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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Having attended Princeton, I think the mix of eating clubs and administrators/professors obsessed with "rigor" can make for a unusually rough environment, even compared to other T10s.

In my opinion, eating clubs are are just a more pretentious cousin of Frats and Sororities. They become an obsession for a lot of people and define a lot of students' social identities. The participation rates are really high, something like 70% of upperclassmen. On party nights and even party days, Princeton felt like a Greek Life school for the mega rich.

"Rigor"- at least in STEM - generally translates into raising the difficulty until it's clear that a majority of people are struggling to keep afloat. If the majority aren't struggling hard, the professor must raise the rigor. This can really quickly kill the joy of learning for at least half the class.

HOWEVER, if you can master the rigor and the Greek Life, the school can open the doors to absolutely unbelievable opportunities(I know people who had seven figure incomes at top hedge funds by their late twenties). The Eating Clubs(i.e. Greek Life) make for incredible networking opportunities. Those same rich students that may make some Questbridge kids feel alienated can also open the doors to incredible opportunities in IB and PE for those same kids if they learn to fit in. The same academic rigor that may make most STEM kids begin to hate learning and gives most STEM students unattractive GPAs can also allow the top performers to truly stand out from the crowd - and subsequently get recruited by the top quant hedge funds.

Princeton enables the "winners" to win greatly. However it also convinces a lot of people that they are "losers". Both socially and academically the road to "winning" is an absolute dogfight. There isn't time or energy to care about other people or personal growth outside of the dogfight. I suspect that with the shift towards STEM and more preprofessional types than ever before, the "dogfight" is probably more central to the student experience than it was in the past. I also imagine people are too busy with the "dogfight" to show much concern for others or make time for genuine connections. I suspect this is a big part of what bothered Quon so much. 
[/quote]

Sounds toxic.[/quote]

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