Hi all,
I would like to know about the culture of Princeton. Competitive? Collaborative? Is it high pressure? Is there work life balance?
Also, do you know how strong is the Christian community? Thanks
My son finds it very collaborative. Pressure depends on how much load you can take on. You can coast through Princeton taking a light load, or take a very heavy load. No one is stopping you from taking a very heavy load. In other words it is not a high floor school for load. The major determines the floor. CS has a medium floor. Mechanical Engg has a medium floor. Economics has a low floor. Math has a high floor. Anthropology has a low floor etc.
Don’t know about the Christian community, although I haven’t heard the student body as a whole to be very religious as is true with most college campuses.
There are numerous Christian student organizations on campus and in the adjacent community. Unless you belong to a small and specific denomination, you’ll likely find your people. There are many beautiful churches on campus and in the surrounding, walkable community
I agree that it’s very collaborative, but I think pressure is self inflicted and has very little to do with load. Princeton is, however, rigorous.
I also disagree regarding this low floor notion. While I don’t think it’s the grind some believe, I don’t think many are coasting. In part this is because the majority of students are very intellectually curious and aren’t looking for the easier classes, but the ones that interest them.
Intellectual curiosity is, IMO, one of the key things that set Princeton apart from other peer universities. Yes, there is plenty of smart at all these top schools, but kids who favor Princeton seem to be the ones who truly love learning for the sake of learning and are not as focused on learning as a career path.
Finally, low floor is a dismissive and unfair way to compare majors. It is true that the BE kids have it tougher than the AB kids from a GPA standpoint. STEM classes are challenging and the volume of work large, but that doesn’t mean Humanities classes are a walk in the park. My STEM kid would absolutely drown under the volume of reading and writing required of a History major, for example.
CS is unique bc you can choose the AB route or the BE route. I believe the major requirements/classes are very similar but the distribution requirements are different.
1 Like
I did not say that History is a low floor. I am carefully picking and choosing.
There are some gentlemen’s majors at Princeton. Economics could be one of them. As I mentioned elsewhere Princeton has three Econ tracks – frat track, math track, and grad track. The kids on campus feel anthropology is one of them. I am just acknowledging those.
ABs are not necessarily the easy route in CS. Often the theory kids that have heavy math interests also end up as AB. You need to carefully pick your path through the department to get a moderately heavy path as opposed to a heavy path. Also my definition of a moderate heavy path may not fit your definition of a moderate heavy path :-).
I agree about the love of learning. Absolutely. But there are kids that will take the easy way. Let me give you an example and leave it at that. There was a girl at our HS who got into P as legacy. She told the kids in the school that she is going to P to find a rich kid and marry.
I hope she didn’t get her heart broken. Unlike popular belief, the Princeton of today is not covered with entitled rich men (which I am sure you know).
I am sure there are kids trying to get through college the easiest (laziest?) way possible everywhere, but I really do think those are the exception and finding a way to do that might be in itself work.
And just because this is often a topic that comes up… I don’t know this girl’s story (or her sense of humor?) but it does not reflect the the reality of legacy students at Princeton. I happen to know several and each and every one of them was a very accomplished HS student who deserves to be there in their own right.
1 Like
There are entire sororities at universities filled with women looking to “marry up”. At least at Princeton, you’ll only meet a handful (if that). And because women do not fix their hair and do full-on makeup to show up at class (again, there are universities where that is the norm) that will not be the prevailing culture.
And I am not saying women are the ones that are looking for Gentlemen’s majors. Otherwise those would be named gentlewomen’s majors :-). This just happened to be the ready and blatant example that came to my mind. Princeton is not MIT. There are students with a variety of interests and motivations.
I don’t think women have been at Princeton long enough to have the centuries old traditions of the Gentlemen.
But at any rate, to answer the OP’s question- the work/life balance is there for kids who prioritize that; spending one’s life in the lab or library is also an option if that’s what someone wants.
1 Like
One of the things that Princeton seems committed to and has done extremely in recent years is to provide a rich amount of opportunities for students to socialize outside of eating clubs/typical college parties, be it trivia night, a trip to a Broadway show or pizza and ice skating. (Just another benefit of a well funded and generous university). Even those inclined to life in the lab/library can find a fun/interesting way to unwind occasionally.
1 Like
Princeton also provides serious money for activities that don’t involve alcohol – as an explicit goal.
1 Like
My husband went to Princeton and was involved with Princeton Christian Fellowship while there; it was a very solid Christian group. He’s still in touch with the leadership, and it appears to be equally wonderful now. Feel free to PM me and I can connect you with him or with the leaders there.
2 Likes
That appears to be the unicorn I can’t find elsewhere as I go through this process again. Suggestions welcome and appreciated.
My son told me freshman year that if you organize some group activity that doesn’t involve alcohol the university provides a budget of $20-$30 or more per head to order food etc, almost no questions asked. On an event by event basis. I don’t know the details. Perhaps the kid just needs to reach out to ODUS and ask for funding for the activity and see what happens. ODUS is the office of the dean of undergrad students.
Incidentally alcohol on campus is quasi free and uncarded. Certainly sophomore spring and up you are in eating clubs where alcohol is bought on the dining budget, and for freshman/sophomore fall kids – easy to get invited to parties at the eating clubs. I don’t know if anyone goes out to a bar. At all. The tamest clubs have the most liberal alcohol licenses, and vice versa. These licenses are over a 100 years old.
1 Like
By the way this is the best place to ask questions about Princeton: https://realtalk-princeton.â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– /
Answered by students.
Just introduce yourself as frosh.
1 Like
Not really. Not that there are options.
Each time my daughter comes back for break, she says she was surviving on 2-4 hours of sleep for the past 48-72 hours. I think midterms are tough, there is serious grade deflation, and students are highly collaborative (daughter studies with a group of 15 kids - mainly engg majors). She was valedictorian of her high school class and she is retaking all the courses she currently has (major difference between community college/AP/state school versus Princeton). But she loves it there.
1 Like
I started replying to @Farhana_Islam , but this is really for the OP. Sorry about that 
I am not sure if I’d say there is grade deflation.
The university would like to characterize it’s grading as the lack of grade inflation.
Here are some numbers from a few years ago:
Employers are aware, and don’t care.
Brown is at one end of the spectrum. You can drop courses after taking their final exam.
And I have heard @hebegebe comment that while As are difficult at Yale, Cs are even more difficult. I guess grading is harder at Princeton than at several of it’s peers. But I have not heard it be called as grade deflation.
And you are correct that STEM GPAs are lower than humanities GPAs at Princeton. I’ve seen the numbers, but don’t recollect where I found them – maybe 0.2 to 0.3 difference.
If you want a good calibration of how much load your kid will feel, the only people who can give a reliable answer are kids from your own school that are senior to your kid doing a similar major.
Students come into Princeton with various levels of preparation. My son tells me that kids coming from strong private schools, and from strong public schools in states like NJ, NY, CA, MA etc tend to take the load in their stride – i.e., they are not doing 2-3 hours of sleep.
There are four big buckets of time kids need to fit in – sleep, academics, social and extra curriculars. So how much sleep you get is a function of what you are doing in the other three buckets.
Kids that have a lot of lab courses tend to have irreducible time commitments.
2 Likes
I see that lack of aggressive grade inflation often called grade deflation. It’s all relative. If the grades for a school are lower than peers it’s seen as deflation.
Comparatively, when I was at UCLA the average GPA was around 3.0. That would give students these days aneurisms.
1 Like
That’s fair. I haven’t had any complaints from my kid.
A positive that I hear is that at least in many of the stem classes that he is taking, they mostly hand out As if you do the work – i.e., there is only favorable curving. If you are above traditional A cut offs, they don’t curve against you, and if the whole class is scoring poorly, they sometimes curve in your favor. Several of his classes give out 40-50% of the kids an A. In those classes he may be putting in 15 hrs of homework a week though, per class. He has had the occasional class where the entire grade for the semester depends on solving a cumulative of 6-9 problems on various problem sets. I know most of his friends are not near the average from the above link. He says humanities majors may have more relative grading.
Here is the grade distribution from the 2022 senior survey btw:
Those grades don’t look deflated to me.
And here is the link which has a whole bunch of other data:
1 Like