Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.

STEM is a grind at Princeton

Princeton is at an academic crossroad. They want to admit more FGLI (it's now the #1 institutional priority as they have more money than god and legacy preference is gradually diminishing), but FGLI often have lower preparedness and were admitted TO. TO ends at P this year so it will be interesting

Couldn’t Princeton just lower the academic expectations for FGLI admits, but keep everything the same for the rest of the students?

Ha! Trust me, it is not just FGLI kids who struggle. Many, many kids from top privates, top magnets, legacy kids, etc. have a hard time at Princeton, especially first year. You deal with it, go into easier majors, get academic support, deal with the grade deflation and hope grad schools will give you the Princeton pass when evaluating you against a Harvard gentleman's B.

Or schools can admit the right students to begin with.

You’re assuming it’s really simple to admit the “right” students in the first place. I’m guessing you mean using stats like SAT. The problem is, some kids will grind for years to get their score up. Let’s say we’re talking about a really rigorous college with a higher SAT bar. If it requires years of studying to get a 1550+ for one student, and a few weeks of studying for another student, how is a college supposed to tell these two apart? And how is that first student going to keep up with the second student once in college and under pressure to keep up in the same classes under similar time constraints?

I never mentioned the SAT—that’s your assumption. If some people enjoy studying endlessly or tiger parents have no clue what competence means, that’s their decision. Identifying the right fit is schools' responsibility if they request such a high tuition. If other merit-based institutions—many of them globally ranked—can successfully select the right candidates, why can’t we? If University of Cambridge can nurture talent like Demis Hassabis, why aren’t we able to do the same?

American and UK universities both have a track record of nurturing immense talent. They both also have a record of students who fail to thrive. It’s hard to predict sometimes based on the high school record, and there is no crystal ball. But it’s partly the responsibility of the parents and students to find a good match as well. Don’t just go to a place for prestige. The OP is absolutely right in thinking that just because you can get into a high rigor school doesn’t mean it’s the best decision for you.

There are some reliable predictors.

The SATs are a good predictor but they are not reliable on their own.
GPA at high rigor high schools combined with SAT scores are much better predictor.
Add in a USAMO/USAJMO (possibly even AIME) qualification or other science Olympiad qualification and you can pretty reliably predict positive academic outcomes.

GPA + SAT is only a little bit better if a predictor than SAT on its own

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.

STEM is a grind at Princeton

Princeton is at an academic crossroad. They want to admit more FGLI (it's now the #1 institutional priority as they have more money than god and legacy preference is gradually diminishing), but FGLI often have lower preparedness and were admitted TO. TO ends at P this year so it will be interesting

Couldn’t Princeton just lower the academic expectations for FGLI admits, but keep everything the same for the rest of the students?

Ha! Trust me, it is not just FGLI kids who struggle. Many, many kids from top privates, top magnets, legacy kids, etc. have a hard time at Princeton, especially first year. You deal with it, go into easier majors, get academic support, deal with the grade deflation and hope grad schools will give you the Princeton pass when evaluating you against a Harvard gentleman's B.

Or schools can admit the right students to begin with.

You’re assuming it’s really simple to admit the “right” students in the first place. I’m guessing you mean using stats like SAT. The problem is, some kids will grind for years to get their score up. Let’s say we’re talking about a really rigorous college with a higher SAT bar. If it requires years of studying to get a 1550+ for one student, and a few weeks of studying for another student, how is a college supposed to tell these two apart? And how is that first student going to keep up with the second student once in college and under pressure to keep up in the same classes under similar time constraints?

I never mentioned the SAT—that’s your assumption. If some people enjoy studying endlessly or tiger parents have no clue what competence means, that’s their decision. Identifying the right fit is schools' responsibility if they request such a high tuition. If other merit-based institutions—many of them globally ranked—can successfully select the right candidates, why can’t we? If University of Cambridge can nurture talent like Demis Hassabis, why aren’t we able to do the same?

American and UK universities both have a track record of nurturing immense talent. They both also have a record of students who fail to thrive. It’s hard to predict sometimes based on the high school record, and there is no crystal ball. But it’s partly the responsibility of the parents and students to find a good match as well. Don’t just go to a place for prestige. The OP is absolutely right in thinking that just because you can get into a high rigor school doesn’t mean it’s the best decision for you.

There are some reliable predictors.

The SATs are a good predictor but they are not reliable on their own.
GPA at high rigor high schools combined with SAT scores are much better predictor.
Add in a USAMO/USAJMO (possibly even AIME) qualification or other science Olympiad qualification and you can pretty reliably predict positive academic outcomes.

I wouldn't consider math competitions. If that's the case AI should go to college not your kids.

This is like saying the NFL combine shouldn't consider the weights recruits can lift or the speed they can run because if that's the case then a forklift / car should get recruited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.

STEM is a grind at Princeton

Princeton is at an academic crossroad. They want to admit more FGLI (it's now the #1 institutional priority as they have more money than god and legacy preference is gradually diminishing), but FGLI often have lower preparedness and were admitted TO. TO ends at P this year so it will be interesting

Couldn’t Princeton just lower the academic expectations for FGLI admits, but keep everything the same for the rest of the students?

Ha! Trust me, it is not just FGLI kids who struggle. Many, many kids from top privates, top magnets, legacy kids, etc. have a hard time at Princeton, especially first year. You deal with it, go into easier majors, get academic support, deal with the grade deflation and hope grad schools will give you the Princeton pass when evaluating you against a Harvard gentleman's B.

Or schools can admit the right students to begin with.

You’re assuming it’s really simple to admit the “right” students in the first place. I’m guessing you mean using stats like SAT. The problem is, some kids will grind for years to get their score up. Let’s say we’re talking about a really rigorous college with a higher SAT bar. If it requires years of studying to get a 1550+ for one student, and a few weeks of studying for another student, how is a college supposed to tell these two apart? And how is that first student going to keep up with the second student once in college and under pressure to keep up in the same classes under similar time constraints?

I never mentioned the SAT—that’s your assumption. If some people enjoy studying endlessly or tiger parents have no clue what competence means, that’s their decision. Identifying the right fit is schools' responsibility if they request such a high tuition. If other merit-based institutions—many of them globally ranked—can successfully select the right candidates, why can’t we? If University of Cambridge can nurture talent like Demis Hassabis, why aren’t we able to do the same?

American and UK universities both have a track record of nurturing immense talent. They both also have a record of students who fail to thrive. It’s hard to predict sometimes based on the high school record, and there is no crystal ball. But it’s partly the responsibility of the parents and students to find a good match as well. Don’t just go to a place for prestige. The OP is absolutely right in thinking that just because you can get into a high rigor school doesn’t mean it’s the best decision for you.

There are some reliable predictors.

The SATs are a good predictor but they are not reliable on their own.
GPA at high rigor high schools combined with SAT scores are much better predictor.
Add in a USAMO/USAJMO (possibly even AIME) qualification or other science Olympiad qualification and you can pretty reliably predict positive academic outcomes.

I wouldn't consider math competitions. If that's the case AI should go to college not your kids.

I hope you are being facetious or snarky. The Math Olympiads are still a benchmark for the latest AI models, which cost billions in capex to set up and train. Even the bleeding edge ones need millions of tokens, long chains-of-thought and test time compute and not insignificant human interaction to approach gold medal level performance after running for hours (wall clock and not CPU/GPU time). High schoolers have to solve these in roughly 1.5h per problem.

There are about 250 high schoolers in the US that qualify for USAMO (which arguably is at least as difficult if not more than the IMO) and about 150 or so get honorable mentions or medals. Most of these could medal in IMO as well (were it not for the super-high competitiveness of the US IMO selection process).

So, while college success (or in academia) does not require one to be good at Olympiad level math, being good at them is a good indicator of college success.

Sure—except most people in these competitions aren’t participating purely out of a love for math. Many are using them as stepping stones to firms like Jane Street or Citadel. For them, it’s more about strategic positioning than genuine curiosity—competition is for racehorses. Solving problems quickly isn’t what drives humanity forward; deep, original thinking does.

In engineering fields, a solid command of calculus is a reliable indicator that a student can handle the rigor of college-level work. For liberal arts, however, qualities like critical thinking and creativity are far harder to quantify—and as an engineer, that’s outside my area of expertise.

Olympiad math is far deeper and far more original than anything in high school, along with being deeper than undergrad math and requiring more originality than undergrad math homework assignments: https://web.evanchen.cc/faq-school.html#S-9

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.

STEM is a grind at Princeton

Princeton is at an academic crossroad. They want to admit more FGLI (it's now the #1 institutional priority as they have more money than god and legacy preference is gradually diminishing), but FGLI often have lower preparedness and were admitted TO. TO ends at P this year so it will be interesting

Couldn’t Princeton just lower the academic expectations for FGLI admits, but keep everything the same for the rest of the students?

Ha! Trust me, it is not just FGLI kids who struggle. Many, many kids from top privates, top magnets, legacy kids, etc. have a hard time at Princeton, especially first year. You deal with it, go into easier majors, get academic support, deal with the grade deflation and hope grad schools will give you the Princeton pass when evaluating you against a Harvard gentleman's B.

Or schools can admit the right students to begin with.

You’re assuming it’s really simple to admit the “right” students in the first place. I’m guessing you mean using stats like SAT. The problem is, some kids will grind for years to get their score up. Let’s say we’re talking about a really rigorous college with a higher SAT bar. If it requires years of studying to get a 1550+ for one student, and a few weeks of studying for another student, how is a college supposed to tell these two apart? And how is that first student going to keep up with the second student once in college and under pressure to keep up in the same classes under similar time constraints?

I never mentioned the SAT—that’s your assumption. If some people enjoy studying endlessly or tiger parents have no clue what competence means, that’s their decision. Identifying the right fit is schools' responsibility if they request such a high tuition. If other merit-based institutions—many of them globally ranked—can successfully select the right candidates, why can’t we? If University of Cambridge can nurture talent like Demis Hassabis, why aren’t we able to do the same?

American and UK universities both have a track record of nurturing immense talent. They both also have a record of students who fail to thrive. It’s hard to predict sometimes based on the high school record, and there is no crystal ball. But it’s partly the responsibility of the parents and students to find a good match as well. Don’t just go to a place for prestige. The OP is absolutely right in thinking that just because you can get into a high rigor school doesn’t mean it’s the best decision for you.

There are some reliable predictors.

The SATs are a good predictor but they are not reliable on their own.
GPA at high rigor high schools combined with SAT scores are much better predictor.
Add in a USAMO/USAJMO (possibly even AIME) qualification or other science Olympiad qualification and you can pretty reliably predict positive academic outcomes.

I wouldn't consider math competitions. If that's the case AI should go to college not your kids.

I hope you are being facetious or snarky. The Math Olympiads are still a benchmark for the latest AI models, which cost billions in capex to set up and train. Even the bleeding edge ones need millions of tokens, long chains-of-thought and test time compute and not insignificant human interaction to approach gold medal level performance after running for hours (wall clock and not CPU/GPU time). High schoolers have to solve these in roughly 1.5h per problem.

There are about 250 high schoolers in the US that qualify for USAMO (which arguably is at least as difficult if not more than the IMO) and about 150 or so get honorable mentions or medals. Most of these could medal in IMO as well (were it not for the super-high competitiveness of the US IMO selection process).

So, while college success (or in academia) does not require one to be good at Olympiad level math, being good at them is a good indicator of college success.

Sure—except most people in these competitions aren’t participating purely out of a love for math. Many are using them as stepping stones to firms like Jane Street or Citadel. For them, it’s more about strategic positioning than genuine curiosity—competition is for racehorses. Solving problems quickly isn’t what drives humanity forward; deep, original thinking does.

In engineering fields, a solid command of calculus is a reliable indicator that a student can handle the rigor of college-level work. For liberal arts, however, qualities like critical thinking and creativity are far harder to quantify—and as an engineer, that’s outside my area of expertise.

Olympiad math is far deeper and far more original than anything in high school, along with being deeper than undergrad math and requiring more originality than undergrad math homework assignments: https://web.evanchen.cc/faq-school.html#S-9

The vast majority of jobs and college majors have nothing to do with the Olympiad math.

[Anonymous]

The reality of math competition today for high school students is doing a lot of drills. Nothing about originality. Unless your kids are actually at the Olympiad level, there’s nothing impressive about making a few AIME qualifications, or even AMO. Better spending time on multi variable, linear algebra, or number theory, etc.

[Anonymous]

College admissions should not consider math competitions at all. This should be left to kids who are truly talented in math and not doing it for the sake of college admissions. Keep it pure.

[Anonymous]

I doubt any of the Olympiad math boosters here have kids who are actually at Olympiad level. They probably made it to AIME or AMO, unfortunately that didn’t give them an edge enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.

STEM is a grind at Princeton

Princeton is at an academic crossroad. They want to admit more FGLI (it's now the #1 institutional priority as they have more money than god and legacy preference is gradually diminishing), but FGLI often have lower preparedness and were admitted TO. TO ends at P this year so it will be interesting

Couldn’t Princeton just lower the academic expectations for FGLI admits, but keep everything the same for the rest of the students?

Ha! Trust me, it is not just FGLI kids who struggle. Many, many kids from top privates, top magnets, legacy kids, etc. have a hard time at Princeton, especially first year. You deal with it, go into easier majors, get academic support, deal with the grade deflation and hope grad schools will give you the Princeton pass when evaluating you against a Harvard gentleman's B.

Or schools can admit the right students to begin with.

You’re assuming it’s really simple to admit the “right” students in the first place. I’m guessing you mean using stats like SAT. The problem is, some kids will grind for years to get their score up. Let’s say we’re talking about a really rigorous college with a higher SAT bar. If it requires years of studying to get a 1550+ for one student, and a few weeks of studying for another student, how is a college supposed to tell these two apart? And how is that first student going to keep up with the second student once in college and under pressure to keep up in the same classes under similar time constraints?

I never mentioned the SAT—that’s your assumption. If some people enjoy studying endlessly or tiger parents have no clue what competence means, that’s their decision. Identifying the right fit is schools' responsibility if they request such a high tuition. If other merit-based institutions—many of them globally ranked—can successfully select the right candidates, why can’t we? If University of Cambridge can nurture talent like Demis Hassabis, why aren’t we able to do the same?

American and UK universities both have a track record of nurturing immense talent. They both also have a record of students who fail to thrive. It’s hard to predict sometimes based on the high school record, and there is no crystal ball. But it’s partly the responsibility of the parents and students to find a good match as well. Don’t just go to a place for prestige. The OP is absolutely right in thinking that just because you can get into a high rigor school doesn’t mean it’s the best decision for you.

There are some reliable predictors.

The SATs are a good predictor but they are not reliable on their own.
GPA at high rigor high schools combined with SAT scores are much better predictor.
Add in a USAMO/USAJMO (possibly even AIME) qualification or other science Olympiad qualification and you can pretty reliably predict positive academic outcomes.

I wouldn't consider math competitions. If that's the case AI should go to college not your kids.

I hope you are being facetious or snarky. The Math Olympiads are still a benchmark for the latest AI models, which cost billions in capex to set up and train. Even the bleeding edge ones need millions of tokens, long chains-of-thought and test time compute and not insignificant human interaction to approach gold medal level performance after running for hours (wall clock and not CPU/GPU time). High schoolers have to solve these in roughly 1.5h per problem.

There are about 250 high schoolers in the US that qualify for USAMO (which arguably is at least as difficult if not more than the IMO) and about 150 or so get honorable mentions or medals. Most of these could medal in IMO as well (were it not for the super-high competitiveness of the US IMO selection process).

So, while college success (or in academia) does not require one to be good at Olympiad level math, being good at them is a good indicator of college success.

Sure—except most people in these competitions aren’t participating purely out of a love for math. Many are using them as stepping stones to firms like Jane Street or Citadel. For them, it’s more about strategic positioning than genuine curiosity—competition is for racehorses. Solving problems quickly isn’t what drives humanity forward; deep, original thinking does.

In engineering fields, a solid command of calculus is a reliable indicator that a student can handle the rigor of college-level work. For liberal arts, however, qualities like critical thinking and creativity are far harder to quantify—and as an engineer, that’s outside my area of expertise.

Agree, very very hard to quantify. Perhaps some of these competitions like bio or chem olympiads may signal that you would ace the MCAT and do well in medical school. But when it comes to basic science, I cannot think of a simple signal for research potential. For example, I think the ISEF competition is a poor signal of scientific promise. I have nothing against it--it's a nice activity and a good way for kids to get some exposure to research. It is an especially good motivator to beef up your presentation and scientific communication skills. But not everyone has the means to participate, and I hardly think doing well means you have more promise than someone who didn't do well, or someone who didn't even participate. I wish we could measure genuine curiosity, creativity, and passion, but we can't.

However poor of a predictor these may be, they're infinitely better than anything else AOs have access to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Recently heard from a friend their sophomore DC at Chicago finds the work more manageable than feared (was expecting where fun goes to die), and read on here schools on the title no longer have grade deflation. Is this true? College counselors and private consultants (the 2 we have talked to so small sample size) seem to still think these are grind schools where too many students graduate with low GPAs.

Anyone with with DCs at these schools now with real-life recent experience and not just recycling hearsays?

Every one of them has a median Gpa of 3.65 -3.8, similar to the rest of the ivies and T10 besides Harvard and Duke which inflate (3.9,3,85 median). All of these schools require a lot of work to get above the median, with certain concentrations/majors requiring many more hours than others. That is life. It hardly makes the named universities any grindier than the rest of their peer schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Recently heard from a friend their sophomore DC at Chicago finds the work more manageable than feared (was expecting where fun goes to die), and read on here schools on the title no longer have grade deflation. Is this true? College counselors and private consultants (the 2 we have talked to so small sample size) seem to still think these are grind schools where too many students graduate with low GPAs.

Anyone with with DCs at these schools now with real-life recent experience and not just recycling hearsays?

Every one of them has a median Gpa of 3.65 -3.8, similar to the rest of the ivies and T10 besides Harvard and Duke which inflate (3.9,3,85 median). All of these schools require a lot of work to get above the median, with certain concentrations/majors requiring many more hours than others. That is life. It hardly makes the named universities any grindier than the rest of their peer schools.

How would you know if you didn’t attend every one of these schools? Speculation. Hearsay.

Grade inflation or not. A kid at one of the named schools still needs to put in a lot more effort to get the same gpa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.

STEM is a grind at Princeton

Princeton is at an academic crossroad. They want to admit more FGLI (it's now the #1 institutional priority as they have more money than god and legacy preference is gradually diminishing), but FGLI often have lower preparedness and were admitted TO. TO ends at P this year so it will be interesting

Couldn’t Princeton just lower the academic expectations for FGLI admits, but keep everything the same for the rest of the students?

Ha! Trust me, it is not just FGLI kids who struggle. Many, many kids from top privates, top magnets, legacy kids, etc. have a hard time at Princeton, especially first year. You deal with it, go into easier majors, get academic support, deal with the grade deflation and hope grad schools will give you the Princeton pass when evaluating you against a Harvard gentleman's B.

Or schools can admit the right students to begin with.

You’re assuming it’s really simple to admit the “right” students in the first place. I’m guessing you mean using stats like SAT. The problem is, some kids will grind for years to get their score up. Let’s say we’re talking about a really rigorous college with a higher SAT bar. If it requires years of studying to get a 1550+ for one student, and a few weeks of studying for another student, how is a college supposed to tell these two apart? And how is that first student going to keep up with the second student once in college and under pressure to keep up in the same classes under similar time constraints?

I never mentioned the SAT—that’s your assumption. If some people enjoy studying endlessly or tiger parents have no clue what competence means, that’s their decision. Identifying the right fit is schools' responsibility if they request such a high tuition. If other merit-based institutions—many of them globally ranked—can successfully select the right candidates, why can’t we? If University of Cambridge can nurture talent like Demis Hassabis, why aren’t we able to do the same?

American and UK universities both have a track record of nurturing immense talent. They both also have a record of students who fail to thrive. It’s hard to predict sometimes based on the high school record, and there is no crystal ball. But it’s partly the responsibility of the parents and students to find a good match as well. Don’t just go to a place for prestige. The OP is absolutely right in thinking that just because you can get into a high rigor school doesn’t mean it’s the best decision for you.

There are some reliable predictors.

The SATs are a good predictor but they are not reliable on their own.
GPA at high rigor high schools combined with SAT scores are much better predictor.
Add in a USAMO/USAJMO (possibly even AIME) qualification or other science Olympiad qualification and you can pretty reliably predict positive academic outcomes.

GPA + SAT is only a little bit better if a predictor than SAT on its own

I don't have any research showing that high rigor GPAs are any more predictive than inflated GPAs beyond my anecdotal experience from TJ kids.
The TJ kids I know with less stellar GPA but high SAT score don't do as well as the kids who have high in both.
But I agree, SAT > GPA in predictive ability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The reality of math competition today for high school students is doing a lot of drills. Nothing about originality. Unless your kids are actually at the Olympiad level, there’s nothing impressive about making a few AIME qualifications, or even AMO. Better spending time on multi variable, linear algebra, or number theory, etc.

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I doubt any of the Olympiad math boosters here have kids who are actually at Olympiad level. They probably made it to AIME or AMO, unfortunately that didn’t give them an edge enough.

AMO As in USAMO? There are literally 200-300 students that qualify for USAMO every year. You are very likely to get into at least 1 Ivy+
Making it to the next cut and getting invited to MOP almost guarantees admission to MIT of someplace like that.

[Anonymous]

For STEM majors

I still prefer the Oxbridge approach to admitting STEM majors: strong grades, rigorous entrance exams, and an in-person interview. There’s nothing more revealing than a face-to-face conversation. They’ll have to handle in-person interviews when they enter the job market anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't students study and get evaluated "properly"? Why is it called "grind"? It is called learning and evaluating.

Not everyone deserves a trophy. Studying or get out of the school to do something more meaningful to your life.

Have you taken an in-person tour at a place like Caltech, MIT or CMU? The kids there tell you it's a ton of work, 10-12 hours x 7 days a week. Why are some parents so nervous about their kids' future employment prospects that that want them to start brutal job training 7 days a week for 4 years (or more) starting at age 18?

It's not even job training. It's partially work for the sake of work to separate the dream de la creme de la cremr from the creme de la creme, and partially grade school prep. Indeed, students often find themselves under prepared for industry relative to similarly talented peers at similarly prestigious non-grind schools.

I have seen quite a few burnout kids.