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(good idea mercury. don't get optimistic about prefrosh giving up on asking their own personal questions in their own slightly-different way and hoping for a unique answer though.)
Freekfyre--
Short answer: it depends, but usually not "extremely."
Long answer:
It's hard to answer that concisely and fairly, because most Cornell students have only been in one of Cornell's schools. (A business major might give you a different answer than an engineer or architect.) If they've been in two of Cornell's schools, they've still probably only been to Cornell. (How do you compare strenuousness if you've only experienced it at one school?) If they've transferred in from another school, then from my experience they'll mostly tell you that Cornell is harder.
For me personally, as an A/S student up for transfer to engineering (and thus taking the same curriculum as other engineers), I can tell you that classes at Cornell are significantly harder and require much more outside-of-class work than classes at my (private college-prep) high school. I do think it's strenuous and sometimes I have to skip having fun in favor of getting work done, but I almost never have a weekend that I devote to studying alone.
People who go around to different colleges and write books about how they compare to each other tend to describe Cornell as more academically rigorous than some other schools, though not all (Swarthmore comes to mind). I believe them, since I have several friends from high school who think college is easier. I don't know many people who breeze by without working hard, but I don't know anyone who's completely drowning in work either. If going to college is something you view as worth investing a significant amount of time and effort (and money) into, but not your entire life or soul, then Cornell will probably work with you.
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