Wait, is it actually relatively likely to fail at life EVEN if you go to a top colleg

College Search & Selection
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<p>This is kind of long, but bear with me, I’m really interested to see what other people think.</p>

<p>I’m currently a freshman at a top 20 US university in my second semester here. One of the struggles that I’ve had here is one that many smart overachieving graduated high school seniors realize once they go to a top university: I’m shocked by how many smart, amazing students I’m surrounded by. It’s almost disconcerting, how stupid I feel compared to a lot of other people. As of right now, my grades kind of suck – especially compared to how they were in high school – because I’m still adjusting mentally, both in terms of the workload/different lifestyle as well as because of my contemporaries, who challenge me and are, for the most part, a LOT smarter than I am and it’s difficult to compete. Despite this, I’m confident that I’m going to adjust so that I will be able to manage my grades and workload before my sophomore year begins.</p>

<p>At the same time, though, I’ve noticed that a large chunk of my peers are seemingly unmotivated and, quite frankly, appear to be screwups. If I ran into them on the street or at a party without knowing that they went to my school, I’d probably think that they were dumb. And for the most part, these aren’t the “secret genius” types who just do really well in school on the side while they party all the time – these are people who can’t seem to manage their time here and claim “I don’t care about my grades, it’s what I do with my life” – that sort of thing, although their reasons for not putting their all into schoolwork will vary. Some of them party literally EVERY night, smoke weed, drink, and then berate those who don't do the same. Others are just plain lazy, especially kids who are on full rides (for both financial/merit reasons) and sit on their laurels with easy majors. (DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying ALL of them, just a surprising amount of them. I have friends who are very hard working and are on full rides.) The girl across the hall from me (she’s on a full ride here) literally sleeps most of the day, skypes with friends from back home, and crams for her relatively easy anthropology exams but doesn’t challenge herself at all, nor does she get involved in other activities on campus even though she was very active in varsity sports and volunteering in high school. </p>

<p>Anyway, this latter type of people at my school that I’ve described make up a higher amount of the student body than I thought. What I mean by that is, while it seems that most of the people at my school are obviously the same kids who did extremely well in high school, there’s still a sizable chunk who fit this lazy mold, more than I thought there would be. How is it possible that there are so many students who obviously did extremely well in high school so that they could get into a university like this one, and yet now, it’s as if they’re different people? Have they gotten discouraged by their peers who are super smart? Are they simply not adjusting to the way college life works? Is this the same case at Ivy league schools, at schools “better” than mine? Or is this just the case at my school? I’m willing to bet it isn’t. </p>

<p>I know that you don’t have to go to a top school to get a top education and still do amazingly well in life, and I came to my college because I love this school, not because I thought being here over my state school would give me an “edge” for my future. But right now I’m pondering this: the successful people who went to top colleges are part of what give those top colleges their prestige. However, you never hear about the people who graduated from those colleges, got their degree, but didn’t make anything of themselves persay because they didn’t make that effort in college and beyond. What triggers that transformation? I suppose I always thought that if you’re smart, going to a top school almost guarantees success in life. But I guess that’s not true.</p>

<p>Comments??</p>

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<p>I have a friend who graduated from Brown and works at Bloomingdale’s… he landed a few good internships, but they never hired him on fulltime. I’ve never worked with him, but from what I gather he seems pretty lazy. I think some kids are good at following directions, but don’t know how to take initiative. I could never see him becoming a manager or working late nights… I hope he grows out of this real soon!</p>

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<p>I suppose, then, that hardwork trumps intellect any day??</p>

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<p>When you meet someone and within 5 minutes they tell you that they are a graduate of HYPSM (without your asking), then chances are that person has nothing else going for them.</p>

<p>Hard work AND intellect is best, but otherwise hard work trumps intellect.</p>

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<p>Anyone can fail at life. Being a student at a top college means you have thus capitalized on many, if not most of the opportunities you had in HS and made it work for you. Going to a top school means you have access to opportunities that are only made available to it students, people with superior intelligence and intellectual ability. </p>

<p>A person may have the ability, but does he or she apply his/herself appropriately?</p>

<p>The people who are successful in this world are successful because they know what it takes to reach the top of the mountain. These people possess personality traits like:
-Tenacity
-Perseverance (adjusting to adversity and fighting through tough times)
-Self-determination
-Passion
-Sacrifice (Going out and partying it up vs. staying in on a saturday night and studying)
-Creativity
-Insightful (they pick up on issues/problems/oppurtunities that the majority of the population can’t identify)</p>

<p>My advice to you is don’t fear failure, because in order to succeed you must fail. Many very intelligent people who were at the top of his or her class in HS get a rude awakening in college. The truth is for every very intelligent person, there is about 100-350 people with similar abilities. Now that’s competition. </p>

<p>Only very few people get to the top of the mountain. It’s because they possess personality traits and decision making skills that most people cannot begin to fathom. </p>

<p>Many of these students think…I’m going to an elite school, therefore, I’m set for life. The cold hard truth hits them freshman year of college. They think they have nothing to prove until he/she sees that everyone else around him/her is as smart or smarter than him/her. </p>

<p>Correct me if I’m wrong, but the way I see it is this…If you go through life thinking you don’t need to prove anything, it won’t get you very far. People like that fail and never succeed because they lack the motivation to prove something. People don’t need to prove anything to anyone, but what they need to do is to stop…take a deep breath and realize one thing…I only have to prove myself…to myself and that’s it. You can’t worry about what others are doing because that will only distract you and keep you from where you in-vision yourself to be…say 10-15 years down the road.</p>

<p>I know plenty of kids who went to great schools. They may have been rewarded for their intelligence and aptitude with acceptance to those elite schools, but they all lacked something. Can you guess what it was? </p>

<p>-Communication/Social Skills. They have flaws just like everyone else in our society, myself included. </p>

<pre><code> Problem was, they could tell me what an algorithm or variable calculus was, but when it came to dealing with people in everyday life…they couldn’t communicate effectively (verbally).
</code></pre>

<p>If one can’t communicate effectively, then it becomes a real problem within the real world. </p>

<p>The people who are truly successful can understand and comprehend complex topics, but he/she also possesses the skill to appeal to the mass population of society, by using simpler terms or verbiage. </p>

<p>It’s all quite interesting if you think about it. You grades might be poor, but there’s room for improvement. You must open your mind and allow yourself to adjust to college. HS is long gone. The days of not studying and pulling A’s in every class are over. </p>

<p>Hope everything works out for you. Good Luck!</p>

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<p>

Just a wild guess here, but maybe these people are demotivated and thought they had to “settle”? Since you say top-20 and not HYPS, I’m guessing you go to a school like Tufts or WUSTL. In other words, populated by the kind of kids that did the work to get into the very cream of colleges, who most likely applied to several of them, and were rejected. </p>

<p>So your top 20, that you are rightfully proud to attend, is viewed by many of your peers as inferior goods to which they forced to attend because HYPS inexplicably turned them down. With that chip on their shoulder they don’t care about college any more, and just go thru the motions.</p>

<p>I’d actually be curious to hear what you’d find out if you inquired where else these people applied.</p>

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<p>There are plenty of people going through the motions at HYPS too.</p>

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<p>SportsMinded said it well.</p>