| If students are competitive, they are competitive with themselves and are pushing themselves to do well because that's what they are used to doing and that's what has worked out well for them. (That's probably what your alumni interviewer was pushing towards). If you remain "competitive" insofar as you work hard in class and work hard to maintain high grades, your options are less limited.
However, I do not think that there is pressure to be competitive, and you don't have to be competitive to learn and have fun with the curriculum and get decently good grades. So some students care a lot about their grades (particularly the ones with set aspirations on business/law/med/grad school), and some students don't really care about what grades they end up getting. I'm of the latter set.
There is virtually no competition among students, and I don't know why that is. It's generally seen as extremely bad form to share personal information like grades and scores, just as it would be sort of improper to share information like household income and financial aid award. I think it's because students come to Chicago not expressly to get good grades, but rather to learn, and the students who so desperately want good grades end up choosing an institution where they feel they can get them more easily. |