Sacrifices right? While one group goofs off, does the minimum to get by, who for one reason or another are satisfied with mediocre grades...
another group is sacrificing these things to develop their skills, it's not just in academia.
I know people who worked hard on their Math, others worked hard at the Track/Sports, others worked at music instruments, and other activities and became top in our school.
Sure, they had higher nerd status than the rest because they spent more time studying than socializing - but trust me, they didn't miss much.
I think what you're describing is undergraduates. In the US we don't typically say that undergraduates are academics. Usually, people who are academics will complete a masters and/or PhD where they do independent study and publish a thesis. Afterwards, many of them hope to stay in academia for life, or continue their work as a researcher in a private organization.
Academics have to go through undergraduate programs too, but most non-academics end their education with a bachelor's degree simply to help them get a (typically) non-nerdy job.
Other countries have students who study harder than Americans, for sure. As someone with a multi-ethnic background, I find that students in lesser developed countries have fewer options in their future so they study hard as a student for the chance to make it out of poverty. Students in highly developed nations don't worry as much because they think they have a decent standard of living waiting for them regardless.
I don't think that (for example) India has dramatically more nerds than (for example) America because being a nerd is driven by your personality. Nerds genuinely enjoy studying <x> in particular and they find ways to do just that. Nerds can end up as doctors or engineers but typically nerds aren't primarily motivated by careers. I think you notice this difference in the wide prevalence of cheating in poorer countries. Non-nerds feel the pressure to study but they're not actually interested in the work so they cheat to get by. Cheating exists in America too, but there's less risk of falling into poverty so students who aren't interested in a subject will more often accept a low passing grade.
I think we should confine this to the primarily US setting (and maybe parts of the English speaking world like Canada). In most of the rest of the world being top in academics is expected from everyone especially to pass standardized tests (the only way in many countries) to get into universities. The poor outnerd the rich fiercely so that they can step up. The rich try to nerd so that they can maintain their privilege.
There are no secret backdoors (like athletics) for the rich in the public schooling and university realm that exist in most of these countries. In essence everyone is a nerd or trying to be a nerd.
In the US system, one could make the argument that elite legacies and the fencing team help the manufactured diversity and lower the “nerd” (achievement oriented) “toxicity.”.
A study abroad for just a semester would be an eye-opener for many of us on the normalcy of nerdness in many societies. Most parents hope their kids become doctors, engineers etc.
The following paragraph is a good summary, I think:
> Anyone who cares about getting good grades has to play this game, or they'll be surpassed by those who do. And at elite universities, that means nearly everyone, since someone who didn't care about getting good grades probably wouldn't be there in the first place. The result is that students compete to maximize the difference between learning and getting good grades.
Elite schools are there for two types of students:
A) Incredibly smart and hard-working students that want to be around the leading experts in their fields. These kids end up as post docs / researchers, and get to work/stay close to those schools.
B) The ones that want to land elite jobs (gov / banking / finance / law / etc.) - for these, the social activities are quite more important.
Don't get me wrong, you need to be a top-tier student / pupil to get in, and the latter students are also such. But different priorities.
Is that really true? I feel like there are people who are actually just passionate about things early on and have ample opportunity to explore those passions. I believe those kinds of students are able to make it into top schools as well even though they aren't studying for the sake of getting into them..
My understanding was that this idea of education being about learning for its own sake was from an era when only the children of the privileged class received higher education and since their future as part of the future elite was more or less guaranteed from their upbringing and connections and it was thought important than the future members of the elite class are broadly well-educated, not merely specialists in their roles.
The reality now is that education is more or less for everyone and most people, even at elite institutions, don't have a clear path to being a member of the elite without working super hard for specific career goals. It would be odd, then, for some of those students to continue to pretend that they have a clear path to being a member of the elite and learn the kinds of things that are disproportionately important for the members of the elite, when they have to accomplish a lot to get there. The world is simply far more competitive.
Education at this level is a "who can survive the most unpleasantness" competition. High school students work their asses off to get into highly selective colleges. Highly selective college students work their assess off to get into highly selective grad schools or employers (investment banking, consulting, prestigious tech companies). Students of highly selective grad schools work their asses off to get into the vanishingly few secure, living-wage jobs in their fields.
At each stage, the purpose is the same - to prove that you are more deserving than your peers of a seat in the next stage, because each stage has fewer seats than the last.
If you value your present well-being over advancement (and therefore future well-being), don't put yourself in a competitive educational environment with the goal of "winning" (i.e. high GPA). If you have certain career tracks in mind, sleep deprivation, poor mental health, and low quality of life in the short and medium terms are table stakes.
I enjoyed my time at such a place once I had a good relationship with a tech company (now my employer) and no grad school ambitions. My friends headed for the sciences could not have optimized for their present happiness without giving up their dreams.
The movie, 'The Revenge of the Nerds' came out in 1984, after I had left my neighborhood, and for all of its silly comedy, was a sign that things were changing.
My parents and other parents in my poor, working class neighborhood saw education as the way to a better future, not just financially. Intelligence was berated by others in my age group in class. I don't equate education with intelligence, since I have met so many bright people who never finished high school (my father), and so many phDs whose intelligence I question to this day. That piece of paper, a university degree, can be earned with average intelligence, but costs a fortune for most non-public universities. As an acquaintance said to me about his son going to an Ivy league school, 'he's set up for life'. Regardless of his son's IQ, or final GPA, the societal strata he will interact with and form networked connections with, along with the school's reputation, will guarantee him a higher-than-average floor of entry compared to my children. For the record, I am not for that type of education.
Well, there's also a large cohort that has been told that they should be going to the best schools and getting the best grades and the best internships and the best jobs at FAANG etc. Then they end up writing internal CRUD apps or tweaking ad models to eke out 0.01% more engagement, but they keep grinding because that's all they've ever known.
You need to remember that a lot (probably the majority) of these people have been overachievers since they were kids. Pushed by their family, mentors, etc.
They know that in order to get to the top, you need to play the game - it's exceedingly rare that one just stumbles into the top, by intellect alone. There are tons of smart kids out there, you need some edge.
So they pick up extracurricular activities, join clubs and boards, start making a name for themselves. Get letters of recommendation, and what not.
Now they're suddenly students at top schools, with like-minded peers around. They start chasing internships, and it's the same thing all over again. Join the best clubs / orgs, get leadership experience, etc.
For these driven "type-A" folk, it's always about hitting the next milestone. It never ends. Get into best prep schools, get into best universities, get the best internships, get the best jobs, get into the best business school, get the best post-MBA job, get the best promotion, etc.
It's like a professor told me once: Some of the brightest students, academically speaking, do not necessarily end up with the best jobs or positions. A lot of them tend to be too focused on their academic work, to the point where they neglect things like resume-building, networking, interviewing skills, etc.
I don't think that's the case at all. "Smart" and "hard working" are relative terms. Most "smart" kids aren't taking quantum mechanics in high school and most "hard working" kids aren't putting in 14-15 hour days in high school. You don't have to cheat to get to the top--you just have to have your shit together when other kids are focusing all their efforts on getting laid.
That said, the incentive to cheat is certainly much higher these days, between the 15 hour days and rigorous course loads, than it was 50 years ago before SAT tutors and numbers-based admissions; back when just being able to pay the $$$ for a top preparatory school basically guaranteed admission into Harvard and Yale: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/books/review/06brooks.html... ("That year [1950] 278 students from elite prep schools applied to Harvard and 245 were accepted. The acceptance rate from Exeter and Andover was 94 percent.").
It's definitely not true that everyone at elite schools had to grind standardized tests to get in. Lots of kids are naturally talented at (or just really in to)
the things schools like.
In the context of my comment, better jobs. Doctors, lawyers, and proper engineers and such. Basically, the kids who worked harder excelled in college and stuck with it.
There's a cynical take that the social function of the absolute elite universities is to allow young upper-class people (with family wealth and access to wealthy networks) to network with the smartest and most driven members of the middle- and lower classes (who will get things done).
Presumably, the willingness of the family to make sacrifices for their child is a positive indicator for how driven the child will be.
The ones you are talking about are those who earned need based financial aid for scholastic achievements. If that’s what you mean by “elite” I guess you’re right in the sense that it’s difficult to manage and they’ve done so, but that’s a strange way to describe hard working students.
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