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>but the academic culture I came from normalized self brutalization to succeed

What school did you go to? Went somewhere similar.

Honestly I've never heard of a college that respects these types of boundaries. By its very nature if you're taking 15+ credits of academically challenging coursework you're going to be working 60+ hours a week.

My school recommended 3.5 hours of work outside of class for every 1.0 hour of lecture (roughly equivalent to credit hours with rare exception). For the minimum full-time load of 12.0 this equated to 54 hours a week (12 hours of class, 42 hours of outside). 18 credits was 81 hours a week all in, and this was expected. 100-level classes were typically less but my junior year particularly it was pretty much spot on.

That describes pretty much every PhD program in the US.

And, frankly, many strong undergraduate programs, perhaps especially ones which are also very large (my school has 500 person class size even in your second-to-last and last years, so you need to go above and beyond to distinguish yourself enough to, say, get a professor to write you a recommendation)

I was also talking about an undergrad program, probably should have been more clear in my top comment.

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