<p>Love your retort, collegealum. :)</p>
<p>JerseyShoreMom, I don’t know if your opening words, “First of all” were intended to signal your readers about your concurrence with the frankly snotty and grossly ignorant generalizations in the NYT article or not, regarding Princeton. It would seem that you are at least in some agreement with the know-nothings who describe themselves as “We Columbian people.” </p>
<p>Clearly, at least in terms of the author(s) of that article, apparently, at <em>Columbia</em> “they call it an education.” What amazing arrogance & ignorance is displayed in this article, on 2 counts: (1) Humanities classes are not difficult (at any fine U, by the way, a distinction which is <em>hardly</em> limited to C) and (2) Humanities majors & stupid people (and/or undereducated people) are synonymous.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the pre-1983 distribution requirements at P. I know about them more recently. You can challenge zero of them. Labs are required; difficult math is required; demanding writing ability is required, and most importantly relative to the published NYT article, the students in humanities classes are brilliant, esp. upper division.</p>
<p>So, since the Columbia writer felt free to dish out garbage, & the NYT felt free to publish such drivel, here’s my equally unsupportable stereotype of Columbia students – as accurate & up-to-date & scientific as the author’s stereotype of Princetonians: C students are full of themselves, and full of it.</p>