How do you cope with the fact that normies attend elite universities

[Anonymous No.10899976]

and make nothing of the special resources that you could capitalize on?
>>Stanford University undergraduate
>>has world class faculty and low enough undergrad enrollment to get to know profs
>>even if you performed middle of the pack here you'd likely get into the PhD program of your choice at Stanford as long as you did undergrad research (+ that magical brand on your CV/transcript)
>>a good half of the spots are given to humanities stacies, retarded minorities, etc. who will never make use of anything at Stanford except the reputation in the job market for Stanford BA's in poli sci perhaps
meanwhile you're at a middle of the road state university or unknown international school busting your ass to make a 3.9+ in physics/CS/engineering/etc to get a slim chance at making it into a grad school like Stanford, if you were already at Stanford you'd be given highly preferential access to any grad program and you'd benefit from their lack of grading rigor (average undergrad grade is like an A-), opening up time to get a research assistant job or something (faculty at small private institutions are obliged to help undergrads to a greater degree than big state universities so even below average kids can do "research" even if it's glorified make-work)

[Anonymous No.10899997]

>>10899976
Rotten world

[Anonymous No.10900005]

gamers society rise up

[Anonymous No.10900011]

>>10899976
Those normies are probably better than you if you're barely making 3.9 in no-name unis. You don't deserve Stanford.

[Anonymous No.10900016]

>>10899976
I cope by realizing that I didn't have any rich parents whom made start-ups or non-profits for me, that I was in math and programming competitions for pure fun, that I did take the ECs I liked, that I can enjoy my passions and that nevertheless I have never ever regretted spending my free time watching anime, playing MK with my friends, and studying things for passion and true curiosity.
If you really think you need it you may make it to Stanford, the thing is that if you're not smart enough to stand out in talent alone, you have to become an almost completely different person in order to get there, starting by your school image to your false, persuading essays.

[Anonymous No.10900018]

>>10899976
I already go to a good university and I'm not a good student, so I don't really care

[Anonymous No.10900021]

>>10900011
You have to consider the institution, 3.9 from a grade deflating STEM school with a significant dropout rate and 3.0 medians is very good, you can get into a top 10-20 PhD with less if you're active in research
3.7+research can get you somewhere really good, just not top 5 tier

[Anonymous No.10900036]

Grow up faggot being well adjusted doesn't make you stupid. Face it, 'normies' are mostly just better people than you.
t. not well adjusted at all

[Anonymous No.10900037]

>>10900036
>faggot
Why the homophobia?

[Anonymous No.10900039]

>>10900037
I said that to summon you.
Why are you in every fucking thread you lunatic

[Anonymous No.10900049]

>>10900036
These humanities/social science normies are going nowhere that an elite undergrad degree will be an asset to them (except maybe to feed their egos). Think low paid admin jobs or crappy law schools like UC Hastings or something. You might think many of them do investment banking - not really, that requires a good GPA in a quasi hard major like econ and early attention to interviewing and financial accounting/modelling skills (ideally during/after freshman year). An English BA with no particular finance or business experience is fucked even from a top school

But in the hands of the /sci/ poster going to Iowa State for some reason (but academically smashing it) a Stanford affiliation is the difference between grad school at BU or MIT/Harvard

[Anonymous No.10900050]

>>10900016
That's the game though, everyone has to be fake to get into school, get hired, get married, etc.

[Anonymous No.10900053]

>>10900036
When it comes to Humanities, being a normie is a sentence of death. They basically can't break the barrier of studying, so they end up being unable to produce new ideas.

Most of these normies will end up at some newspaper or going to business, because at an academic level being a Stanford NPC is like being a mediocre deluxe.

[Anonymous No.10900054]

>>10899976
Normies don't attend Stanford. High IQ geniuses, children of wealthy celebrities and politicians, and people who won prestigious awards and competitions attend Stanford

[Anonymous No.10900060]

>>10900050
The friends I made were done by staying true to myself. I didn't need to ever lie to get a job.
It's not like is not worth the effort, I mean, the end justifies the means, but if getting into Stanford means sacrificing everything I hold dear to myself for just a profession then I'd better be like I am right now. Science is not the only thing I love.

I would love to hear these people actually saying that, because I found really hard to believe that there is someone that truly got into a T10 just doing what they love and talking with "passion". But they end up being second-hand ads ffs.

[Anonymous No.10900064]

>>10900054
Lolno there aren't enough of those kids every year to fill the entering classes at HYPSM + Caltech, Columbia, etc. There are a few hundred of these pure IQ or connections people who are basically instant admits, you need to throw a like a 100x on that number to fill the entering classes of top 10 universities.
The bulk of the class just did well at their uncompetitive flyover public or crappy private HS and wrote a nice essay. Many are also affirmative action admits, think Mexicans from East LA who were the one smart kid in their entire ghetto high school

[Anonymous No.10900065]

>>10900037
This is 4chan. Anyone you disagree with is a niggerfaggot. Although, I appreciate your critique. If discourse here ever becomes civil it will be because of people like you calling people on their bullshit. This may take hundreds of years, however.

[Anonymous No.10900072]

>>10900064
>The bulk of the class just did well at their uncompetitive flyover public or crappy private HS
What? More often than not is the total opposite. It's always the same fucking High Schools. Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Thomas Jefferson, any fucking school in Palo Alto, Andover, Exeter, etc.
Those send a lot of people every single year to top schools. And no one can't deny they are prepared, but it's also no one's fucking fault there are poor that weren't born in some important city like New York or San Jose. For many cases, if you weren't born in CA or NY you don't exist.

[Anonymous No.10900086]

>>10899976
stanford is for literal morons, go to a real school like berkeley where people get in solely off of academic merit

[Anonymous No.10900087]

>>10900072
Kids at Exeter will tell you the opposite, it's harder to get in from there. There was the case of the Asian dude from Exeter or Andover or one of those schools who rekted all of the legacy kids who eventually matriculated at HYP but he had to settle for Johns Hopkins. It's in the same book that put Jared Kushner's Harvard story on blast (daddy paid for a building)

Stuy and Bronx Sci might send like 5-10 each to each HYP type school, that's not putting a big dent in the total numbers. Just because the modal number of HYP kids is 0 and one school places 5 doesn't make it some special feeder relationship

[Anonymous No.10900089]

Semi related:

I am a first year student at a top CS program (Bsc.+Msc. 5y) in my country that is unknown outside of here.

I'm considering starting another bachelor's in mathematics while doing my CS program which would grant me a Bsc. CS, Bsc. Math and Msc. CS. Furthermore I'd want to do some research.

Another option is to just do the CS degree, some math electives and go all in on trying to get published at a conference such as NeurIPS.

Assuming I have the drive and intelligence of a top student at UofT, Berkley or Stanford, would it be realistic for me to publish at NeurIPS before applying for PhD if I skip the math degree? The CS program is 5 years long.

What path would lead to the most likely success for CS admissions? CS+Math+Research or CS+NeurIPS.

Which is the most realistic? Again assume I have the drive and intelligence.

[Anonymous No.10900099]

>>10899976
>thinking that the university isnt a for profit business

[Anonymous No.10900116]

>>10900049
yes of course! thank you, i'm enlightened. i would go to a university to get my degree in a social science so i can be a clerk.

research? professorship? nah i don't fuck with that shit let me sort papers

what a retarded take

[Anonymous No.10900117]

>>10900072
> important city
> san jose

t. i live in san jose

[Anonymous No.10900119]

>>10900089
Publishing is more valued than coursework for sure. I've seen some people publish undergrad work in NIPS but they were from top schools and about to graduate (or they had graduated within the year or something)

https://da-data.blogspot.com/2015/03/reflecting-on-cs-graduate-admissions.html

"But publications and research experience typically mattered more. Particularly when it was good research, from someone we trust. I had a colleague in undergrad who was the first author of several SOSP and OSDI papers during his undergrad. Needless to say, nobody cared that he came from Utah when it came time for Ph.D. admissions -- he was an easier admit than a Stanford graduate with a 4.0 and a triple major but with no compelling research (or equivalent) experience."

[Anonymous No.10900132]

>>10900116
People don't seek PhDs in useless subjects for career advancement because their academic positions are scarce and low paying. The type of student who goes into say a philosophy PhD out of Stanford undergrad probably has a huge hard-on for the subject and graduated near the top of the class. The number of such people in a year? Maybe 2?

It's really only computer science and economics/business that have decent industry options for PhDs and have enough tenure track positions hiring every year to even make the 4, 5, or 6 year commitment worth it to get a PhD

[Anonymous No.10900139]

>>10899976
American universities are not elite, notice the undergraduates that win field medals are from French schools or imports at Harvard.

[Anonymous No.10900148]

>>10900139
Right you should rate the quality of a university on a few outlier graduates, got it

[Anonymous No.10900277]

Those kids who seem un intilectual can be just that, or understand that to make it in a social ladder you have to act fake and have a good social credit (Facebook account and YouTube ,if company Google's you).
Even if she isn't "smart" (outside of cramming for exams) or interesting in terms of maintaining conversation above anything frivolous, she still deserves it ; it's fair.

[Anonymous No.10900296]

You stop caring.

All elite universities are just boys/girls clubs. Nobody gives two fucks where people like Euler or Grothendieck went to school (even if they went to good schools). It's about what they did. Most of the people who graduate these school will never be known and their names will be just as forgotten as joe fatch who went to state school. Just study what you like and go where you can. It's all meaningless in the end anyway.

[Anonymous No.10900310]

They are elite because they have the most money. So they can hire the talent from everywhere in the world. Of course going to them means shit in undergrad, however the hires they make means if you get into grad school you'll work with the best people at what they do, and therefore learn much more

[Anonymous No.10900334]

>>10900277
Pic related is literally an English major and got like a 1490 or 1500 SAT, probably with the missing points being in math

So she literally has not mastered 10th grade mathematics (690 math score) but is going to one of the best universities for STEM in the world

Her letter writers probably wrote about how much of a stacy she is and how she's an asset to a classroom and other vapid shit that should not factor in admissions.

The average 4chan bot would need national level accomplishments to get into Stanford but normies have it much easier albeit it's kind of a shot in the dark for them, results vary wildly

[Anonymous No.10900397]

I’ve never understood why extracurricular activities are such an important factor at American unis.

[Anonymous No.10900459]

>>10899976
SAT-M has a pretty low ceiling. So most normies can cough up a decent enough score. With high grades + checking boxes for ECs, they can roll the dice and get in to one of the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc.

Then they'll get some BS humanities major and get a job in consulting or banking making multiples of my STEM PhD stipend.

And guess what? That's life. Could be a hell of a lot worse. I sure as hell ain't getting rich, but I love what I do. I have roof over my head, food on my table, and me and my family are doing okay. Can't ask for much more than that.

[Anonymous No.10900460]

>>10900037
>why the homophobia?
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.10900475]

>>10900397
It means how much niggercock you can grasp while getting simultaneously analfuck. That on your credentials is a green light which shows ur skills and dexterity to handle academia cock.

[Anonymous No.10900518]

>>10899976
I hate to break it to you, anon, but those normies are probably as smart or smarter than you AND have the social skills you lack.
It does suck to be socially retarded but no smarter than chads, however I've come to painfully realize that this is true a lot of the times.

[Anonymous No.10900532]

I live in a 3rd world country and I got denied a scholarship despite my good scores and CV purely out of luck while I watched religious ISIS supporting fags who have lower scores I know from school get a full scholar ship in the US. This is bullshit and I'm now forced to study in a 3rd world country with shit funding. I'm a good student better than most of the students in the uni I'm going to, if I wasn't poor I would've gone to the US and live in 1st world country where I wouldn't be killed for being an atheist

[Anonymous No.10900830]

>>10900397
Because they got so many people with (near) perfect SAT scores that and they need to differentiate them somehow.
>>10900532
Define 3rd world country.

[Anonymous No.10900871]

>>10899976
This obsession with degree is normie tier, so I don't care. The only thing that matters in the market is actual performance

[Anonymous No.10900894]

>>10900830
>Because they got so many people with (near) perfect SAT scores that and they need to differentiate them somehow.
Really? I thought the SAT was a thinly veiled intelligence test (and as such you don’t have score inflation).

[Anonymous No.10901250]

>>10900894
not anymore
they give out high scores like candy these days because the general population is getting dumber.
Removed analogies
Vocab is much much much easier
and a few more things they also dumbed down that im missing

[Anonymous No.10901266]

>>10899976
>How do you cope with the fact that normies attend elite universities and make nothing of the special resources that you could capitalize on?

1) By outwardly refusing to believe that elite universities offer something more than the opportunity to meet incredible people. I know complaining about the mediocre profs and lack of academic nurture will only make me look like a big brainlet. Deep down I know it affects me, but I also know it won't help me focusing on it.
2) By working my ass off and still outperform most of those who attend elite universities.

[Anonymous No.10901283]

>>10900459
Consulting and banking jobs are hard to get and retarded normies don't really get them, smart Jews and Asian Americans in economics usually do

[Anonymous No.10901287]

>>10900894
Every iteration of the test gets easier and more beatable

[Anonymous No.10901315]

>>10900518
How are they smarter when the best they can do is study English or poli sci? If they had the talent for engineering/science they would do it, it's far more profitable to do so
And Stanford will inflate the grades of those in the bottom of the class so they won't fail out of STEM classes

[Anonymous No.10901323]

>>10899976
Élite university is a normie concept

[Anonymous No.10901348]

I didn't go to Standford, but another high tier school. If you are an exceptionally gifted individual, you should really go to a high tier school, because only there you will be challenged enough to foster your talent. However, let's be honest, most of us are just average or slightly above it. Go to a high tier school for undergrad and you will struggle. If you struggle, it will be exceptionally hard to keep your GPA high enough to be admitted to a good PhD program. For many programs, having a bad GPA is simply a knock out factor. So going to Stanford, if you intend to go for a PhD might actually hurt you in the long run.

Having a degree from Stanford will of course open you many doors into lower tier schools or industry, which is certainly a plus, but of course comes at a price. Mostly money and time.

If you really intend to go for an academic career, go to a decent, but not onverly crazy institution for your undergrad. Do well, get a good GPA, learn all the shit you want at a reasonable pace. Most undergrad stuff is actually pretty standard and could be done anywhere. Most average and decent schools focus more on teaching, while the top tier schools often focus more on research, which is pretty much useless to you as an undergrad. Once you have your undergrad, move on to a better school for your PhD, this is where it will actually get serious.

[Anonymous No.10901378]

>>10901348
That's false. Counterintuitively, the elite schools for undergrad are far less rigorous, with obscenely high average grades awarded (in the A range), lower courseloads than average (you need like 30-32 courses to graduate from Brown or Harvard vs. 40+ standard across America), and generous drop policies (you can drop up to the final exam at Brown and failures aren't recorded on a transcript)

If you drop a high performer from UIUC or Georgia Tech or Purdue into Stanford his GPA would be no worse, possibly better and the lower end kids getting by with a sub-3.0 at the state schools would almost certainly do better at Stanford because hardly anyone gets a lower range GPA like a 3.0 over there just as an effect of easy grading policies. They have no interest in forcing hard curves and gatekeeping kids out of tough majors when they only have 7000 undergraduates, they have an "everyone can win" type of attitude whereas at a big UC school it's more sink or swim, if you don't study you're getting a big fat C, not my problem

Your logic would more apply to high school, standing out at your local unknown HS beats being in the middle at a selective science magnet

There is absolutely no one who is better off at their state school vs. Stanford. Why would Stanford make it so and make it tougher to attract students? The only truly tough graders of the famous schools are MIT, Caltech, and formerly Princeton but not so much anymore

[Anonymous No.10901386]

>>10901378
Germanfag here, I was afraid of applying to ivy league schools (UChicago or Columbia) for a semester abroad because I thought they’d be a lot harder than my uni, but this really encouraged me lol

[Anonymous No.10901395]

>>10901378
Interesting. I must admit, that I don't really know how it's over there in the states, but in Euroland I think the situation is a little different. My school often took pride in the fact how difficult the exams are or how many people have failed it. Sure, most of the time passing grades were then put on the curve, but still. It was not a pleasant time for me. The professors were not overly enthusiastic about you, if your are merely average, because they had many much more gifted students to keep interested. Again, if you can keep the pace, you're good, but few do.

Thanks for the insight on grade inflation in the states, though. It seems to be worse, than I expected.

[Anonymous No.10901416]

>>10901386
Don't get me wrong, you can find ways to make it hard if you seek them out (and /sci/ wannabe intellectuals and masochists probably will). A lot of the stronger STEM students take graduate level courses early

Now if you drop a Stanford kid with a 1500 SAT into an absolutely terrible unknown college in America with terrible entering SAT ranges how would they do? They'd probably 4.0 it straight through.

Still, a lot of the universities with good entering students but comparatively less famous brands tend to throw their kids in the fire (especially the STEM oriented and/or large public ones). The exception would be liberal arts colleges that tend to be easy just like Ivies/Stanford. Some people take pride in how difficult their school is but it seems like cope, see: https://www.quora.com/Why-would-someone-choose-Carnegie-Mellon-over-Harvard/answer/Yishan-Wong

Why wouldn't you want it to be easier so you can do more social things or do research on the side? I'd take Brown over Georgia Tech, University of Toronto any day (Brown is infamously fucking easy)

[Anonymous No.10901455]

>>10901416
>tfw I'd rather go to an easy school where I can just focus on research experience/getting published/gaining work experience

[Anonymous No.10901469]

>>10901395
At least for us in STEM there's some kind of objective standard in scoring exams so even if the policies are less generous to us at whatever schools we attend, there is fairness in it

But when I took a mandatory English writing class I got a B or B+ despite my very best efforts (I went to a public university in North America around the quality of Georgia Tech / UBC / Washington / etc). This grade in a humanities class at Stanford or Harvard would be comically low, probably bottom 20% or 10% in a given course. In the class I took it was probably above or at median. But you protest, Harvard students are really smart! Sure, if you're not counting athletes, minorities, and normie lottery winners. the people who got in on pure merit without luck are very good

It seems to me like institutionally the attitude is completely different, some universities want to have brutal, clear distinctions between the top students and the rest of the pack and others are happy to give 3.6+'s to virtually anyone. You could see grade deflation as a positive if you're #1 in the class because it makes you look better in comparison but that's a rare breed. I guess the tougher grading universities don't want to award high grades to undeserving people who may go on to elite grad programs and fizzle out there, tarnishing their home school's reputation. They want their 4.0+ kids to be very rare, sought after, and accepted by Stanford grad programs, who cares if the 3.0 student is kind of fucked by this policy

But like other posters said this is all stuff that passed us by at 17/18 and it's toxic and idiotic to think about it. But someone like me of marginal talent who did not reach the top at a competitive but not prestigious public university would've found more success at Stanford by far

[Anonymous No.10901475]

Dude, I FCKING LOVE SCIENCE!!!

that's how I cope. there is no free will come debate me. the game

[Anonymous No.10901499]

>>10901416
>>10901416
Thanks for the elaborate response, anon! All of my friends who transferred or had a semester abroad at a prestigious school (ETH, NTU etc.) had a terrible transition (missing prerequisites in some courses, loneliness, competitive environment), so it was a bit daunting for me to apply to a highly ranked US uni. I would have gone through with it regardless of difficulty for the experience, but it was just a bit reassuring for me that it’s not as difficult as I thought it would be. I wanted to experience the US and maybe travel during breaks because I’ve never been and there’s a lot I wanted to see.
I was also considering UC Berkeley and UMichigan, as they have programmes with my uni.

[Anonymous No.10901508]

>>10899976
Got damn I would fuck the red out of her hair

[Anonymous No.10901523]

>>10901499
Yeah idk what your experience will be but if you're a strong student wherever you are you'd most likely be strong anywhere. Among the top universities respected by engineering departments and favored in PhD admissions are Sharif in Iran and the IITs in India, Peking/Tsinghua in China, probably several in Europe I know less about, etc. These guys come over and kick ass, although they're the equivalent of Stanford in their countries but whatever

My only point is I wouldn't necessarily fear the #4 university in the US more than #24, there are many more factors going into it. Berkeley is supposedly tough. You have to also consider who is saying these things, a lot of Berkeley undergrads come from California community colleges (they're obliged to accept such transfer candidates being a large public university for California) and they apparently do very badly, perhaps perpetuating the story of how hard it is

[Anonymous No.10901540]

https://www.quora.com/Which-university-is-more-difficult-UC-Berkeley-or-Stanford

"The primary difference is that (caveat: I haven’t been to either Stanford or Cal in many a years, so the policies may have changed) Cal grades on a tougher curve while Stanford grades more generously. Basically, top 5% get As, next 5% get A-, etc., at Cal while Stanford offers As and Bs to about 70% of the class and the remaining 30% get Cs."

[Anonymous No.10901564]

>>10901266
Good luck anon. This is the right attitude and only way to cope

[Anonymous No.10901566]

>>10901523
>>10901540
I don't understand how anyone who has attended a large US university could think these questions even make sense. What does it mean for one huge institution to be harder than another? At the undergrad level, course content is virtually identical across all US universities. Institutional and program policies influence grading to some extent, but for the most part it's up to individual professors. You literally have more variation in grading standards between two professors at the same university than between universities. And then it's also going to depend on the major, the average level of students in your cohort (it's much harder to be at the top of the curve if the majority of students are well prepared), and the preferences of whoever happens to be in charge of the school or department at that moment.

[Anonymous No.10901571]

>>10901540
Stanford is also way more selective than Berkeley is, so you have to factor that in.

Also Stanford wants people to donate more than Cal wants people to donate

[Anonymous No.10901612]

>>10901566
Individual professors bend to the grading trends of the institution, no one's gonna give C+ averages at Stanford out of nowhere and rock the boat, plus administrators may step in and overrule if the kids are complaining.

The aggregate data shows you that Harvard has a near 100% graduation rate and hardly anyone gets a GPA below 3.0 (about 3.6 on average), does that not make it easier than say University of Toronto where 3.6 is a very good, top 15 or 20% type of GPA rather than average?

The summa cum laude/PBK graduates of Harvard are very talented but the bottom half are no different from you and me, probably 125-ish IQ people who might've worked harder in high school than average. They get A's passed out to them easily while we at regular universities fight for them and they're basically protected from failing any class because a failure is a super rare outlier event, like bottom 1%. If you don't think these differences are real you're delusional.

And also consider that many of us studying STEM at mid tier state schools would be studying poli sci or econ at HYPS instead, further relaxing the rigor of college and probably being no worse off career-wise

[Anonymous No.10901619]

Not that an econ BA is a golden ticket but people who step down from the sciences into econ tend to be able to get very good GPAs, at HYPS that could easily lead to McKinsey consulting or investment banking

[Anonymous No.10902334]

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/09/13/grade-inflation-abounds-faculty-say/

[Anonymous No.10902455]

>>10899976
Women are accepted to Ivy league so that the male students get laid. Can you imagine going to an all male ivy league school? Gross. You'd have to used the old french system of concubine maids.

[Anonymous No.10902533]

>>10901619
>people who step down from the sciences into econ
This is a really special subgroup of useful idiots who aren't inquisitive enough to recognize the full extent of the political and social implications of the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve banking.

[Anonymous No.10902588]

>>10900871
How do you measure that?

[Anonymous No.10903035]

>>10900037
>dropping the f-bomb in your own posts
Why the covert perpetuation of heteronormative oppressions?

[Anonymous No.10904716]

bump

[Anonymous No.10904718]

>>10899976
>meanwhile you're at a middle of the road state university

i'd be fine with that if i had some english-speaking peers. then those "elite" uni's could pander to normies as much as they like, they wouldn't remain "elite" for very long.

[Anonymous No.10904721]

>>10904718

but instead of what could have been a generation of genuinely bright domestic students, we have borderline retarded foreigners who've only just figured out how to use toilet paper. bravo, progressives.