Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:50
Subject: Re:Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
I had two kids just graduate Cornell. Whether it is a grind depends totally on the major. One kid in STEM worked incredibly hard while other kid coasted in an easy major and had a ball.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:50
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Because it’s an unmanageable and unrealistic amount of work, which isn’t the same thing as “learning properly”.
But that's the expectation from their future employers
That's the part that I find most perplexing: these STEM school grind kids are obviously super smart and motivated, then they go into the workforce and become uninspired 23 year old worker bees. I know some became the founder of Duolingo (our CMU tour guide kept talking about him), but 99% don't.
In comparison , only 60% of the non grind students get to become the worker bees. The other 39.9% will be unemployed.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:49
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Maybe grades shouldn’t be where we place our trophies in the first place?
So what? Money? Yes there are still some umc to squeeze the last drop of money until every dies. Raise tuition to get more A.
We’re talking about college. Grades had nothing to do with any of my departmental awards back then. Grades were just the evaluations the college forced faculty to provide to students. Our awards came from excellent research, student involvement, or exceptional papers, not how well we crammed Statistical Mechanics the night before our exam.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:45
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Because they “cheated” in by writing “cool” essays but don’t have the ability or intelligence to handle rigor.
Ok, then they should continue to hire consultants to help them to graduate and get a job.
Maybe they do..
that's pathetic. ha ha ha
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:44
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Maybe grades shouldn’t be where we place our trophies in the first place?
So what? Money? Yes there are still some umc to squeeze the last drop of money until every dies. Raise tuition to get more A.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:44
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Did you get a trophy in writing? The question marks belong inside the quotation marks.
Op, Hopkins, STEM, a grind.
You can't expect to get all A without any work to get into med schools. We don't want this kind of doctors either.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:44
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Because they “cheated” in by writing “cool” essays but don’t have the ability or intelligence to handle rigor.
Ok, then they should continue to hire consultants to help them to graduate and get a job.
Maybe they do..
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:43
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Maybe grades shouldn’t be where we place our trophies in the first place?
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:42
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I love that you asked that because I’m also perplexed. When we toured JMU our tour guide was in a sorority and talked about she spent her free time (which sounded awesome). Yet this board makes it sound like the students are miserable. DS says he won’t consider Cornell if he gets in but on the tour our tour guide seemed really happy and was in engineering. It’s hard to sus out.
We know MANY happy Cornell kids. Most are in Greek life.
Yeah because they are too rich to care about it
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:37
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
Anonymous wrote:I love that you asked that because I’m also perplexed. When we toured JMU our tour guide was in a sorority and talked about she spent her free time (which sounded awesome). Yet this board makes it sound like the students are miserable. DS says he won’t consider Cornell if he gets in but on the tour our tour guide seemed really happy and was in engineering. It’s hard to sus out.
We know MANY happy Cornell kids. Most are in Greek life.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:35
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
I love that you asked that because I’m also perplexed. When we toured JMU our tour guide was in a sorority and talked about she spent her free time (which sounded awesome). Yet this board makes it sound like the students are miserable. DS says he won’t consider Cornell if he gets in but on the tour our tour guide seemed really happy and was in engineering. It’s hard to sus out.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:17
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Did you get a trophy in writing? The question marks belong inside the quotation marks.
Op, Hopkins, STEM, a grind.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:15
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Because it’s an unmanageable and unrealistic amount of work, which isn’t the same thing as “learning properly”.
But that's the expectation from their future employers
That's the part that I find most perplexing: these STEM school grind kids are obviously super smart and motivated, then they go into the workforce and become uninspired 23 year old worker bees. I know some became the founder of Duolingo (our CMU tour guide kept talking about him), but 99% don't.
Whatever you describe is not CMU specific. It is simple Darwinism Gen Z is going through.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:13
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
Anonymous wrote: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.
Because it’s an unmanageable and unrealistic amount of work, which isn’t the same thing as “learning properly”.
But that's the expectation from their future employers
That's the part that I find most perplexing: these STEM school grind kids are obviously super smart and motivated, then they go into the workforce and become uninspired 23 year old worker bees. I know some became the founder of Duolingo (our CMU tour guide kept talking about him), but 99% don't.
Why you so worried about CMU students? There's nothing wrong with there being a very challenging academic institution for students in search of that environment. It's not for everyone and that is fine.
They are doing pretty well. I agree. They are one of the top three employee source in both high level tech Google Deepmind and Anthropic. Very respectable results.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:09
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
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.
Because it’s an unmanageable and unrealistic amount of work, which isn’t the same thing as “learning properly”.
But that's the expectation from their future employers
That's the part that I find most perplexing: these STEM school grind kids are obviously super smart and motivated, then they go into the workforce and become uninspired 23 year old worker bees. I know some became the founder of Duolingo (our CMU tour guide kept talking about him), but 99% don't.
CMU has substantially contributed to progress in autonomous car technology since the mid-2000s. But "Duolingo" is easier to explain.
Also autonomous car technology is still in Beta (to oversimplify).