Newsweek and UW Madison

[lurch91]

Saw an article in the September 5th 2011 edition of Newsweek.  The article was "The Best Colleges For You" and it ranked the colleges in various areas (Best Food, Return on Investment, etc).  I read the "Least Rigorous" rankings, "As above, Measured by student evaluations of degree of difficulty" (the "As above" refers to the "Most Rigorous" sections which is defined as "Measured by student-rated workload, dropout rate, and degree of professor oversight").

Third on the list for Newsweeks "Least Rigorous" University?  None other than University of Wisconsin-Madison (and that's how Newsweek referred to UW too).  Fourth on the list was University of Minnesota - Go Big Twelven!

The Big East landed two schools on the "Party School" list; West Virginia University was #1, and Syracuse University was #5 (University of Illinois was #4).

By the way, they did have a "Horniest" (Schools with high marks for student looks and low marks for campus strictness) category too; in order they were Wesleyan University, Yale, Rice, Bowdon and Stanford - braniacs need love too.

[Skatastrophy]

Least Rigorous makes sense for UW and The U's undergrad degrees.  The same for most big state schools.  I'd never apply that label to their excellent graduate degree programs, though.

[steadfast]

So the people who go to Yale and Stanford are rich, smart and good-looking too? That doesn't seem fair. Aren't they supposed to be nerds?
For myself, I would definitely pick the college with the best food. I don't want to spend 4 years eating slop.