DC had the same outcome last year. At Cornell now. Don't lose hope! |
Emory is not a T20 school. |
Let it go, let it go… |
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Princeton seems like a weird place to me now. The admissions department is run by minorities and generally super woke but they make room (grudgingly?) for legacies and athletes. Then most of the kids end up in tough STEM majors like CS where the faculty grade rigorously and many of the kids who thought they won the lottery end up miserable and wishing they’d gone elsewhere.
Is that perception inaccurate? |
Nope, I was shocked by the reports from my kids’ friends last year when they were freshmen, especially since I grew up in Princeton and remember how the school was 30 years ago. Now, super hard stem classes and extreme grade deflation. Absence of social kids. Then I heard about the six suicides in three years, and concluded it wasn’t the same Princeton I remember. Hopefully they are taking steps to make it more enjoyable. |
| Yes, that is my observation as well, lots of legacies with the bare minimum stats for Princeton who end up in STEM majors and subsequently get crushed by material they can barely handle and end up pretty unhappy. Behind the scenes is typically some over-bearing (legacy) parent who pushed the kid into an institution and place he didn’t really belong. Heartbreaking to watch actually. |
It seems like a pretty unpleasant place these days. I'm an alum and my spouse is staff. DC (2026) has a good chance of getting in but doesn't want to go, and I may discourage them from applying because if they get in they would probably feel pressure to go, and I think they'd be happier at a SLAC. |
| Admissions officers now admit kids who can't do the work but expect them to survive. Then reject kids who would excel. It's messed up and results in mental health issues on campus. |
I am the poster who relayed my daughter’s friends’ experience. None are legacies and they were strong students at an academically rigorous private school. |
I don’t think any of the students who committed suicide were hooked, most were Asian. |
Minorities?! With jobs?! Omg what has become of this place!? |
Well two were faculty kids, so yeah I’d say they were hooked. |
I don't think this is true of legacies necessarily. Legacies are, after all, children of smart people and are generally privileged. Because of that privilege, they are disproportionately likely to major in the humanities or social sciences. I think it's a toxic combination of grade deflation, immense pressure on many to major in STEM, minorities/low-income folks who have potential but are coming in with less preparation than UMC/UC students, and many (not all) athletes who are academically overmatched. |
It’s not as if some kids are sailing by with 100s on every test because they are not legacies or urm. In general chemistry and calc 1, it is common for the class average on a test to be well below 50 percent. It’s curved upward, but this can be most devastating to the kids who were valedictorians and never struggled before coming to college. |