“The work load, while rigorous, is certainly not overwhelming, especially when compared to Cornell, which is notoriously a fairly stressful place”
My D2 transferred to Cornell from a #20-30 ranked LAC and said that the workload was essentially the same
People have been slinging allegations of how much tougher Cornell is since way back when I attended, and they’re still doing it today. Irrespective of actual merit, and changes in grading over the years. Students attending but a single college have no basis for comparison.
They were making the same claims in the mid to late 90s too.
In 1997 a reporter found the formula UC Berkeley’s law school was using to weight the GPAs of applicants from different colleges. (“Grading the Grades: All A’s Are Not Created Equal”, L.A. Times 7/16/97). Berkeley was adding points to GPAs of applicants from schools that scored 79 and above based on an index formed via a GPA vs LSAT analysis they performed. Applicants received an extra .02 GPA boost for every 1 point over 78.5. The indices they developed for these three schools were: Cornell 86.5, Dartmouth, 87, Williams 89. Which means, firstly, that they found that grading at the three schools was not all that different; but secondly that of these three institutions, Cornell grading was, by their analysis, actually the easiest of the three. And Williams’ grading was the most severe.
Of course that was a long time ago. Things have changed since that time, at all schools. These describe how they have changed at Cornell:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/grade_inflation_at_cornell/
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/487570-grade-inflation-or-deflation-p1.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20100214201042/http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeSP08.pdf
Cornell does have a large engineering school , which has a somewhat lower curve, lower threshold for dean’s list, etc. Cornell has a relatively large proportion of students pursuing science-related fields in general. The sciences everyplace are hard, and tend to have less wiggle room in grading. If I had to guess, that’s where the disproportionate whining comes from. Which is not to say the work isn’t challenging in other fields too. At all three of these schools.
Specifically, physics will be hard at all of these schools. It has to be. Because physics is hard. If it isn’t you aren’t being prepared properly.