College Overview: Princeton

Princeton: Princeton University
The biggest pieces of advice I would give to a high school student considering Princeton would be: 1. Starting your freshman year try to get the best grades you can. It really helps to have good grades all the way throughout high school. Remember a lot of the other applicants are going to have amazing grades as well. 2. Take the hardest curriculum available to you. This shows that you are committed to your work and enjoy learning, as well as discovering. 3. Join a club or two and do something th...

Princeton: Princeton: Paradise is a Tough Place
Princeton is a wonderful school all-around. The academics are top notch, there are myriads of student groups, club sports, and other opportunities in which to get involved, there is always a party going on somewhere, and our school spirit soars as high as the University flag does atop Guyot Hall. However, as a paradise in itself, Princeton is full of temptations and tricks that can easily get you in to a lot of problems, as the academics here are very demanding, especially for freshmen. Even...

Princeton: Work hard, play harder
You had better be able to sit and work, but to leave your work when it's time to play. Princeton emphasizes communal dining for a reason: you need to be social. Those few people who really just want to study and be left alone will not have a good experience. Important to remember is that Princeton also expects you to be able to enjoy yourself under pressure. The best parties are often during, if not just before, exams. You need to be able to budget your time to have fun. That said, you ...

Princeton: Tough to Get In!
I would say getting in is pretty difficult, I mean I had very good grades and like standardized tests and things like that I mean its pretty selective but I mean it’s attainable – you can get in if you put your mind to it. It’s just really a combination of everything you do, you’re activities your grades, they really want to see what you’re gonna bring to the environment to make the campus community better as a whole - anything you bring is probably for the good.

Princeton: Profs talk to Freshman!
Princeton is very different from the other Ivy League schools mainly because it has such an intense focus on the undergraduates – for example Cornell West, when he was at Harvard, had graduate students student, undergraduate students as assistants, he never had any contact with undergraduates at all. Now that he’s here he teaches his own Precepts and so you really get to direct with the faculty a lot and the faculty themselves will tell you that the reason they chose Princeton over other Ivy...

Princeton: Beautiful Campus
There's a feeling of awe you get: when you come and look at these ancient buildings and this gothic architecture. It a sense of place you know, a sense of you’re in this great learning establishment and its – its impressive and a little intimidating at first but once you get here you apart of it and I think that’s a really valuable thing.

Princeton: Triangle Club
I was most nervous about the social transition to college – so I think I’m better mentally prepared for that and so when I ended up getting here the academics were the part that gave me more trouble and the social part ended up not being so hard after all. And it helped that I was in a club with lost of people and upperclassmen that helped ease my transition.

Princeton: Good things come in small packages
I think our size makes a difference dramatically – because of the fact that we are the smallest Ivy league school there’s a much greater sense of community here and everyone lives on campus and it has a much different feel in that sense than say Columbia or Harvard where people are scattered all over the place. I think, compared to a few of the other Ivy league schools, I mean it’s obviously very hard – my advice would be if you’re gonna apply and you want to get in, pick a couple of t...