<p>If you're a smart, accomplished kid but not someone who is looking forward with bated breath to writing 120 pages of original research, are you not cut out for Princeton? Did all of you current students look at these writing requirements as wonderful opportunities, or did any of you think it would be a drag?</p>
<p>i personally think that the independent research aspect of Princeton is greatly overblown. it's not as if many college students around the country don't do independent research or write theses of some sort on a slightly smaller scale. if you search the archive of senior theses at the Mudd library website, you'll find that most senior theses at Princeton are actually less than 100 pages.</p>
<p>120 pages? I'm dying right now at 5am trying to brainstorm a decent ungraded 2 page JP outline due in exactly 12 hours.</p>
<p>Are most theses chock full of 100+ pages of pure information, or is there a lot of BS and commentary added in to get it up to that level? </p>
<p>And do the professors actually read the whole thing?</p>
<p>You better believe they read them. With a fine tooth comb. There are usually two readers- the first being your adviser, the second, another prof in the department. Both assign grades and I believe they are averaged. I am an older alum, so current students, please correct me if I am wrong. For the record, mine was 115 pages, in the comparative literature department.</p>
<p>They definitely do read them, but "with a fine tooth comb" may be a bit of an exaggeration. Many seniors actually have a little fun with their theses and try to sneak in little irrelevant bits here and there...Terrace, for example, had a few seniors sneak in "food = love" (the club motto) into their senior theses.</p>