<p>I am relatively new to CC --- been reading posts on a limited basis for a year or so. As I read through some of these posts by kids I can't help but feel that there are far too many arrogant and over confident kids.</p>
<p>I attended a decent undergraduate college. For my MBA I went to a top school. The kids in my undergrad were nice and friendly. I won't even discuss my MBA experience. Cocky, cocky, cocky.</p>
<p>Anyway, what do you parents think? Are the kids at the top notch schools a little too big for their britches? </p>
<p>Tell me where the nice kids go to school. Thank you ---</p>
<p>I think what youâre seeing is probably a facade thatâs easier to carry off online to mask insecurities. There are still a lot of nice kids everywhere. My sons attend/attended Washington University in St Louis and Rice. Both schools are filled with nice, respectful, down-to-earth students.</p>
You canât judge a schoolâs social atmosphere by the way students post on CC, certainly. Youâll find nice kids on every campus, as leftrightleft says, and arrogant ones, too. Many parent posters have related that their kids at top schools find it somewhat humbling to be surrounded by so many extremely bright, accomplished people.</p>
<p>I usually read only the Parents Forum and Parent Cafe. Lots of nice folks in here - though some are certainly arrogant, too.</p>
<p>"Anyway, what do you parents think? Are the kids at the top notch schools a little too big for their britches? "
-If you feel that they might be, then do not choose the place, if it is important. For most HS graduates, they are passed the stage when they even consider that. They just know that they can find thier own crowd at any place.
Anyway, everybody has their own criteria for choosing school. I imagine that very few will consider nice behavior or not so nice behavior of other students, but if you do, you got to visit every place anyway, just pay attention to how they behave in addition to all other information that you will collecting. I hope that my honest opinion does not sound arrogant to you. If so, I apologise.</p>
<p>This is of course very anecdotal, but I have recruited kids at Harvard and at MIT, and the former have seemed more arrogant, sometimes to the point of rudeness. Not all certainly, but my general experience. MIT less so where kids seem much more curious, accepting, down to earth. Might be the difference between techies vs. non or something, though HU has their fair share of techies. That said, I have worked with recent grads from both, and in the workplace, I donât experience much arrogance from either. Guess work can be the great equalizer!</p>
<p>Consider the MBA personality profile, too. OP, Iâd bet that at your top school, the folks in the PhD programs werenât as cocky as the MBAs, even though they believed themselves to be very smart and got through an equally or more challenging admissions process. At my university, you could make a good guess about who was getting an MBA vs. a JD at our joint parties. The JDs had plenty of self-regard in their own way, but the MBAs were a brash and extroverted bunch. The way they present themselves is more like athlete cockinessâŠitâs a lot easier to see than nerd arrogance.</p>
<p>I was about to bash Harvard students, as is my duty as a Yale grad, but instead Iâll say this: at Harvard, and at similar schools, there are a lot of extremely capable and self-confident kids. This may play as âarrogantâ to some people, especially if you come from a background where people tend to be self-effacing.</p>
<p>In my experience, many extraordinarily accomplished 18 year-olds are very humbled by their undergraduate years at top schools. When everyone in your college classes is a valedictorian, straight-A student with remarkable accomplishments, you rapidly appreciate that you are not as special as you thought you were.</p>
<p>The most arrogant people I know are people who were top students in high school and went on to be top students at less-selective colleges. They have always been the smartest person in the room everywhere theyâve been and theyâve come to assume that everyone around them is inferior. This is not because they are so smart, but because they did not have the opportunity to go to college with people who were every bit as smart as they were.</p>
<p>People of my acquaintance with undergrad degrees from Harvard or Yale (and MIT, in fact) are humble, and to have nothing to prove to other people about how smart they are. Not arrogant at all.</p>
<p>I also agree that MBA programs probably attract certain personality types. Self-promotion and arrogance may be prized in business programs. And the experience of being accepted to a âtopâ program might just reinforce the arrogance that some of the folks have developed over the previous 25 years of their lives.</p>
<p>If we canât generalize, then it probably doesnât matter what school you go to so forget about fit. I argue we can generalize on lots of dimensions, even if we donât âlikeâ to talk about that dimension.</p>
<p>I would further point out that just because there is diversity on a dimension within any given school, doesnât mean there arenât also differences across schools on that dimension. Just because âyou can find both nice and arrogant people at any schoolâ does not for a moment negate the real possibility that some schools (and I would say some majors) attract more of one type of student than another (whether those are real personality differences or just differences in presentation).</p>
<p>for the insightful and interesting comments. I am from a lower middle class midwestern background and only âquiet confidenceâ was encouraged. Enlightening perspectives from all of you.</p>
<p>Sometimes people see high expectations with high performance as arrogance. Some kids expect to get to get into top schools and feel they deserve it, and are bitter or at least disappointed when they donât. For instance, if youâve made the US math olympics team and expect to get into MIT, I donât think thatâs arrogant, even though there is a group of people on cc who think it is arrogant. </p>
<p>Some people have made large investments in their career at a young age with some degree of sacrifice in other areas, and therefore, they expect some kind of decent return on their investment.</p>
<p>IMO, part of this is because, traditionally, MIT evaluated candidates on academic performance alone (though has begun to change in the past 10 years). So from a selection standpoint, there was no advantage to being aggressive. Harvard, on the other hand, values non-academic ECs more, some of which can be acquired by being aggressive (i.e., founding an organization and advocating for it.) And Harvardâs ideal seems to be people who will be successful in government and/or business, and both of those spheres being aggressive and brash is valued.</p>
<p>I think that many of the kids who post on CC are not among the most popular kids at their high schools because their academic success sets them apart. So they donât get to be cocky at school. But here, among other kids with high academic aspirations â some of whom may have qualifications inferior to their own â they get a rare chance to be cocky, and some of them indulge themselves.</p>
<p>I havenât noticed as much arrogance as unbridled entitlement. For example, they want the âgovernmentâ to foot the bill for the college of their choosing or they think the world is lining up to hand them a scholarship because they got decent grades in High School.</p>
<p>On the Parents of College Class of '13 thread, bragging on oneâs one kid is not only permitted, it is encouraged. We know that IRL, itâs not nice to brag on the great intership your kid just landed when your friendâs kid doesnât have one. But the thread is a safe place for us to share.</p>
<p>I think itâs the same way with some of the kids. If a kid takes 6 AP exams and gets 5s on all, perhaps without even studying, she may know that it isnât nice to brag to her friends who got 2s on theirs. But she can come to CC to brag, because it is a great accomplishment.</p>