[nostatic]

don't quite a few go off the brige too?

While I won't dispute my genius status (ha!), one of the biggest factors in my success in school was the fact that I started when I was 22 after spending 4 "lost" years working crappy jobs trying to become a rock star (among other things). By the time I got cleaned up and went back to school, I was on a mission...I'd been in the "real world" and it sucked. As a result, I kicked major butt, mostly because of good study habits. It took a semester to get my legs, but then I did my chem degree in 3 years. I lived at home (saving money), and tutored for spending cash. Then when I found out I could go to graduate school and they would *pay* me, I said "sign me up."

Caltech took a very different approach to Cornell (at least for grad school in chem). Very hard to get in, but once you were there they wanted you to do well. That being said, of my incoming class of 28, 21 finished their Ph.D.s. The other 7 left with a masters and either went somewhere else or changed course (law school was a common one).

The big factor at Caltech was deciding if you were going to buy into the competition factor. Almost everyone there came from being top dog at their undergrad school. In a situation like that, you can either let your ego be your guide and try and be the best, or check your ego at the door and focus on learning how to solve problems. A lot of the people who flushed out chose to compete and got their butts kicked. I realized early on that no matter how smart I was, there was always going to be people who were smarter. So I could either kill myself trying to be better than them, or try and find some balance in life, and do the best I could. Again, getting my butt kicked for 4 years in the "real world" helped a lot with that transition.

A couple of secrets I learned. First, in Calculus, do 1 hour of problems EVERY DAY. Same goes for physics. In chemistry, you think with your pencil...it is a language and you have to write it and speak it to learn it. Draw structures EVERY DAY. I used to do problem sets over and over, ask for more, and do them every day. The night before the exam was spent at the movies or at band rehearsal...not cramming.