Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?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

Sone classes are hard for almost everyone, regardless of who you are. Anecdotally I think some students think Princeton will be nurturing because it’s small, the way SLACs are, and they are surprised to find it’s not.

[Anonymous]

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.

Well too bad. Do we expect employers to nurture new grad? I don't see that happening with AI catching up on human abilities.

Sone classes are hard for almost everyone, regardless of who you are. Anecdotally I think some students think Princeton will be nurturing because it’s small, the way SLACs are, and they are surprised to find it’s not.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Deflationary curves and rampant to now professional cheating at the top killing the curve can make it very demoralizing. If schools dealt with that dynamic then it would be different.

The issue is academics have different priorities. Grades mean nearly nothing in graduate admissions- you just need to pass around a 3.5-3.7 minimum and after it’s all about recommendations and your publication/research history. Jobs used to not care about grades but they’ve turned a leaf where they want colleges to do their job in discriminating who is and is not their version of competent.

Yike. Thought STEM professions are all skills based. Why would employers check grades?

I’m an academic in STEM and the above is just flat out incorrect. Must be basing this on what grad admissions were like 25 years ago and before grade inflation.

[Anonymous]

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.

[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.

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

[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.

Maybe so, and that's great if a kid does well at those, no knock against that. But that's a pretty narrow qualification. Most of the elite STEM academics I know never touched an olympiad in their life.

[Anonymous]

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.

I stopped equating prestige with competence a long time ago—speaking as a hiring manager.

[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.

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.

[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: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.

[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.

SAT is the most objective standard.

And you are off for the rest of points. GPA is meaningful only if it’s from high rigorous courses at high rigor high schools. Math competition is irrelevant as many students don’t participate in it.

[Anonymous]

And speaking of intelligence—if elite college professors can propose ways to measure AGI like what HLE does, they should also be able to articulate what kind of students they actually want to teach.

For reference, see Humanity’s Last Exam from the Center for AI Safety: https://agi.safe.ai/

Intelligence isn’t just about solving math problems quickly. Math is simply a convenient tool—not the full measure of human capability.

[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.

That's moving the goalposts by a lot. The point was whether Olympiads are a good predictor of college success, more so than SAT. And objectively that is correct. Whether the xMO kids do it for strategic positioning for quant jobs is not relevant. And there are reliable studies that show that IMO medalists end up publishing more impactful research than the non-medalist/non-IMO counterparts. Also, if you have met these kids, they are well beyond calculus in 9th/10th grades so they can handle the rigor.

And yes, calculus errors can cause a bridge to collapse but then again mucking up volatility in Black-Scholes can lead to the LTCM crash. Rigor is required in both aspects.

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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.

[Anonymous]

Over 95% of all colleges are test optional, and we are talking about math competitions now? If we can’t even agree on the most reliable predictor, how is it realistic to use a ultra niche one?