<p>Good question. I don’t know the answer, as I’ve never been a student at another school. My impression is that most top schools offer classes that are at Chicago’s level and harder, but that they might be fewer and further between. Or they are completely avoidable. Depending on whom you talk to and what classes they have taken, Harvard is either a joke of a school or the hardest place on earth.</p>
<p>More than likely, the required effort is higher than any other school (with the exception of, perhaps, Caltech). That is, our easiest (required, resp.) classes are harder than any other school’s easiest (required, resp.) classes.</p>
<p>Concerning medium-difficulty classes, I don’t know how we match up. I can guess that we’re about on the same level as other top universities, though.</p>
<p>However, our most difficult classes are usually the hardest classes in the nation. The obvious example here is, of course, Honors Analysis. I’ve heard similar things about the physics department, and economics is obvious as well.</p>
<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>
<p>It should be noted that while generalizations can be helpful for people trying to get a feel for the school, the difficulty of a class isn’t necessarily institutionalized and it’s really more of a choice on the part of the teacher as to how hard they want to make it… You can have a Sosc class where you get grilled on the readings and therefore have to read 100 pages a night, closely, or a Sosc where the teacher explains the readings to you and you don’t have to read at all. It’s hard to quantify things like “average level of difficulty.”</p>