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<p>Your wit, on the other hand, is impeccable. I have never seen such extensive vocabulary and clever use of italics to comment on one’s “poor grammatical structure and word choice”. Some people might say you should instead be focusing on how to actually get into Stanford, but no not me, I appreciate high school ■■■■■■.</p>
<p>Since you understand picture better, this is what I meant:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.gallery-sakura.com/picture/KATSUSHIKA%20HOKUSAI.jpg[/url]”>http://www.gallery-sakura.com/picture/KATSUSHIKA%20HOKUSAI.jpg</a></p>
<p>ewho, I see that Stanford doesn’t care for picking good writers…proofread next time please</p>
<p>Anyways, I had no doubts about my decision, if anything, it was H vs. P for me.
Yeah, I know about the co-term thing at Stanford, it didn’t appeal to me because it terminates in a Master’s degree and I would like the option of applying to grad school for PhD studies. Plus, P has something like co-term, masters in 5 years or something like that.</p>
<p>My dream is MIT for grad school, but they are too incestuous and too smart :(</p>
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<p>Actually, as of two weeks ago, Stanford is no longer on the list of colleges I will apply to.</p>
<p>Also of note: the quote above is a run-on sentence.</p>
<p>iCalc, what do you want to study at P? You have to pardon me for my Pekinglish if I confuse you. My son did not apply to P simply because its areas of study are too narrow. Can you explain the meaning of the picture?</p>
<p>
I don’t know. In college, I want to be exposed to disciplines that I have not been exposed to. That’s the beauty of my future school :D</p>
<p>Sorry for the off-topic posts.</p>
<p>Why are you not afraid of the grade deflation? Usually you give back everything you learned two weeks after the final exams. In your case, you could get very bad grades at the same time. This could kill your confidence. Of all the classes I took for my three college degrees, none of them were purely for learning something but for good grades. I believe Stanford and Harvard provide the best study environment for what I always want to do – take classes just for learning.</p>
<p>In high school, I was sick of grade inflation. So, I think it would be a good experience to go somewhere where As don’t come easy. Who knows, I may moan and complain about my grades next year, but heck, it’s Princeton so I can deal. Failing out and not graduating is the least of my worries. It’s not like Pton has an abysmal graduation rate. </p>
<p>Main reason: I’m sick of grade inflation. Schools shouldn’t have more than one valedictorian. The valedictorian title has completely lost its distinction nowadays. Grade deflation gives one more potential to truly “stand out.” I like taking risks, but this is not a great risk at all.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t like “laid back” environments. I like competition. It prepares me to get ahead in the real world. At the same time, I DO like camaraderie, and Pton seemed like the perfect balance of these two.</p>
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<p>wowwwwwwwwwww</p>
<p>GoldenCoast: wondering why Stanford came off your list two weeks ago, if you want to share?</p>
<p>wow, and i thought that stanford was just the perfect, golden, ideal school. well, my friend toured the campus recently and he said during classes, most of the kids were on their lap tops doing… facebook.</p>
<p>still wouldn’t mind going there though, lol.</p>
<p>Every college I’ve been to has lots of students on Facebook in class. Stanford is certainly no exception.</p>
<p>It is my opinion, which of course you are all free to disagree with, that threads which decry the lack of intellectualism on certain campuses are at their heart based on class prejudice against students with less financial resources. Only affluent kids can spend their college years focused on purely “intellectual pursuits”, reveling in the joy of learning for learning’s sake. Middle class and lower class kids need to worry about managing their homework so they can fit in enough hours at their campus job, and then major in something practical so they can actually find a paying position when they graduate. They don’t have social and business connections through their parents or through the summers they spent in Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons to fall back on. I’m sure my D would love to be sitting by a country club pool reading some great work of literature right now, but instead she’s at her JOB in Princeton. And guess what her adult co-workers said to her on her first day? They told her they were very surprised she “wanted” to work after her senior year in high school because “most kids don’t” and they themselves didn’t either. Imagine–they think it’s a question of wanting to work. It was precisely attitudes like that which D encountered during her visits to Princeton that made her choose Stanford instead. Oh, and the same for some other elite schools. The smartest kid from my son’s high school class went to Brown. Last I heard he’s taking a year off from school working on an organic farm in Costa Rica and contemplating his future. He can do that because his parents have more than enough money. So, for our family, “pre-professional” has a nice sound to it.</p>
<p>^I don’t see what the problem is. To move ahead it life, you have to be willing to put yourself in better situations with more successful people. For example, it seems that most people want to be iBankers on cc. Guess where the potential iBankers/real iBankers are? <em>gasp</em> in these elite, wealthy schools. I cannot believe that people COMPLAIN about a school being too rich and elite. C’mon, stop being bitter. Rich people don’t hate poor people. You should be glad that you have the OPPORTUNITY to be placed around successful people. Look at Sotomayor, for example. She was a poor Hispanic who felt out of place at Princeton. Look at where she is now.</p>
<p>Stop taking the fact that you have to work so personally. Princeton students are very open if you talk to them.
If you get offended THAT easily, you will not survive in the real world.
Rich, intellectual people don’t bite. Stop hatin’ on them because they offended you with a couple of words. Even a poor person like myself (do you like me more now that you know I’m poor?) does not HAVE to work to get through school. If I worked and someone asked me this, I wouldn’t be irked at all. </p>
<p>And honestly, Stanford kids can be more stuck up.</p>
<p>Undergrad IS the time to be expanding your intellectual horizons. If you’ve never learned to bask in reading literature, you NEVER will. College is as much about personal growth as it is about career-preparation. Poor people get VERY VERY good financial aid at these colleges, especially Princeton. Princeton is footing the bill for you and you’re complaining about it?? Biting the hand that feeds, much? They are ALLOWING you to use undergrad as a time to grow personally and intellectually. This doesn’t meant you have to major in classic literature. An engineer can enjoy topics in the humanities, and the social sciences. Honestly, there are SO many social issues these days that being able to deal with people, and learning about people is an indispensable skill. You see these smart, genius kids at some “unbalanced” schools, and even though they’re smart, you can’t see yourself interacting with them on a friendly basis. They’re just not approachable or fun to talk to. Even though they’re smart and have a potential for success, you can help but feel sorry for them. It feels like they shun humanities courses, and along with it, humans. Focus on career training in grad school.</p>
<p>I actually kind of disagree with The GFG. I am low-income, work more than enough, and still consider myself an intellectual person. I think that you can be driven and focused but still have an intellectual air. I think that socioeconomic status can play a role in the time and activities a student chooses, but that doesn’t pre-empt those students from the “intellectual” activities. Heck, I take intellectuality with me to work - that’s one of the essays that got me into Stanford.</p>
<p>
Life isn’t about engineering a spaceship or discovering new chemical elements. You need charisma, intelligence, and a drive in order to succeed in this world. Schools such as HYP make you into a real, employable, approachable HUMAN BEING. In the world of business and politics (greatest income potential), you need charisma and smarts in order to excel. No one would want to work with you if you’re just robot that calculates and experiments.
<em>facepalm</em> Well hello, people GO to these elite, prestigious schools to get social/business connections. Talk to your classmates, it’s not that hard, eesh. If you’re not willing to connect with your classmates for some reason, why not just go to a state school and learn academic materials on your own? Elite schools thrive on an alumnus network. That is part of the reason why people clamor over them- for the connections, and for the ability to be in the circle of successful alumnus.</p>
<p>Great idea. Go to Princeton to socialize with the elite. Good plan, except you can’t join the same eating club they frequent because your daddy isn’t a CEO of a major corporation. You’re relegated to the club you don’t have to bicker to join. </p>
<p>Look, my S just graduated from Dartmouth and did indeed land a job in investment banking. So I do understand the inherent value of elite schools and would have been happy with my D choosing to attend any of the Ivies. However, she wanted to feel that she could fit in socially and not be left out of the social events because money was needed. She knows that there were many times when my S had to go off and work one of the two jobs he held during the academic year while his frat brothers hung around getting drunk or having fun. And it’s not like he could go on spring breaks with his affluent friends either. The trips were way too fancy. He and his middle class classmates also saw how despite the fact someone had a higher GPA and generally better resume (because he actually had held jobs), the kid whose father was CEO of a company the hiring company wanted to do business with got the job. So my point is that just because you go to school with the privileged doesn’t mean you can fully enter their world. Some people are fine with that, and some aren’t. Some are willing to be miserable like Michelle Obama was in college in order to reap the benefits later, while others want to be socially happy during those four years.</p>
<p>Lastly, you can indeed be intellectual and poor. But we all know that greater resources afford a person or a society the necessary leisure time to pursue the arts, music, and the life of the mind more than the person or society who has to worry about putting food on the table. Just sayin’.</p>
<p>And finally, there are plenty of people who would disagree that schools like HYP produce well-rounded, approachable human beings. Plenty of people think that the kids who go to schools like HYP or MIT are socially stunted or snobby. My girlfriend just told me that her company decided to no longer recruit at the Ivies for their management interns because the hires they took from those schools usually didn’t work out. For one thing, the kids were unused to manual labor and were unwilling to spend time learning about any part of the business that involved lowly or dirty things like warehouses. For another, the Ivy kids always thought they already knew everything. This was the opinion of my friend and her bosses–not mine. But surely you are aware of the negative stereotypes that exist about Ivy grads.</p>
<p>iCalc, I get it. You repeated too many times here on what you think about HYP, now I start to doubt you now. 
I think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs should be the bigger heros than Sotomayor to you. Do I expect you to drop out Princeton after one year?, possibly after receiving many "D"s. (I am kidding you, so take it lightly)</p>
<p>Still, you have not answered my question yet, about the picture.</p>
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Actually life is about these things, even though they aren’t everything. Don’t try to downplay the work of scientists and engineers who have contributed to society by calling them robots that calculate and experiment. Where would our world be today without technological advancements of practical use? How can you say that discovering new chemical elements has no use in life? The fact is that these things pay, and they are of some actual use in the world.</p>
<p>
First off, the world of business and politics does not have the greatest income potential. Take a look at Steve Jobs, the Intel founders, and Bill Gates and you’ll realize that not only does a high income but also a real contribution to society come from smart people who work hard in science, and not from charisma & connections.</p>
![http://www.gallery-sakura.com/picture/KATSUSHIKA%20HOKUSAI.jpg[/url]](http://www.gallery-sakura.com/picture/KATSUSHIKA%20HOKUSAI.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
