Stanford v Princeton - STEM

EnVinoVeritas
Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:25:42 +0000

phantasmagoric - She realizes narrowing her academic interests would help, but she is just not sure at this point. She did summer engineering camps for two summers at different colleges, and decided electrical and mechanical probably were not her thing, but some other area of engineering could still spark her. In fact, it was the narrow engineering choices at Yale that helped her eliminate that school. She loved her CS AP coursework in high school (except for the slow pace), and really enjoying sitting in on CS classes last week at both P and S. The S professor apparently wrote the book and threw candy and the whole class was quite engaged. But she also loves math and has been advised that while many people can code, not many have the advanced math skills required for certain types of CS. So she has started looking at majoring in applied math, minor in CS as one possibility. Anyway, just not sure enough at this point to make the decision based on fine points of curriculum at either institution.

M’s Mom - we are going to a local admitted students event tonight and she will ask about the SLE program. At her recent S visit, her engineering friend derided the program as “weird”, but she has an open mind.

Senior0991 - the “intellectual challenge” can be hard to define, but maybe it is more cultural than anything. Students at both P and S will be highly gifted, no doubt. But she has been disappointed over the years to observe that some of the brightest students she has studied with have downplayed their talents in the class. Not out of a desire to be humble, but because being intellectually interested is sometimes seen as not cool for whatever reason among some. She has noticed this particularly among boys. She is not a snob or elitist by any stretch. But she wants to study with people who want to intellectually engage, not sit in the back of the class and think they are so smart they can get an A without participating and, besides, what they really care about is skiing or coding or doing whatever they do in their time outside the class. I guess she is a little concerned that the laid back nature of S reminds her a bit of her sunny So Cal high school where regard for intellectual challenge was a bit uncool. Does that help?