[jonnyss]

What evidence do we have that undergraduate academic work at Stanford is "harder" than at Georgia, Notre Dame, Miami, Texas, BYU, USC, etc.? Gaining admission to Stanford is more difficult, but does the admissions challenge equate to academic difficulty or even significant academic difference? I have a hard time imagining, for example, that the undergraduate physics curriculum at Stanford is significantly different than it would be at SMU or Virginia, to take something that allows for clean comparison. And I would not be surprised to learn that Stanford is more generous in its grading than some large state schools are. For all we know, a student who earned a "B" in organic chemistry at Michigan learned more than one who earned an "A" at Stanford in the same class.

anecdotal evidence, including personal experience:

true to some extent, but at a 20-40 ranked school, you have lots of company when you can't figure out a difficult problem set. at stanford, yale, harvard, half the class gets it no problem. so the professors can and do make the tests and problem sets at stanford harder (in some classes, not all).

[jonnyss]

What evidence do we have that undergraduate academic work at Stanford is "harder" than at Georgia, Notre Dame, Miami, Texas, BYU, USC, etc.? Gaining admission to Stanford is more difficult, but does the admissions challenge equate to academic difficulty or even significant academic difference? I have a hard time imagining, for example, that the undergraduate physics curriculum at Stanford is significantly different than it would be at SMU or Virginia, to take something that allows for clean comparison. And I would not be surprised to learn that Stanford is more generous in its grading than some large state schools are. For all we know, a student who earned a "B" in organic chemistry at Michigan learned more than one who earned an "A" at Stanford in the same class.

anecdotal evidence, including personal experience:

true to some extent, but at a 20-40 ranked school, you have lots of company when you can't figure out a difficult problem set. at stanford, yale, harvard, half the class gets it no problem. so the professors can and do make the tests and problem sets at stanford harder (in some classes, not all).