[82lsju]

anecdotal evidence, including personal experience:

true to some extent, but at a 20-40 ranked school, you have lots of company when you can't figure out a difficult problem set. at stanford, yale, harvard, half the class gets it no problem. so the professors can  and do make the tests and problem sets at stanford harder (in some classes, not all).

Was in many a classes at Stanford where a majority of the class struggled with problem sets. We'd all have our little study groups and we'd call each other for help. One class was so tough, the midterm means were in the teens, high score in the twenties. New professor, Stanford grad and PhD, wild guy; an absolutely brilliant guy who had no idea how smart he was compared to normal Stanford students. . . .

chemical engineer here, we also had study groups for problem sets.  We had one chemical engineering class with a midterm where the mean was 18 and the mode was zero (that's out of 100), I am still very proud of the C+ I got in the class which was the 8th highest grade out of about 30 students.  The same prof a year or two earlier initially failed about half of a winter quarter required class, the class was mostly seniors, the dept chair suggested he revisit his grading or plan on teaching the class again in spring quarter, he did the former.  We ran into the prof at a chem eng event maybe 15 years later and went up to say hi to him, he waved us off.  I still recall him introducing a visiting prof at an event taking not so subtle shots at his colleague about why the visiting prof was so much better at catalysis than his colleague.

[82lsju]

anecdotal evidence, including personal experience:

true to some extent, but at a 20-40 ranked school, you have lots of company when you can't figure out a difficult problem set. at stanford, yale, harvard, half the class gets it no problem. so the professors can  and do make the tests and problem sets at stanford harder (in some classes, not all).

Was in many a classes at Stanford where a majority of the class struggled with problem sets. We'd all have our little study groups and we'd call each other for help. One class was so tough, the midterm means were in the teens, high score in the twenties. New professor, Stanford grad and PhD, wild guy; an absolutely brilliant guy who had no idea how smart he was compared to normal Stanford students. . . .

chemical engineer here, we also had study groups for problem sets.  We had one chemical engineering class with a midterm where the mean was 18 and the mode was zero (that's out of 100), I am still very proud of the C+ I got in the class which was the 8th highest grade out of about 30 students.  The same prof a year or two earlier initially failed about half of a winter quarter required class, the class was mostly seniors, the dept chair suggested he revisit his grading or plan on teaching the class again in spring quarter, he did the former.  We ran into the prof at a chem eng event maybe 15 years later and went up to say hi to him, he waved us off.  I still recall him introducing a visiting prof at an event taking not so subtle shots at his colleague about why the visiting prof was so much better at catalysis than his colleague.