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It depends on your personality. I went to MIT, and found interactions with other students much more useful than the coursework itself. If you've spent 18 year

by KMag 6y ago

It depends on your personality. I went to MIT, and found interactions with other students much more useful than the coursework itself. If you've spent 18 years with tons of people telling you that you're the smartest person they've met, it's really good to meet (1) a few people who put you in your place and (2) lots of people who are genuine peers and push you and encourage you for the first time in your life, instead of just telling you that you're smart (or giving you a hard time for being smart). My freshman year at MIT, I roomed with a guy who was a highly ranked chess player, and one of the smartest people I've met. However, 18 years of having the rules never really apply to him and never being forced to actually focus really hurt his work ethic. He was plenty smart enough to graduate from MIT, but failed out due to a lack of focus. There were about 1,000 people per grade in my high school, and people occasionally asked me if I was as smart as the girl a year ahead of me who went to Harvard. There was really no question that by most measures of intelligence, I was the smartest person in my grade. I was getting strait As in honors-level math classes at the state university while in high school. I got 800 in both the SAT I Math and SAT II Math sections, and 790 in the Chemistry SAT II. My chemistry teacher just started marking my scantron sheet as the answer key, and the day after every exam, the whole class would go over my exam answers on the board to see if I had made any mistakes. I ended the year with 9 points above 100% in Chemistry because on the first exam, the second highest score in the class was 90/100, so the teacher just added 10 points to everyone's scores. I made one mistake (at least mistakes that got caught) later in the year in chemistry. In my university honors-level math classes, I would bring a newspaper and read, until one day where the TA asked a question that nobody else in the class could answer, so I folded up my newspaper, figured out what was going on and answered the question. The professor (standing off to the side) got red in the face and pulled me out into the hallway and said "I don't care who you are. I don't care what kind of grades you're getting. If you bring a newspaper to class one more time, I'll get you thrown out of the honors program." It was good for me to interact with others with similar experiences growing up and get a drop or two of humility. Your mileage may vary.

adamnemecek 6y ago
Ok what did you get out of those interactions?
- KMag 6y ago
  I got a bit of humility, and challenge, and met a lot of people who showed me what passion and drive can really do. Most importantly, I got friends who really pushed me to make the best use of my abilities instead of blind praise. You don't get to MIT without a combination of ability and internal drive, but for most of us, the external drive was also very beneficial. The comradery also really helped me push myself harder. I'm in the middle of the Standford introductory compilers MOOC right now, but with a self-paced online course, the atmosphere is just very different from being surrounded by really bright and passionate people trying their best. Not everyone needs or benefits from that sort of environment, but I found it very helpful. IHTFP
  - adamnemecek 6y ago
    Are you sure these things are that useful? I went to a quality-wise comparable school, people talked about the importance of humility and such but idk, I just don’t think I got my money’s worth.
    - KMag 6y ago
      Not everyone is me. Lots of people would do equally well outside the crucible, and some people have mental health issues due to the crucible. But for me, it was really useful. (On the other hand, the rate of mental breakdowns and suicides/suspicious deaths did seem alarmingly high at MIT around the turn of the millennium.) For many people, finally learning to fail and pick yourself back up is useful. In high school, I took 6 trimesters of honors-level math at one of the "Public Ivys"[0], and my senior year of high school I was taking a full course load there plus 1/4 course load (band class) at high school. I got all As, except for a B+ in Intro to World Politics, without working very hard, driving 45 minutes each way to and from school. It was a good education, and I could have gone there on a full ride scholarship, but I still feel MIT was worth it. At the "public ivy", I would have gotten better grades, and probably would have put more effort into personal projects, but focusing on personal projects is very different from focusing on things you have to do, and I didn't really have to focus on my school work at the "public ivy" in order to get above a 4.0 GPA. I probably would have had to have waited until after school to learn how to pick myself back up after failure. On the other hand, I don't think I would have found some other top schools as valuable. I have a friend who graduated with a CS degree from an Ivy League school and then came to MIT. In his experience, that Ivy treated students like they already worked very hard to get into school and deserved high grades, but it seemed to him that at MIT the culture was very different, seemingly even for undergrads. What I've read about the grading curves (median GPAs, percentage graduating with highest honors) at some of the Ivys seems to match up with his observations from that one Ivy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy

by KMag 6y ago

adamnemecek 6y ago

Ok what did you get out of those interactions?

KMag 6y ago
I got a bit of humility, and challenge, and met a lot of people who showed me what passion and drive can really do. Most importantly, I got friends who really pushed me to make the best use of my abilities instead of blind praise. You don't get to MIT without a combination of ability and internal drive, but for most of us, the external drive was also very beneficial. The comradery also really helped me push myself harder. I'm in the middle of the Standford introductory compilers MOOC right now, but with a self-paced online course, the atmosphere is just very different from being surrounded by really bright and passionate people trying their best. Not everyone needs or benefits from that sort of environment, but I found it very helpful. IHTFP
- adamnemecek 6y ago
  Are you sure these things are that useful? I went to a quality-wise comparable school, people talked about the importance of humility and such but idk, I just don’t think I got my money’s worth.
  - KMag 6y ago
    Not everyone is me. Lots of people would do equally well outside the crucible, and some people have mental health issues due to the crucible. But for me, it was really useful. (On the other hand, the rate of mental breakdowns and suicides/suspicious deaths did seem alarmingly high at MIT around the turn of the millennium.) For many people, finally learning to fail and pick yourself back up is useful. In high school, I took 6 trimesters of honors-level math at one of the "Public Ivys"[0], and my senior year of high school I was taking a full course load there plus 1/4 course load (band class) at high school. I got all As, except for a B+ in Intro to World Politics, without working very hard, driving 45 minutes each way to and from school. It was a good education, and I could have gone there on a full ride scholarship, but I still feel MIT was worth it. At the "public ivy", I would have gotten better grades, and probably would have put more effort into personal projects, but focusing on personal projects is very different from focusing on things you have to do, and I didn't really have to focus on my school work at the "public ivy" in order to get above a 4.0 GPA. I probably would have had to have waited until after school to learn how to pick myself back up after failure. On the other hand, I don't think I would have found some other top schools as valuable. I have a friend who graduated with a CS degree from an Ivy League school and then came to MIT. In his experience, that Ivy treated students like they already worked very hard to get into school and deserved high grades, but it seemed to him that at MIT the culture was very different, seemingly even for undergrads. What I've read about the grading curves (median GPAs, percentage graduating with highest honors) at some of the Ivys seems to match up with his observations from that one Ivy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy