Very interesting recent comments of a UChicago student

aquapt
Sun, 21 Jan 2024 19:33:04 +0000

marlowe1:

Or you can take the more cautious route, which better preserves your ego and your current sense of self. You will be the exact same teenager with whatever mix of sloppy received wisdom and half-baked ideas in your head on your first day at Chicago as on your first day at Easy University. At the end of Chicago, you will be a very different person. At the end of EasyU, you may not be.

I wonder whether all that rigor at UChicago included learning about choice-supportive bias. This student has literally no idea how easy EasyU would really have been, or who they would have become had they gone there. These assumptions about students at all/most other schools are lazy, self-serving, and unworthy of the elevated intellect this student claims to have developed at UChicago.

Not to say there isn’t a point being made here, about why a student might choose to embrace the challenges and costs associated with attending UChicago. But the glib dismissal of the availability of challenge at other schools is distasteful and hints that the true value they find in their school is merely about feeling superior.