[nostrademons]

Another option is to go to the hard college and then blow off the classes. It's pretty hard to fail out of an elite college (except for MIT), because that adversely affects their U.S. News rankings and makes them less of an elite college.

IMHO, you learn more by taking harder classes and floundering in them than you do by taking easy classes and acing them. Set the amount of time you're willing to spend on academics, and if you can't do everything that's expected of you, just don't do it.