Reply to Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Confused by all the vitriol about a reasonable question. Wanting to avoid super-grind college culture is not the same thing as trying to cheat your way to easy As without learning anything. 
 1. College is not solely about learning subject content, especially for the many students who do not wind up using their major in their ultimate job. College should also expose you to new perspectives, students from around the country and the world, etc. You are shortchanging yourself if you spend 12 hours a day in the library. Might as well do an online degree. 
2. As an academic, I find that mindless grinding can be counterproductive. Scholarship (or advanced undergraduate work writing a research paper with an original thesis, or solving a problem in the lab) is not making widgets. Sometimes a walk or a little time away is where you get the best ideas. When I hear that some students are spending 12 hours a day studying and all weekend in the library, I do not assume that they are producing the best work or learning the most. 
I want my DC to work hard in college and to learn a lot. But I would not encourage DC to go to a school that has a super-grind culture or where a very difficult curve creates a zero sum competitive culture. I don’t think it is unreasonable for a prospective student to wonder whether the historical reputations of the listed schools are still accurate. [/quote]

Sure, but it really goes both ways. Schools need to admit the right group of students to achieve what you described. The real question is: why do they end up with that kind of reputation or create such zero-sum environments in the first place? Were they like that before?[/quote]

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