Quote

I grew up in a little town in Minnesota, 500 people. I went out to Princeton, and I wasn't very well-accepted out there by the fancy folks of Princeton University, I felt. I came away bruised and feeling rejected.

— Walter Kirn

Sentiment: NEGATIVE

←Previous Next→

✓Similar Perspectives

I spent a lot of time feeling alienated and rejected.

— Lisa Bonet

I remember failing my Princeton interview. My mom wanted me to apply because ever since I was a kid she had this dream that I would apply to Princeton, but it was just not happening.

— Tina Fey

I wanted to get out of Ashland, and I thought it would be pretty cool to go to school in the East. So I asked my guidance counselor what Ivy League schools were. And I applied to Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth - that was it. My guidance counselor told me I wouldn't get into an Ivy League school. So as my act of resistance, that's all I applied to.

— Winona LaDuke

People wrote me off, but I believed in myself. I got the confidence back, and it grew and grew. I won my first major and my last at the place that changed my life.

— Pete Sampras

I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

— Harry Mathews

I went to Princeton, I minored in women's studies.

— Jennifer Weiner

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.

— Michelle Obama

✗Opposing Perspectives

I was raised as an upper-class WASP in New England, and there was this old tradition there that everyone would simply be guided into the right way after Ivy League college and onward and upward. And it rejected me, I rejected it, and I ended up as a kind of refugee, really.

— Spalding Gray

In my early career I was like a goldfish. Rejection didn't affect me; I'd just forget how bad it was and keep going back for more.

— Emily Watson

As a senior at Princeton, I felt like the whole world was open to me. In our country, that's not a given. We aspire to be a place of equal opportunity, and yet where you're born determines your prospects.

— Wendy Kopp