Harvard Student Says Something a Princetonian Would Never Say: College Is Too Easy!

Imagine a Princeton student saying that the academics here are just too darn easy and that the school should get harder. Why yes, please deflate our grades even more! And can we tackle another JP or two while we’re at it? This, I promise you, is something no Princetonian would ever utter.Which is why I was so fascinated to read a recent article written by a Harvard senior about his school’s academics, and why he believes Harvard should be harder(!).Christian Flow, a Crimson editor, tells us about the time when his professor called him out when he hadn’t started his term paper two days before the due date. According to Flow, such an academic berating had never happened before—that most students at Harvard are so invested in their extracurricular activities that academics are just things people do to keep up with appearances.

…as far as day-to-day disincentives for underperformance are concerned, student organizations take the cake. Skip your reading for a section and risk an awkward moment with a teaching fellow. Skip out on your responsibilities for an extracurricular, and risk derision or excommunication by your peers: You’re lazy. You’re not willing to sacrifice like everybody else. You’re a flake. That’s accountability. That is personal. …engaging meaningfully with course material shouldn’t be an option; it should be demanded across the board.

Tell me if I'm in the wrong here, but this Harvard place sort of sounds like the opposite of what Princeton is. From my observations of Princeton, the balance between academic and extracurricular life here tips heavily on the side of academics.On one hand Flow’s article seems to confirm what many of us already know: Princeton provides the better undergraduate academic experience. But on the other hand, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Princetonians were more engaged with intellectual pursuits outside the classroom. If anything, Princeton suffers from the opposite of what Flow described at Harvard: in general, we tend to be apathetic to most things not involving our next grade/precept/essay, and as a result our student organizations and activities on campus suffer compared to those at our rival schools. Compare many of our student organizations to their analogous peers at Yale and Harvard, and you'll see what I mean.Perhaps I’m being too cynical. After all, there are many students here whose extracurricular pursuits are top priority, and many of our student organizations and activities are stellar in both their work and ambition. And maybe it's a good thing that academics hold such a vaunted place in the hearts and minds of Princeton students.Still, I worry that Princeton is afflicted with extracurricular malaise, and that it’s a direct result of our heavy workload, short semesters, and grade deflation (obviously). Is the academic-extracurricular balance at Princeton the right way to go? Is it preferable to the way things are at places like Harvard? Or is the cultural difference between us and Harvard not really there, and just a matter of personal experience?