"Succeeding" at Stanford - Linda Tong

I remember coming across the transcript of a Stanford Admissions Q&A session on Art of Problem Solving, a website for competition math students. In particular, one question caught my attention: “What are some of the main ways that smart / high achieving kids fail once they get to Stanford? And what is the main advice you'd have for preventing (or recovering) from that failure?” The Stanford student gave this answer: There are definitely new challenges here that can be hard to adapt to, such as the fact that you're suddenly surrounded by many more brilliant people, and the classes are much harder but also often more flexible, with the result that you're responsible for keeping yourself on schedule and not falling behind…accept that things are going to be harder now and that this is a good thing. I find all of those things to be true. Now that I am in my third year, I have a better understanding of what it means to be a student at Stanford, and it really is a daunting place. No one at St

I remember coming across the transcript of a Stanford Admissions Q&A session on Art of Problem Solving, a website for competition math students. In particular, one question caught my attention: “What are some of the main ways that smart / high achieving kids fail once they get to Stanford? And what is the main advice you'd have for preventing (or recovering) from that failure?” The Stanford student gave this answer: There are definitely new challenges here that can be hard to adapt to, such as the fact that you're suddenly surrounded by many more brilliant people, and the classes are much hard