<p>^Hear, hear.</p>
<p>This reminds me of something S's friend related last summer. He'd gone into NYC, taking Karl Popper with him on the Chinatown bus, hoping to while away the ride by reading Popper (this is summer, exams are over). I was amused that he thought Popper appropriate reading fare for a bus ride.</p>
<p>Well, if some of us had been on the bus we could have engaged him in a discussion of Popper.</p>
<p>DS at Williams found his most exhilarating moment when all his friends watching a House episode got the Schroedinger's Cat reference. I doubt more than one or two of these kids is a future physics major. For S, that made the experience of watching the show more rewarding. Don't know if an actual conversation about Schroedinger's cat erupted, but it could have.</p>
<p>^Unfortunately, he was disturbed by a neighbor with a cell phone ( I should tell him about phone jammers). Your experience is like Coureur's and like mine. As S's friends plopped down on our sofa watching some silly show, I overheard something about "categorical imperative." The relationship between Kant and that TV show eluded me.</p>
<p>Background: I'm a student at Chicago with many good friends at Harvard.</p>
<p>I can't really add much to this argument rather than to say that, duh, there are intellectual students at Harvard. One of my best friends there will go out of his way to start an intellectual argument; another of my best friends there does all the readings for all of her classes not because she'll get a better grade, but because she loves the work. I was reading over an article about libertarians at Harvard, and a member of the libertarian club mentioned that after the first time he read Marx, he was so excited he couldn't sleep.</p>
<p>(I've read Marx for core at Chicago, and I couldn't make enough sense of it not to be able to sleep).</p>
<p>What has surprised my friends, though, is the number of "non-intellectuals" at Harvard. I don't think it necessarily has to do with bumped applicants versus non-bumped applicants... but rather that not everybody at Harvard is an intellectual or enjoys "nerdy" conversation. That doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't bright, talented students... it just means that maybe they don't want to sit with their friends at dinner and rehash what they did in bio lab step-by-step.</p>
<p>I chose Chicago because I wanted to be around as many academically-minded students as humanly possible. Though I'm sure I would have been able to find my own at Harvard (had I applied, been admitted, and decided to have gone), I felt that the "vibes" I was looking for in a school were more front-and-center at Chicago than they were at Harvard.</p>
<p>unalove:</p>
<p>I think the vibes have to do with the common experience produced by Chicago's core. I like it very much, but S feared it might get in the way of scheduling math classes. H's core curriculum is far more flexible (it's not really a core in the true sense of the word), but it makes for a less unifying experience and a very different atmosphere.
So far, S has has only two courses in common with his close friends. So he cannot have sustained conversations with them about something he's read and which they have not. He read Kant and his friend read Popper. They can have short conversations about these two authors and more. Generally, though, not in front of a Crimson writer.</p>
<p>I am curious to know if Lucy Caldwell would know who Karl Popper was.</p>
<p>unalove, your friend was a libertarian who thought he found common ground with Karl Marx???</p>
<p>I have no connections with Harvard and nothing to gain or lose if some undergraduate thinks it is no longer a center of intellectualism, but the smug air of superiority assumed by the author really rubbed me the wrong way. Then again, she is just a college undergraduate, and even smart college undergraduates do and say dumb things which they later regret.</p>
<p>Well, would Karl Popper know who Lucy Caldwell is?</p>
<p>I'd call it even.</p>
<p>my D has a friend who is taking 2 science classes and an english class as a freshman, on the "dentist track"</p>
<p>if she decides she DOESN"T want to be a dentist is two years, well, she has lots of science, but not much else</p>
<p>yeah, I call that kind of sad- no history, no music, no literature, but she can disect a frog, and will be kind of stuck if she finds, as the majority of college students do, that they want to change their major</p>
<p>that is the real lose</p>
<p>for me, I am sick of people saying they want to be an engineer....</p>
<p>Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FRS FBA (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994) </p>
<p>He might have known her as a 7 year old, who knows? Would her writings have been of interest to him?</p>
<p>The letter is laughable. She states as fact, her opinions based on three yrs on campus without a shred of data or research. If this is the level of critical thinking which universities are teaching, heaven help us.</p>
<p>I was referencing an article:</p>
<p>The</a> Harvard Crimson :: Magazine :: Life in the Middle</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sheffield practices what he preaches, spending summers working on police violence and domestic abuse research in places like Argentina and his home town of Fayetteville, N,C. As he waxes eloquent on philosophy and his love of Marx (he claims that the two nights after the first time he read Marx he didn’t sleep), Sheffield’s frustration with the perception of libertarianism is clear.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's not enough context, but I just read that and went, "WOW!"</p>
<p>CGM, I can't tell you the temptation I have had to take exclusively English lit classes, and yet, if I did, I don't think I'd be in a better place than your D's friend... I don't think college is about making students specialists in a field, regardless of whether that field leads directly to a profession or not, but it's about extending knowledge in all directions.</p>
<p>I wonder if changes in the admissions race has in fact resulted in some significant changes in what the typical student at tops schools is like. What I'm thinking of, in particular, is the possibility that current students at Harvard (and similar schools) are substantially more hard-working and "driven" than students of past eras. In the past (and I'm thinking back like 30 years), the curriculum at most high schools was much easier than it is now, and students who were academically gifted could get top grades (and scores) without working all that hard. I went to college with many kids like that--they were very smart, gifted, etc., but they weren't all that "driven." Maybe they (we) seemed more "intellectual" because we were willing to sit around the dorm room or lunch table talking about interesting topics rather than writing that paper or studying for the next exam. Today, it seems to me, it is much more difficult for a student who is not "driven" (in addition to being smart) to come out of high school with the grades necessary for admission into top schools. (Is a student who is more "driven" likely to be more "careerist?" My gut reaction is yes, but I'm not sure.)</p>
<p>Hunt:</p>
<p>But your theory does not really make sense. It's not about writing papers. If a student has not done the reading because s/he has not done the reading, preferring "to sit around talking about interesting topics," s/he is bound not to have much that is interesting to hear.<br>
It is possible that today's more driven students are actually more knowledgeable than my generations. When I started, the big issue on campus was parietal hours; my introduction to American campus life was a panty raid.
By the time I graduated, my fellow students had deserted classrooms and library in order to hold demonstrations, sit-ins, occupations of administrative buildings. Yes, they talked a lot about interesting topics--without much knowledge of what they were talking about.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>my D has a friend who is taking 2 science classes and an english class as a freshman, on the "dentist track" if she decides she DOESN"T want to be a dentist is two years, well, she has lots of science, but not much else. ...for me, I am sick of people saying they want to be an engineer....<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Well the pre-med/pre-dent track is science-heavy at every college in the country no matter how intellectual (or not) it is. So what's the alternative? I don't see an easy way around this. Would you be comfortable being treated by doctor who never took biochemistry? Would you want to live in a building or drive a car that had been designed and built by engineers who had taken a bunch of English lit courses instead of the usual math, physics, and engineering?</p>
<p>The more I think about this issue, the more I believe there needs to be a distinction between a school's intellectual atmosphere and students' intellectualism or lack thereof. Chicago's intellectualism is very visible because the core fosters the kind of exchanges made possible by having a common set of readings. But at other schools, such an intellectual atmosphere is less common because of the diversity of interests of the students (not the diversity of income). It does not make the students at those schools more or less intellectual. It's more a case that their intellectual endeavors are less likely to be noticed by those not sharing in them. I am reminded of an admitted student who was turned off by the food fights he saw at Caltech, which suggested to him that Caltech students were not serious enough, not intellectual enough. He did not see that the food fights were actually a way of relaxing after long bouts of extremely intense intellectual labor. Very likely, those students had worked through problem sets together, though not in a public place.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I didn't use the term "intellectual," but after her freshman year I asked D whether she found the kids at Harvard to be regular kids or were they strange or somehow operating on a higher, or at least different, plane from ordinary college students? She said that they seem like regular smart kids about 90% of the time, but these really strange, exhilarating, and quite wonderful conversations keep breaking out at the oddest moments.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>coureur, this is similar to my experience at MIT.</p>
<p>marite: I think your above post is spot on. You reminded me of Feynman at Cornell thinking of QED watching a plate spinning in the Cornell cafeterial. Can we think food fight?</p>
<p>I also think that it is not productive to judge different uses very intelligent people put their highly functional minds. I know engineers who think poetry is a complete waste. I know poets who cannot understand an architectural blue print and poets who can. There are geniuses in the financial industry who never go to the theater. There are others whose generous donations support entire symphony orchestras. </p>
<p>DS's final choice was between Chicago, Williams and Brown. He liked the core for the reasons unalove does I'm sure. He liked the idea of being in that atmosphere. He also liked the freedom of Brown because he has a very clear idea of what he wants and needs to know. He chose Williams as being somewhat in between (and for the mountains). He can pursue needed courses, but without a core he can also explore his own interests. He can not talk about is classes with everyone, but he can with several of the kids in his entry who are in his classes. As my and other examples pointed out, a globally educated student population with its ears open creates students who "get" our culture with its scientific and cultural references. It is not necessary to display this knowledge to reporters!</p>
<p>As you look at the article, realize that the Harvard Crimson comes out 6 times a week and is staffed by students, the majority of whom -- including top editors -- get no pay, have no plans to be journalists, and yet spend as much as 30 hours a week putting out the paper.</p>
<p>And the Crimson is just one of the publications that Harvard students produce even though very few Harvard students plan on careers in publishing or journalism.The other publications include a literary journal, a weekly student newspaper, and the "Let's Go" travel guides. </p>
<p>IMO, the best thing that Harvard offers is the opportunity to be around lots of other students who are passionate about being involved in things in addition to going to classes. There certainly are many colleges that are far more intellectual, and I think that someone who wants an immersion in intellectualism to be the hallmark of their college experience would be better off attending a place like Swarthmore or University of Chicago instead of Harvard. Certainly Harvard has some intellectual students, but I think there are other colleges with a higher percentage of intellectual students.</p>
<p>the author makes (at least) one fatal assumption, IMO. She ASSUMES that H used to be more intellectual (however that word is defined), but yet there is absolutely zero evidence to support that assertion. Perhaps they used to be intellectual and are no longer, but how would anyone know?</p>
<p>We sent one kid to H from the podunk HS I attended, and he was not even close to being an intellectual -- just an average kid taking college prep classes (never heard of AP in our city) like the rest of us, but parents could afford a private school. The only true intellectual in our HS went to Caltech on a full ride.</p>
<p>Re post #58. Lucy Caldwell would probably be mortified at being considered not intellectual because she spends so much time writing for the Crimson!</p>