Why is college so much easier than high school?

Freshman year of college is easier than High School. Senior year isn’t.

For me I think it was a combination of increased maturity (ie I would actually do the home work, reading etc) and an increased interest in the subject at hand. A lot of the things I studied at school I did so because I had no choice. Every course I went to at universtiy I chose becaue I was interested in which makes doing all the reading etc easier in the first place.

@Ivan But why?

I agree that being interested in what you are studying helps. Also, I think the fact that we choose to go to college plays a role in it as well. High school, we have to go to, even when we don’t want to. College offers a bit more freedom than high school, which changes our opinion of what we are doing.

I would say only some of my questions in my first year of college were easier than my senior year of high school, most of them were equally as hard. By my second year, all my courses were harder than what I had in high school.

It’s definitely maturity.

@Seaofclouds But I got my ass handed to me on a platter in classes I really did want to take in high school. For me, it isn’t a small difference, it’s a huge difference.

Because it’s welcome…. in High School you don’t get the freedom to choose much

I’ve wondered the same thing. I didn’t do jack shit in highschool and I had honors and awards rained down upon me while my peers struggled and suffered. Even then, it was still slightly more difficult than college. I’m attending one of the most notoriously difficult colleges in the region, and I just sit around most of the time and finish my work the day or even hour before it’s due and still get A’s while a lot of my peers freak out and struggle and wind up failing out. The whole time, I’m sitting here scratching my head thinking “this is what people get so riled up about?”

@papayalily Perhaps it’s the level of difficulty of the courses you are taking? I know when I started college, I had to take a placement test to determine which level I could start at in college courses. I did really well on many of the subject as was able to jump straight into some harder courses.

You’re not in class at 7 or 8am unless you want to be. You’re not in class for hours straight unless you want to be.

That really does make a huge difference.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I tried so hard in high school, and I got my ass handed to me. Since after freshman year we got to choose 75% of our classes, you can’t really say that I didn’t want to take those classes – and I would work my ass off, study for hours each night, always do the reading, always do every single assignment, and I never skipped a class even once, and then get Cs and Ds. Now I’m handing in stuff that isn’t really better and getting As. Now, I do have Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, but then it begs the question – why does high school do that aggravates the disability that college doesn’t?

@Seaofclouds Not the way my school is set up.

@papayalily Do your college instructors have a different teaching style than your high school teachers did? A teachers style can have a huge effect on a students performance in school, especially one with a learning disorder. How many courses are you taking at a time? How many hours each day are you in class and how many hours outside of class do you spend on work for that class? Perhaps those things have an impact as well.

@papayalily, I had to look up NVLD, but after reading a bit about it, I would guess it has to do with college being less structured and more independent-learning focused. Also, like others have said, the maturity thing probably has to do with it, in spite of your condition. Either way, I’m glad you’re having an easier time now.

@Seaofclouds Yes, but there were a more than a handful of good teachers with a great teaching style whose classes I crapped out in.
@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard That’s some of it, but I honestly feel like the standards are just so much lower. Which, since in high school I worked so hard and failed so much, doesn’t mean I think college’s standards are too low but rather that high school’s were too high (while still being really low… It’s more of a “you didn’t teach me how to ace this exam but didn’t stop expecting me to ace it” kinda thing).

I dont really find this true at all. In high school I didnt have to do a damn thing and graduated 3rd in my class. College I have to actually work for my grades. It is nicer in the fact that Im going for something im passionate about so it makes learning easier but theres still a lot more expected of you IMO.

General ed classes in college are designed to be easy enough for the vast majority of students to pass. Not everyone who gets into college did particularly well in high school. There are a lot of Average Joes in those classes and the college doesn’t want half of the enrolled students failing out every year.

My upper level classes were very challenging. There was absolutely no skating through them.

@uberbatman Me too! IEven the 3rd in my class part.

I agree with the above two, and must add it really depends on what courses one chooses. Also your background. Some introductory science courses for example are harder and more challenging than their 2nd year continuations. So, I wonder what courses you took in your first year.

On one hand, it can be easier because, as others have already said, you have much more freedom in selecting classes. You can study what you want; you can learn about what you are interested in; no more being forced to take certain classes as a general requirement year after year. I know my boyfriend was relieved to know that he would never be taking another math class (I’ve kind of gone the same route, but I never hated math). In addition, you have flexibility with your schedule and you’re on your own so there’s more freedom in general. You’re in college because you want to be, not because you have to (hopefully); it’s not compulsory like high school is.

The combination of all of that can make it easier to focus and care about it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the course material is actually easier (I found high school to be an effortless breeze and Stanford is difficult), but there’s more motivation to do well when you’re in college.

It’s wasn’t easier for me. High School was a breeze and college was a bitch.

I haven’t found college to be easier than high school. High school, for me, was a snap.. I had enough study halls where I never even had to bring a book home!

Some college courses are easier than others. 101 classes are pretty simple; I think I have A’s in all the 101 classes I had to take, with very little effort on my part. As I got into upper-level classes, such as ones requiring prerequisites, 300 and 400 level, etc., I found I had to put in quite a bit more work. The classes were more demanding and difficult.

I also found other factors contributed to how difficult a class was. The professor makes a huge difference. If you have professors that mesh well with how you learn, things are much easier. If you have a professor that has difficulties getting the concepts across and makes ridiculously difficult tests, the class is torturously difficult. Class size made a big difference for me, too. I did much better in smaller classes (100 people and below) than in bigger ones (200+). Often a class’s lab would be ahead of or out of sync with the lecture, so that added to general confusion.

My memory is of sailing through high school. My first year at a competitive east coast women’s college was a nasty shock, I recall. I got my first D ever, on a Freshman English comp paper. It was a literary exegesis of a poem by William Blake.

I don’t think it’s easier. I worked my ass off all through my undergrad and I’m working my ass off doing my Masters.

Because you are there by choice, not by force.

Easier than high school? What college do you go to???

I’ve never been challenged this hard academically in all of my life. I wish I could the same thing… I dont remember studying any longer than an hour or two a week – if even that in high school. Now, I study almost everyday for 2–3 hours… for before exams, I’m practically studying 5–7 hours daily.

My friend’s going for his pharmD at a science school… he’s practically pulling his hair out.

Every year the knowledge of how to learn increases.

College is easier than school if you secure more percentage of marks than school.Otherwise its not easier.