http://college.usatoday.com/2015/12/31/top-50-colleges-with-hardest-working-students/
Interesting list of schools with no surprise to see names such as MIT, U of Chicago, Princeton, Columbia and others in the top ten, but I am a little surprised in not being able to find Caltech on the list. What do you think?
It was based on student surveys on how hard they think they are working. Maybe Caltech student are just very humble about how much they work? Maybe too busy to reply?
Is it often “rumored” here that Ivies are “easy”? If this is true, it is contradictory with this list because 3 of the top 10 are Ivies.
Also, why are there so many private colleges in the list? Isn’t it often rumored here also that many private colleges are for the rich and spoiled (and potentially “lazy”)? /sacastic
I am aware that Columbia has its more comprehensive and inflexible core courses. (Lopsided students had better not go there.) Yale requires 4/32 = 1/8 = 12.5% more credits than Harvard, AP credits are essentially useless and all core courses could not be taken else where.
Chicago deserves its second rank. (Premeds had better not go there. I will take it back, because the third hardest one, Rice, produces many successful premeds year after year – must have something to do with having too many Asian American students there – Chicago/Midwest is no Houston. No wonder many top med schools in midwest open their doors for “the exiles from California.”)
Rice is up there also. Maybe a result from being an engineering-focused school in its history, being the top dog in Texas, and being a little bit too close to BCM (so it inspires their students to go there after graduation?)
How about Princeton? What makes it “hard”?
Useless if you ask me. Can’t be quantifiable. Probably based more on preconceived notions.
This is the top 100. The link above is based on the Niche Academic Rating.
https://colleges.niche.com/rankings/best-college-academics/
Like all published surveys, the data used is for the graduating class of 2018.
I have never heard that Princeton is a place where people take it easy. It has a culture of academic seriousness, for sure, albeit with preppy trappings. For years, it practiced deliberate grade deflation, which may have put pressure on students to overwork. Also, it requires that all seniors produce an extensive thesis. While that doesn’t increase the workload of students who would have done a thesis anyway, I’m sure that increases the average workload of seniors considerably compared to its peer schools. That wouldn’t have shown up in a Class of 2018 survey, necessarily, but it almost certainly justifies including Princeton in a list of colleges where the students work hard.
Not reliable IMO. For instance all students at the academies have to take 30+ hours of engineering and hard science (regardless of major) in addition to mandatory military formations and mandatory sports.
The list mixes acceptance and graduation rates along with student survey responses about workload to get the rankings. Including acceptance and graduation rates naturally biases the list toward more selective schools.
If it were only about student survey responses about workload, the list might be a lot different. Indeed, it would not be surprising if less selective schools with high percentages of students in high-workload majors moved to the top of the list. Perhaps South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and Belmont University?
Of course, schools with additional curricular requirements, such as the military service academies as mentioned above with required military activities and sports, could also move up in the list.
I don’t think anyone doubts that the students at the military academies work pretty darn hard. I didn’t notice whether they were even included in this survey. They are sort of in a category of their own.
As a cynic, I might argue that a high grad rate reflects the opposite of “hardest” working. 
The list includes USMA at #22 and USNA at #39. But do students there really work less than those at 21-37 other schools ranked as harder working?
Of course they don’t. That’s really a silly proposition.
If I wanted to be charitable, I might speculate that from the standpoint of the survey, a lot of what military academy students work on isn’t “academics,” so maybe they spend less time on “academics” than students elsewhere. But, nah . . . . It’s just moronic to suggest that there are 37 colleges where the students work harder than midshipmen.
Of course, even in just the academic sense (not including the required military activities and sports), the military service academy students have rigorous core curricula covering various subjects, while the supposedly harder working students at Brown (#21) have no general education requirements (so that a student there could avoid whatever non-major course is hard for him/her).
I have never worked so hard as when I was in grad school working only on courses that were supposedly easy for me. I don’t think core curricula or lack of requirements is what makes a college hard.
@mathmom, It is not the core curricula that is particularly hard. It is sometimes that a lopsided student, while being excellent on a certain subject (say, science), is relatively weak compared to his/her peers in a humanity, writing/discussion intensive class. Such a student may even have been a relatively OK student at his/her non-magnet public college. I actually know a case where a student who was a valedictorian at his non-magnet public high school was struggling in almost all humanity classes. There is little hope he could remedy the situation when the peer students are much better than him on some required core courses. One student could write a paper in one evening and get a relatively good grade, while he could spend 2 weeks on this paper and was still at the bottom of the class. It is very difficult for him to catch up. If such a student attends a college that accepts AP credits for core education credits, he does not need to take any of these core education classes (i.e., he could use his AP credits.)
It is not the class that is hard. It is the peer students in the same class that makes a class for such a loopsided student. (I think a CC oldtimer, BlueDevilMike once made the same point. He even said that at his college, Honor Physics is “easier” than the General Physics, if I remember it correctly. Unlike the upperclass or grad school level classes, the “difficulty”
level of such introductory level classes has nothing to do with the depth of the materials covered in the class. It has everything to do with the achievement levels of peer students in comparison because of the grading curve. A student from a lower performing high school tends to not have a “fighting chance” due to their poor preparation in his/her secondary education. I actually think it is kind of cruel to put such students in the same class room with the students who are much more prepared in academics.)
I don’t think the article was measuring how hard unprepared students were forced to work, only how much average students worked. My older son worked very, very hard at CMU despite the fact that thanks to AP credits he got to take mostly science and math courses.
^ This
At some (granted, not many) college, students are not allowed to use an AP credit to substitute a class. They are only allowed to use it to place out a class but are still required to take a more advanced class to fulfill the core education requirement. The foreign language classes are treated the same: If you have had a AP credit, you are required to take a higher level foreign language class rather than not taking any foreign language class at all.
Agree it is useless. No info on how they chose their survey recipients, how many responded and many other questions about how they figured their rankings. Also- “working hard” may mean so many things based on the students, the courses and the teaching. Plus- define hard work…
Re foreign language requirements- some can meet those with HS credits and never take any in college, no credits but one less hoop to jump through.
Far too many variables for this to be meaningful.
I think that it has gotten to the point that they make up lists just to have something to write about. I am waiting for the list of the colleges with the best toilet paper…