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I spent my first two summers of high school completing state-required gym classes so that I could fit more science classes into my schedule during the academic year. Every morning, I had to run a lap on the track with my classmates under the searing July sun.
Howard Greene was finishing his graduate work at Harvard in 1963 when he received a call from a dean. Sweeping social changes were underway in the ’60s, he was told. Princeton was looking for a couple of young guys to come in and change its culture.
“All the workings of a bank should be as visible as the wheels and mainspring of a glass-enclosed French clock,” novelist John P. Marquand writes in “Point of No Return.” The public intrinsically mistrusts people who handle money, he says, so bank officers should conduct their business with “no deception, everything open and aboveboard.” John T. Osander ’57 thought that Marquand’s advice aptly applied to his own line of work as the University’s director of admission.
During the Great Recession of 2008, college students saw the global economy in shambles and left the humanities in droves, out of fear such areas of study would lead to unstable, low-paying jobs. Yet, when the economy recovered, they never returned.
Jordan Thomas ’18 was just beginning a statistics course during his first spring semester at the University when he made a startling realization. Many of the other students in his class had already taken college-level statistics in high school.
Landis Stankievech ’08, a mechanical and aerospace engineering concentrator, was all set to apply for the Canadian Rhodes Scholarship by his senior year. He had excelled in his classes, received some academic awards, taught youngsters how to skate, and played on Princeton’s varsity hockey team.
In her junior year, a friend of Yale senior Joshua Monrad suffered from a mental health crisis, which caused her grades to slip. Later, she looked into the possibility of receiving an institutional endorsement for prestigious fellowships in the United Kingdom. The friend — whom Monrad counts among “the smartest people [he] knows” — was told to forget about it, because her grades weren’t good enough despite still meeting the competitions’ requirements.
Opening Exercises kicks off awards season at the University. An administrator takes the stage to call up a half dozen students to receive prizes for reaching the top of their classes. Other awards are presented in the following weeks that include Shapiro prizes, Rhodes scholarships, and so on, until the senior class’s valedictorian is named. The competition for academic awards is supposed to be one of the most meritocratic processes in higher education, hence why their winners are revered. You’re either the best, or you’re not.
Few things can pull a Princetonian out of bed before 9 a.m., but induction into Phi Beta Kappa is one of them. Each year, in the early hours of Class Day — 8:45 a.m., to be precise — about 140 seniors join the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society.
At Princeton, few honors are more highly sought-after than the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence. Endowed by president Harold Shapiro GS ’64 in 2001, the awards are presented to 3 percent of underclass students for “outstanding academic achievement” in “intellectual pursuits that constitute the core of undergraduate education.”
When I investigated Bicker for The Daily Princetonian two years ago, I distinctly recall an Ivy Club member telling me, “I went to the Lawrenceville School. A lot of people in Ivy went to Lawrenceville.”
Princeton has little to show for its experiment in “grade deflation,” except inflating grades that continue to lag behind those of its peer institutions.
Few things worry first-years more than the fear of not making friends in college — and for good reason. Harvard researchers found in 2017 that nearly half of first years felt that their peers had larger friend groups than themselves. A 2018 national survey of 88,000 students across 140 institutions confirmed that two thirds “felt very lonely” within the past 12 months.
Elliot Davies ’20 was the only person at his state-funded secondary school who applied to American universities. In fact, no one in his family had ever applied to any university before.
Athletes from rich towns are siphoned into elite colleges
eData reveals rich places are overrepresented in student body
A courtroom battle in Boston recently busted Harvard’s admissions process wide open. As the public awaits the judge’s decision on affirmative action, few have paid much attention to the leaks of the advantages beyond race that Harvard bestows upon high school seniors.
Thousands of high school seniors logged onto the admissions website over the last few months to see if they had earned a spot at Princeton. Over 90 percent were rejected. Until the moment they signed in, no one knew whether they had been admitted — except for select groups of students.
My investigation into Princeton’s financial aid records revealed that the University has endowed scholarships reserved for students coming from the country’s richest towns and most expensive high schools. During the past three months, I reviewed a hundred pages of endowment listings on the “Giving to Princeton” directory and paired it with public information.
Class elections have descended upon us again, and — if they resemble those of the past — they’ll be uneventful. Candidates will post advertisements on Facebook. Their campaigns will be based upon the vague uncontroversial platitudes of class unity and free branded clothing. We’ll rejoice if even one of them campaigns in-person.
