Suggesting that students can't milk their prestigious degree is just false. It is a fact that you can, and it is stated as supporting the author's argument.<p>Being a student at Stanford (or anywhere else) doesn't obligate one to 'great pursuits'. This is just evangelical nonsense trying to keep the prestige of the school high. It also sets up a false narrative that an individual's choices are the main factor of one's success.<p>I think there is value in looking at recognizing that school isn't an end in itself, but this sort of preachy message is too much.<p>Here's some better advice: Do what you want, ignore people telling you the 'right way'.
The advice mostly still applies if you replace "Stanford" with "Higher Education Program"<p>For most 18 year olds, doing well in school has been _the_ thing to focus on, for their entire life. Using school as a means to achieve something _else_ is a pretty big change in how they think about the world. And using it well requires both knowing what the "something else" is and how to use your higher education program to achieve it.<p>This shift comes at the same time as a huge amount of independence & life changes (from parents/home town), and most people I know (me included) didn't really understand the purpose of higher education until they were a senior, or later<p>Or even if they do, it's hard at 18 to know what the "something else" is
Working rigorously and wasting your childhood years to flounder and pick CS at Stanford is absurd to me.<p>Tech is one of the few fields you can succeed in without having to go to an elite university or enter higher education at all.
Feels like there's so much massive societal damage coming out of Stanford (Theranos, FTX, so much more...), that it's kind of a dying platform. If I'm a high-achieving high-schooler, I'm going to have real second thoughts about applying here.
Typically, Berkeley was more brutal. The EECS Undergraduate Handbook (graduation contract) used to say that <i>the prestige of the Berkeley degree increases with distance from the Campanile</i>.
> Many of the incoming students I speak with are overachievers who spent a lot of time in high school thinking about how to get into a great college. They strategized their extracurriculars and optimized their grades. (To an extent, that was me.)<p>It really is a different world for the well-connected.
Let's see... what does Stanford reward? <i>checks notes</i> Oh. Oh my.<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188828810/stanford-university-president-resigns" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188828810/stanford-universit...</a><p>Well, I'm sure that resignation came about after a thorough finding of misconduct. <i>checks notes</i> Oh. Exonerated?!
<a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/stanford-president-to-step-down-despite-probe-exonerating-him-of-research-misconduct" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.science.org/content/article/stanford-president-t...</a><p>Well, I'm sure that these were probably shocking, recent revelations that brought this about? <i>checks notes again</i> Years, you say?<p><a href="https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/stanford-president-after-resignation-continues-withdrawing-scientific-papers-tainted-by-research-misconduct/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/sta...</a><p>Oh Stanford. You scamp.