Anti-Climacus

LINK: Two notes I found interesting from this NYT article on doing work v. having fun as an undergrad:

"The "slow down" movement on campuses reveals the many mixed messages sent out to students. Universities tout their exclusivity, their low admissions rates, and scour the country for the most desirable students. Then, the newest freshman class of academic superstars - who also happen to be prize-winning scientists, professional-caliber musicians, athletes, leaders and do-gooders - arrive on campus and are promptly told to cool it (but still get high grades to get into good graduate schools)."

In my experience, it's pretty easy to get good-but-not perfect grades on not a lot of work (and thus lots of time for relaxation and fun). The difference between Dara's grades (I'm not going to give you a number, but suffice to say you couldn't do better than she's doing) and mine is not really all that great, but if you look at the marginal hours of work we do per week to get those grades, it's insanely out of proportion (though she's now adopted, largely (I like to think) due to my evil influence, the habit of just sort of ignoring work you don't want to do).

"They are worried about the U.S. News and World Report rankings, as well as about sending their students to top graduate schools and good jobs."

Idle curiosity and vanity compelled me to check the US News rankings for Political Science (and Theory) programs, and pretty much nothing had changed. And even if something had changed, a one-year alteration doesn't really mean anything. Why choose one year's changes as your relevent level of aggreggation? Not for any good reason I can think of.