I totally agree -- Princeton would really not have been the best choice for this type of student. I actually enjoyed this film more than I expected to given some of the harsh critical responses -- but I liked it because it afforded some very funny and very accurate insights into the college admissions process and its absurdly competitive nature (practically everyone in reality applying to the top twenty schools DOES have a 4.0 or higher weighted GPA, everyone has high SAT scores, everyone has special extracurricular activities, etc -- the competition is insane). So yeah Jeremiah's sudden interest in Princeton seemed a bit forced, and considering the fact that most college-bound students aiming for schools like Princeton have been working for it for years with exceptional grades and test scores also, Jeremiah would/should have been encouraged by a counselor-type like Rudd's character to look at the top liberal arts colleges. Still intensely competitive of course -- but the more intimate environment, combined with an off- beat sensibility (Macalester as one example), would have helped a student like Jeremiah "find himself" and adjust to a competitive college curriculum, workload, and environment.
Given the boy's quirky personality, the fact that he thrived when closely mentored (as in the case of his teachers at Quest who recognized his potential, the Russian philosophy professor, and also Paul Rudd's character), and his "quirky" unusual, sort of theatrical interests -- he seems like the ideal candidate for a liberal arts college like Williams or Amherst or Macalester -- he would thrive in the small-classroom atmosphere as opposed to the competitive lecture halls of the big universities. Even the smaller classes at the research universities have a "big" feel since the professors are research-oriented so their attention is mainly focused on publishing (this is not to say that they are not capable of being outstanding teachers -- I attended Stanford before I went to grad school and my profs were exceptional). My wife and I both have Ivy League Ph.D.s, and we are professors at a small (elite) liberal arts college -- and honestly we enjoyed this film -- it was a pleasant surprise, and the glimpse it affords into the college admissions process is quite accurate and probably good to show students so they know what they are up against. We kept saying that Jeremiah seemed like the perfect liberal arts college student, a brilliant "auto-didact" who needed some careful mentoring and an intimate environment in which to thrive. Not Princeton or any other big, competitive research university, at least not until he could hold himself together.
"I love those redheads!" (Wooderson, Dazed and Confused, 199
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