<p>Just wondering. I actually like that type of environment, because it's so serious and cutthroat</p>
<p>not really…</p>
<p>I don’t think Northwestern is “cutthroat”.</p>
<p>oh ok. because some people were telling me that that’s what the environment is like at Northwestern, U Chicago and the top Ivies</p>
<p>it’s not cutthroat but you could tell people care about their grades.</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>Agree. Expect to find a serious and hard working but collaborative academic environment.</p>
<p>I definitely wouldn’t say there are a lot of “asocial” people. Most people are very friendly and involved in clubs and such, in my experience.</p>
<p>I agree with brebeuff. Most people care about their grades, but it’s not “cutthroat” in the sense that students do nothing but obsess over their grades and how they compare to other people’s. Grades are taken seriously (by most people), but it’s not like everyone thinks they’re in direct competition with everyone else to see who can get the highest GPA.</p>
<p>I see much less of a sense of competition here, mostly because fewer classes have been curved. Granted, at the end of this quarter I will have only taken eight classes, but they’ve all been on an ordinary grading scale. Contrast this with the large public university I used to attend, where everything was curved six times over and your main goal was to be better than the guy next to you.</p>