Their profession for these four years is to be a student. It means they are goal-oriented. One day I went to lunch with Fred Hargadon, who has been the dean of admissions at Princeton for thirteen years and was the dean of admissions at Stanford before that. Like all the administrators and faculty members I spoke with, Hargadon loves these students, and he is extraordinarily grateful for the opportunity to be around them. But he, like almost all the other older people I talked to, is a little disquieted by the achievement ethos and the calm acceptance of established order that prevails among elite students today.
Most kids see their education as a means to an end.
Hence they are not a disputatious group. These students are also extremely respectful of authority, treating their professors as one might treat a CEO or a division head at a company meeting. You don't mess with the faculty. I cannot get the students to call me by my first name. That's the most common complaint the faculty has of Princeton students.