My D would like to attend an LAC where the students are not crushed by their academic workload. Long time posters know that our high school kills the kids with hours upon hours of homework and time-consuming projects, so D does not want a repeat of sleeplessness if it can be avoided. Since she is nevertheless a serious student and plans a career in a field that does care somewhat about the name on the diploma, of course that desire for a reasonable workload has to be balanced with necessary rigor.
She has looked at those independent sites with student rankings and comments, but for the same school you can often find kids who say the workload is super intense and all they do is study, and others who claim the classes are easy and they are involved in lots of EC's. The major might be the difference, obviously, but on one popular site the students actually comment by major and the same applies. She always asks the tour guides how they think their workload compares with that of friends at similar institutions, but has never gotten a great answer. They all say that you really need to study at their school, but it's manageable.
I am leaning toward using ranking as a guide, but I have my doubts you can assume that the workload at a #25 school is necessarily more than that at a #35 school. We just visited a college where we heard the phrase "writing intensive" constantly. I'm thinking that means lots and lots of papers so she should ditch that one! Any other ways to tell?
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