I’ve heard that Dartmouth is not cutthroat at all. The community seems really supportive and tight-knit!
Carleton and Haverford are two LACs where you will get a top-notch education in an intellectual, but non-competitive community.
Williams didn’t seem like it was cut throat. A few of the students told me that even talking about grades is taboo there.
I agree on Carleton.
Disagree on Rice, especially if pre-med. Very competitive.
Pre-med is competitive anywhere.
It seems to me that many who have commented on this thread believe competitiveness and “cut throatedness” are axiomatically synonymous. In my opinion, they are not. Students – and, more important, a university’s culture and mores – and be very academically competitive, but can also strongly encourage a culture of student-to-student and faculty-to-student cooperation.
Wustl, pomona
Whenever I see this word on CC, I don’t know what to make of it. When I was in school, the term applied to a small number of students who would actively sabotage things. A fairly minor example would be someone who surreptitiously takes a stack of handouts so everyone else runs short.
But, there’s always the students who want to call everyone who studies harder than they do ‘cutthroat’.
^ Or pulling false fire alarms during an O Chem final…
I always suspected those were the total losers who were panicked by the final. Most of the people suspected of being ‘cutthroat’ were actually competent.
Tufts! I’d like to say though, I think a lot of schools that have a “cut-throat” atmosphere aren’t so much cut-throat as they are just simply hard working.
Disagree, coldminny, about Rice. Very congenial environment.
As for the definition of the word, IMO cut throat means intensely competitive, but not malicious.
Stanford, Duke, Brown.