Academics

I would say that the academic rigor is decent. The work is where you have to actually try in classes. Which can be difficult for some people who are just use to having easy classes in high school. However I think the difficulty is very much worth it. It opens the door for you to learn things better if you struggle with the concepts and then finally are able to understand them. That way the information will stick better for you.

Each academic major will have a "capstone" class in your senior year. It will be difficult, and a lot of work, and it will come with a "capstone project" that will showcase the skills and knowledge you have developed over the last four years.

Many departments and majors are also starting to require real-world experience. Some majors (like mine in Health & Exercise Science) implement this through required practicums. These you register for like a class, but spend most or all of your time in an internship-like experience. Other departments require documented community volunteer service or shadowing hours before you can register for certain classes and graduate.

It all depends on the class you're taking and the teacher you have. For example, engineering classes have a lot of the research professors as professors, so the curriculum is generally very rigorous even if the topic isn't necessarily hard to learn. Also, most classes have a routine you need to follow (like homework is due every Monday at 3, and you will have about 8 to 12 problems from the book all on the topics you learned in the past week) so it's easy to keep track of what you need to do. You will probably have an average of 4 classes a semester, and most classes are 50 minutes long for 3 days a week. That doesn't give you a lot of time to actually learn the material in class, so you need to study it on your own. If a class doesn't give a lot of homework, you need to do practice problems or something in order to ensure you're actually learning from the class. I'd say the academic rigor is high for any department as long as you're willing to put in the amount of work that is expected of a college student. I know many people who don't even study outside of class and who put off work, and they don't excel in college.