In technical fields this is usually reliable (someone who went to CMU or MIT and graduated probably put in a pretty high baseline level of work), but in more liberal arts fields school quality correlates much less to a baseline quality level.  At my alma mater (Amherst), for example, the easiest course of study would be to take 4 humanities classes &#x2F; semester, spend 12 hours&#x2F;week in classes, write 3 papers&#x2F;semester for each, and then you&#x27;re done.  50% of the student body does this.  The hardest would be to double up on lab sciences (physics + chem, for example, or physics + neuroscience), which entails about 20 hours&#x2F;week of classes, 30-40 hours&#x2F;week spent on problem sets, 2 midterms and a final.<p>I&#x27;ve heard that Harvard is similar: the grade distribution at Harvard is roughly 10% As, 80% Bs, and 10% Cs.  Getting an A at Harvard implies that you really did a lot of work, but getting a B could imply everything from &quot;You really did a lot of work but just missed the cutoff&quot; to &quot;You learned basically nothing from your undergraduate education.&quot;