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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Princeton alumna here, graduated in the 1990s.  It is great to be a Princeton alum, but being a student at Princeton is a mixed bag.  I made great friends and it has helped my career at various points.  But academically Princeton has been a really difficult place for at least 100 years.[/quote]

Agree completely with this — also an alum from the 90s. I love Princeton more the further from graduation I get. Love my friends from that time. I did not love going there. Have complicated feelings about it. It’s harsh in certain ways, in part because the junior faculty are themselves gunning for permanent positions they mostly do not get. [/quote]

I loved going there, not that it was a cake walk.  Academically, I did very well from the outset - came from an FCPS public and always held my own with kids from elite privates.  Was too naive to think there was any reason why I couldn't thrive, and my high school friends were going to places like Yale, MIT, Duke, Northwestern, and UVA, so I was used to a strong peer group.  Socially, it was more of an adjustment, as it was clear a lot of the wealthier kids and athletes felt like they were on another level.  But I found my people (and a time-intensive activity) by sophomore year and it was great from then on.  The fact that assistant professors might themselves be gunning for tenure was not something that particularly affected students, except insofar as they had to decide whether they wanted to excel in the classroom or through their research.

Most of my friends loved the place, too, and continue to do so, although some are sheepish about their affection for the place.  There's a "stickiness" about the place that you don't find everywhere - it burrows itself into your consciousness and they don't let go of you, either (they will track you down to the ends of the earth to send you PAW and "Annual Giving" solicitations).  I'm quite sure my experience, and those of my friends, are more typical than the small number of alums who've come on here and expressed mixed feelings.

Since my time there, Princeton has gotten considerably more diverse racially and economically, but students seem to be more STEM-oriented and pre-professional, and there seem to be more students who can't handle not always being at the top of their class and/or are burdened by "imposter syndrome."  I'm not sure what the answer is for that, other than to have a longer orientation period and more focused mental health screenings.  But it doesn't have much to do with whether a kid thinks they're going to get into Ivy Club or not.  [/quote]

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