I've got experience at 4 different universities

• 2 years undergrad BYU (Statistics)
• 4 years undergrad Air Force Academy (Math, Physics)
• 2 years Masters AFIT (Physics)
• 4 years teaching undergrad at Air Force (German, Physics)
• 4 years Masters/PhD Georgia Tech (Physics)

Leaving aside AFIT (since there's no undergrad there), my experience was that BYU had the easiest undergrad of the group.

At each of those 3, I've taught/TA'd and I'd say that Georgia Tech has the most impressive undergrads and expects the most of them, but that USAFA has the toughest grading.

I had a buddy who was a freshman with me at USAFA and got a 3.3 (very good at USAFA) that year, then went on a mission and transferred to BYU after.  He inquired about a scholarship and was told that he wasn't even eligible to apply with such an abysmal GPA.  So went and got a 4.0 that year, raising his GPA to 3.6... Which still wasn't high enough to be allowed to apply.  With another year of 4.0, his cumulative bumped to 3.7x and he finally met the minimum requirements. Still when he went to the scholarship office, he was told not to bother since his GPA was so low that he'd never be competitive. ( He applied anyway and did get the scholarship - apparently someone they're t looked past the top-line overall number).

What's interesting is that both USAFA and GaTech view/present themselves as engineering schools, whereas Yale and even Stanford are more liberal arts or at least with a heavy emphasis on those fields (along with science/engineering).  I wonder if that's a major part of it