<p>Are Duke, Chicago, Cornell and Dartmouth considered “elite colleges”?</p>
<p>This article gets posted and reposted. Is the author blaming his education for having nothing in common with the plumber? Perhaps, and I don’t think this is a stretch, the author just isn’t very personable or socially adept. </p>
<p>His analysis of the situation externalizes the blame. I imagine this fellow has an excuse for everything.</p>
<p>Pre-professionalism is everywhere. Sorry.
College is still what you make of it. Always will be.</p>
<p>“Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A’s in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time. Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they’re exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn’t get straight A’s because they couldn’t be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal.”
I have to say I disagree with the author here…isn’t part of the goal of admissions essays/interviews etc. to root out those people who really have less passion (I think his idea that the people who are like those in my <em>Second Bold</em> are the kids who end up at the elite universities), the people who just do things because it’ll look good on their apps?</p>
<p>Adcoms are pretty good at seeing through BS, IMO.
And most kids at HYPSMXYZ are pretty passionate about what they do.</p>
<p>"So you should respect his view, because it most certainly has some truth in it. "</p>
<p>In the same way that I respect Aristotle’s views that smoke rises because its ‘natural place’ is the sky, and rocks fall because their ‘natural place’ is the ground.</p>
<p>This ‘author’ is literally trying to speak for every person affiliated with academia…
It could just be the case (it is) that he himself is hopelessly removed from society, having been the paradigm of that isolated kind of person he described, where in reality, most people aren’t like him.</p>
<p>This entire article sounds like the kind of validation seeking sour grapes disparagement you hear from kids. </p>
<p>“Well…I didn’t really want to go to the Zoo…”</p>