The Dimensionality of Tsinghua Students

Tsinghua students vary a lot, said my friend, who has been a Tsinghua student for five years. How so? I asked. She explained:

Dimension 1. Some students spend most of their time studying, others spend most of their time on activities. It’s best to have a balance, she said.

Dimension 2. Some students are rich, some poor. Rich students have better cell phones than poor students. As freshmen, they are much more familiar with computers. (My friend, whose family is poor, hadn’t used a computer before college.) In the campus store, rich students will buy items that cost 15 or 20 yuan ($2 to $3). Rich students will sometimes eat off-campus. There are a lot of rich students at Tsinghua. Do they get in the usual way? I asked. (Doing extremely well on a national test.) Maybe not all of them, my friend said, but if they get in other ways it’s a secret. (Unlike the University of Illinois.)

Dimension 3. Students vary in how much they cultivate their own interests. Some do, some don’t. Students with wide interests are the happiest, my friend said. They are less controlled by how well they do academically. This was a mistake she had made: paying too little attention to her own interests.