Quote: (06-07-2014 02:27 PM)Excelsior Wrote:
Quote: (06-06-2014 06:16 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:
Interesting article. There's fraud going on way beyond the athletes -- in the frats, with the legacy admissions, and in other areas.
Also, the Boston Globe ran a story in December about grade inflation: "A" is the most common grade at Harvard. How can that be? Courses are too easy? Everyone is so smart?
Yes.
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Ha. If everyone is brilliant, no one is brilliant. That's your problem with America right there.
Everyone is not brilliant. Everyone (or almost everyone) at Harvard (or similar schools) is brilliant.... snip.
TL;DR: Yes, they are that good.
Brilliant is quite the exaggeration. I went to a very good public high school, I was part of the honors programs, etc. Half my social circle went to ivy league schools. Kids who get into ivy league schools are smart, they work hard, they do extra bullshit to pad their applications, and if they're lucky they're the right race or sex to fit the agenda. But on the whole, they're not brilliant.
How many truly brilliant people do you meet in a life? So far, I've only met one, and he's one of my professors. He's the only man I've ever met who I think is a true genius. He is one of the top scientists in the world in his field, he went to MIT and Stanford... and now he teaches at a small state university.
I've never scored below 99th percentile on a standardized test in my life. Yet, I don't consider myself brilliant. I am merely very smart.
Anyway, your logic about As doesn't make sense to me. If the students are sooo good that they're all pulling down As, make the freaking classes harder! You're not doing them any favors by keeping the intensity down if they're capable of more. That's just going through the motions, you need to challenge students if you want some to excel.
Also, in my experience extremely intelligent people don't have a lot of patience for bullshit. What I'd expect to see when looking at a really smart kid's transcript, say one majoring in physics, is a whole bunch of As in math and physics and a bunch of Bs or Cs in the crap he has to take that he doesn't care about. Dude's there to learn physics and get into Caltech, not learn about the Wiggy-woggy people of Bumfuckistan or read shitty literature he can't identify with at all by some villager in northern Africa.
Anyway, IMO ivy league schools are about networking, not education. It's foolish to pedestalize people just because they went to an ivy league school.