<p>I disagree. By your logic, Harvard, which is a leading feeder school for graduate and professional programs is “easier” because it is supposedly less taxing than MIT to get a high GPA. Rigor is a part of this because graduate and professional schools keep a tally on how the graduates from particular programs do in their schools. If graduates from particular schools struggle with a particuluar graduate program enough, then top graduate programs would be far less likely to extend acceptances to other graduates from the same undergraduate programs. Where do you get the notion that Brown came in below most peer schools as far as being in the 7th position vis a vis student cross-admits statistics? In one little considered part of the first draft of the study, the price-considered piece, Brown was higher than 7th, in fact, it leapfrogged MIT. The point is not that the study’s conclusions were methodologically irrefutable, it is that since the colleges closely guard cross-admit data, it is the only study, to my knowledge that attempted, through statistics and raw data, to give some idea as to which elite schools were preferred by a sample of talented high-school graduates.</p>