I go to Georgetown. No, I am not a STEM major, but I don’t think college coursework has been that difficult. I stress a little bit more, but I have a pretty solid GPA and have never pulled an all nighter. Finals take a day, two days tops, to study for, and even 20 page essays only take a weekend to write. There’s so much less work than in high school. Overall I’d say the difficulty of college work was overstated (for me of course).
Yes.
That’s why.
I am a Political Science major – I would never even think of comparing my academic experience to my friends in Mechanical Engineering. Whole different ball game.
I’m a math/CS double major with a music minor (but my involvement is more like someone who is a music major; just can’t fit in all the academic classes). I don’t know if I thought college would be really hard, but I found my first year to be so much easier than high school. I think that’s just because my high school is insane (STEM magnet). But I took sophomore level CS and sophomore/junior level math last year as a freshman and, while some weren’t easy, none of the classes were particularly hard (not like some of the classes I took in HS that were complete death).
I pulled a couple near all nighters, but that was to write like 8-10 page papers for my gen eds, not for any of my major classes. Problem sets for math took anywhere from 30 min- 1.5 hours. CS problem sets took no more than 2 hours first semester and we would have an entire week to do them.
I’ve been a slacker for years, and I thought college would be harder than high school once I start my classes. Even though I spent my CNS freshman year on basics, I had mixed difficulty depending on the class. Intro Chemistry was way easier to understand in college than in high school. I spent 2-3x as much hours for my Intro Biology than my HS’s Biology. I processed easier with the Differential Calculus professor’s way of working out class examples, and I struggled with a Integral Calculus professor who answers your questions with questions.
So yeah, college was as hard as I imagined. Productive work is what makes the grades in my opinion.
I’m a triple major (Poli Sci, Econ, German) with a 4.0. It’s not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I’ve pulled a few all-nighters, but there’s absolutely no busy work and that’s why it’s so easy. I don’t ever feel like I’m wasting my time when studying; I can just learn the material and go from there.
Yes and no. Certainly less busy work than HS, but more larger assignments that are more “valuable”. Also there are some classes where the highest grades are 70s/80s.
I never got the all-nighters to study something, For doing a paper/project maybe, but personally after a while of studying I just stop absorbing information. Sleep seems more important.
Harder!
I thought my honors Calc 1 course wouldn’t be that hard, after dual-enroll calc in HS.
I was wrong.
My honors Calc 2 professor thought that 50-70 problems a week was a doable workload, with many students also taking chemistry and physics.
She was wrong.
In English, I thought that getting glowing feedback on each stage of the paper/project process meant that I wouldn’t have lots of points taken off arbitrarily (a big deal in a class where there were only 100 points total).
I was wrong.
So yes. I came out of it with the grades I wanted, but I have never been so stressed.
I thought it wasn’t that bad, honestly. I think it depends on what classes one is taking, though. My STEM major friends looked like they had a lot of work, but I am an education major, and I didn’t think the workload was that tough. My high school teachers gave a lot of busy work, but college professors seem to cut to the chase and only assign relevant assignments. I thought that the decrease in the number of assignments made my first year of college seem easier than high school. At the same time, I had to put more time and effort into my assignments. I actually had to think about what I was writing instead of just writing random B.S. to fill the length requirement of the paper. I also feel prouder of my grades in college because I know that I put a lot of effort into my work.
Truthfully? I found it easier than I thought. I may be full of it, cause I’m in my first year, but so far it has been easier.
I’m a physics major, and from the get go my course load was heavier than my engineering friends’ were (second quarter in, I was taking 20+ units), but I always found myself with too much free time.
My gpa isn’t 4.0, though, so of course there was more I could have done to study. But it’s comfortable sitting at 3.8, so I’ll just wait and see.
It’s a boring Monday night, so I guess I’ll write a longer response. 
A lot of people struggle with college because they have to work and support their parents or kids at the same time. I’m a commuter student, but otherwise I’m “traditional” in the sense that I’m young and I don’t have significant obligations outside of school.
My majors are math, computer science, and (hopefully) philosophy. I’ve taken eleven classes at a non-flagship state school and nine classes at a semi-prestigious private university where I’m earning my degrees.
I didn’t go to a challenging high school, which means I never studied until I got to college. I have more of a social life than I did in high school, and I’m living in a city rather than the country. If I don’t understand an assignment, I’m more likely to procrastinate than ask for help. My attendance is, um, not wonderful. All of these things are pretty dumb, but they add up.
Another problem is that I’m a perfectionist. This especially hurts me in writing-intensive classes because I feel like I can’t write anything down unless it’s already gorgeous and evocative. I have lots of thoughts, and all of them seem ineffable. If you’re a decent writer, humanities classes are like Chinese finger traps—the more you psych yourself out, the worse you perform.
Is it Monday where you are? @halcyonheather 
X_X My brain uses the following syllogism:
If it weren’t Monday, I would be competent enough to know what day it is.
I don’t know what day it is.
Therefore, it is Monday.
It’s brutal. I had to write a 45 page essay on the micro physics of the universe. Naw I’m jk. It’s about the same for me. My grades practically are the same in college as highschool. At I’ll have A’s and usually that one B. Two B’s at the most and that’s pushing it.
Most of my classes were actually supposed to be easy since I was a Japanese major (sans the Japanese language classes), but because I have a learning disability, I tended to struggle in my classes. You said it only takes you a day to study for finals. For me, it takes an entire weekend and the morning of the midterm or final.
Definitely harder than high school.
I expected college to be hard but in a different way than it actually was. I expected to have a lot of work to do in college - long problem sets, research papers, and a lot of really hard exams. It really surprised me all of my classes only had at most 4 exams (including the final). It also surprised me that there wasn’t a lot of homework, and most of the difficulty from college stemmed from actually having to work at understanding the material outside of class. Back in high school, I would just show up, pay attention, take some notes, and that’s all I needed to understand. A lot of learning in college happened for me outside of class on my own time, and that was the hardest thing about college for me.
Freshman year can be easy if you attended a good high school and worked fairly hard, since a lot of coursework covers the same ground. This is true of STEM track people who are often repeating science and math classes as well as liberal arts folks taking freshman level writing and content classes.
It does get a lot harder, especially in less selective schools where the folks filling up the bottom of the curve leave semester after semester, leaving often the brightest students who then have to compete for As (definitely true in engineering) … those who won’t or can’t do the work often do leave or switch to easier majors or a slower degree pace.
For folks who did not attend a good high school and/or did not work hard … if they learn to work hard and work on what they need to catch up on … I think you can actually start doing better …
If you attended a very competitive high school, you would fall into my first category … and may even be a bit bored … you can add an elective, maybe pass/fail if you want to keep that stellar GPA, or just start really participating in non-academic activities in school.
Sophomore year probably depends on major and whether you are ahead or behind your peers.
Junior year … can be very very hard. You are expected to do high level college work, your professors want you to dedicate a lot of hours per class (up to 40 hrs / week, you have projects and major writing assignments … etc.