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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I kind of thought that the top 5000 high school graduates today have to be better prepared than the top 5000 from 30 years ago. Those are the ones who have been raised to do this since pre-K. Honors and AP classes all the way.

So either the "top" 5000 high school students now are those who resume-padded the most, and/or they have a learned behavior to just manipulate the system instead of doing actual work.

I kind of thought that the top 5000 high school graduates today have to be better prepared than the top 5000 from 30 years ago. Those are the ones who have been raised to do this since pre-K. Honors and AP classes all the way.

I agree. Things are much more competitive now compared to 30 years ago in terms of math competitions, high-stakes testing, and also selecting from a much larger pool of students. Today's top students are probably much more talented than the top students of 50+ years ago. But maybe the median student is less prepared.

Resume padding doesn't exist in Europe, you get admitted based on cold hard criteria like tests and grades, not cozy fluffy stuff like extracurriculars, quality of personality and "well-roundedness". Still it seems that standards have to be lowered steadily. This is understandable for universities that are growing in student count. For already very selective schools like NYU, it's probably due to a change in selection criteria.

Old-man-yelling-at-clouds time: It's maybe too easy to say that today's generation is coddled and soft. But there does seem to be a difference. Youths always used to be entitled/lazy/whatever, but that was in defiance of the messaging towards them. Now a generation has grown up who were told all along that they are a special little unique snowflake whose greatest value lies in "being who they are". (It's tempting but probably futile to summarize entire generations like this but whatever.) At the same time though, it seems that zoomers are more neurotic, anxious, self-conscious etc., drink less alcohol, have less sex, drive slower, generally are more aware of their constant public image (online, and also in person due to the constant presence of Internet-connected cameras in people's pockets). The stakes are high all the time, and reality smacks people in the face compared to what they were told.