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Comment by sethg | Hacker News Reader

Can I get reality checks here from some people who actually attended Ivy-league schools? The author's description of Yale doesn't match my experience with MIT very well, but of course, MIT isn't one of the Ivies.

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I go to an Ivy League school, but not Yale - one of the lesser well-known ones. There are certainly people here who have "arrived", and are skating across, partying, until they get their job at Wall Street, but there are some genuinely interesting, 'searcher'-type people here as well. They do expel people here; the school administration is pretty harsh, actually. The academics aren't easy; sure, you can pick easy classes and get your A-, but your major classes are unlikely to not require some serious work, and you have to do a major. There's definitely a sense of severe detachment with the real world, but that may be more about the isolated location than the prestige.

MIT sounds awesome, actually - people in touch with reality! Humble people! People who don't expect it to be easy, and hence complain about things being so hard! Maybe I should have applied, but apparently their financial aid isn't too good.

When I visited Yale, their sense of entitlement was very, very stifling. From anecdotal comparisons, Yale seems way relaxed, academically, as well.

> apparently their financial aid isn't too good

nonsense. Harvard, MIT, and Princeton have the best financial aid in the country (besides of course Olin, Cooper Union, and the military academies...)

There's a cultural norm at MIT that you should complain about how hard your workload is, but I don't think that really counts as humility. Students are usually too busy to think about their social class.

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