> If you want to learn something, top-tier universities aren't much better than many other options. Very true. In fact, at colleges like Harvard and Columbia,

> If you want to learn something, top-tier universities aren't much better than many other options. Very true. In fact, at colleges like Harvard and Columbia, higher grades are often easier to achieve than at the mid-tiers like Boston University and NYU. With that said, there are colleges that force you to absorb copious amounts of information and fail you otherwise. UChicago is known for this. Is that not symbolic of being top in "academic excellence?". What you're implying seems more like the "prestige" category, in which Harvard was mentioned as the winner above. All of this aside the point, this doesn't explain how Caltech would be #1 in academic excellence for a college, above UChicago, and Caltech's larger equivalent, MIT.