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You are here: Home / Liberal Arts College Rankings / Academic Challenge

Academic Challenge

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Academic difficulty of any school is often determined by acceptance rate or a different simple measure. However, these statistics can be skewed by countless different factors, so we decided to make this ranking category much more straightforward. These Liberal Arts schools with the most challenging academics have been determined solely by current students.

We used student responses from our annual Liberal Arts Colleges Student Survey to determine the top 20 colleges on this list. Each ranking is a combination of the number of hours students study at the school and the perceived difficulty of the academic workload.

Because the perceived difficulty of academic workload is a much more subjective measure than the number of study hours, we’ve also factored in the colleges’ average SAT scores (critical reading + math). Students at highly selective colleges tend to have expectations of a more difficult academic workload when they enter college, while students at less selective schools would not expect as much of a challenge, which is why we’ve included this measure.

 

Schools with the Most Challenging Academics

Ranking SchoolState
1Davidson CollegeDavidson CollegeNC
2Grinnell CollegeGrinnell CollegeIA
3Carleton CollegeCarleton CollegeMN
4Colorado CollegeColorado CollegeCO
5Bryn Mawr CollegeBryn Mawr CollegePA
6Macalester CollegeMacalester CollegeMN
7Mount Holyoke CollegeMount Holyoke CollegeMA
8logo_hamilton-collegeHamilton CollegeNY
9Smith CollegeSmith CollegeMA
10Claremont McKenna CollegeClaremont McKenna CollegeCA
11Kenyon CollegeKenyon CollegeOH
12Furman UniversityFurman UniversitySC
13Rhodes CollegeRhodes CollegeTN
14Occidental CollegeOccidental CollegeCA
15Colby CollegeColby CollegeME
16Oberlin CollegeOberlin CollegeOH
17Centre CollegeCentre CollegeKY
18Franklin and Marshall CollegeFranklin and Marshall CollegePA
19Lawrence UniversityLawrence UniversityWI
20Barnard CollegeBarnard CollegeNY

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