There's nothing tedious about the advanced math and CS classes at University of Waterloo, for example. The weekly assignments will crush you if you don't give them each at least 10 hours of solid work, but they're not tedious at all. They're simply that difficult. But they're only worth 10% of your overall grade. The remaining 90% is split between the midterm and final.

If you think you're such a hot shot that you don't need the assignments or the midterm to prepare you, they'll usually let you write and count the final alone towards 90% of your grade. Good luck, though.

The process absolutely involves skill and intelligence and most of it is not tedious. Doing a few sample questions, trying to solve a quadratic is not 'tedious', for example. Neither is coding your first little program.