what's the difference between going to a state university or a "reputable"one do professors ask more working

Question

and studying at well known schools?
Will a student at a reputable uni study more than a student at a state university to get the same grades?

Answer 1

Some state universities are very "reputable" but because they have very large numbers of students, the work at state schools is often quite different. For instance, at an assembly line school the classes may be 50 or 60 students or more, and sometimes much more, like 400 or 500 in a huge auditorium. In elite schools the classes are routinely smaller and instead of multiple choice tests the kids get case studies and papers to write.

A few schools are notorious for having really heavy course assignments, - the University of Chicago and MIT for two. But all the elite schools give students long reading assignments and writing assignments that involve many pages of critical thinking and analysis.

One comment about Chicago said that Freshman are often surprised when after getting 4.5 GPAs from all A's in AP courses in high school they come out of the first test at UChi where the class average was 30%. It's culture shock when you go from high school to the big time. The Ivies, Duke, Stanford, etc are all the same.