<p>You’re welcome. I just think that it’s best to look at schools using this method if you are concerned about academic differences instead of using hearsay. For example, many institutions that students claim to be difficult or “challenging” are lesser so than the student body there would make out to believe, but unless you have a syllabus or some course materials, one’s instinct would be to just take it face value. For example, Berkeley and Georgia Tech students complain a lot about how insane science is, and how it’s harder than insert “highly ranked, private grade inflated university” and when you look, you realize that it maybe only is true for say, engineering associated fields (engineering, physics, CS, math), and even then, many places are still more difficult (regardless of differences in grading practices. For example, often Berkeley students like to claim that it’s harder than Harvard…I respect the school pride, but it isn’t). Seriously, sometimes you look and you go “what are you folks complaining about?” I guess one correlate to how much students complain is the size of the class and another, the teaching quality (as in, it may not be as difficult conceptually as other places, but the instructor quality is low in comparison to the expectations). One way you can feel out a schools attitude toward academic rigor is perhaps looking at prof. ratings (rate myprofessor which is very crude, but is one of the only public venues with some ratings) vs. difficult. For example, it appears Emory students have a high tolerance for high difficulty as long as the instructor is good. I think I view high tolerance as, difficulty ratings of 2.5 and lower (we have several science teachers below 2.3 that have 4.0+ which is impressive given the general stereotype of pre-meds), but quality rating of around or higher than 4.0. Seems schools with students that complain more have some soft correlation between the two (on top of that, you’ll see more of the weird comments like, “this class is hard, I actually had to study very frequently and work problems”. You know, as if it isn’t expected); As in higher difficulty often results in lower ratings. And then, if you are still skeptical, you can find syllabi/course materials.</p>