Sohae tells us about the rough transition from high school to university and speaks about how her teachers at Northwestern, although brilliant, are not good at teaching.
Part 1 is here
Transcription
Sohae
So the people who are teaching you if you go to a research university, they’re not, they weren’t taught to teach. They were taught to do their research. For example, my chemistry teacher, my chemistry professor for my first quarter at Northwestern, she’s brilliant, top of, like, top of the chem department, everybody loves her at the chem department, but she cannot teach for her entire life. Like, she’s a horrible teacher
Kamila
we’re gonna get into like actual college and stuff. So you’re accepted into Northwestern, you’re going to go, you’re bounded. So can you tell me about like arriving at Northwestern? And how was like your first day, your first week? How did you feel? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you make friends immediately.
Sohae
So the thing is, since I was an early decision admission, we get put into a Facebook group. And that Facebook group was just for my entire class. So the class of 2023 is all in this one Facebook group. And from there, like everybody did intros and like, like, posted pictures of themselves in the intro, like told a little bit about the road a little bit about themselves, fun facts and everything like that. And so I got to meet a lot of people through that. And also, I was part of the quest bridge group chat. I was, even though I didn’t match through quest bridge, I was still part of quest bridge, because I was a finalist. And so a lot of my friends, I met from there. My roommate, actually for freshman year, I met through that quest bridge group chat. Um, it was quest rich people who had gotten into Northwestern. So it was that. And then once regular decision rolled in, there were more people and like more group chats were made. I’m pretty sure I made a group chat for like, Korean people. So I like wrote in the Facebook group, oh, if you’re Korean, and like, you want to have like a little group chat, like you should join. And then we had one, I made a lot of friends through there. So honestly, I had a lot of friends online, even before I got to campus. And for me, I never got to visit any college campuses. So I didn’t step foot onto Northwestern until my first day, but I had a summer program before the school year started. So I was there, maybe five weeks earlier than everybody else was with, along with other people who are in that program, which was really fun. And I got to make friends really easily through there as well. Um, they, and yeah, I those feels great. Honestly, I was really happy to be on campus. I wasn’t nervous or anything, because I knew I already had like, at least some friends that I could talk to once they got in purse, once they got there in person, once I got to see them in person. And I was just happy to be away from home, like, because I said like, I don’t like California. It’s not like I’m never going to see my family again. So it was fine for me. I really enjoyed the freedom because like I said earlier in high school, I didn’t really do much like partying or anything super, like wild like that. And now I could because I’m an adult, and I can make my own choices and do my own thing on campus. So it was great. Yeah,
Kamila
coming off. So you came onto campus, and it’s good that you had like friends and such. And you met your roommate through that. So how was the situation living with another person? Every almost everybody I’ve interviewed her said they hated for specifically first semester. And a lot of that was because of their roommate. They said their roommate and them didn’t get along. It was terrible for them. So did you have that kind of same situation?
Sohae
No, my roommate freshman year was probably like, the most. I don’t know how to describe it because we were never close. We were just very surface level friends. And we were both very okay with that. We never got into like deep talks. What? Because I really I know that a lot of high schoolers kind of fantasize about being like best friends with their roommates and like, doing everything with their roommate talking about everything. But for me and her for she and I I don’t know. We just really I don’t know we just vibed and occasionally we shared a few appliances. Talked about boy problems every now and then. And but that was pretty much it. Like we she was probably the nicest roommate I could have ever asked for. Because I remember, at one time during freshman year, like, I could not wake up for the life of me even though I had like 50 alarms. But that was because I was going through something. And I was just, I don’t know, depressed or something. But she didn’t say a word about it, even though like my alarms were waking her up, and like, she was the nicest person. And we just were very, like, very, I don’t know, just good friends, but not like in the conventional sense of like, knowing everything about each other. And it was it was a nice arrangement, in my opinion. That’s nice.
Kamila
Yeah, I guess that makes sense. surface level friends, because I interviewed Ali from Johns Hopkins like earlier. And she was like, my roommate, roommate and I, we were friends. But outside of our like, dorm room, we weren’t really associated with each other. We didn’t like, yeah, lunch together. tell each other everything. We had our own sides. We talked and stuff, but out of the dorm, we were just kind of, you know, acquaintances outside.
Sohae
Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Kamila
Okay, so same situation. Yeah. So going into Northwestern College is a whole nother like universe compared to high school. And it’s also very prestigious. The competitive is competitiveness is there and the academic rigor is there. So did you have trouble adjusting from high school to college in terms of academic rigor and what was expected of you?
Sohae
Yes. Very much. So. I, chemistry at Northwestern is a shitshow. It’s, it’s hellish. Because the northwestern chemistry department, like all the PhDs and the grad students and the professors, there, they’re all brilliant. They’re geniuses, they’re the northwestern chemistry department is probably one of the top in the country. I don’t know what the rank is. But like, we have a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and like, so many, I don’t know, innovative people who are doing work in chemistry. And so the bar is so high for that. And I feel like it’s pretty similar. Everywhere else in what I’m talking about, like, just like T T 20. Like top 20 campuses. Like it’s a different world. I’m not sure if it would have been different if I went to a private school, like on the East Coast, because there are a lot of those kids here. I’m not sure if it would have been super different if I went to an international school because we do have a lot of international students. But public’s going from public school education to a private school, university education completely different. And it’s so hard in you like, because I feel like high school you can kind of BS your way through it and still do Okay, and that’s kind of what I did. But, like, here, you need to work your ass off, I honestly don’t understand how there can be people with like, near four point O’s, who still have a good social life and good mental health and have everything in balance. It’s really hard. Yeah.
Kamila
And what exactly is different about high school and college like in terms of the academics itself.
Sohae
So the people who are teaching you if you go to a research university, they’re not they weren’t taught to teach. They were taught to do their research, if that makes sense. So your professors, most of the time, they’re doing their own research outside of class. And they, they just have to, they teach because they have to teach, because it’s part of the job. But they never, if that makes sense. So like, it’s hard. My, for example, my chemistry teacher, my chemistry professor for my first quarter at Northwestern, she’s brilliant, top of like, top of the chem department, everybody loves her at the chem department, but she cannot teach for her entire life. Like she’s a horrible teacher, but she is a professor, if that makes sense. But in high school, your teachers, they were they learned how to teach, if that made like they went to school and they have a certificate to teach. And so they’re probably better at teaching than a than a professor no matter how smart the professor may be. So there’s one big difference. The other difference is that the bar is very high. Like, you’re getting top students from all, all around the world, not even just the country like around the world, because we do have a lot of international students, like I said before, so it’s you have the cream of the crop, and you’re putting them all together in one place. And so you’re gonna have people who are geniuses at one subject, and they set the curve for that certain class. And so it just, yeah, that’s what it is. And that’s where like imposter syndrome comes from, because, like, you might have been top of your class at your public high school in in Texas, but you’re now in a place where everybody was the top of their class, you know what I mean? Yeah. So,
Kamila
did you feel that and like you and your friends? Did you really feel like, Oh, my God, imposter syndrome? Basically, do I belong here, you know, these people have written science paper before they even came here, like,
Sohae
right? After that, I saw my friends struggle with it a lot, especially my friends who came from first and low income background backgrounds, because like a lot of Northwest, around 60% of Northwestern students don’t get any financial aid. And that means that they’re, they come from a household that makes over, I think, somewhere like 200k a year. And so there’s like a big discrepancy between those kinds of people. Because the, obviously, the more money you have, the more resources there are available to you. And so those people were, like, groomed from high school to be the top. And then there’s this fgli community, who was who just worked their ass off with what they had, you know, they weren’t, they couldn’t pay for XYZ, they couldn’t pay for, you know, like, a CT prep. So that’s a thing. I personally, myself, I never questioned like, oh, do I belong here? Because I, I was very aware that I earned my spot here. Because of what I just went through in high school and all of that, but I did I do feel dumb, a lot. Like I just because I feel dumb in some classes, doesn’t necessarily mean like, I questioned whether I belong there. But because everybody has their certain strengths, like, obviously, not obviously, but you might, you would probably assume that an English major isn’t the best at quantum physics, you know? Something like that.
Kamila
Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of goes with the, I guess this is considered a theory, but there’s this like idea of a spike where when you apply to college, it’s better to be really, really strong at one subject, rather than like,
Sohae
well rounded. Yeah, I agree with that.
Kamila
You think that’s it, like the best at like physics, the best set English is like all around you,
Sohae
you have to have. So you have to have an edge, in my opinion, if you want to get you either are a legacy student, a student athlete, or you have some sort of edge to you, or like your parents donated a building? Like the, you know, I’m pretty sure you know, about like, the USC scandals and all of that, yeah, but, um, like, for normal student, I would say like, regular middle class, like, if you’re going to take a middle class American student, you have to have you need to be like, at least decent at everything. But you have to have some sort of edge to you, whether that’s your personal story, or some sort of achievement, or some sort of like involvement in something like that has to be like, some sort it has to show like your passion for something. And I think that is where a lot of students fall short. Because I did go to competitive high competitive high school but a lot of my friends, they’re really smart had like 4.0 GPA, unweighted but didn’t get into the top schools that they wanted to go into. And I I personally think that it’s because they just didn’t demonstrate some sort of passion. And I think that’s what’s really important because talking to my friends who did get into top schools, like I say, there’s a common factor and that common factor is they did okay enough in school like they met that certain threshold, but they also had something super special about them. So the, in my opinion, when colleges say, Oh, we’re looking for someone well rounded, that’s BS, where they’re looking for somebody who meets the certain basic requirement and that basic requirement might like is like a high GPA and a good enough as at your AC t score, and like a smattering of extracurriculars, but they’re looking for that specialty And that’s also why like everybody has something special about them when you’re at a top school. So that’s also what contributes to like imposter syndrome. And like, all those things that and people that’s I feel like, in my personal opinion, that’s why a lot of people battle have like, mental health issues, because there’s just comparing themselves to everybody. And like that kind of stuff.
Kamila
And kind of backtracking a little bit about the difference between high school and college. Do you think high school did anything? Like whether it was the AP courses? Or the rigor? Did they do anything to actually prepare you for college? Do you think high school like failed at their job? School,
Sohae
the only thing I learned in high school that was useful was some of the stuff from AP, human geography, some of the basic mathematics, some of the basic biology, some of the basic chemistry, and also how to like skim a paper, and how to, like, finesse your way through something, that’s the only thing that I really got from high school, none of the higher level calculus stuck in my head, none of the higher level statistics, or anything like that really stuck. And I feel like that’s true for a lot of people, they just did it to get the grade, for a lot of the time. And that’s it. Like, I my work ethic is honestly kind of ruined because of high school. And that’s why a lot of people struggle in college, because they have to actually study hard in like super hard in college and do practice problems for at least an hour a day for some classes, you know, so, and some of these classes, you have to actually do the reading, whereas in AP Literature, you can read the SparkNotes. You know what I mean? And like get by for the daily quiz or whatever. So, yeah, yeah, so the short answer is no.
Kamila
So, of course, coming into high school, and this is not just you, I think I’m pretty sure it’s like most people, you’re struggling to the adjustment of the rigor and everything. So how did you kind of manage your time manage your life in college? Was it really hard to balance your schoolwork, actually go out and make some friends and just have time to yourself? Like, how long? How long does it take for you to actually get into a routine that worked for you, and that you can balance
Sohae
your life, I’m still working on it. I mean, I’m only a second year. And I will technically I’ve only had like two real quarters of college, because of COVID. But like, it was really hard in the beginning, because all I wanted to do was go out. And like party or something, maybe not party as much like a super hard but because I didn’t do that in high school. I was like, Oh, I can do that stuff now. And I can go out whenever I want, I can leave by myself, whatever, like no one’s here to watch me. So that’s what I kind of focused on a lot first quarter, which was kind of bad. But there are certain people that you meet in college who are really, like, really devoted to their academics. And I honestly feel like those are the people you should be friends with, because they’re going to help you like, there’s this one thing, there’s a saying like you become like, your closest friends. And so like if you make your closest friends super smart people with great work ethic, you’re eventually going to turn it in, like not turn it into them, but adopt some of their, you know, characteristics and habits. Yeah. So I’m glad that I had like that experience of going out. But my GPA isn’t glad that I did that a lot. Um, and I don’t know, it’s just yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a process. And it’s gonna take me a while, but I feel like I’m working on it now, I guess. And those two, like those 10 months in quarantine really gave me time to like, just think about myself, and all that. And so like, now it’s time to actually try to put that into into stone, and like work on
Kamila
it. So and you actually brought up something I wanted to discuss. And this is more at top tier schools or maybe to other schools, but I know this is for sure, like top tier schools. So when I was interviewing to two people from Johns Hopkins, they were you know, straight A students or almost straight A students at high school. But then coming into college, they go into, I don’t know the lecture room, and just whatever their test score is their test score is going to be you know, there. It’s like if they get a 75 on it, it’s completely normal compared to high school where you have like an A so Was that kind of just a normal college?
Sohae
Yeah, it does. It’s not just at top schools, it’s at every school. I’m like, honestly, especially in my opinion, especially for STEM classes, because I’ve talked to my friends who are humanities majors. And they say, for us, we don’t have tests, we have essays that we have to write. So there’s not like some, there’s, it’s not like there’s some sort of curve or anything. So we do have to keep A’s. But for STEM students, there’s always going to be like some sort of curve. And so like, the average is probably going to be like a 60%. And that’s not normal. It’s normal. It’s not good, but it’s like normal. And especially for something like organic chemistry, or biochemistry, physics, like the average being 60 70% is kind of normal. And there are people who get above that, and they get weighted that way, and their people get below that. And the curve kind of helps them maintain like a letter grade, because in high school, your letter grade is attached to the percentage, right? Because like 90%, and up is an A always right. But that’s not the case for for university.
Kamila
Really, why is that the case? Is it just based on the average, that’s why it’s based on
Sohae
the average. So like in statistics, they you know, you have the bell curve. But obviously, if you’re, if a certain subject is at a certain difficulty, you can expect more people to do poorly. So it’s not going to be a perfect bell curve, it’s going to be like something like like this that skews to the right or something. And so they shift, they shift the grades based off of those standard deviations. So like, a 70%, could be a B, and like a 78%. Could be an A like you’d you never know. Oh, that’s an that’s interesting. Okay. Yeah, it’s something I had to learn in. Yeah.
Sohae
Did you not know coming in,
Sohae
I didn’t. I kind of knew it. But I didn’t understand the specifics of it, I knew that there was some sort of curve that would have done something but like, I didn’t know, to the fullest extent.
Kamila
And one thing about GPA. So I’ve heard like, in high school, your GPA, you have to have a good GPA. If you want to get into a good school like it, you need, like you said, you need to meet that threshold. Or I’ll still just kind of like look over your application. It’s one of the things you need to meet. But in college in terms of getting a GPA and going into the workforce, is it that important?
Sohae
It depends. Not everybody who goes to college, immediately goes into the workforce. After college, there are people who go to grad school, people who go to law school, people who go to med school, and other sorts of higher education. And for those people, I would say GPA still matters. To an extent, especially for law and med students. A lot of medical schools and law schools have like, sort of like a minimum GPA that’s not set in stone like it is. It’s not set in stone. But it’s like the unspoken rule, kind of like college, you know, because people are like, Oh, I’m not going to get into Harvard, if I have a 3.7 like kind of the same thing. But if you’re going into the workforce, from what I hear from my family members, my family friends, nobody, nobody really cares about your GPA. Maybe your first job might ask you for your GPA if you’re a fresh graduate from college, but I don’t think it really, really matters. That’s why people say C’s get degrees all the time. But yeah, like AI. And also honestly, your majors doesn’t matter either. I have a friend who graduated from Northwestern with an engineering degree. And he is now in marketing for like Product Management for like a furniture company for Wayfair was just like the big online furniture company. But like, and my sister she graduated with a degree in something and completely went a different direction. So honestly, I don’t think it matters too much.
Kamila
Interesting. And one thing I want to discuss about college in general is kind of getting involved and getting involved in like all sorts of things research actual like, you know, clubs, extracurriculars, and then internships study abroad. So coming into Northwestern Did you know like, oh, they are a top school. They have, I bet tons of resources for whatever I want to actually end up doing. So did you know that you wanted to take advantage of those internships, study abroad, whatever it was?
Sohae
Yeah, you kind of have to, if you want the experience, if you want that certain experience, you have to take care of that you the resources there to help you. And if you don’t take advantage of that resource, it’s kind of dumb. Like why why would you go about it the hard way, if you have that resource that will directly put you to somewhere or help you to get something. That’s not to say that that resource will guarantee you what you want, but it’s certainly going to help. But yeah, I knew that I was I wanted research, because I want to go to medical school. So I looked up programs that were available programs, and like advising and things that were available to freshmen students, first year students and apply for the program, and that’s the program that I was in for the summer before school started. And through that, I secured research with one of the professors at Feinberg, which is Northwestern Medical School. And it’s great, like I got a grant. Obviously, it didn’t follow through because of COVID. It was supposed to happen during the summer. But and I couldn’t do it. But I still like can say that I got it because I did. And now like, yeah, so you you just have to no one’s going to give you the resource, you have to search for the resource, but the resources there, if that makes sense.
Kamila
So it’s like not particularly hard to get it. You just need to like find me. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And also, I have a question about in this, you may not know, because you’re only a sophomore, you’re not in the workforce or anything. But do you think being a Northwestern student with the experience? Do you think that’s going to help you like greatly just because you are a Northwestern student? Do you think that gives you some sort of edge over say someone who went to like a state school?
Sohae
Yes. Um, I hate to say that, because that’s not super fair. Because not everybody has the same opportunity to go to a school like I do. Not everybody, like, has the resources to get you where you need to be to go to a top 20 school. And that sucks to say, and that has, but it’s true. And people know that people who go to Ivy League’s pseudo Ivy’s, like Northwestern, and other top like 50 schools in the US are taught. I don’t know, it’s, it’s kind of like a name brand or brand name thing. Because people like luxury goods, because they’re luxury. You know what I mean? Like people flex Gucci? Because they buy it for the fashionable. Right? Right. And like, I guess, yes, there is some sort of higher quality to that, to that brand name. But mostly, it’s because it’s like, that’s the way it is. And that’s the same I, in my opinion, is the same thing with universities and colleges. Like, I, people underestimate. From what I’ve heard, obviously, I can’t speak for, like, I’m not an expert on this, because I don’t go to community college. But from what I’ve heard from multiple people, is that community college is, is something that’s really valuable because unlike the professors at a school like this out of school, like Johns Hopkins at a school like Harvard, the professor’s over there are taught to teach then, like know how to teach something. And so the quality of education is going to be maybe even higher than, like learning some, like, I don’t know, say, for example, like you’re learning about, I don’t know, Cell Biology, right? I, the professor’s here. They research cell biology, so they know the ins and outs of it, but they don’t know how to, like articulate that knowledge to the students. However, a cell biology professor at a community college knows like has a teaching credential so they’ll be able to articulate that to the students and the students will be actually be able to learn if that makes sense. And so it’s like, you know how when you find some thing on Amazon for super cheap, but it ends up being super good quality, it’s like the same thing.
Kamila
And so do you think that I mean, I guess do you think college is going to prepare you for the workforce like I asked us about high school preparing you for college, but once you after you get your Postgraduate which you said you like want to do higher education. After you get that do you think you’ll be prepared for the workforce? Do you think Northwestern or any top school or just anything? Going Gen prepares you for that,
Sohae
uh, not really, unless your goal after college is to go to higher education. So like, if you’re going to go to law school, med school, grad school, people who go to grad school end up. Like, most of the time, they want to go into academia and like Teach up research at universities, and teach at universities and that kind of stuff. So we hold on, let me try to rephrase this, if you go to med school, you’re going to be to be prepared to a degree, be a doctor, right? If you go to law school, you’re going to be prepared to be a lawyer, or a judge or whatever it is. But like, the real world is always different from education. That’s what every adult has told me, every single adult. And so obviously, I can say, from my own experience, but people I know, are only even like, maybe, I don’t know, like four years older than me, they’re in the workforce. And they know for a fact that this school is not the same thing as working. And nobody’s going to coddle you, like you don’t have the same resources that you had at school to do well at your job. So I don’t think it’s going to really prepare me that much. The only thing that’s really gonna help prepare you for a job is probably talking to like a mentor who does the job or like, has the job that you want. Because they’ll be able to tell you about their experience, and that might be able to, you know, help you from there. But otherwise, no, not school.
Kamila
I mean, thank you for painting the reality because a lot of people look at college and like, oh, it’s amazing, especially if you go to a top school, they’re like, Oh, the resources are this, but like you like show, it’s like what it actually is.
Sohae
And like just the resources, like we have a career center here, right? The Career Center is going to help you get the job. But the like, it’s going to help prepare you to get the job, they’re going to help you with your resume. They’re going to do like mock interviews with you. But and that might help you get the job, but that’s not going to help you succeed in the job, they’re not going to tell you like, Oh, this is proper, like etiquette at your workplace. Oh, this is what you have to do like to get in a I don’t know, this is what you have to do to make your boss like you like, things like that. Nobody’s going to tell you that. And like, unless they’ve experienced it already. So that’s either going to come from your family, your friends, or like your mentor. Ups, like some thing like that it’s not going to come from school itself.
Kamila
That makes sense. Yeah. Well, thank you for like telling the truth. Because, you know, I like from the very beginning. Like earlier, I painted a very optimistic picture about college. But once I started interviewing, and then like kind of noticing patterns, I’ve realized it’s much more harsh than most people think it is. Because I’m very excited for college. Still I am. But I understand that it’s like this really harsh reality, where everything just only gets harder. So
Sohae
yeah, like I knew, like, I’m pretty similarly to you. Like, I was always excited for college because I could fly out of the nest, you know, but and I knew it was going to be hard. But even though I knew it was going to be hard, I still, like got hit with reality. So I’m like, glad you’re doing this because you get more details than I ever could have gotten.
Kamila
Well, so we’re coming to an end here. And there’s one thing I do with everyone. So I want you to give one piece of advice for current high school students. It can be about anything, and they can be of any year, so like maybe something to prepare for college. And then another piece of advice for current college students. Maybe they’re coming in and they, they’re lost. They don’t know what they’re doing. So can you give advice for those two groups of people?
Sohae
Okay, so for the people who are still in college, not applying yet. Just do Khan Academy. If you’re taking the LSAT, just drill Khan Academy, and you will get a good score like that a score that you want, if you keep on doing it, like even if you have to take like 20 practices, just do it because it’s free. And and it’ll help you. Yeah, and also for that group who’s like preparing to edit to apply for college. Just like I hope you you can show like what you’re passionate about in your essays, because that’s, that’s what’s meaningful to college admissions. college admissions officers. And for people who are coming into college,
Kamila
maybe they’re like in college, beginning college, and they’re kind of lost. They don’t know what they’re doing, because it’s a whole nother world. So what what was the one
Sohae
piece of advice you’d give to the class of 2020 for college? Class of 2024, and like maybe 25 It’s okay to feel dumb. Like it’s normal. It’s very normal. A lot of my friends in college out of college tell me their stories about like, how dumb they felt this one class or something. Like it’s okay, because everybody feels it, at least at one point. And you’re not. Like it’s No, it’s not worth it to question whether you belong because you got into the school for a reason.
Kamila
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Thank you so much. I mean, this was a very, how would you say enlightening, very knowledgeable interview. So thank you so much for thank you so much for coming.
Sohae
No problem. Good night.
Kamila
Good night. That ends my entire interview is so Hey, make sure to check out part one if you have not done so already. Also, make sure to subscribe and check out my blog, a college kid.com for various college related articles on there. But other than that, hope see you in the next one.