Peter Dong Harvard: Fill & Download for Free

Don’t ask me what the reason was I took Math 55.I wonder now if anyone does get out of it alive.As soon as I get into class, I’m fighting off a swarmOf positive-definite non-degenerate symmetric bilinear forms.Oh! You stay up all night Tuesday working on them in your dorm.You get the same topology however you transform.You put ’em back together and you get your favorite norm.Those positive-definite non-degenerate symmetric bilinear forms.From the song "Positive-Definite Non-Degenerate Symmetric Bilinear Forms" from the musical "Les Phys" by Peter Dong.

A2A. I think you are well on your way. Here is a similar answer I wrote for someone:Arvin Chang's answer to What are some things I can do as a freshman to be admitted into an Ivy League university?You mention your interests (singing/songwriting, coding, linguistics) are centered around communication. That is a great insight to have and I think you should continue in that exploration to find unique synergies between those interests. Did you know that musician Vienna Teng studied computer science at Stanford, but end up pursuing music?Vienna Teng, Stanford renaissance womanShe now has Here is a TED music performancesOne about how her cultural heritage has affected her musicOne about how she uses music to express both hope and despair at the same time.Anyways... the point is not to copy Vienna Teng. Or Peter Dong's work as a Physics and Music double major.Physics: The Musical! | Magazine | The Harvard CrimsonThe idea is that if you continue to study, pursue your interests and combine them to find your own sense of self and your own voice... that is that type of student a school like Stanford looks for.Good luck!

From OP’s commentsBack in high school, we had one guy go to Harvard. He was not class valedictorian nor salutatorian. He had no high school honors whatsoever. I never saw him in any AP class. I was salutatorian, but I was more towards the bottom ranking of all the salutatorians and I got rejected by Harvard, which is fine. I understand they only take the best. But that guy was not! I had only heard that his father had some connections.I was a bit bitter and sad that I got rejected by Harvard but that was a while back. I don’t hold any negative feelings now. As I’ve come to realize that success in life has very little to do with a college degree. Because if it did, I’m sure Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg would have never dropped out of Harvard!TLDR: I think it can easy be if you want it to be, but I believe that most of Harvard students didn’t apply to Harvard to take the easy road.As a STEM major at Harvard, I didn’t find the academic workload very light.I know that if you really wanted to, you could only pick what are know as “gut” courses that are easy A’s and probably graduate with honors - however in my personal opinion don’t think most people at Harvard do this. In all the people I knew at Harvard, I only knew of one guy who explicitly tried to take easy courses at Harvard… and he went on the Stanford Law School and is now a partner at a law firm so I assume he was either sandbagging or he knew how to work hard when he wanted to). However, since that could be some self-selection going on.My wife (who went to MIT ‘01, MS ’02) always chides on me about the Harvard’s history of grade inflation - to which I point out that she always complains that so many of friends from Harvard are unusually intense, over-achieving workaholics compared to her more mellow friends from MIT. And it is definitely true that all the grades are skewed towards A.My only limited defense of grade inflation… is what percentage of Harvard student do you think would graduate with honors at a state university? Also there is always a low quartile in any group. How would you feel if you just scraped into Harvard as a Z-Lister and the found out you were doomed to C’s for your entire college career because you were in the bottom 25% of a class of over-achievers?I hope this helps shed light on this issue from the viewpoint of an alumni.Update: OP questioned whether I was a proper judge of the my own workload while I was an undergraduate student. I’ve included the opinions of other Harvard students to support my claim that Harvard can be as hard as you want it to be.Woody Hancock's answer to Is the academic workload at Harvard very light if 90% graduate with honors?Vanessa Tan's answer to What was it like to attend Harvard when it had grade inflation?Paul Handorff's answer to What was it like to attend Harvard when it had grade inflation?Jack Korbin Kelley's answer to What is it like to take Harvard's Math 55, purported the "most difficult undergraduate math class in the country," teaching four years of math in two semesters?Math 55: Rite of Passage for Dept.'s Elite Intimidates Many | News | The Harvard Crimson.Daniel A. Stronger '01 took the class last year and ended up scarred by the experience."[Math 55] pretty much destroyed my year last year," he says. "I was doing more work for Math 55 than for all my other classes combined, and I wasn't even completing all the work. It was really painful and just too hard.You will note that Dan Stronger is an IMO medalist.Here’s another article about Math 55 Burden of Proof | Magazine | The Harvard CrimsonA classmate of mine even musical based on how hard some of his classes were“Don’t ask me what the reason was I took Math 55.I wonder now if anyone does get out of it alive.As soon as I get into class, I’m fighting off a swarmOf positive-definite non-degenerate symmetric bilinear forms.Oh! You stay up all night Tuesday working on them in your dorm.You get the same topology however you transform.You put ’em back together and you get your favorite norm.Those positive-definite non-degenerate symmetric bilinear forms.”From the song "Positive-Definite Non-Degenerate Symmetric Bilinear Forms" from the musical "Les Phys" by Peter Dong.That’s just Math 55 (which I knew I wasn’t smart enough to take). I did take Physics 16. It isn’t quite as hard as Math 55, but it still was plenty difficult for people who weren’t literally genius smart. I got a 5 on the AP Physics BC exam and perfect SAT II exam… and Physics 16 was pretty hefty workload for me. I got a B+ in it and was proud of that B+ (on the second midterm the mean score was a 20/100 and the 25% of students got a 0/100).Aspiring to be a physicist? Or just a fan of lots of work and little sleep? Then Professor Howard Georgi’s class might be for you! You can plan on spending a solid 11 hours on Physics 16 coursework outside of class each week and, as a former student so eloquently said in his/her review, “Just know in advance that Physics 16 will sometimes control your life, especially on Wednesday nights.” Does it still sound tempting? Then go for it. Although the class is infamous as one of the hardest classes you can take, with 85% of former students rating it as “difficult” or “very difficult,” 93% of those that make it through would recommend it, to some extent or another, to others. As another anonymous former student said, “It is hard, you will be like ‘wtf’ more than you probably ever have for a (science/math-y) course…but, there’s really no other way to learn intro mech[anics] with as much (sometimes only just manageable) theoretical/math-y depth.”From The 10 Hardest (& Easiest) Classes At Harvard University\