<p>From what I hear, I think that Swarthmore, CalTech, and Reed all have a much more intense minimum required effort than the U of C, and pretty much every other school has a much lower minimum.</p>
<p>I do feel like I’m being cornered on this one into saying something that makes me come off as an anti-Ivy elitist of some sort, which I hope I’m not. (Am I?) I have a lot of respect for other academic institutions and the students who attend them, not only the ones that I think are more intense than Chicago.</p>
<p>I like to think of it this way: for every school you can name save the ones I listed, (and I have a lot of friends in high places, so I do mean every school), I can probably think of a few people I know who are working much, much harder than me and a few people who are barely lifting a finger. Those who are barely lifting a finger would have a much less pleasant time at Chicago than they would at the schools they attend.</p>