<p>@myyalieboy I don’t see how you could tell. What discipline do you hire from (as in what degree do most of the people you hire hold), because I suppose you could go do things like find course websites and compare. I know that Harvard and Princeton have some extraordinarily tough science and math courses (my interest), but so does Yale (however, from what I’ve seen, Harvard and Princeton seem slightly tougher, but even that is department/instructor dependent). It may also reflect the students each admits. Harvard may, for example have more students opting to take advanced/higher level freshman offerings in a discipline so they may be the types that enjoy more academic rigor. I also believe that Yale has a higher grade inflation than Harvard and Princeton (both have significantly higher inflation than Princeton) so that may have an influence. This is just really hard to tell, because the students are the same caliber, but may just have different personalities and that can influence the types of courses they take. As in, it may not be the overall academic rigor of the school so much as the level of rigor that students choose to engage because at almost all top privates, it is relatively easy to dodge unusual levels of rigor especially if outside of STEM. Admittedly, places like Duke, Chicago, Yale, and Harvard are also known for tough economics departments (which is a social science). </p>
<p>*finally, I shouldn’t really engage this conversation because you may be trying to induce a flame war of some kind as suggested by you referring to H grads as somewhat “socially aloof” as if the ones you hire or know reflect most H grads. In addition, you also assume that schools with higher than normal rigor cannot churn out socially adept students. Many top universities in Europe are extremely rigorous (Places like “Oxbridge”, Imperial College London, and many others are likely more academically rigorous than many very top schools in the US) and yet I don’t imagine their graduates being describe as “socially aloof”.</p>