What do people think of this essay? “Stanford Isn’t Fun Aanymore.”

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-national-crisis-of-generation-z-jonathan-haidt-social-media-performance-anxiety-fragility-gap-childhood-11672401345

This goes hand in hand with the Stanford article. Sadly, these kids don't even know what they're missing.

Getting groped and assaulted and raped by drunk bros...good times.

DP. The essay above has nothing to do with frats or drunk bros. Quit commenting if you can't even be bothered to read first.

You need to re read it.

I love how this dope ^^ keeps gaslighting that the above essay is somehow about frats. It’s not - not at all. Please do quote any portion of it that discusses frats in any way. You can’t so run along.

first paragraph:

"JP’s favorite college story is the night he built an island. In the fall of 1993, JP was a junior in Stanford’s chapter of Kappa Alpha. The brothers were winding down from Kappa Alpha’s annual Cabo-themed party on the house lawn. “KAbo” was a Stanford institution, a day-to-night extravaganza that would start sometime in the morning and continue long after midnight. The girls wore bikini tops and plastic flower leis, and the boys wore their best Hawaiian shirts."

Is Kappa Alpha not a frat?

Oh, wow. We're talking about the WSJ link presented at the top of THIS POST. Please try to keep up.

This thread is about the essay on Stanford. Paste the wsj article here if you want to discuss it.

You're clearly unable to follow the discussion in this specific post/thread. Either read the posted article yourself or shut up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If kids want to have fun in college now, apparently they should go to the University of Chicago, not Stanford. Sounds like the overbearing Stanford administrators have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and made it a substantially less happy and interesting place for students.

University of Chicago isn’t fun either. Actually none of the top 20 or so schools have students that are quirky, creative, or fun anymore, for the most part. The way admissions now works has largely eliminated the quirky smart applicants. The result is exceptionally boring and rigid college campuses.

The comment about kids at the top 20 schools being boring is an overstatement and not every top school has gone as far as Stanford in apparently trying to regulate social interactions among students.

I do understand where you’re coming from. The big pushes among admissions departments were (1) diversity and (2) admitting students with a demonstrated “passion” for some activity that aligned with the communities the schools were trying to construct. So many ended up with students who were more racially and economically diverse, but more maniacally focused on building the types of resumes that would demonstrate their “passions.” In trying to reward the quirky and the creative, they unintentionally incentivized students to be even greater people-pleasers at a rather young age. It’s no surprise more of them end up suffering from “imposter syndrome” on campus because the admissions departments have sent the message that their true, less curated selves might be less welcome.

LOL nearly 40% of Harvard is legacy.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wow, that article really was depressing. Interesting that there's been quite a bit about Stanford in the news lately - including their idiotic "harmful language/forbidden words" nonsense. Too bad. I always thought Stanford would remain independent of all the liberal nuttery, but I guess not.

The forbidden language thing was for the IT people who wrote official content for their website. Stop letting clickbait get you worked up!

PP here and I’m well aware of that. That doesn’t change the fact that the “official content” was indeed, officially for Stanford. How about you stop being an apologist for idiocy?

In other words, even a minimal amount of clickbait will cause me to set my hair on fire.

"Clickbait"? Didn't realize the actual Stanford newspaper was "clickbait." Sorry this embarrasses you - as it should.

https://stanfordreview.org/house-of-cowards-stanfords-harmful-language-initiative-update/

It’s a student run paper at Stanford and yes it’s click bait. From the article:

The update from Stanford’s Chief Information Officer, Steve Gallagher, states “the website does not represent university policy. It also does not represent mandates or requirements.” Gallagher’s post also reads the “website was created by, and intended for discussion within, the IT community at Stanford.”

It’s a discussion piece - but sure go nuts.

That's Stanford covering their butt after this got out - as anyone who can read can discern. You must be either a Stanford alum or have a kid there to be taking this so personally.

what are you then? You're trying to turn a random Stanford blog in the "actual Stanford newspaper" and it's pretty clear this was never a mandate and it was never "officially for Stanford". You're the one desperately trying to make it into something it isn't because you need to engage in some bizarre conflict.

How about this investigative article from the Stanford Daily, the student-run newspaper? https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/24/inside-stanfords-war-on-fun-tensions-mount-over-universitys-handling-of-social-life/

Is this enough of an “actual Stanford newspaper” for you?

+1
Exactly. Now we wait while the PP dismisses it for one bizarre reason or another.

Two different articles. One was about the stupid IT internal memo and the is one is about the lack of fun at Stanford. And if you include the WSJ article listed somewhere else we have three articles floating around on this thread.

And it wasn’t AN actual Stanford newspaper, they were making it THE actual Stanford newspaper. The Stanford Review is the student right wing paper. And they accomplished their goal getting people like you to think that memo was an actual problem.

Right on cue!! Go away, troll. With every post, you're looking more and more absurd. Everyone else is able to follow along and understand what the conversation is about. Also, if you consider The Stanford Review "right-wing," that just speaks volumes about you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If kids want to have fun in college now, apparently they should go to the University of Chicago, not Stanford. Sounds like the overbearing Stanford administrators have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and made it a substantially less happy and interesting place for students.

University of Chicago isn’t fun either. Actually none of the top 20 or so schools have students that are quirky, creative, or fun anymore, for the most part. The way admissions now works has largely eliminated the quirky smart applicants. The result is exceptionally boring and rigid college campuses.

+1
Not to mention, an administration and student body that is so overly woke/PC they wind up sucking the air out of anything and everything. What a bore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If kids want to have fun in college now, apparently they should go to the University of Chicago, not Stanford. Sounds like the overbearing Stanford administrators have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and made it a substantially less happy and interesting place for students.

University of Chicago isn’t fun either. Actually none of the top 20 or so schools have students that are quirky, creative, or fun anymore, for the most part. The way admissions now works has largely eliminated the quirky smart applicants. The result is exceptionally boring and rigid college campuses.

The comment about kids at the top 20 schools being boring is an overstatement and not every top school has gone as far as Stanford in apparently trying to regulate social interactions among students.

I do understand where you’re coming from. The big pushes among admissions departments were (1) diversity and (2) admitting students with a demonstrated “passion” for some activity that aligned with the communities the schools were trying to construct. So many ended up with students who were more racially and economically diverse, but more maniacally focused on building the types of resumes that would demonstrate their “passions.” In trying to reward the quirky and the creative, they unintentionally incentivized students to be even greater people-pleasers at a rather young age. It’s no surprise more of them end up suffering from “imposter syndrome” on campus because the admissions departments have sent the message that their true, less curated selves might be less welcome.

They don’t reward the quirky and creative very much in admissions any more. I don’t think even top 20 admissions committees value creativity much at all any more. What they select for is essentially just some smarts combined with unusually high levels of executive function. The kid who is organized enough from a young age to extensively resume-build and keep up high grades is the kid who gets in. That leaves very, very little space for quirkiness and creativity.

I guess if that’s what universities now want, and colleges were still happy places full of motivated learners having fun, that would be one thing. It would be a different population than Stanford used to have (as a former refuge for the quirky brilliant dreamers), but it would be okay. But that level of rigid resume-building also leads to depression and mental health struggles. If a bright kid can’t be a dreamer any more, can’t make a single mistake, can’t take a risk, they will eventually feel crushed in their life, devoid of any joy. And that’s why the campuses have become so dreary, with such sharp increases in mental health issues. Of course the universities themselves are, as the article points out, taking the opportunity to reign in student free thought and fun as well, for complex reasons of their own. But the problem is more foundational than university policies. It’s that these schools are now filled with kids who have never learned how to have fun, to relax, to idly dream, to “waste” time, to meander a bit. This group of students would never think about building a contraband island. They won’t even play their music too loudly in their carefully organized dorms.

[Anonymous]

Frankly, I loved the contraband island. That was right up my alley.

[Anonymous]

I went to Stanford in the 90s. There were lots of smart people, but the weird theme houses and traditions really did make it fun and special. It's too bad it's been institutionalized like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in California and still live in California, after having moved away for some years. I am in my 50s. When I was in high school, Stanford was seen as a place for the extremely bright, quirky, and creative. If you were rank-obsessed or considered an “east coaster” at heart (and that was not a positive), you would apply to the Ivies, but people here thought that was largely for the students who would eventually populate the large law firms of the world. I still remember being a kid and overhearing some of my mom’s friends talking about a kid who had (inexplicably, in their view) decided to go to Harvard and them clicking their tongues mournfully because the girl was “so creative!”

There is a real sense of loss in California over what happened to Stanford. It used to be a Californian university at heart, with a personality that rewarded creativity and daring. Now it’s largely indistinguishable from Harvard or Princeton. And this college ranking machine is now turning on USC, which also used to be a quintessentially Californian school. Even UCSC is falling into line.

I don’t disagree with the criticism of the frats — nobody should mourn the loss of Brock Turner culture — but I don’t think that’s really what is going on here. I think at heart, California schools used to have room for the quirky and creative, but the college admissions monster has weeded all of those kids out. What is left is a culture of achievement, box-ticking to the extreme. The students who make it it to Stanford now have one unifying characteristic: they have disproportionately high levels of executive function. But no one would describe them as “wildly creative” or “free thinkers” anymore. And that loss of freedom to explore their creative side — to allow room for mistakes — is driving a depressive culture that at the worst leads to suicide. It’s not that the university would disallow the building of an island (though of course it would). It’s that Stanford has chosen to build a student body that wouldn’t even think about trying to build an island, because that wouldn’t fit into their schedules.

I don’t know what the answer is. I feel like this homogenization of university cultures is part of a larger trend. For instance I think that’s why big Southern state schools are so popular now — they’ve managed to keep ahold of some of their unique culture in a way that California schools have not, though the machine is coming for them now too. I feel like the UCs might be able to possibly change the homogenization trend over twenty years by sharply limiting access to OOS students, which they’ve started to do here. But I don’t know that Stanford and USC will ever regain the creative student body they used to be known for.

I am from Chicago and broadly, this is (sort of) how I feel about UChicago, too. Used to be a world unto its own- very, very unique culture; full of brilliant, quirky, weird kids who were proud of their geekiness and their school that embraced them. It was a very self-selecting group that went there. It has retained some of that, I guess, but overall it has just kind of become your generic Really Good School filled with kids who are not there because they wanted the unique, proudly geeky culture of the university, but because of the high ranking. In other words, prestige chasing. It is sad.

[Anonymous]

Oops, looks like people already beat me to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in California and still live in California, after having moved away for some years. I am in my 50s. When I was in high school, Stanford was seen as a place for the extremely bright, quirky, and creative. If you were rank-obsessed or considered an “east coaster” at heart (and that was not a positive), you would apply to the Ivies, but people here thought that was largely for the students who would eventually populate the large law firms of the world. I still remember being a kid and overhearing some of my mom’s friends talking about a kid who had (inexplicably, in their view) decided to go to Harvard and them clicking their tongues mournfully because the girl was “so creative!”

There is a real sense of loss in California over what happened to Stanford. It used to be a Californian university at heart, with a personality that rewarded creativity and daring. Now it’s largely indistinguishable from Harvard or Princeton. And this college ranking machine is now turning on USC, which also used to be a quintessentially Californian school. Even UCSC is falling into line.

I don’t disagree with the criticism of the frats — nobody should mourn the loss of Brock Turner culture — but I don’t think that’s really what is going on here. I think at heart, California schools used to have room for the quirky and creative, but the college admissions monster has weeded all of those kids out. What is left is a culture of achievement, box-ticking to the extreme. The students who make it it to Stanford now have one unifying characteristic: they have disproportionately high levels of executive function. But no one would describe them as “wildly creative” or “free thinkers” anymore. And that loss of freedom to explore their creative side — to allow room for mistakes — is driving a depressive culture that at the worst leads to suicide. It’s not that the university would disallow the building of an island (though of course it would). It’s that Stanford has chosen to build a student body that wouldn’t even think about trying to build an island, because that wouldn’t fit into their schedules.

I don’t know what the answer is. I feel like this homogenization of university cultures is part of a larger trend. For instance I think that’s why big Southern state schools are so popular now — they’ve managed to keep ahold of some of their unique culture in a way that California schools have not, though the machine is coming for them now too. I feel like the UCs might be able to possibly change the homogenization trend over twenty years by sharply limiting access to OOS students, which they’ve started to do here. But I don’t know that Stanford and USC will ever regain the creative student body they used to be known for.

Thank you for putting it so eloquently.

Now cue the status strivers on this board will claim that you’re just mad your kids can’t get in….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in California and still live in California, after having moved away for some years. I am in my 50s. When I was in high school, Stanford was seen as a place for the extremely bright, quirky, and creative. If you were rank-obsessed or considered an “east coaster” at heart (and that was not a positive), you would apply to the Ivies, but people here thought that was largely for the students who would eventually populate the large law firms of the world. I still remember being a kid and overhearing some of my mom’s friends talking about a kid who had (inexplicably, in their view) decided to go to Harvard and them clicking their tongues mournfully because the girl was “so creative!”

There is a real sense of loss in California over what happened to Stanford. It used to be a Californian university at heart, with a personality that rewarded creativity and daring. Now it’s largely indistinguishable from Harvard or Princeton. And this college ranking machine is now turning on USC, which also used to be a quintessentially Californian school. Even UCSC is falling into line.

I don’t disagree with the criticism of the frats — nobody should mourn the loss of Brock Turner culture — but I don’t think that’s really what is going on here. I think at heart, California schools used to have room for the quirky and creative, but the college admissions monster has weeded all of those kids out. What is left is a culture of achievement, box-ticking to the extreme. The students who make it it to Stanford now have one unifying characteristic: they have disproportionately high levels of executive function. But no one would describe them as “wildly creative” or “free thinkers” anymore. And that loss of freedom to explore their creative side — to allow room for mistakes — is driving a depressive culture that at the worst leads to suicide. It’s not that the university would disallow the building of an island (though of course it would). It’s that Stanford has chosen to build a student body that wouldn’t even think about trying to build an island, because that wouldn’t fit into their schedules.

I don’t know what the answer is. I feel like this homogenization of university cultures is part of a larger trend. For instance I think that’s why big Southern state schools are so popular now — they’ve managed to keep ahold of some of their unique culture in a way that California schools have not, though the machine is coming for them now too. I feel like the UCs might be able to possibly change the homogenization trend over twenty years by sharply limiting access to OOS students, which they’ve started to do here. But I don’t know that Stanford and USC will ever regain the creative student body they used to be known for.

I am from Chicago and broadly, this is (sort of) how I feel about UChicago, too. Used to be a world unto its own- very, very unique culture; full of brilliant, quirky, weird kids who were proud of their geekiness and their school that embraced them. It was a very self-selecting group that went there. It has retained some of that, I guess, but overall it has just kind of become your generic Really Good School filled with kids who are not there because they wanted the unique, proudly geeky culture of the university, but because of the high ranking. In other words, prestige chasing. It is sad.

University of Chicago has also become bland, and has lost a lot of its unique culture. It is unfortunate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in California and still live in California, after having moved away for some years. I am in my 50s. When I was in high school, Stanford was seen as a place for the extremely bright, quirky, and creative. If you were rank-obsessed or considered an “east coaster” at heart (and that was not a positive), you would apply to the Ivies, but people here thought that was largely for the students who would eventually populate the large law firms of the world. I still remember being a kid and overhearing some of my mom’s friends talking about a kid who had (inexplicably, in their view) decided to go to Harvard and them clicking their tongues mournfully because the girl was “so creative!”

There is a real sense of loss in California over what happened to Stanford. It used to be a Californian university at heart, with a personality that rewarded creativity and daring. Now it’s largely indistinguishable from Harvard or Princeton. And this college ranking machine is now turning on USC, which also used to be a quintessentially Californian school. Even UCSC is falling into line.

I don’t disagree with the criticism of the frats — nobody should mourn the loss of Brock Turner culture — but I don’t think that’s really what is going on here. I think at heart, California schools used to have room for the quirky and creative, but the college admissions monster has weeded all of those kids out. What is left is a culture of achievement, box-ticking to the extreme. The students who make it it to Stanford now have one unifying characteristic: they have disproportionately high levels of executive function. But no one would describe them as “wildly creative” or “free thinkers” anymore. And that loss of freedom to explore their creative side — to allow room for mistakes — is driving a depressive culture that at the worst leads to suicide. It’s not that the university would disallow the building of an island (though of course it would). It’s that Stanford has chosen to build a student body that wouldn’t even think about trying to build an island, because that wouldn’t fit into their schedules.

I don’t know what the answer is. I feel like this homogenization of university cultures is part of a larger trend. For instance I think that’s why big Southern state schools are so popular now — they’ve managed to keep ahold of some of their unique culture in a way that California schools have not, though the machine is coming for them now too. I feel like the UCs might be able to possibly change the homogenization trend over twenty years by sharply limiting access to OOS students, which they’ve started to do here. But I don’t know that Stanford and USC will ever regain the creative student body they used to be known for.

I am from Chicago and broadly, this is (sort of) how I feel about UChicago, too. Used to be a world unto its own- very, very unique culture; full of brilliant, quirky, weird kids who were proud of their geekiness and their school that embraced them. It was a very self-selecting group that went there. It has retained some of that, I guess, but overall it has just kind of become your generic Really Good School filled with kids who are not there because they wanted the unique, proudly geeky culture of the university, but because of the high ranking. In other words, prestige chasing. It is sad.

+1 from a U of C alum. It's also why I'm a little dubious about the PC culture run amok story being told here about Stanford, because that's definitely not what's happening at the U of C. It's prestige and status chasing that's causing those changes and they sound similar to what's happening at Stanford if from kind of the opposite direction. Maybe I'm wrong about Stanford, I don't understand the culture there particularly well*

*Obviously as a U of C alum, I only understand kids having fun at college theoretically

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people always glamorize a part they didn’t experience. It’s complicated. I will rant about how enforces dining halls and administrative interference ruined my Alma mater’s dorm culture if you want but the idea that creativity, happiness, and self expression can only be found in the Greek system is so much BS. Also the fact that the author thinks that students who live in dorms are inherently lonely and miserable is so much projection.

Is it though? There are many posters here claiming their freshman are finding the dorms to be lonely places.

Sure, dorms can be bad. They can also be great. I loved my college dorm and still keep in touch with people who lived on my hall. Frats can be great, but they can also be terrible. One of my good friends in colleges loved their frat and made lifelong friends there. One of the babysitters growing up got two broken legs from a sorority initiation ritual.

My point was that the author of this article is saying, "the 80s/90s/olden days were so great and wonderful and everything has gone downhill since then" which is an attitude I'm inherently distrustful of. My alma mater (MIT) has closed down two of the most "problematic" dorms (read, the two with the most pronounced drug cultures) and I think they did a disservice to school culture in so doing. But I also think that when people glamorize how MIT was in the 80s they miss the rampant sexism that ran through the culture at that time, that I only hear of when I talk to alumna and faculty who were there then -- they're so pleased to hear what a good experience I and my female classmates had in the early 2000s. So while I think the author of this article may have some valid points (I'm not a Stanford alum or student so I can't say for sure) I think she's missing some of the extremely valid and possibly good reasons the culture is changing. Building an island is great until you're the kid who has to have life-altering surgery at 19 because someone didn't over-engineer the loads on the zipline sufficiently. Open frat parties with tons of free alcohol are great until you're sexually assaulted at one of them and your rapist only gets six months in jail.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wow, that article really was depressing. Interesting that there's been quite a bit about Stanford in the news lately - including their idiotic "harmful language/forbidden words" nonsense. Too bad. I always thought Stanford would remain independent of all the liberal nuttery, but I guess not.

The forbidden language thing was for the IT people who wrote official content for their website. Stop letting clickbait get you worked up!

PP here and I’m well aware of that. That doesn’t change the fact that the “official content” was indeed, officially for Stanford. How about you stop being an apologist for idiocy?

In other words, even a minimal amount of clickbait will cause me to set my hair on fire.

"Clickbait"? Didn't realize the actual Stanford newspaper was "clickbait." Sorry this embarrasses you - as it should.

https://stanfordreview.org/house-of-cowards-stanfords-harmful-language-initiative-update/

It’s a student run paper at Stanford and yes it’s click bait. From the article:

The update from Stanford’s Chief Information Officer, Steve Gallagher, states “the website does not represent university policy. It also does not represent mandates or requirements.” Gallagher’s post also reads the “website was created by, and intended for discussion within, the IT community at Stanford.”

It’s a discussion piece - but sure go nuts.

That's Stanford covering their butt after this got out - as anyone who can read can discern. You must be either a Stanford alum or have a kid there to be taking this so personally.

what are you then? You're trying to turn a random Stanford blog in the "actual Stanford newspaper" and it's pretty clear this was never a mandate and it was never "officially for Stanford". You're the one desperately trying to make it into something it isn't because you need to engage in some bizarre conflict.

How about this investigative article from the Stanford Daily, the student-run newspaper? https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/24/inside-stanfords-war-on-fun-tensions-mount-over-universitys-handling-of-social-life/

Is this enough of an “actual Stanford newspaper” for you?

+1
Exactly. Now we wait while the PP dismisses it for one bizarre reason or another.

Two different articles. One was about the stupid IT internal memo and the is one is about the lack of fun at Stanford. And if you include the WSJ article listed somewhere else we have three articles floating around on this thread.

And it wasn’t AN actual Stanford newspaper, they were making it THE actual Stanford newspaper. The Stanford Review is the student right wing paper. And they accomplished their goal getting people like you to think that memo was an actual problem.

Right on cue!! Go away, troll. With every post, you're looking more and more absurd. Everyone else is able to follow along and understand what the conversation is about. Also, if you consider The Stanford Review "right-wing," that just speaks volumes about you.

DP. Actually, it was founded as a right wing reaction to the minority led Rainbow Agenda. Even in 2016 the editor said that it was there to express unpopular views. I thought the article raised some good points about creativity and expression, but it also clearly glossed over concerns of frat house "infractions " that are dismissed as trumped up charges. But are they really? It's ok to acknowledge potential bias in a publication.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in California and still live in California, after having moved away for some years. I am in my 50s. When I was in high school, Stanford was seen as a place for the extremely bright, quirky, and creative. If you were rank-obsessed or considered an “east coaster” at heart (and that was not a positive), you would apply to the Ivies, but people here thought that was largely for the students who would eventually populate the large law firms of the world. I still remember being a kid and overhearing some of my mom’s friends talking about a kid who had (inexplicably, in their view) decided to go to Harvard and them clicking their tongues mournfully because the girl was “so creative!”

There is a real sense of loss in California over what happened to Stanford. It used to be a Californian university at heart, with a personality that rewarded creativity and daring. Now it’s largely indistinguishable from Harvard or Princeton. And this college ranking machine is now turning on USC, which also used to be a quintessentially Californian school. Even UCSC is falling into line.

I don’t disagree with the criticism of the frats — nobody should mourn the loss of Brock Turner culture — but I don’t think that’s really what is going on here. I think at heart, California schools used to have room for the quirky and creative, but the college admissions monster has weeded all of those kids out. What is left is a culture of achievement, box-ticking to the extreme. The students who make it it to Stanford now have one unifying characteristic: they have disproportionately high levels of executive function. But no one would describe them as “wildly creative” or “free thinkers” anymore. And that loss of freedom to explore their creative side — to allow room for mistakes — is driving a depressive culture that at the worst leads to suicide. It’s not that the university would disallow the building of an island (though of course it would). It’s that Stanford has chosen to build a student body that wouldn’t even think about trying to build an island, because that wouldn’t fit into their schedules.

I don’t know what the answer is. I feel like this homogenization of university cultures is part of a larger trend. For instance I think that’s why big Southern state schools are so popular now — they’ve managed to keep ahold of some of their unique culture in a way that California schools have not, though the machine is coming for them now too. I feel like the UCs might be able to possibly change the homogenization trend over twenty years by sharply limiting access to OOS students, which they’ve started to do here. But I don’t know that Stanford and USC will ever regain the creative student body they used to be known for.

I am from Chicago and broadly, this is (sort of) how I feel about UChicago, too. Used to be a world unto its own- very, very unique culture; full of brilliant, quirky, weird kids who were proud of their geekiness and their school that embraced them. It was a very self-selecting group that went there. It has retained some of that, I guess, but overall it has just kind of become your generic Really Good School filled with kids who are not there because they wanted the unique, proudly geeky culture of the university, but because of the high ranking. In other words, prestige chasing. It is sad.

+1 from a U of C alum. It's also why I'm a little dubious about the PC culture run amok story being told here about Stanford, because that's definitely not what's happening at the U of C. It's prestige and status chasing that's causing those changes and they sound similar to what's happening at Stanford if from kind of the opposite direction. Maybe I'm wrong about Stanford, I don't understand the culture there particularly well*

*Obviously as a U of C alum, I only understand kids having fun at college theoretically

I was going to say when someone claimed that U of C was no longer fun, that my sister (an alum) has a U of C mug that proudly announces that it's "where fun goes to die" so I didn't think that was really a goal?