Colleges where the students are super competitive with one another?

[Ann.without.an.e]

Which schools have this rep?

 

DD just doesn't want this sort of school.  Her friend's brother is at Duke and he says it is awful there for students in pre-med, engineering, and other competitive fields.  He has known of students to compromise other student's research or projects just to get ahead (like going in the lab and messing up their stuff).  This just makes dd sick to her stomach.  

 

 

 

ETA: Just in case someone comes along and finds this thread in the future ;)  DD did decide on Duke.  The students are super collaborative rather than competitive.  She did thorough research before deciding to go there and it seems that her friend's brother does not hold the sentiment of most students at Duke.  I just didn't want to leave a bad impression here  :lol:

Edited January 17, 2018 by Attolia

[EmilyGF]

I went to Caltech and, while it is a super competitive college to go to, the students didn't seem to compete with each other but with the curriculum. 

 

I do think certain majors are always going to be more competitive. Premed is probably one of those; anything leading into law would likely be very competitive, too. 

 

Emily

[Crimson Wife]

I was pre-med and my now-DH was engineering. We took one chem class together and he complained about how cut-throat and nasty the pre-meds were to each other compared with the engineers. Yep, that was one reason why I dropped pre-med halfway through. I looked around and decided that I disliked most of the other pre-meds and didn't particularly want to spend decades working with them.

 

In my Communicative Disorders major now there is some of that but not nearly as much as pre-med. I got stuck in a group project last semester with a girl who was a real piece of work. She appointed herself group leader, gave me a deadline for my portion, and when I hadn't completed it 30 hours prior to said deadline, she did it herself and then awarded me low participation points in the feedback she turned in to the professor along with the project. I still had an A in the course even with her stunt so I didn't complain but ugh.

[Arcadia]

He has known of students to compromise other student's research or projects just to get ahead (like going in the lab and messing up their stuff).

I had seen that happened in the elite middle school I attended including homework/assignments/textbooks being stolen from backpacks. My husband had seen that happen in the elite middle and high schools he attended. Police reports were lodged.

 

Every school/college/workplace has these kind of people. It is about finding your tribe that you can be safe with. My alma mater's labs that are opened 24/7 has security cameras and swipe card access. Very few students has card access after office hours (8am-5pm).

 

ETA:

We had good and horrid experience with MIT and Stanford engineering interns and fresh graduates.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Arcadia

[8filltheheart]

Every school/college/workplace has these kind of people.

My kids have never run into that type behavior at their universities.

[Nan in Mass]

My sons' colleges have actively encouraged a more team-based approach. Mine would have hated a cut-throat atmousphere.

 

Nan

[SamanthaCarter]

When I lived in SC, I heard this said several times about Furman. Which is kind of crazy, because outside of the South, who's heard of Furman?

[regentrude]

Every school/college/workplace has these kind of people

 

My DD did not have any such experiences at her (crazy hard, huge work load) school.  

 

Nor has sabotage ever been an issue at the university where I teach. We are informed about the numbers and kinds of ethics violations each year by the department that is handling that; nobody has even any anecdotes about sabotaging behavior.

 

From what I hear, some majors are more prone to it than others. At our school, we do not have a pre med track.

Edited November 2, 2016 by regentrude

[creekland]

Never heard of any issues at all from middle son (pre-med even) and when I asked him about it he was rather surprised at the question telling me it definitely hasn't happened to him or anyone he knows.  They often form study groups helping each other prepare.

 

OTOH, correctly or not, Johns Hopkins has such a reputation.  I've only heard about it - not directly - so sort of hesitate to mention it TBH.

[snowbeltmom]

Never heard of any issues at all from middle son (pre-med even) and when I asked him about it he was rather surprised at the question telling me it definitely hasn't happened to him or anyone he knows.  They often form study groups helping each other prepare.

 

OTOH, correctly or not, Johns Hopkins has such a reputation.  I've only heard about it - not directly - so sort of hesitate to mention it TBH.

I don't have direct knowledge either, but when my son was making his decision a couple of years ago, we were advised by two separate families (neither lived in the same state or knew each other) to avoid the school as they were both related to students who transferred after freshman year because they found the student body too cut-throat.  One student transferred to Harvard and the other to MIT.

 

The students at my son's school are not competitive with each other at all.  They form study groups and work on P-sets together.

[Nan in Mass]

I'm surprised that the engineers are cut-throat. In my experience, they have to band together into study groups to survive. : )

 

Nan

[angela in ohio]

I think that's far less likely than a more subtle issue of competitiveness. My oldest, non-competitive dd was warned away from schools that have an environment of "paddling ducks" in which everyone is serene and proud above the surface while paddling frantically beneath the surface. It creates a superficial environment where students perform, perform, perform until they drop like rocks from the unacknowledged stress. 

 

We visited schools where no one smiled as they walked around campus, and everyone was walking alone in their own direction. One school talked of mandating group work, and that was impressive, until we realized that they mandated it to counteract that natural inclination of most students to be more competitive than collaborative.

 

My oldest goes to one of the most collaborative schools in the country, by design, and it's been great for her. My middle is more competitive, and she is doing great at a school with a bit more of that environment. It's not that individual students are out to get each other or anything like that, though.

 

I think there are two issues, as discussed in this thread. One is that there are "those people" everywhere, the cut-throat jeks. The other is that each school also has a culture that it encourages, either intentionally or not. So I wouldn't be swayed by stories of isolated acts, but I would visit a campus and really look at and ask about the environment.

[Crimson Wife]

 

From what I hear, some majors are more prone to it than others. At our school, we do not have a pre med track.

 

My 1st alma mater did not have a specific "pre-med" major but there was definitely a sequence of courses that all the pre-meds took in order to meet admissions requirements to med school. Most pre-meds majored in either bio or human bio because there was such an overlap between major requirements and med school admissions requirements. But there were also plenty of other majors. A bunch of pre-meds were psych majors because they did either the neuroscience track or the child development track.

[SkateLeft]

Neither of my kids have experienced this in their engineering programs.

 

On the other hand, my husband was in the conservatory program at Carnegie Mellon, and there was considerable nasty competition because they did cuts. Fortunately, he switched to computer science after his first year. Musical theater was pretty cutthroat.

[Ann.without.an.e]

When I lived in SC, I heard this said several times about Furman. Which is kind of crazy, because outside of the South, who's heard of Furman?

 

 

Oh no, Furman is high on DD's list.  Ugh.

[Farrar]

That so doesn't surprise me about Duke. Ugh. Honestly, I feel like a lot of the "ivies of the south" have this reputation, though I'm not sure why exactly.

[Melabella]

I am sad to hear that about Furman too. It's my DDs top choice right now. Hmmm...

Edited November 4, 2016 by Melabella

[Caroline]

Oh no, Furman is high on DD's list.  Ugh.

 

For what it's worth, I have not heard that about Furman. I teach high school in the south and hear a lot about a lot of different colleges. I have several former students happily attending or graduated from Furman. 

[Ann.without.an.e]

For what it's worth, I have not heard that about Furman. I teach high school in the south and hear a lot about a lot of different colleges. I have several former students happily attending or graduated from Furman. 

 

 

I am so glad to hear you say this.  I am not far from Furman and know plenty of people who have gone there and I have never heard this either.  But, DD wants to go into research and I've never known anyone in that department.  

Edited November 4, 2016 by Attolia

[wendyroo]

Engineering at MIT never felt like that.  The difficulty and intensity and stress level were through the roof (reflected in the alarming suicide rate), but the atmosphere always felt more "we have to stick together or we will all drowned" rather than "I'll push you under if I have to in order to claw my own way to the surface".

 

Wendy

[creekland]

For what it's worth, I have not heard that about Furman. I teach high school in the south and hear a lot about a lot of different colleges. I have several former students happily attending or graduated from Furman. 

 

I haven't heard it about Furman either, but admittedly, it's dropped completely out of my radar in the last four years since they quit being good with aid.  I don't think anyone from our school has even applied since.  When they wanted 33K more per year from us than any other school middle son applied to... and we read that giving less in aid is their stated plan (or was back when we looked it up), it totally dropped off the radar for our area.  Most kids here need or want decent aid, either need based or merit.  I'm not sure I even know any who are happily full pay (or could be).

[Dmmetler]

As a music major (and faculty member at times) I can say that this is more common than not in schools of music that I've been involved with, although you don't generally hear of physical sabotage. The mind games, though, can get really intense. And that's true even at relatively non-competitive state U's, let alone at a major conservatory program. I think it's a side effect of the fact that there can only be one female lead in each musical, one concert master in each orchestra, only one person can play each solo, and those little wins are what leads to, hopefully, getting the holy grail of actually being able to make a career out of it. To some degree, it is seen as a rite of passage. I know a lot of working musicians who married other working musicians, but few started that relationship while in college unless they were in such disparate areas that they weren't directly competing.

Edited November 8, 2016 by dmmetler