Princeton University Top Questions

The classes are almost always small (with the exception of about 5 introductory classes). It is ridiculous how well you get to know some professors. I have been to one of my professor's houses two times and am planning on going again in two weeks for dinner. Doug Massey knows my name and likes talking to me. I can't imagine a more inspiring academic sphere However, I wish grade inflation didn't exist. It makes learning for its own sake a little difficult.

Professors will often know your names, especially if you are in their precept. My favorite class so far was a history class called "The New Nation." It was taught by Sean Wilentz, who is nationally recognized as one of America's leading historians, and was a truly wonderful lecturer. My least favorite class was an astrophysics class called "The Universe" - it had great lecturers and was fairly easy, but I wasn't interested in the subject matter and was only taking it to fulfill a distribution requirement. Students study pretty much whenever they are not sleeping or partying - people tend to live by the "work hard to play hard" motto. Class participation is vibrant - mostly because it is usually a large percentage of your grade for the course, but also because people seem to be genuinely engaged with the reading and discussion topic. In my experience, Princeton students have a lot of intellectual conversations outside of class. Students are EXTREMELY competitive - competition drives nearly all aspects of Princeton's social and academic life. The most unique class I've taken was an anthropology seminar entitled "Law and Love: an Anthropology of Social Forces." I have not officially declared a major yet since I am still a sophomore, but I am considering anthropology. The department is small, so students get more attention from faculty. I have never spent time with professors outside of class, but most people I know have had a meal or coffee with a professor at some point in their Princeton careers. Most professors welcome and encourage student invitations to meet with them outside of class. Princeton's academic requirements are rigorous, but fair and ultimately rewarding. Education at Princeton is what one makes of it - but the way distribution requirements are set up, students are heavily encouraged to explore all kinds of disciplines and learn for learning's sake.

Class here is what you make of it. there are fabulous professors and not so great ones, and ditto with the classes. I don't think you should eve rtake a class you don't like.

Small campus, so undergraduate focused so professors are incredibly accessible, know their students names and are really engaged. Princeton students are always having insane, intellectual, thought-provoking conversations EVERYWHERE. Students can be competitive, but those kids are marginalized, and really on the periphery. Princeton's education is centered on lots of independent work and 7 distribution requirements, so very liberal arts. We have a great mix of courses, some exceedingly practical, others are exercises in futility and pure academia. You really have your pick. I'm only a freshman but I have loved all my classes, but I am in an awesome anthropology seminar where we talk about the competing social forces of love and law in everyday life. Very provocative and compelling.

My favorite class so far was my Psych 101 lecture freshman fall, with a fantastic, funny, engaging professor who then met with me early the next semester to help me think about major options. I have enjoyed basically all of my classes, and the professors have been very willing to help students. The students are surprisingly non-competitive - many Princeton students come from extremely competitive high schools, and it's really a relief to be here and be able to talk about grades in a course and not feel a competitive edge from everyone around you. I am a music major, and part of the reason I came to Princeton is the music community - not just in the department, which is very nurturing and has lots of offerings, but the student body itself. Princeton has distribution requirements which can be a pain, especially the science with lab ones for non-science majors, but I think it's a good experience. Princeton's thesis requirement apparently inspires a lot of controversy, but I really think it's crucial that students have the experience of a large body of independent work because nothing could better prepare you for the real world. There also aren't as many graduate students on campus, and we don't have the typical professional schools, so the focus really is on undergrads.

Academics are a big deal here. Everyone is very focused on them, and there is a general expectation that academics are going to be a very high priority. Many people spend a huge amount of time on academics. Due to recent changes in policy, grade inflation is being combated. This means that it is very hard to get an A, as there is actually a limit to the percentage of any given class that can receive one. This increases the intensity of the academics, because there is an element of competition built into the system. While it is not too difficult to get B's in classes without a ridiculous amount of effort, it because very difficult to get an A. This is because you know everyone else in the class is working really hard, so unless you do too, it's hard to keep up. The courses are very interesting, though, and manageable in difficulty. As long as you take them seriously, you really can get a lot out of them pretty painlessly. The professors are amazing, because a lot of the time they are the leaders of their field. I recently took a class with Peter Singer which was unbelievable. I really can't stress enough that it is amazing to learn from these people.

It's hard to really say what makes a great class. The professor has a big influence, as does the reading list, as do the students who take it. Luckily, at Princeton all three are usually pretty strong. Professors are brilliant, men and women at the top of their field. Classes are amazingly varied in focus, so two different courses on the same text can be entirely different and entirely enlightening. Professors are very accessible, though good academic advising is often difficult to come by. My major in particular, Comparative Literature, is great in that it shares professors with many other small departments, so the variety of backgrounds is vast, but all have time to work with you. Students are intelligent, but most are aware that everyone here is intelligent so there's no need to show off. People will have casual conversations about high-level intellectual subjects and highly intellectual conversations about inane subjects at the same meal. While the larger departments often offer less support, and economics and Woodrow Wilson School majors are often very job oriented, most people will take advantage of all sides of their department and others to get a well-rounded and intellectually exciting experience.

Academics at Princeton are great. The professors are really accessible and friendly.

Some professors know my name. In general I've found they only know it if they were my preceptor, advisor, or taught a seminar (excepting Michael Barry). If you go to office hours, they will know your name. But unless you make an effort somehow to communicate with them they won't. But it's not their job to memorize everyone's name. Fav class ever was Causes of War with Gary Bass. Sure he can come across as arrogant sometimes, but this guy sat in on Milosevic's trial...he kind of has done some amazing things. He basically inspired me to be a pol major. And many other things in my life. I love him. Worst class. Probably The Psychology and Philosophy of Rationality. Harman is the stereotpyical Philosophy prof and he's just awful. I learned nothing. Thank god I PDF'd it. It was soooo bad. I feel like I study pretty much every day but Friday. Not a whole lot on Saturdays either. I have friends that only do work once every 2 weeks, stay up all night to do problem sets and then crash. Their grades aren't so good either. Participation in precept is high...kind of mandatory. Otherwise in lecture, generally not. People def have intellectual convos outside of class. People are competitive. We got into Princeton. It's in our blood. College does lessen that somewhat. But then there's grade deflation. The pol department is pretty awesome. It's definitely a bigger department, but you still always get a faculty member as your advisor. The profs are super smart and really open to talking to students. I personally haven't spent that much time outside of class with profs, though I know people who have, and I wish I had. I'm just shy. The academic requirements aren't too bad. EC is a random requirement though. And science classes for humanities people suck. But education is definitely both for education and job stuff. There's always lots of theory involved.

As it’s sometimes said, Ivy League academics are the reward for kids who worked their asses off in high school. Classes were the liberal arts standard. I will say that the most amazing classes I took were actually in the Humanities department (which isn’t technically a department, since it doesn’t offer any majors—only “certificates”). There’s no journalism major, so the Humanities dept. brings in big-name journalists and writers to have semester-long writing workshops/classes with students (you have to apply to get in, and the biggest names draw the most applications). I ended up taking Narrative Writing with Evan Thomas from Newsweek and Humor Writing with Joel Stein—both were amazing opportunities to work one-on-one with really respected journalists who were just as happy to work with use as we were to work with them. That’s the standard, I guess—professors are usually really invested in their classes because so many of their students are so damn smart. It makes for a vibrant—if sometimes intimidating—academic environment.