Doubtless, there are many students out there with potential who have had to overcome significant obstacles in their lives, but admission officers cannot rely on blind faith by admitting a student who has not excelled, regardless of whence they come.
Are our obligations to our family proportionate to our geographic distance from them? Does the acceptability of shameful decisions increase as the train approaches Princeton Junction?
When I tell friends that I don’t have a Facebook, their eyes widen. Then they gush support for my decision. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking I should do that too,” they say. “It takes up so much time!” But I didn’t deactivate my account because I felt like I wasn’t productive enough.
I can honestly say that I would never have applied for the Rhodes later that same August had Dean Frank Ordiway not e-mailed me encouraging me to do so. Thankfully, I had enough good sense to respond to his e-mail and to explain to him why I wasn’t planning to apply. What he replied, in short, was: “Let us or the Rhodes committee reject your application: Don’t reject yourself.”
Using those very structures that some perceive as oppressive, the B.S.E. program ultimately allows us the most intellectual freedom.
The Editorial Board offers a majority and dissent on grade deflation.
The Editorial Board offers a majority and dissent on grade deflation.
“Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4?” It sounds like a shady government conspiracy about torture or ethically questionable pardons.
A typical college road trip, save our final passenger: a live goose.
Real families happily argue in cars and throw things at one another in a healthy manner. They aren’t forced into contrived family bonding activities, whether they are board games, camping trips or potato sack races.
Princeton expects a lot of its professors. We are supposed to teach gifted undergraduate and graduate students; run or help run departments and programs; and do original research — research that pushes the borders of our fields. We also collaborate with colleagues here and around the world, organize meetings and workshops, edit, and serve as referees, judge fellowship and prize competitions and hire new colleagues. It makes for a busy life.
We thought getting into Princeton would sort out our lives, but it didn’t. Most likely, getting into McKinsey or Goldman Sachs isn’t going to sort out our lives either. We’re never going to know exactly what the hell we’re going to do with our lives, and frankly, we probably don’t want to.
More than 1,200 applications were submitted for 75 freshman seminars in the fall and spring terms. But since the number of freshman seminars cannot meet the high demand for them, it is important to ensure that the seminar application process gives students ample opportunity to compete for the seminar they want.
It's that time of the year again: the Editorial we shouldn't be writing.
