatomy is even harder, blows my mind whenever we're in the lab
 
ciestar said:
Anatomy is just hard in general but sheesh! (We did cats and sharks in anatomy at my UG) Cadaver anatomy is even harder, blows my mind whenever we're in the lab
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I also have done cats and sharks in my structure and development class (hands down worst class of all time), but the human cadaver A&P was very very difficult. It didn't help matters much that the cadavers were all at least 20+ years old, so some of the structures (i.e. nerves) were nearly impossible to identify. But at the very least, it helped me become accustomed to cadavers and will surely take the initial "shock" factor away from my gross anatomy experience in MS1
 
Does anyone have any experience with community colleges in New York State?
 
ciestar said:
California seems to have a decent cc system, it is not so here in Pennsylvania. Same with your multiple UC campuses, PSU, Pitt, Temple, etc all have other campuses (satellite campuses) that are an absolute joke compared to the main campus. The UC system is an whole other ballgame, though, which I understand but that was the closest analogy I could come up with 😛



Anatomy is just hard in general but sheesh! (We did cats and sharks in anatomy at my UG) Cadaver anatomy is even harder, blows my mind whenever we're in the lab
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Yeah just from this thread it seems like med schools are probably hesitant to take cc courses seriously since there is such a huge variability in quality.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Yeah just from this thread it seems like med schools are probably hesitant to take cc courses seriously since there is such a huge variability in quality.
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Exactly. Kind of a lose - lose thing. Either the curriculum and competition are watered down and you don't learn enough, or it's not and it's every bit as difficult but you don't get the 'credit' for doing well like you would in a four-year school. Either way, you lose with the Ad Coms.
 
21Rush12 said:
I went to one, what is your question?


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My question is how did the one you went to compare with a 4 year school's classes?
 
I felt it was comparable, better attention and smaller class size at community college. I did the upper level classes obviously at a 4 year institution and they were harder. Microbiology was absolutely harder at the community college and I wasn't given credit for it because it was an upper level class at my 4 year institution so they refused. Otherwise things were not remarkably different, but it's hard to assess.

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