<p>I don’t think norcalguy was saying Cornellians are stupid, or that there isn’t a subset of the Cornell student population (sizable at that) that supersede most students at other comparable institutions. He also didn’t single out a single college, he was talking about them all together. That’s not to say that a 1410 on the SAT is a bad score: it’s fantastic. The point is just that the average GPA (across all colleges and all students) is 3.4, while the average entrance stats are lower than other Ivy Leagues. Therefore, it seems very unlikely in a statistical sense that Cornell is actually harder than the other Ivies, although some certain programs may be; but even then, the difficulties don’t vary too wildly, I wouldn’t think. Undergraduate courses at all top-25 universities are probably very nearly identical in difficulty.</p>