> A criticism that has sometimes been levelled at Stanford is that once you are admitted you can coast your way to graduation.
This is an odd criticism. While I was at Stanford, the school administrators were extremely concerned with a ubiquitous problem on campus called "Stanford Duck Syndrome": looking serene and peaceful above the surface, but underneath the water, paddling as hard as possible to keep from sinking.
You could say I was an academically-inclined kid. I started high school a year early. And during that year, I passed AP Calculus with the maximum score of 5. I studied for the SAT for a week, took it only once, and if I recall correctly scored in the 98th percentile. And finally, I matriculated at Stanford at age 16.
But still, Stanford was by a large margin the most difficult thing I'd ever done up to that point. And it would not be a huge stretch to include everything I've done ever since.
I've come to understand since graduating that, for many other institutions, the professor applies a curve to an exam in response to the overall performance of the class being poor. At Stanford, it is expressed at the start that the exam will be curved -- because the professors intend to make it so difficult that they are confident that, in their classroom of highly motivated, intelligent students, only a small handful will be able to get As; it is intended to be a way to differentiate the very top students.
Let me give you a sense of what this feels like. I was taking the freshman physics series with the world champion in physics. Blake Ross, one of the guys behind Firefox, was attending while I was there. Even while I was learning how to swim at Avery Aquatic Center, I saw Don Knuth finishing up lap swimming....
Out of curiosity, I typed "duck syndrome" into Google. The only relevant links on the first page pertain to "duck syndrome" at Stanford. Maybe the term is beginning to catch on elsewhere?
You're flirting with the assumption that something must exist on the Internet in order to exist at all. Or even that there's a strong correlation. That's a bit scary!
Indeed. But the converse is also untrue: Not everything that people post on the Internet has a basis in reality. I know many people who went to other universities, and many do not appear to have a similar concept: For example, there are probably few superficially serene ducks at MIT, because many of them seem to wear their hard work on their sleeves; and students at Cal have nicknamed their school "Berzerkeley".
I am not saying that this term or even this phenomenon is strictly unique to Stanford, but I simply have never observed "duck syndrome" used in this sense in any other context. This includes the Internet, personal conversations, and so on. And now, it includes this Hacker News thread, because aside from Drbble's vaguely plausible remark no one has yet come forth that their institution employed this term as well.
My take on it is that, just as everyone has their own mascot, everyone has their own vocabulary, which probably includes their own coinage for this experience if they indeed have this experience to describe.
This is an odd criticism. While I was at Stanford, the school administrators were extremely concerned with a ubiquitous problem on campus called "Stanford Duck Syndrome": looking serene and peaceful above the surface, but underneath the water, paddling as hard as possible to keep from sinking.
You could say I was an academically-inclined kid. I started high school a year early. And during that year, I passed AP Calculus with the maximum score of 5. I studied for the SAT for a week, took it only once, and if I recall correctly scored in the 98th percentile. And finally, I matriculated at Stanford at age 16.
But still, Stanford was by a large margin the most difficult thing I'd ever done up to that point. And it would not be a huge stretch to include everything I've done ever since.
I've come to understand since graduating that, for many other institutions, the professor applies a curve to an exam in response to the overall performance of the class being poor. At Stanford, it is expressed at the start that the exam will be curved -- because the professors intend to make it so difficult that they are confident that, in their classroom of highly motivated, intelligent students, only a small handful will be able to get As; it is intended to be a way to differentiate the very top students.
Let me give you a sense of what this feels like. I was taking the freshman physics series with the world champion in physics. Blake Ross, one of the guys behind Firefox, was attending while I was there. Even while I was learning how to swim at Avery Aquatic Center, I saw Don Knuth finishing up lap swimming....