Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asian Princeton kid on YouTube sounds so unhappy there. Is it that bad?

He has clearly experienced a lot of trauma in his life and is probably dealing with complex PTSD. Princeton has its share of careerist students who got where they are by being hyper-competitive, fake, and manipulative.

There are also wonderful people and brilliant minds there.

He sounds like he needed an especially nurturing environment and, depending on what he majored in, he may be encountering a cohort of unpleasantly hyper competitive classmates.

Anonymous wrote:I worked at a firm where the managing partner of the office, a task master with a stern demeanor, was a staunch Princeton grad active in the alum community. His son had attended Princeton and seemed like a nice kid. The kid went to law school, trying to follow in his father’s footsteps but very tragically committed suicide prior to taking the bar exam. It seemed the weight of trying to uphold someone else’s legacy can be too much in some cases.

Anonymous wrote:Asian Princeton kid on YouTube sounds so unhappy there. Is it that bad?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my opinion, it seems some students are just not ready for college and especially not ready for a competitive pressure cooker college for whatever reasons. Perhaps they push through high school to get the top grades, EC’s etc and then are just burnt out. Perhaps they think an elite college is the ultimate prize at the end of high school and once they are in they feel their work is done only to find out that they have to continue to grind and the pressure is even more intense. I don’t know. Just wondering. It’s really sad.

I think it’s more that it is very difficult to live in a highly pressured situation surrounded by so many type A students — there are very few counterbalancing influences telling you to chill or that it doesn’t matter, and the living environment is chaotic and unhealthy too. It doesn’t matter how “ready” a student is, it’s just a very stressful situation for a kid who is probably already the amped-up, conscientious type.

I recall a single student suicide during my four years at Princeton, and the school now has far more "creature comforts" and support systems for students than when I attended.

As far as I can tell, about 80-85% of this has to do with the profile/mental state of current students when they arrive on campus and perhaps 15-20% with the competitive environment once they are there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anyway, college campuses and college towns don’t drive kids to take their life. It’s a mental health issue (sometimes fueled by parents…google the latest research on parents with anxiety shaping the mental health and behavior of their offspring…it’s sad…everyone just needs to chill out).

Comparison is the thief of joy and comparison is easier than ever before with social media. Add on an economic environment where the middle class is shrinking and there's intense pressure on high achievers to make it into the upper class(think PE/HF/big tech). If on top of that pressure, you throw a bunch of the most type A 18 year olds in the country into a notoriously rigorous academic environment with high grade competition and strong isolation from the rest of society - that's just asking for trouble.

For a lot of these kids, the rat race feels existential. Even after getting into the top university in the country, the rat race still feels existential. That's a problem. No one is content with a gentleman's B anymore - but a lot of people still have to get B's.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yet every time someone posts in DCUM about how grim and awful the environment is on these elite campuses these days, all their rabid fans scream about how wrong that assessment is and that everything is perfect.

Suicides happen on most college campuses, but yes, IMO, they happen more at the pressure cooker schools, and in reality most T25 schools are exactly that. Those kids have often grown up thru HS expecting to be the best at everything and eventually the pressure to do that can be too much unfortunately

I do appreciate you qualifying your comment as “in your opinion”. Because until you can site sources that say suicides happen more at the top 25 schools, then this statement is insensitive to the mental health challenges of affected students.

It does happen everywhere, not just Top schools, obviously. But there is "less pressure" at a school ranked 100 vs a T20 school typically. The kids at T100 likely did not spend their HS 4 years carefully crafting their life just so they could get into HYPSM.

Here is my personal awarements/antedotal evidence. I have one kid attended a T100, one at a T30-40 and I went to a T10. All 3 are in cold, dreary areas. The T100 and T10 are 60 miles apart. The T10 had 9+ suicides we knew about in a 5 year period recently--it's a known issues at the school. The T100 I've only heard about 1 suicide in last 10 years. Have not heard of any at the T30-40 school and cannot find anything with searching (I do hear about a few at the Medical school for that school but not undergrad) This T30-40 school is not known for being a pressure cooker at all, lots of "strivers" who wanted T25 but didn't get in (most were WL/offered sophomore transfer at T25 schools---most applied to and wanted to attend at least 2-3 T25 schools)

Anyway, college campuses and college towns don’t drive kids to take their life. It’s a mental health issue (sometimes fueled by parents…google the latest research on parents with anxiety shaping the mental health and behavior of their offspring…it’s sad…everyone just needs to chill out).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love Princeton, NJ. It was my dream school. It's gorgeous and I love the small town and restaurants.

I went to a large state school with just a small town. I truly don't get all these people talking about their kid wants to go clubbing and head out into the city...wtf.

Maybe because my kids live in an urban neighborhood and take the Metro to HS in DC it seems absurd to me.

We did all of our partying on campus and at off-campus apartments...and then as we were older the 3 nearby college bars in the small town.

Maybe there would be a road trip to visit friends at another school or go to a college game---but it wasn't about clubbing after hours in NYC--so much time for that post college...not to mention expensive AF for a college kid!!

Eh, that’s your opinion.

I grew up in MoCo and my friends and I used to sneak into clubs in DC every weekend starting in high school. We were able to get into certain bars in DC and Bethesda by senior year in HS. College was an entirely different scene.

Anyway, college campuses and college towns don’t drive kids to take their life. It’s a mental health issue (sometimes fueled by parents…google the latest research on parents with anxiety shaping the mental health and behavior of their offspring…it’s sad…everyone just needs to chill out).

Anonymous wrote:I love Princeton, NJ. It was my dream school. It's gorgeous and I love the small town and restaurants.

I went to a large state school with just a small town. I truly don't get all these people talking about their kid wants to go clubbing and head out into the city...wtf.

Maybe because my kids live in an urban neighborhood and take the Metro to HS in DC it seems absurd to me.

We did all of our partying on campus and at off-campus apartments...and then as we were older the 3 nearby college bars in the small town.

Maybe there would be a road trip to visit friends at another school or go to a college game---but it wasn't about clubbing after hours in NYC--so much time for that post college...not to mention expensive AF for a college kid!!

Anonymous wrote:A friend of mine turned down a professorship at Princeton and went to another Ivy League school (not Harvard or Yale). She hated the location although it seems like a nice place to live as a professor to me

Anonymous wrote:I worked at a firm where the managing partner of the office, a task master with a stern demeanor, was a staunch Princeton grad active in the alum community. His son had attended Princeton and seemed like a nice kid. The kid went to law school, trying to follow in his father’s footsteps but very tragically committed suicide prior to taking the bar exam. It seemed the weight of trying to uphold someone else’s legacy can be too much in some cases.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isolation is a key factor . Princeton seems cold, clinical, and drab in terms of campus life or having a college town feel. UPenn, Columbia, Yale, Cornell seem to have more energy

This is true