Academic Ambition Quotes

Thus, after finishing high school, I started with high expectations and enthusiasm to study chemistry at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

My mother used to wheel me about the campus when we lived in that neighborhood and, as she recounted years later, she would tell me that I would go to McGill.

Some people take the spelling bee very seriously. These people are called "parents of children in the spelling bee." They're trying to make up for their own childhood of crushed dreams and misspelled words.

I went to Cambridge and thought I would stay there. I thought I would quietly grow tweed in a corner somewhere and become a Don or something.

The Rhodes is something I've always really wanted. I would never have applied for it if I didn't really want to go. The opportunity to study at Oxford is amazing.

I wanted to go to Harvard because it felt like it would be the Hogwarts Academy of law schools.

I had gotten a master's degree in administration supervision with it in mind that I would some day be a professor, then get a doctorate degree and move up and eventually be president of a university.

At first, after my freshman year, it was kind of a joke, going into my sophomore year like, 'Hey, I wanna graduate in three years, two-and-a-half.' And we were just kind of playing with it, added some extra classes in, and then once I finished that following spring going into that next summer, it was just like, 'Hey, I can actually do it.'

I think my parents - my mother in particular - always believed I should go as far as I could with my studies. There was no pressure, but at each step there were people who you admired, and you strived to those levels.

Dartmouth represented a great opportunity. I wanted to go to the best possible school I could go to.

The family's dream was to see me receive a high degree abroad and to return to become a university professor - on the door to my study room, a sign was placed reading 'Dr. Ahmed,' even though I was still far from becoming a doctor.

I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.

In 1953 there were two ways for an Irish Catholic boy to impress his parents: become a priest or attend Notre Dame.

I was a beast in college. I worked hard and I played hard. I was relentless learning about business. I actually snuck into MBA classes my freshman and sophomore years. I wanted to challenge myself to see how I compared to the smartest kids at Indiana University so I was 18 and pretended I was an MBA student.

I want to go to college, definitely. If it's possible, I want to.

My scholarly expectation is then that I may succeed in becoming clever in philosophy in spite of my stupidity.

I was one of those dorky kids who'd wanted to go to Harvard since the fifth grade.

If intellectual curiosity, professional pride, and ambition are the dominant incentives to research, then assuredly no one has a fairer chance of gratifying them than a mathematician.

By the time I reached the sixth form at my local grammar school, my father would glower at me every time I passed him with a stack of books under my arm, warning me there was no money to go to university.

In my family, graduating and getting your bachelor's is just the beginning. It's only expected. You're underachieving if you don't strive for more than that.

I want to go to college if I can. That's really important to me, and I really hope that I get that opportunity to do so.

I was really into my studies and wanted to be a doctor.

I saw my friends in medical school seeming to be more engaged with the real world. That provoked a sort of jealousy, and I decided to go to medical school after all.