Are More Selective Colleges More Academically Difficult?

Vernon Smith, economist and Nobel Laureate started life as a physics student who switched to EE to avoid a certain course, then switched again to economics as a graduate student.

He once said the following:

Caltech was a meat grinder like I could never have imagined. I studied night, day, weekends and survived hundreds of problems,
I was majoring in physics, but switched to electrical engineering, which was in the same division (Mathematics, Physics and EE) as a senior. In this way I did not have to take the dreaded “Smyth’s course,” required for physics majors, but not EE, and received my BS on schedule in 1949
After Caltech, Harvard seemed easy, and I got virtually straight A’s. …Graduate school is an endurance test, but was not that demanding for me after having survived the undergraduate meat grinder.
The difference between Harvard and Caltech? “At Harvard they believe they are the best in the world; at Caltech they know they are the best in the world.”

Comparing physics to economics? I don’t think he is being totally fair, but I do get his point.