<p>Is it generally spurned? Keep in mind I'm concerned only about the "techies" at Stanford: namely engineering/science majors.</p>
<p>A general belief is that Stanford students try to avoid appearing as nerds, and try to avoid talking about academic matters (once again, I'm confining myself to math/science) together. As someone who is often socially ostracized because I enjoy discussing science/math with friends, I am slightly concerned about "anti-intellectualism" at Stanford.</p>
<p>Here is a quote from "Iki" a CC user:</p>
<p>"A word of warning - Stanford seems to miss one thing: a culture of rampant and ever-present intellectual discussion. People don't want their dinner table conversations to be dominated by bull sessions on the future of the EU, the meaning of beauty or statistical methods. Not to say that the discussions don't occur, but you have to seek them out."</p>
<p>How valid is that quote?
Keep in mind I am not saying academic discussions at Stanford don't occur, I am just saying they are harder to seek out than at other peer institutions such as: MIT, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Princeton.</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>PS: my thread title has a typo b/c my computer keys suck.</p>
<p>I’m not at Stanford so I can’t say anything about Stanford specifically, but I do have some words on this:
four years ago, I was choosing a boarding school. I was really drawn to the “you can discuss philosophy, [insert intellectual thing here], etc. at dinner or track practice or whatever!” it seemed so cool. then I got to school, and yeah, sometimes I do have discussions about really intellectual things at dinner, but most of the time, I really, really don’t want to. School work and clubs (but mostly classes and homework) just take up so much of your intellectual time (plus, all my classes are discussions anyway), that I do not at all want to discuss intellectual things when I don’t have to because you just get tired of it.</p>
<p>And maybe this is just my experience at a “really old, prestigious” boarding school, but I don’t see why it would be too much different at college, regardless of which one. Just because everyone’s really smart, doesn’t mean they always want to be discussing intelligent things.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t think you’ll have a problem with being socially ostracized bc of your current reasons once you get to a college, especially one like Stanford.</p>
<p>OK… let me reword it. When I say intellectualism, I am specifically meaning the willingness to discuss and debate on topics of science/math casually. It does deviate a bit from the standard definition of the word intellectualism (which you can look up on the internet).</p>
<p>Secondly, right now, I have no one to share with my cravings for math/science. I have only 1 person who truly understands me and my passion for math/science, and trust me, we have the best time together solving physics problems/discussing about relativity (sometimes more than 2.5 hrs nonstop, in fact, we skipped lunch to talk about it_ without realizing we forgot to eat lunch!). The other person who understands me is my lab mentor (who is also a professor), and we talked for a hefty 2 hrs a few days ago about a topic in RNA interference but also about current molecular biology research. Although lengthy, those discussions are very enlightning, and put to test your understanding, as it forces you to question knowledge you thought were obvious. I would like those kind of discussions to be dinner table discussions in college… sth I fear Stanford students try to avoid.</p>
<p>“I do not at all want to discuss intellectual things when I don’t have to because you just get tired of it.” With me, the more I talk about it, the more I’m obsessed with it. I might suddenly realize I didn’t know a topic as well as I thought, and will study it until I master it front to back.</p>
<p>I don’t know where this image of Stanford being “anti-intellectual” comes from… People I know here discuss intellectual things every day, from politics, to history, to science and engineering. I have a lot of engineeering friends, and not a day goes by when they don’t discuss something really techie/nerdy. (I’m always amazed at how they can use the most random, obscure facts and relate them to every day conversation.) Anyway, my point is, if you want to have engaging, intellectual discussions with people, there are plenty of people who will be willing to do so; I don’t really think it’s frowned upon at all. But don’t just expect those conversations to fall into your lap. There are a lot of different people here with a lot of different interests, so you can’t expect everyone to want to discuss the things you’re interested in.</p>
<p>Probably from stereotypes. One of the stereotypes of an intellectual is not only arguing a lot but also living a somewhat Bohemian life: spending a lot of time in urban coffee shops, dressing scruffy, watching a lot dreadful foreign films, taking on the air of the neurotic and unhappy genius, constantly carrying around a copy of Voltaire - in French, drinking an odd type of tea that no one has ever heard of, reading a lot of obscure bad poetry, and writing a lot of even worse poetry yourself. </p>
<p>By contrast the Stanford/California stereotype is someone from the suburbs, who is smart, fairly well-dressed & polished, reasonably happy, knows a lot but is not particularly argumentative, has seen all the latest Hollywood comedies, loves football and/or basketball games, is high achieving but still has time to surf occasionally and play in the Ultimate Frisbee tournament.</p>
<p>I come from California and got accepted to Stanford. If the “anti-intellectualism” thing holds true, then I most likely won’t be going to Stanford. I am absolutely sick of going to a public high school every day and having kids talk about random crap while downplaying any topic that is even in the least bit associated with something intellectual. In other words, I’ve been held intellectually “stagnant,” if you wanna put it that way, for the past four ****in years. High school seems to have dumbed me down, what with the aforementioned attitude of most students and the lack of educational depth. Anyway, if this holds true for Stanford, then I find it quite sad that a group of students, particularly those of such an educational level, hold their environment as a determinant in deciding how they should feel about education and intellectualism.</p>
<p>Darkdestroyer12, you basically expressed what I wanted to say, in a more explicit way. That’s how I feel about HS, and it quite saddens me. Also remember that I suspect that Stanford is more anti intellectual than schools like MIT/caltech, not to say it is anti-intellectual in general.</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter to me whether the anti-intellectual stereotype is fitted closely or not. What matters to me is how willing Stanford kids are willing to talk about math/science w/out treating you like an outlandish alien.</p>
<p>I am posting a reply here because I would conjecture that Stanford’s situation is much like that of my own school/any school with a wide variety of kinds of students, which is to say that you have to find a subcommunity within the large community that is like you. I know plenty of people who go to Stanford who definitely wouldn’t talk about school stuff outside of class. But I also know the opposite kind. You’ll probably end up associating with the kind which is most like you. A nice thing about such a school is that there are other kinds of people too.</p>
<p>Basically, if you hang around, for instance postdocs and graduate students at your school, a lot of them just love talking about cool intellectual topics. They’ll basically be exactly like you or even more into the given subject matter than you! There’s the group of people who gawk at the kinds of things I like to study for fun, and then there’s the much smaller group which identifies perfectly with my feelings.</p>
<p>I would say that the OP’s quote from lki has it about right. You’re not going to sit down at dinner with random people and be thrust into a conversation on the finer points of some intellectual/academic topic. However, that is not to say that Stanford is “anti-intellectual”. I would say that there’s a constant awareness here that you’re around a lot of very smart people, and if you want to take advantage of that, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.</p>
<p>One thing I will say is that I don’t think Stanford students keep up on events outside of the “bubble” as much as they should. All too often, I’m the one informing my friends about what’s been in the news lately, rather than having an intellectual discussion about it. That’s not related to “intellectualism” per se, but it might tie in.</p>
<p>Which Stanford kids? Do all of them have to love deep math/science conversations or just some of them?</p>
<p>Stanford is loaded with some of the very smartest people on this planet. Among math and science majors, grad students, and faculty you will readily find math and science conversations of the very highest order. But if you expect every random kid you happen to sit next to in the cafeteria to be fascinated by your thoughts about some obscure theorem or arcane experiment, you will probably be disappointed – not only at Stanford but at pretty much every other college in the US too. Perhaps the only school that could even remotely come close to that would be Caltech.</p>
<p>in short faraday, no. Though you should probably ask Caltech people about this though for verification. I agree with what Coureur and Sly Si stated.</p>
<p>In high school classes can be so devoid of content that you feel starved of intellectual stimulation. Seven hours a day of listening to other kids ask inane questions, and teachers giving inane or wrong answers can make you a little crazy. You won’t feel this way at any of the schools you are considering attending. The classes will have plenty of interesting content, and the professors are smart, smart people. All of a sudden you will be surrounded by stimulating people. You will be able to imagine being like them when you grow up. You will no longer feel different.</p>
<p>That said there is a difference in the style of intellectual engagement at MIT and at Stanford (and generally between east and west coast). MIT tends to be a little more intense. Some would describe this as more “in-your-face” and some would describe this as more “engaged”. Stanford and northern California has a reputation as more easy going. But if you think about it… an awful lot of invention has come out of that area, there must be a pretty hefty exchange of ideas going on to produce Silicon Valley’s success, no matter how laid back it seems on the surface.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you come from, but unless you are planning to always live in the region you grew up in, one thing I would consider is using college to experience a different regional culture.</p>