Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:08
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?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.
Wow. What an ugly person you are.
Grade deflation is real and so is the difference in workload. Back in my day, Swarthmore was known as *the* grind school. So much so that it had a Wall Street Journal article written up about it. We had a teacher visiting from Harvard who assigned 1/3 the workload of a usual Swat class.
That said, it is true that rampant grade inflation in high school means many students are not prepared for college. For elite schools, SATs and APs will mostly screen out kids who are really unprepared, except when schools admitted students test optional and found that grades alone really aren’t predictive of college performance. How can they be when so many high schools don’t teach kids to read and analyze a full book?
This is why so many schools are going back to requiring testing. It’s the only reliable way to sort out the grade inflation and compare between high school schools.
Truth hurts.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:07
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?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.
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.
Ok. So participation awards? AI fabricated papers?
You don’t think people deserve awards for being good researchers and writers in an academic department?
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:06
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
Oops no no no. Hire a consultant to do all the work. Who cares about to study or work. That's for poor people.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:04
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
Get an Easy A, continue coasting in the med schools, publish lot of AI papers, become an influencer talk about how glamorous and prestigious life like. This will make more money. Easier short cut, my friends.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:02
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
Anonymous wrote:I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.
STEM is a grind at Princeton
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:02
Subject: Re:Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
Anonymous wrote:I am interested in the answer to the original question. Would appreciate more anecdotes from those with current experience of these schools.
Go to other "prestigious" rich schools with grade inflation. That works better for people who don't want to work.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:00
Subject: Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
I don't think of Princeton as having a grind reputation.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:00
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.
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.
Ok. So participation awards? AI fabricated papers?
Anonymous
02/19/2026 13:00
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.
Sorry, you're wrong. If I quote your question with a question mark, then yes: PP asked, "Did you get a trophy in writing?"
But in the examples above, the question mark is not part of the quote (or scare quote). Therefore, it goes outside.
Anonymous
02/19/2026 12:59
Subject: Re:Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie mellon...are the "grind" reputation real or outdated?
I am interested in the answer to the original question. Would appreciate more anecdotes from those with current experience of these schools.
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.