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Contrary to popular belief, there are individuals who don't like Stanford. Infact, I found some opinions written by students that make the school look pretty bad:

http://www.studentsreview.com/CA/STFU_c.html

It's the 7th comment down. It is boxed in red, and there are 4 in a row. I am wondering what are some other peoples takes on these statements. I'll be attending Stanford next year, and these statements by students kindof scared me... They point out the supposed "bad" aspects of Stanford, and describe them thoroughly, making Stanford look like a terrible place. The students who wrote these opinions obviously thought extremely poorly of Stanford, and mercilessly picked apart (between the four of them) every aspect of the school, making me wonder if Stanford was the right choice afterall...

By Jlq3d3 (Jlq3d3) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 02:06 am: Edit

Almost everyone i speak to who is a student or has been a student loves it. Think about, if you are happy at Stanford, you wouldnt bother finding a website, and spending time saying how great it is. But if you are one of the few who hate a school, you would have the impetus to take the time and effort to write such a thing.

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 02:14 am: Edit

You'll find unhappy student reviews on the Harvard Independent, Yale Daily, and almost all the best schools. MIT has high suicide rates, Caltech has high drop out rates, Cornell has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, and many Princetonians are shunned by the exclusive eating clubs. In fact, there are many unhappy students at all the ivy leagues with the exception of Dartmouth. (It seems that Dartmouth is a rarity and almost everyone loves the school).

College life is what you make of it. I plan to have a blast at Stanford.

By Foreignboy (Foreignboy) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 03:10 am: Edit

The benefit of going to better schools is that the good points make up for the bad points.

The last entry in the article, about the girl getting raped, was kind of scary, but I can imagine how an image-conscious school like Stanford would try to cover up this sort of thing. This is assuming that entry is genuine, of course.

Anyway, until I actually start experiencing the good and bad points for myself, I'm trying to keep this entry in mind:
"The world is your oyster at Stanford."

By Madelinemay11 (Madelinemay11) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 06:41 am: Edit

I think the campus of Stanford is a real downer for most students...it's the largest (or second largest) in the world, and it's mostly flat grassland, with factory-style buildings...not very appealing compared to the Ivies, which look awesome by comparison.

By Foreignboy (Foreignboy) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 10:11 am: Edit

Hmm.. I've never heard that before. Have you ever visited Stanford?

By Icansmile4u (Icansmile4u) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 10:50 am: Edit

.

By Patient (Patient) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 11:03 am: Edit

I graduated from Harvard and have visited most of the Ivies, including spending a summer at Cornell. I think Stanford's campus is far more beautiful and accessible than any of them. For the most part, the buildings are designed and built as extremely user-friendly buildings.

But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I live near Stanford and whenever I run into a Stanford student while around town (shopping, etc.), I ask how they like it and they fall all over themselves about how wonderful it is. Obviously not everyone is going to be happy there.

Hopefully the admissions office does a good job of identifying the kids who will be a good fit but that doesn't always happen. I always suspect that the colleges where everyone is happy, like Dartmouth is not because the school is so perfect for anyone, but because the school has a particular reputation for being a certain way and only kids who like that kind of school apply. Dartmouth has more of an individual identity (e.g., as a frat school with good academics and a small remote setting) than a lot of the other Ivies and I think the group that applies is going to be generally happy in that environment.

By Samueladams (Samueladams) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 11:53 am: Edit

"I think the campus of Stanford is a real downer for most students...it's the largest (or second largest) in the world, and it's mostly flat grassland, with factory-style buildings...not very appealing compared to the Ivies, which look awesome by comparison"
Ok, where to start. As for it's size, that is entirely correct. However, a third of that campus is a biological preserve, and all the undergraduate "stuff" is focused around the quad, with residences sort of surrounding that, it seems to do a good job of keeping them together. This was a big issue when I went there, finding out how they make to small school feel in a big school campus. As for grasslands, the word grassland is about as far off as one could be. Try forest, there are trees everywhere, which bring out the natural beauty of everything and draw attention away from large buildings that might otherwise stand out. These buildings themselves however are quite attractive, moreso than any campus I saw, and they are certainly not factory style, how about spanish style, with large mosaics and red tile/sand-colored brick look. I only visited princeton, MIT, RPI, and Tufts, and while princeton I found very nice, they are few places I have ever seen that are as breathtaking as the Stanford Campus.
Here's a small anecdote to relate. On the side of one of the quad buildings, literally a classroom building, a guy and his girlfried were sitting out on a circular bench under a tree. He had scattered rose petals all around the bench and had a wine bottle in a cooler right next to them. You could actually do that anywhere on the campus. Every building has beautiful little nooks and nuances to it that appeal to the childhood-explorer in each of us. How many people can say there college campus is sexy enough to have a romantic date on the side of one of its academic buildings? The answer is few. Naturally, as a student choosing between MIT and Stanford, the juxtaposition made it stand out even more, and since I will be attending Stanford, I am biased, but that is a pretty adequate description of the campus, coming from a pessimist who tried to ignore the beauty and weather when choosing between schools because I didn't think it was important.

By Madelinemay11 (Madelinemay11) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 12:09 pm: Edit

"Hmm.. I've never heard that before. Have you ever visited Stanford"

Yes, I live right next to Stanford. You've gotta see an Ivy (say Cornell, Princeton) and then see Stanford....if you're not disappointed, you need glasses.

"Try forest, there are trees everywhere"
Yes, there is a forest, but it's on the outskirts of the campus, not on campus. And the buildings all have a washed out orange/pink sandstone hue, or a 70s office-building look. Gates is probably one of the better buildings, but there's nothing majestic about any of them.

At the Ivies, you'll see inspiring architectures, domes, spires, towers, red/gray brick and sculpted landscapes with multicolored flowers. Stanford is lawn-mowed grass and rectangaloid buildings by comparison.

By Howdydoody (Howdydoody) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 12:26 pm: Edit

Madelinemay11, it is a matter of opinion. I think Stanford has the most visually spectacular campus in the country with a beauty that is unparalleled by any of the Ivies. To say that most people are going to be underwhelmed by Stanford is an unfair generalization. Personally, I observed more hushed whispers and "this is beautiful" comments on my Stanford tour than I did at any of the Ivies (I toured all eight).

Some may prefer the Gothic intensity of the Ivy League, but I did not find the architecture to be particularly "life-affirming." They were nice places to visit, but do you really want all of that darkness hanging down over you and beating on you every day for four long years?

To me, Stanford's campus sort of added to its "work hard, play hard" atmosphere. Stanford's campus seemed to demand that its students stop to admire the beauty of their surroundings at least a few times a day.

The Ivies gave me the "college is hell" vibe, Stanford gave me the "you will work really hard, learn quite a bit, and still have a good time" vibe.

I liked the latter better.

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 12:31 pm: Edit

I found Stanford's campus to be spectacular, and I visited all the ivies except Brown and Cornell.

By Hoosfun (Hoosfun) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 02:30 pm: Edit

Stanford has, undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful college campus in the nation. It's also one of the largest given the population of the school, but those endless... wide... open... spaces may just not be for everyone. The architecture isn't that inspiring, as Madelinemay11 pointed out. But I think Ms. May is exaggerating the 'inspirational' qualities of ivy league architecture. Columbia is beautiful but nothing special; Yale's gothic towers are incredible but they're in the middle of New Haven; Princeton looks like they wanted to emulate Yale, but fell a few hundred feet short on each building (I sware Pton's architecture just makes me laugh, very comfy campus though); anyway, point is that it's all about where you feel good.


I don't mean to offend anyone on the board by this, so read the whole comment out, but what really got me to send in the 'thanks, but no thanks' card to Stanford was the student body. I just couldn't see myself spending my college years with the people I met there - and there's nothing more important then your friends and comrades during 4 of the very best years of your life.

I've visited the Farm a number of times during trips home, and I'm very happy with my decision, though I'm sure the majority of Stanford is happy with their's too.

Get as informed as you can, meet some people, and most of all trust your instincts. You'll be happy as can be if you do. =)

By Howdydoody (Howdydoody) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 02:39 pm: Edit

Hoosfun...where will you be next year?

By Stanfordrulez (Stanfordrulez) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 02:43 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

Yes, I live right next to Stanford. You've gotta see an Ivy (say Cornell, Princeton) and then see Stanford....if you're not disappointed, you need glasses.

---

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 05:30 pm: Edit

Check this article out:

After 20 minutes, the sauna was becoming unbearable. A dip in the pool seemed in order, though its year-round 85° waters hardly chill one’s exterior. En route to the pool, I made a quick pass by the clubhouse to see what was left of the continental breakfast buffet. A fluffy croissant and a plate of strawberries were the spoils of my detour. I splashed in the pool, then grabbed a bagel for the road, heading to the tennis courts to get in a couple of sets before class.

It was a typical morning at my senior-year “dorm.”

Okay, so typical might be a stretch. But such episodes of extravagance were not altogether rare during my time in the Sharon Green Apartments in Menlo Park, a complex of 300 luxury units where, each year since 2000, some 60 students have had the chance to justify every elitist stereotype hurled at Stanford by its peer across the Bay.

I was assigned to Sharon Green in its final year as an undergraduate residence, forced into a world of suburban elegance by Stanford’s student housing crunch. Three years ago, with every study room and utility closet on campus already occupied, the University began shipping residents off campus. Given the housing office’s solutions up to that point, a likely destination might have been a row of cardboard boxes under a Highway 101 overpass, with two people in each box. But instead, Stanford sent the surplus up Sand Hill Road to Sharon Green, only to outdo itself a year later by placing additional students in the even more chic Oak Creek Apartments down the street. That place has an on-site salon, for God’s sake.

I thought I’d scored big my junior year when I landed a two-room double; never mind that it was in the notoriously antisocial Potter House. But my 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Sharon Green made that place look like a closet.

Actually, that’s a poor analogy. The closet in the apartment’s master bedroom was way bigger than my Potter room.

There was, inevitably, a clash of worlds as Stanford kids invaded Sharon Green. After all, it’s the kind of place where you actually feel bad when you spill stuff on the floor or some friends put a hole in the wall, and where posters proclaiming the greatness of beer seem conspicuously alien. An exasperated Palo Alto police officer put it succinctly while breaking up a late-night party at my friends’ place at Oak Creek: “This isn’t a goddamn dorm room.”

We did our best to turn our apartment into an acceptable college pad anyway. Our furniture comprised beach chairs, various inflatable objects and anything else we could find discarded on neighborhood sidewalks. We broke our garbage disposal the first week, giving our kitchen the compulsory stench, and we filled our cabinets with the finest china the campus dining halls had to offer. An empty keg of beer stayed on our balcony so long that I can’t picture the place without it.

But it was all for naught. There was no way to make Sharon Green into a home suitable for Bluto and the gang. And the atmosphere was just too classy to leave us college kids untainted.

The girls below us gave up early and started having dinner parties—with wine!—featuring multicourse meals whose preparation required more than just adding water. Their apartment looked like it was professionally decorated, and you could tell what color their carpet was supposed to be. Soon, they were complaining more than the old couple down the hall when our parties dragged on toward sunrise.

My roommate and I eventually succumbed as well. We started subscribing to the Economist and the New Yorker. We snubbed Safeway for upscale Andronico’s and bought dark beer and cheeses that smelled worse than the garbage disposal. We even cleaned our bathrooms once in a while.

Worst of all, I began to think this was what “real world” living would be like. That notion was cruelly shattered in May by just one hour of combing the area for a postgraduation apartment that would rent for, say, $600 a month. I don’t know how much my stay at Sharon Green cost Stanford, since we only paid the campus room charge, but our unit normally lists at more than $2,000. Guess it’s back to Pabst and Easy Cheese for me.

On the bright side, there was wisdom to be gained from all those old (read: over 25) people living around us.

Most residents fell into three basic groups: 80-hour-work-week Silicon Valley types, families with young children, and senior citizens. All are mortal enemies of the college student who has no concept of midnight being “late.” Our neighbors never seemed to share any of our interests, such as whether one can reach the pool by jumping from a third-floor balcony (answer: almost) or how many empty beer cans fit on some guy’s Boxster in the parking lot (87).

And so, on the cusp of full-blown adulthood, we learned three important life lessons: don’t work long hours, don’t have kids, and above all, don’t get old.
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2003/julaug/dept/voice.html

Damn I hope there is another housing crunch when I attend Stanford!

By Itempest (Itempest) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 06:01 pm: Edit

Stanford is indeed one sexy beautiful campus. I'm sorry I won't be going there this fall...

If you've lived in a place like Stanford all your life, you might long for snow, stone, and high walls. If you've lived in the east coast all your life, you might long for grassy opens like Stanford has.
Again, it's a matter of opinion and exposure.

By Hoosfun (Hoosfun) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 06:18 pm: Edit

Howdydoody,

I'm currently a rising second year at the University of Virginia. I grew up in Palo Alto though, and came close to going to Stanford, so I am somewhat qualified to speak on the topic =)

Wahoowa.

By Jlq3d3 (Jlq3d3) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 06:34 pm: Edit

None of the ivies can compare to Stanford. Princeton was nice to see for a day, but Stanford you can love forever. Places like Yale were gloomy witht the tall old gray buildings and the lack of greenery from november-march. Stanford is green all year. The campus is large but you really only stay in a small section. A big part of it is a nature preserve, a golf coarse, and a linear accelerator.

By Thedad (Thedad) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 06:42 pm: Edit

I've been to Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. Each is very pretty and beautiful in its own way. Arguing about which is "best" like arguing "chocolate" versus "strawberry." The centuries-stained Gothic or whatever some of Yale's key buildings are is more of a novelty to me and I'm a sucker for it but the bright open Mission Revival (and another, I forget which) style of Stanford isn't pretty appealing too.
I admit, Stanford might not look that great with snow but how often is that going to happen?

By 08pride (08pride) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 07:16 pm: Edit

It seems like this thread has changed into a discussion about Stanford's campus. WE ALL KNOW THAT IT IS BEAUTIFUL. THERE IS NOTHING TO ARGUE ABOUT. I'm going to revert this thread back to its original purpose. For those of you who were too busy to go to the website and read the negative opinions of Stanford (which I strongly suggest you do at some point) I have read through it again, and picked out the parts that concerned me the most. The following are a combination of exerts from the four different authors who seemed to have HATED Stanford with a passion. Read them and tell me what you think. I was especially shocked to see so many negative opinions of Stanford in one place, because it had seemed like everyone liked it. So naturally, these complaints caught my eye. IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THESE YET, I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO. PLEASE READ THEM SO WE CAN TALK ABOUT THEM. These quotes will hopefully spark your interest, and cause you to visit the site.

1. "it wasn't worth it. I view my diploma as a receipt, but nothing more. It's not as marketable as some propagandists would like you to believe. In fact, during this past summer's graduation ceremony, a number of students actually spelled out the word "Unemployed!" with pillows laid down on the football field, visible for all to see. This year, graduating Stanford students had a tough time finding (and not finding) jobs."

2. "your professors aren't necessarily gifted in communicating their knowledge (one time literally a guy "taught" numerical analysis on computers by reading from a textbook!), and that the classes are bloated with too many students (I never had less than 50 in a class, so forget the 7:1 student teacher ratio published in US News and World Report's annual college survey). In fact, some classes are so bad that Stanford undergraduates actually take courses at the nearby De Anza Community College and Foothill Community College. That's right: Community Colleges."

3. “based on my experience, I have forbidden my children from even thinking about applying to Stanford, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it over any of the quality, small, undergraduate focused, liberal arts institutions that exist in this country (notably the schools that form the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges.) I would recommend that if one is superficial enough to be stuck on getting the prestigious (to some) Stanford label, the smarter way to do it would be to begin your academic career at one of the small, interesting colleges, and then transfer as a junior (or better yet, as a grad student) AFTER you've benefitted from the attention, feedback and nurturing of a school that is focused on giving its undergraduates a quality education.”

4. “I was abandoned after my acceptance letter. I was placed on a life raft in the middle of the Pacific and expected to navigate my way without a compass or even any idea which continent I should head for. I didn't know what to do, so I let the current carry me. I am ashamed by how little I learned. There actually ARE schools who share in the responsibility to insure that a graduate of their institution has actually been intellectually challenged and at least develops the skills to cultivate curiosity and nourish their mind, body and spirit.
As an undecided major, I found my academic 'counselor' utterly useless. He basically just checked to make sure I wasn't on academic probation, but never so much as suggested a course. Essentially I was on my own to drift around until I managed to find the smallest department that I could (Urban Studies, not yet an offical major) so that I wasn't so totally overwhelmed. Essentially, it was me and the course catalog to figure out my direction through college. (At the time, there wasn't even a core curriculum.)”

5. "Campus ethnic centers and departments have been created, but these don't do enough to make the campus truly diverse. Stanford fails diversity where many institutions do, by paying lip service to diversity but not embracing it. Furthermore there is widespread racial insulation. The ethnic theme dorms do not help this matter, nor does the de facto segregation between the white row houses and largely black apartment complex Mirrielees. Frat parties have the same token black faces week in and week out, while black parties attract few whites."

6. "But that's typical of Stanford: Pay a bunch of professors a lot of money to do very little teaching. In fact, professors generally have to teach only one-quarter (10 weeks total) of classes a year, and that's not even a full ten week period, because the lectures last all of 3 hours TOTAL in the week, and usually a couple of office hours placed at the most inconvenient times. This means that students are paying professors to devote 20% of a typical 40-hour work week to undergraduate matters, with the remaining 80% left to their own discretion. And for many professors, this schedule is in effect for only about 20% of the year (10 weeks out of 52 weeks in a year); the remaining 80% of the year is left to their discretion, such as doing research, consulting to other companies, doing lectures at other campuses, or running their own companies. (A rare handful of professors do teach for two quarters.) To add insult to injury, I had professors who skipped out on their office hours.
A Stanford professor named Tom Campbell (Bachelors, Masters, and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, PhD Harvard) actually served for five full terms in the House of Representatives of the United States Congress while simultaneously receiving his salary from Stanford. He spent so little time on the Stanford campus that some people started to get seriously upset. Critics charged that he was exploiting Stanford's flexibility, while advocates argued that he was increasing the visibility of Stanford and thus enhancing its reputation. After twenty years at Stanford, Campbell recently became the Dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley! Thanks Tom!"


7. "And even when it is warm during the day, even when it hits 90, it will be 40 at night. It is 40 every night in the bay area, meaning you often have to change clothes several times a day. And it rains non-stop during all of winter quarter. And when it rains you must either ruin your clothes getting to class by bike (thanks to our spacious 8000 acre campus), or set out by foot 30 minutes before you need to arrive.
When it's nice out though surely you can go swimming and stuff, right? Well yes and no. You see, because Stanford's athletics are so top notch, they need some super nice facilities and they need to use them all the time, rest of the students be damned. The weight room is not open in the middle of the afternoon, nor before classes, and much of the equipment is old. There are no treadmills in the main weight room, and only two for the entire student body anywhere on campus. We have a great golf course too, but it costs $20 for students to play, and should you bring a guest who is not lucky enough to be enrolled in this great institution, plan on forking over $75. Where does all that money go to? Maybe Stanford's $500,000 annual flower budget. Appearances, appaarences..."

8. "How many of Stanford's Nobel Prize winning faculty attended Stanford as an undergraduate? I don't think a single one."

9. "I discovered the social scene to be the most pathetic junior high school soap opera imaginable. I was in utter shock to witness the obsession with who was dating what football player and who was getting in whose pants. Had I been transported to 1950? I began my search for my 'peeps'. Sadly, I never quite found them. I made better friends at my job at Stanford Shopping Center."

10. "when I graduated from high school, ready to go to Stanford, my parents were proud, I felt like I had accomplished something, and the future looked great and rosy. When I got to Stanford and experienced it, it was not great, did not provide me with the fundamental and necessary training, and left me cynical and pessimistic about the underlying motivations of the faculty."

By Diceypit (Diceypit) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 12:01 am: Edit

sad that you did this research after you enrolled. forget about this, too late anyway. If its really that bad, transfer out.

I checked out the website for my school, thanx for the suggestion. Though your stanford post scared the •••• outta me, i was hesitant to read the negative comments.

By Webhappy2 (Webhappy2) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 12:09 am: Edit

If you wanted UG attention, then you should've applied to a LAC. I didn't apply to any LACs because reputation/prestige were quite important to me.

By Jab93 (Jab93) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 12:10 am: Edit

08pride,

You need to chill. The vast majority of students at Stanford obviously love it...
they don't hang out on websites like the one to which you linked... the relatively few who hate it feel strongly enough to find outlets to express their disappointment... so, those reviews are not representative... if you check out the reviews of schools in Stanford's league (Harvard, where I went, or Yale, Princeton, etc...) you will see similar reviews...

COLLEGE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT!
If you go into it with doubt and negativity, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By 08pride (08pride) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 01:02 am: Edit

"if you check out the reviews of schools in Stanford's league (Harvard, where I went, or Yale, Princeton, etc...) you will see similar reviews..."

That's precisely what I did... And if you did the same, you would've seen that the negative Stanford reviews were far more harsh than any of the other negative Ivy League school reviews. That's why i was so shocked. But I guess that everything balances out, because these were the first seriously negative comments of Stanford that I've ever seen...whereas I heard many negative opinions of the Ivies from all over (this made the Ivies seem more tangible and real). Stanford just seemed too amazing to be real... I guess that those posts brought me back to Earth and knocked me out of my state of euphoria...

By Madelinemay11 (Madelinemay11) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 03:40 pm: Edit

08pride - I can understand that you feel disenfranchised by the stuff that happened to you at stanford.

On the matter of the campus though, I urge everyone to visit for themselves to see if they find stanford's appealing...in my opinion, there is some trolling going on here in an attempt to cover up the plain-jane campus.

By Stanfordman99 (Stanfordman99) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 03:44 pm: Edit

Madelinemay, just cause you got rejeted it doesnt mean you have to be sour. Most people find Stanford's campus to be exceedingly beautiful.

By Twojaw (Twojaw) on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 06:18 pm: Edit

Stanford Campus=Disneyland, Taco Bell Chic
Really flat, Get a Bike, Watch out for Bikers (especially that one that just whizzed by just barely missing you) and best of all NO SNOW (sorry Ivies and Northwestern).

By Voodoochile (Voodoochile) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 01:01 am: Edit

"there is some trolling going on here"

Yes, Ivy girl.

By 08pride (08pride) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 01:41 am: Edit

Madelinemay wrote:
"08pride - I can understand that you feel disenfranchised by the stuff that happened to you at stanford. "

What? I haven't even started school there yet.... Did you miss the entire point of my post?

By Jschuman3 (Jschuman3) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 04:26 pm: Edit

all this talk about how theres plenty of discontent at ivies, i dont think brown or dartmouth students hate their school as much as many other places.

By Lefty9ak (Lefty9ak) on Thursday, July 01, 2004 - 05:51 pm: Edit

Stanford is the holy place. End of discussion.

By Oliviakang (Oliviakang) on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 07:54 pm: Edit

"Whether you should go to Stanford depends on what you want... Here are my observations:
Negative: Techie/fuzzy divide You'll learn about this quickly at Stanford. Techies (engineering, natural sciences) and fuzzies (social science, humanities) have a very different experience with the school--there is respect between some of them, but often there isn't, and techies are treated as neurotic nerds, fuzzies as students who don't learn anything substantive. I myself was a "fucky" - double in international relations and symbolic systems (CS/Psych/Phil of Mind/Linguistics, and got a taste of both worlds.
The University's policies don't help here because techies and fuzzies are treated so differently...
If you are in a techie major, expect to pay a lot of money to get taught by TAs in huge classes. You will invest countless hours in your work for 3 units credit per class or you will fail. The curve is vicious enough you might just fail anyway. But if you teach yourself and survive the ordeal you will have a very marketable degree.
If you are in a fuzzy major, expect to have an intellectual orgy with small classes, great teaching, with little work required for 5 units of credit and an easy "A." Enjoy your college years and good luck finding a job; you'll need it.
Justifiably, most technical students feel cheated since they essentially pay to fund the humanities students... they DO have to work harder, so there's some truth to the idea they are the only ones on campus doing real work. I consider myself bright analytically, a former math nerd, and struggled to make A's in CS. I am a good but not brilliant writer and qualitative thinker. Earning A's in History and Psychology came with no real effort."

is that really true? I'm thinking of majoring in the humanities/social sciences area... but only because I'm interested in them, not because I ever thought of them as the "easy classes"....

similar situation in different campuses?

By Thejuiceisback (Thejuiceisback) on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 08:55 pm: Edit

First of all, if Humanities students at Stanford have trouble finding jobs then think of the poor bastards studying humanities at a no-name university. You'll still be respected and find work or have great opportunities with any degree from Stanford. Sure, it may be easier coming out of Engineering however I doubt that anyone would frown at you if you applied for a job with a degree in any field from Stanford or any prestigious university.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 - 10:20 pm: Edit

Oliviakang, yep, it's pretty much the same everywhere. No matter where you go, no matter what school you're talking about, you can rest assured that the technical classes will almost always involve more work and be graded substantially harder than the non-technical classes. I doubt that there's a school in the country where, say, electrical engineering is considered to be the tomato-can do-nothing major that's filled with all the athletes and other students who couldn't make it in any other major. No matter what school you're at, you're never going to hear a student say that he wanted to study psychology but the classes were just too hard, so now he's studying chemical engineering. No matter what school you're at, physics will never be considered to be an easy major. Engineering students will often times take a bunch of easy creampuff humanities and social-science classes to boost their GPA. You never hear of a humanities student taking a bunch of engineering classes to boost his GPA.

I and many others here on CC have always wondered why is it that technical classes always seem to involve more work and are graded harder than non-tech classes. I can come up with no reason except for the possibility that tech students will get better jobs when they graduate and their hard work and poorer grades are therefore 'payback' for their increased opportunities upon graduation.

By Stanfordnualum (Stanfordnualum) on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 03:39 am: Edit

"I and many others here on CC have always wondered why is it that technical classes always seem to involve more work and are graded harder than non-tech classes. I can come up with no reason except for the possibility that tech students will get better jobs when they graduate and their hard work and poorer grades are therefore 'payback' for their increased opportunities upon graduation."

I am not sure either. But I sorta have a clue:
In engineering/science classes, the letter grades you got are derived from where your numerical score falls on the distribution curve. Unless you have a very skewed curve, it'd look unfair to award the same grade to two scores falling in two different places of the curve. In humanities where grades usually depend on the papers, profs would give "A"s if they like what they read; they are not going to go back and compare paper A with paper B and see if it makes sense that they have the same grade. When I was at Stanford, there was this class that we had an option of either taking a 2-hr exam or writing a paper. It looked to me everyone who wrote a paper got an A for that midterm whereas for the ones that took the exam, their grades are given according to the curve with a pretty normal distribution (hence good mix of different grades).

By Im_Blue (Im_Blue) on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 05:17 am: Edit

"why is it that technical classes always seem to involve more work and are graded harder than non-tech classes."

They involve more work because you have to keep studying and studying until you understand the material. There's no other way to do it. You could study all week for an exam and STILL get a D if you just don't understand it. On the other hand, if you had to write an English paper on a book, you read the book and write a few pages about some aspect of it. I'm not saying that's necessarily easy, but an honest effort will usually not get you anything lower than a B.

CS and Engineering classes also tend to have lots of projects (less true for math and science). If your project doesn't work, you could get a zero or close to it, regardless of your effort. For example, I once spent 100 hours over the course of a week on a project where we had to design a simulated computer processor with cached memory and pipelining. Our processor got stuck running some code and I wound up getting a 10% for my efforts. It's pretty common to spend up to 100 hours a week working on a single project, particularly toward the end of the semester. This is ON TOP OF regular stuff like homework, quizzes, labs, and exams, so the work adds up quickly.

They are graded harder because there is usually a curve. For example, if the average score was 50% and the standard deviation was 15%, then you might have 50% = B-, 65% = A-, and 35% = C-. Other classes are more subjective and usually don't give out that many grades other than A or B. After all, how do you justify giving a C on a 25-page research paper unless it didn't address the question at all? A mediocre student is just more likely to get a lower score in technical classes relative to the average.

By Justice (Justice) on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 11:47 am: Edit

I think the disillusionment that many of the commentators on that website feel is not a product of Stanford but of college in general. They're the kind of students who would've been happy at small LACs but chose the wrong school for their personality.
I personally could care less how much individual attention a school gives students. The real world has to start somewhere...people in real life aren't going to dutifully go to sessions and advise you. You have to find your own advice and make your own path.

By Webhappy2 (Webhappy2) on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 03:05 pm: Edit

CALTECH!!!

Why Caltech? You get uber-prestige like Stanford in an intimate atmosphere. Of course, it's not like a LAC, but Caltech is the only school to give you a 3:1 prof to UG ratio AND access to world-famous profs. Not only that, you get to survive the hardest UG course-load in the nation.

Now, whether that last sentence is a good or bad point will depend on whether I graduate in 4 years w/ a GPA that's 3.5+

By Sakky (Sakky) on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 05:09 pm: Edit

Im_blue, stanfordnualum, you guys are going down the right road, but you don't go far enough.

Let me deal with stanfordnualum first - what you're saying about non-tech profs not wanting to reread papers still doesn't quite answer the question over why the grading is easier. Just because it's hard to differentiate between the quality of papers doesn't mean that you have to give all the students the benefit of the doubt. You can give them no benefit of the doubt.

For example you are indeed correct that if a bunch of papers in a non-tech class all come in all of equivalent quality, then they are probably going to get a decent grade. But why a decent grade? Why not a bad grade? For let's say that you get 2 papers and you can't decide which one is better, so you give them both A's. We know this happens a lot. But why A's? Why not C's or D's? In other words, a nontech professor could easily have the attitude that he's going to give every paper that comes in a grade of C or worse except for the few papers that are truly brilliant. Why not? Seems unfair, but hey, that's the attitude of a lot of tech professors. What's fair is fair. If tech professors give out lots of bad grades, then so should nontech profs.

Now to im_blue. Let me deal with your objections. First, you say that tech material is harder to understand. Ok, let's say that's true. Then the nontech classes should simply assign more and more work to compensate for the fact that their "unit work-load" is smaller. For example, instead of an English class assigning one book by Dickens, assign every single book and article ever written by Dickens. And Thackery. And Eliot. And all 3 Bronte Sisters. And the final paper will be about each and every one of their works. And if you can't demonstrate that you have read and deeply understand all those works, and can compare and contrast them all, then you fail the class. Why can't that happen?


Some people might object that that's simply too much work. Oh really? If the physics students have to put in ridiculous hours to complete their work, then the English majors should too. What's fair is fair.


I would also closely investigate what you mean by "difficult to understand". Case in point. a guy I know once got a 30% on a chemical engineering thermo exam. Did he cry? Not at all - he celebrated. Why? Because the mean was a 25%, so he got an A. But why? He will admit freely that he didn't know anything at all on that exam. But he at least knew more than the average student in that class. Basically, nobody understood anything in that class. But according to the curve, he got an A. On the other hand, those who scored below a 20% on that exam got a F. But, again, why? Honestly, is there really much of a difference between a guy who scores a 30% and a guy who scores a 20%? Both guys know basically nothing. It's like arguing over who has the better cabin on the Titanic. But the curve stated that the first guy gets an A and the second guy gets an F.

On the other hand, I know another guy who once scored an 85% on an engineering exam - and failed. Why? Because the mean was a 95%. But hey, the guy knew most of what was going on (85%). But that didn't matter - the curve failed him.

What that goes to show you is the sheer arbitriness of tech grading. There is no necessary connection between how much of the material you understand and what grade you get. You can know almost nothing of what's going on and still get an A (like that guy who got the 30). You can know almost everything and still fail (like the guy who scored an 85).

Therefore, if that's the way that tech classes are graded, then why is it so crazy to grade non-tech classes in the same way? For example, why can't a guy who writes a good paper that demonstrates solid understanding of the materia in a non-tech class still get an F? Why not? After all, that's what happened to the engineering student who got the 85 - he demonstrated that he knew most of the material, but he still failed. If it can happen to the tech students, then I don't see why it shouldn't happen to the nontech students.

And you say that tech classes have lots of time-consuming projects. True. But then that begs the question why can't nontech classes also have lots of time-consuming projects? For example, psychology or sociology classes could demand that every student do multiple extremely time-consuming field-studies. Literature classes could demand that you write several extremely long and time-consuming articles. Why not?

And finally, you pull out the 'curve-card'. I have 2 responses to that.

First of all, consider your statement that how can you justify giving a 'C' to a 25-page research paper in a nontech class, unless it doesn't address the question at all. Oh really? And why not? It all has to do with the attitude of the prof. Like I said above, a non-tech prof could easily have the attitude that every single paper will get a 'C' or worse except for those rare papers that blow him away, then he might give out a 'B' or even more rarely an 'A'. Why not? If somebody complains about his 'C', then the prof can simply say, well, almost everybody else also got a 'C', hence, I wasn't being unfair to you. You got the same (bad) grade as everybody else.

I would appeal to another analogy. Consider how non-tech PhD dissertations are 'graded'. Can you write up any paper as your PhD dissertation and except to have it accepted? Clearly not. PhD committees for non-tech disciplines are unbelievably exacting and rigorous. This is why those PhD students can spend years, and sometimes over a decade, trying to complete their dissertation. It can't just be good, it has to be unbelievably good in order to be accepted. The PhD committe will almost always ask for revision after revision after revision after revision and will not accept it until it is darn near perfect. That proves that non-tech profs can be just as demanding as any tech prof, if not more so, and non-tech students can and do work extremely hard when required to do so.

So that begs the question that if those departments can be that demanding of their PhD students, then why can't they be similarly demanding of their undergrads? Why not?

And the answer to that question is that of course they can. They just choose not to. Similarly, those departments could easily choose to work their undergrad students like dogs - like assigning each and every single reading under the sun. They just choose not to.

Basically, what I'm saying is that there is no requirement that nontech classes be easier than tech classes. No requirement. It's a freely made choice. All the supposed requirements are really just excuses. Just because a discipline is subjective doesn't mean that you can't be rigorous and demanding. After all, look at how many years it takes to write an English PhD dissertation that the committee will accept. No English PhD student tries to argue that because English is a subjective discipline, then the PhD committee should simply accept anything that he writes that's decent. Or, at least, no student has ever successfully argued it. It's a choice. Non-tech departments have made a conscious choice that their undergraduate programs will be easier than those of the tech departments. They didn't have to do that. They chose to do that.

So that of course begs the question - why do they choose to do that?

By Justice (Justice) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 01:26 pm: Edit

I think it balances out because English majors don't make any money whereas science/engineering majors can make a lot straight out of college. Plus everyone knows that it's harder to get an A in science classes. For god's sake, med schools completely separate your normal GPA and your science GPA! It's kinda dumb I agree and I think it's because humanities teachers are too tired to read thousands of papers and assignments. They just want to have some nice discussion, make some interesting analysis, and then fuzz the grades at the end cuz frankly they don't want to make it that complicated or precise. Science teachers can just average three or four numbers and get the grade. It doesn't matter too much I think because everyone whose opinion about the transcript matters knows about this inequality.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 05:23 pm: Edit

Yeah, well, knowing about the inequality and caring about the inequality are two different things.

For example, a few weeks ago, I ran across this little tidbit on the Internet. It's the stats for MIT premeds, including those MIT premeds who successfully get into med-school. Notice how successful MIT premeds have a 3.7/4 (MIT's 5 point scale is converted to a 4 point scale by the AAMC).

http://web.mit.edu/career/www/pmdata.html

The simple fact is, the overwhelming majority of all MIT students are studying something technical. That means that almost all of them are majoring in something difficult. Yet the fact is, MIT premeds still need a 3.7 to get into med-school. Doesn't that seem just a tad bit high to you? Everybody knows that MIT is a damn hard school, and med-schools should be compensating for that fact by admitting MIT students with lower-than-normal grades, right? Yet the data indicates that they are not doing that. Med-schools still demand that MIT premeds present high grades just like everybody else, or else they will be rejected.

I personally suspect that what's really going on is that while med-schools know about the grade disparity between tech and non-tech, or about hard vs. easy schools, they don't care. In particular, they don't care because they know that med-school rankings are based on selectivity, which is measured in part by the GPA of entering students. So med-schools will actually be hurt by taking in a student who completed the most difficult coursework and got lower grades, even if the med-school knows that that student is the best candidate.

The point is that knowing about the inequality and acting on it are 2 different things. As a corollary, I advise potential premeds or prelaws not to study something difficult, as you don't want to do anything to hurt your grades. As long as med-schools are not going to reward you for taking tough coursework (as they apparently are not rewarding all those MIT premeds), then if you want to be a doctor, you should not take tough coursework.

By Alum (Alum) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 06:32 pm: Edit

"I advise potential premeds or prelaws not to study something difficult, as you don't want to do anything to hurt your grades. As long as med-schools are not going to reward you for taking tough coursework (as they apparently are not rewarding all those MIT premeds)..."

Your post raises several issues:

(1) You suggest that medical schools are purposely penalizing students from "difficult" colleges or majors to satisfy US News, and that is conceivable (although I personally doubt it).

(2) You suggest that students should study "easy" subjects rather than ones that they are presumably more interested in. That is very goal-oriented and questionable advice, although what is "correct" is clearly a value judgment.

(3) You say that MIT students "need" 3.7 to "get into" medical school. There are many factors contributing to who will make a medical school candidate and ultimately a good doctor/scientist, and grades/intelligence are only one (and arguably not the most important one). On the average, it is quite possible that applicants from MIT may tend to lack some of those other important characteristics, despite having high grades and IQs.

By Just_Forget_Me (Just_Forget_Me) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 07:42 pm: Edit

Sakky-Thanks for posting that link, the data are really interesting. I just wanted to point out that A. No one with above a 3.54 at MIT was rejected from med school. B. Of the people with the higher GPAs who were rejected, we don't know what med schools they applied to, or their MCAT stats.

Also, I find the 60% acceptance rate for URMs (compared to 73% overall) strange. Does this mean that there's less of an advantage for URMs in med school compared to undergrad?

By Jlq3d3 (Jlq3d3) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 07:58 pm: Edit

just forget me, well it is possible that since urms are given lower standards to get into the ug school, they might be less qualified to get into med school, even if med schools have some kind of race based preferences also.

By Shyboy13 (Shyboy13) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 08:32 pm: Edit

Some majors and grading standards are just harder than others. I have no idea why and am not attempting to give a reason. I just want to say that I never took a "difficult" class (e.g. physics, math, computer science) as a GPA booster. BUT, I also hated taking humanities type classes of any sort where my grade was in the hands of a professor or TA. I mean, in math classes, the grades I got I deserved. In English classes, for example, my grades rested solely in the hands of the grader. I may or may not have deserved my grades. Boy, I’m glad I loved economics!! Not extremely technical (at undergrad level) and not extremely subjective.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 09:43 pm: Edit

In case anybody is wondering whether MIT is just an anomaly, consider the data from UCBerkeley, another school that is known for tough grading.

http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/top20.stm

This website is nice because it breaks down where Berkeley people apply to, what Berkeley GPA and MCAT scores are of the admitted premeds, and so forth.

For example, consider UCSF. Berkeley premeds who get into UCSF require a 3.85 and a 34 on the MCAT. The average GPA of students at UCSF is 3.71 and average MCAT is 34.

http://www.medicalschooladmission.com/ucsf/


Now, to answer alum's post

#1 - No, I am not claiming that medical-schools are purposefully penalizing students who attend tough schools. What I am claiming is that medical-schools don't compensate much for it either. In other words, for the purposes of med-school admission, a 3.7 is a 3.7 pretty much no matter where you got it or how hard it was to get. In other words, the supposed compensation that med-schools will give to those students who attend a rigorous program is minimal and possibly mythical. Hence, don't count on med-schools judging your GPA generously just because you came from a tough school like MIT or Berkeley.

#2 - And yes, if the above #1 is true (and the data indicates that it is), then if you are absolutely 100% sure that you want to be a doctor, then you gotta play the game of med-school admissions, which means that you gotta boost your GPA, any way you can do it. Which means going to an easy school and majoring in something easy. That's the way to maximimze your chances of getting admitted.

Now, again, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everybody should do that. I'm saying that that's what the med-school admissions track apparently rewards.

#3 - Again, possible, which is why I post the Berkeley data. You might reasonably contend that MIT is an anomaly. That holds far less water now that I'm talking about 2 specific high-profile examples (MIT and Berkeley).

The point is, at the end of the day, certain organizations, like med-schools might be well aware that certain classes are harder than others, but whether they choose to actually do anything about it in terms of compensation is a totally different story. It's one thing to know and understand that person A took on far more difficult coursework than person B and that's why person A's GPA is lower. It's a totally different thing to then reject person A in favor of person B anyway, even though you may suspect in your heart that person A is probably the better candidate.

By Webhappy2 (Webhappy2) on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 11:38 pm: Edit

Is there any chart detailing SAT I & SAT II scores against MCAT scores? I want an idea of what the MCAT scores represent in difficulty. Because if you're MCAT is > 35, it seems you're in to a med school from MIT.

By Sakky (Sakky) on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 02:16 pm: Edit

I am not aware of any such correlating chart, but here is the official AAMC MCAT score chart, broken down by percentile.

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/combined03.pdf

Basically, the mean score of each of the 3 MCAT sections is about 8-8.5, and the mean of the total exam about 25.

Now if you want to compare MCAT to SAT I and SAT II, bear in mind that those students who take the MCAT are a fairly self-selective group. Only those college students who think they actually have a half-decent chance of getting into medical school are actually going to take the MCAT. Hence clearly those testtakers are not going to include those students who performed at a mediocre level in college (or even worse, those students who flunked out entirely). So we already have a more select group than the SATI/II pool of testtakers.

It doesn't surprise me that MIT students who score a 35 or above would stand a very strong chance of getting into med-school, just like anybody who scores a 35 from anywhere as long as their grades are half-decent would most likely get into med-school. A 35 on the MCAT corresponds to a 95th to 96th percentile score.