Top-tier university culture thread.
Any Ivy leaguers or Oxbridge cunts in this /int/ellectually entertaining shithole?
How smart are the smartest cunts there? What's the ridiculous preparation for admission like?
>>57376649
Bump
I live in a frat house, does that count?
>>57379951
Anything counts bro. We just want information on your college experience.
I went to Cornell on the strength of my SATs and above average grades.
>didn't have any friends, was filled with normalfags
>didn't go outside or participate in campus life
>professors were extremely narcissistic and would needlessly penalize you if you didn't suck up constantly
>grade grubbing was a serious problem, everyone was a cocksucker for brownie points, even in my pleb major
>>57381919
YAY!
>>didn't have any friends, was filled with normalfags
Sorry about that, but you should've had the full American college experience, if that was feasible in a school like Cornell. I made the same mistake.
>>57381919
>would needlessly penalize you if you didn't suck up constantly
Glad to know this doesn't happen only in shitty schools, but in the upper echelons of academia as well.
>>57381919
>>grade grubbing was a serious problem
How intelligent were the most outstanding students? Any prodigies or outright geniuses? Would you say your employment prospects are massively superior to people from inferior-tier colleges?
Know a dutch guy in Cambridge, and he is pretty fucking briliant. He skipped 2 grades in the netherlands, so even though he was 2 years younger than me, he would sometimes help me out with phyisics and math inbetween vidya. He also could explain me concepts that I've touched in uni with an ease none of my professors come close to, pretty much way above mere mortals.
>>57382119
>How intelligent were the most outstanding students? Any prodigies or outright geniuses?
I felt that everyone was more or less equally intelligent. It was extremely rare for someone who had already been admitted to do poorly (anything lower than a B) without mental illness being the confounding factor. You're looking at a seriously narrow cross-section of the population, so variance is very low. That being said, I knew people who were very gifted in the talents and skills they developed. 'Geniuses' are a meme.
>Would you say your employment prospects are massively superior to people from inferior-tier colleges?
I don't know, I'm a borderline shut-in. Probably. I'm very paranoid so whenever I get to the interview stage I feel like the disparity between my presentation and my credentials hurts me.
>Sorry about that, but you should've had the full American college experience, if that was feasible in a school like Cornell. I made the same mistake.
I had glimpses of it, and I was extremely jelly. I like to tell myself that their happiness was fraudulent.
>>57382295
Thanks for chiming in and helping with the thread, Norvegebro.
Wish I knew people like you and your Dutch friend. I thought was smart graduating high-school at 13 and redoing it at 14.
>>57382445
Thanks for taking the time to write about this, it always provides valuable insight into one of our childhood dreams.
>That being said, I knew people who were very gifted in the talents and skills they developed
You're right up there yourself, from these posts. I hope no depression or that paranoia is holding you back. Excessive self-doubt can ruin brilliant potential, especially at critical moments like our early adulthood.
>>57382657
I am not at his level at all. I do study in one of the hardest courses in Norway, but we're a bunch of lazy snowniggers for the most part.
Socialist democracies are absolute shit for the upper portion of students. Unless you live in Oslo, you're going to be grouped with so shitty students throughout your school years,it will bore you to tears from the lack of progress. It's better in Oslo because of the number of schools and how this groups the better students at more prestigious high schools, single reason I will raise my kids there.
>>57382657
>I hope no depression or that paranoia is holding you back
Oh, anon.
One more thing I'll mention is that I recall knowing someone who had a working memory and thus ability to manipulate digits on the fly that would be classified as extremely impressive. He was an Ashkenazi jew, of course. I'm tempted to say that those differences might qualify for the gifted genius you're looking for, but I still feel as though these are skills you can develop once you hit the IQ threshold where further distinction becomes muddy (130 or so).
I always wondered if I would have been impressed if I met such a rare soul as someone like Feynman. I suspect the answer is yes.
>>57376649
Went to cunthell for grad school. Got the fuck out. Jesus, what a depressing place. My mental health improved after leaving.
>>57382853
Best of luck and future fortune, bro.
>>57382935
I remember a rather mysterious anecdote that Feynmanns high school IQ was placed at 124, but he went on to win the Putnam in college.
Don't worry too much about depression, being in your situation (higher academia, prospects) would like extremely stressful , but I sometimes find that discarding perfectionistic preconceptions helps. A just go with the flow attitude goes a long way in boosting confidence and putting you at ease.
>>57383689
Tell us about your experience, anon. I always thought that academia beyond undergraduate years was less stressful.
>>57383984
>I remember a rather mysterious anecdote that Feynmanns high school IQ was placed at 124, but he went on to win the Putnam in college.
Apparently he had some type of verbal learning disability. Any verbally-loaded IQ test would have tripped someone like this up. They usually derive g from its strong correlation to verbal ability (strongest of the dimensions of IQ), which is usually fine, but the weakness of a correlation in a specific case is apparent. 'Intelligent' people tend to have a lot of variance between types of IQ for unknown reasons. Could be a statistical artifact.
>I sometimes find that discarding perfectionistic preconceptions helps
Eh, I'm just a crazy person. It's chemical. Actually, I'm not that bad, really.
>>57384434
>Eh, I'm just a crazy person. It's chemical. Actually, I'm not that bad, really.
You're selling yourself short for someone with such eloquent/informed posts.
And you're probably spot on in your analysis. From his anecdotes it was apparent he had some ingenious compensatory mechanisms for an underlying verbal deficit (dyslexia most probably). The conception of Feynmann integrals in itself is validation of that theory.
>>57384657
>pretending to know what path integrals are
>>57384742
>an abstraction to render highly complex systems amenable to simpler mathematical interpretation
Not that hard m8. There are much harder concepts in QM. Are you that physics student who regularly posts on Brit?
>>57385108
You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
>>57385395
>"Oi lads, how do we calculate all possible trajectories in a quantum system? They aren't like the dynamical systems were used in the classics"
>Feynmann shows up and devises a way of summating all possible paths, hence the integral
Most laymen who study popsci books understand what it is.
>>57376649
Just be a nigger and say 'das raciss' and you'll be fast tracked to success at all university's including Harvard
>>57385778
In other words
>I read popsci and think I know physics
You're the worst
>>57376649
I'm doing a grad degree in stem at oxbridge, flag is from being on vacation
>>57385841
That's not what honourable men of harvard do.
>>57385947
You could've chosen from dozens of concepts in Physics that you consider inaccessible to the layman, but this one was probably the easiest.
Ed Witten literally quit his journalistic career and return to get a Princetonian Applied math degree, before becoming the greatest mind in Physics today.
The reality is, with the availability of the internet, every fancy degree is access to a lab and a piece of paper certifying you went to school.
>>57386448
You're such a smug piece of shit. Let me guess, you're too smart for university, yet you have no intricate knowledge of any subject?
>>57386178
Really cool, from Oxford or Cambridge?
Who were the most famous or prestigious lecturers?
Any inhumanly intelligent students you may have encountered?
How is the rigor and cutthroat academic competition?
>>57386545
Nah, I graduated med school and realized that education anywhere is a sham (and a business primarily).
Only the schools mentioned ITT are probably the ideal educational settings, at least according to our humble notion of 'education'.
>>57386718
Sure you did. Expert not only on physics but medicine. All of my keks.
>>57384080
> less stressful
Imagine having to deal with a professor you don't like doing research you don't like while having to take shitty classes and TA for a dumb lab, all on a burger flipper's wage. Fuck cornell. I should have gone to U Michigan. Big mistake on my part but it's too late now. Gonna make enough money to enjoy my hobbies and stop regretting what could have been.
>>57386570
I dont want to get too specific
dealt with several nobel prize winners in and out of classes, had a few seminars given by the leading expert in my field worldwide, most lecturers have wikipedia pages, bump into famous people in the field pretty regularly at my department as they're here for various reasons
I have not had too many experiences with people being "inhumanly" intelligent, doing some kind of mental tricks or anything along those lines, but everybody has very impressive resumes and everybody is extremely clever and quick to understand things as well as interesting to talk to.
everybody is very friendly except sadly for certain asian students who tend to mostly only interact among their own clique.
the competition is not as cutthroat at the graduate level and people are more interested in collaboration and working through things. rigor is all over the place depending on the field. actually I think rigor is handled better by american institutions, as are examinations and papers.
>>57387001
Why don't you take acid? (or more acid, if you already do)
>>57386801
Feel free to believe whatever you want, anon. This is basic information to any curious individual in the internet age. Most people find it in one of the best selling books of all time, ABHoT or the universe in a nutshell.
Every imaginable reference could be downloaded from some of the Chinese or Russian piracy sites, and even MITs curriculum is available online.
>>57386961
Hope things are much better but there are tens of thousands of prospective applicants who would kill for that opportunity. Anything you took from it could be considered positive.
>>57387200
I have never had any alcohol or taken any narcotics and dont really feel the desire to ever take them
>>57387221
Gonna enjoy it when your smug ass withers away in your shithole. It's very, very clear you're a failure who likes to pretend he's smart on an anonymous website.
>>57387001
Thanks for taking the time to post that anon, it's what I expected but I guess I was hoping for a Hollywood-esque romanticisation of the whole experience, lel.
>>57387200
What would it benefit?
>>57387320
Why?
>>57387390
I grew up around trust fund children who threw their lives away partying with alcohol and drugs and it made me completely uninterested in both
>>57387335
>Gonna enjoy it when your smug ass withers away in your shithole
And that is precisely why I come here, not to satisfy some intellectual inferiority complex like you clearly have, but to make that withering more palatable.
>>57387335
You seem upset, lad
>>57387221
If you want to get serious about physics then you also have to register for library access and get proper books (they're not all available as ebooks yet) and download exercise sheets from university websites (usually open access, including solutions sometimes) and solve them.
But I agree, a lot of the time physics lectures just provide you with a good list of topics to focus on and the actual learning takes place when you read the books. Lectures aren't strictly necessary.
>>57388988
Thanks bro, but unfortunately I have to abandon NEETDom and commit to my medical career.
I think the britanon was right in some respects about my posturing here.
Oxford STEM here, accepted into grad school IVY, what do you want to know OP? I applied to undergrad both UK and US.
I got turned down by Oxford.
I did all three interviews though. Pretty intense shit.
