Princeton University Top Questions

All of my departmental professors knew my name. Each teacher seems to genuinely care about their students doing well in the class and that shows in their effort. Students are very into their studies, yet willing to help out fellow classmates. However, there is a small portion of overly competitive cut throat students. BEWARE.

Professors are very dedicated to making sure students are on the right track and interested in the material. They hold regular office hours and both challenge the students and welcome their curiosity.

The academics are amazing. You really can make as much work for yourself as you want to. Everything is here for you if you go after it. In smaller lectures and precepts you will have the chance to get to know professors, but in the end you have to make the effort.

It's not hard to forge connections with professors - they'll invite you over for dinner and are more than willing to spend hours talking outside of class or to write a recommendation. That said, expectations are high and you will not do well if you don't prepare weekly for precept (or lab if that's the case). Academics at Princeton are highly demanding, and will increase in difficulty and pressure with each year as independent work mounts. There is no such thing as breezing through Princeton on the basis of your accomplishments in high school, so don't be complacent. Whether out of consideration for pure intellectual interest or their participation grades, students speak up in precept and lecture and questions are common and insightful. The best classes provoke intellectual conversations that continue out of class. While Princeton's academics will be excellent preparation for a job interview or for analytical work in, for example, consulting, the University is extremely adamant about retaining its liberal arts base and for producing well-rounded, well-read students who are comfortable with everything from Kant to kinetics at a cocktail party.

Students study at all times. I have never seen such a studious group of people. Princeton Students have intellectual conversations outside of class very often. The education at princeton is geared towards learning for its own sake however, the atmosphere is geared toward success in one's job so you end up feeling a lot of pressure to conform.

Classes and professors are wonderful. Religion department is amazing--all the professors know your name. Professors are in general very approachable.

Liberal Arts. There's a lot of freedom here and the departments have too much money you can do a lot of cool projects.

Most of my classes are very small and almost all of my teachers know my name. The level of attention I receive on a daily basis from my professors certainly helps my understanding of the material. One thing to know is that students are very competitive and it is very challenging to get an A in a class.

many of my professors know my name. my favorite class at the moment is probably religion in modern thought and film. it deals with the philosophy proving/disproving religion. my least favorite is an astrophysics course that im pdfing. i dont go to lecture so its unfair to call it such really. studying varies sooo much. some study all the time and others hardly at all. class participation is fairly common depending on the size of the class and the style of teacher. students do have inellectual convos outside of class. competitiveness varies a lot. the most unique class i have taken would probably be this religion class or my early middle ages history class. my major is religion. it is a small department with great teachers and majors. i do sometimes meet to talk with professors. the requirements are not bad at all and probably worthwhile. the education is geared toward learning.

If you're considering coming to Princeton, you have to face a couple facts: (1) the admissions committee has the incredibly difficult task of creating a freshman class from an enormous pool of some of the most academically-gifted and otherwise-talented students in the world (caveat: you can't get in if you don't apply!); and (2) the university doesn't maintain its prestigious academic reputation by allowing its students to hang out in the Woody Woo fountain or on Alexander Beach all day (both excellent ways to de-stress though). Typically, students will take four classes per semester with about 11-15 hours of class per week. Engineers take five classes some semesters and may have up to 18 hours of class per week. While it might be easy to sleep through a 9am economics lecture, good luck catching up on the material since most of the time lectures are different and in addition to the readings that are assigned. Moreover, a lot of classes won't be with 200 or 50 or even 20 other students. The vast majority of classes at Princeton are smaller seminars and classes that require engagement with the material and active participation. Even if participation doesn't really affect your grade, you don't want to be the only person in the room who hasn't done the reading... especially when there are only 10 other people in the room. As a result, you'll find that people put a lot of time into their studies outside of class. While very few people make this their only activity, it is priority #1 for most students, which is the only way it can be when you have 200 pages of history reading, an oral presentation in French, a politics paper, and a creative writing assignment all due in one week. The plus side? Classes are hardly ever boring. Professors rarely gloss over broad topics to try and pack everything into one semester. Instead, your transcript is littered with amazing titles of diverse fields of inquiry like a French course in Jewish identities in post-WWII France and an electrical engineering course on the applications of lasers and other high-technology innovations in everyday life.