jonathan robinson

To: Admitted Students on Ivy Decision Day From: UATX Congratulations. Getting in was hard and you should be proud. Now here’s some unsolicited advice so you don’t waste the next four years. Go to class. We know this sounds obvious. But as the New York Times reported recently, Harvard students routinely skip class, rarely speak up when they're there, and focus on their devices instead of the discussion. Faculty say few students do enough preparation to contribute meaningfully. The average college student spends about 20 hours a week on class and studying combined. At UATX, we aim for 50. That’s the difference between a part-time commitment and a full-time job. You (or your parents) are about to spend upwards of $90K a year. If you don't show up, you're paying roughly $250 per skipped lecture for the privilege of sleeping in. Read the books yourself. Your generation is the first to arrive at college post-literate — raised on short-form video, dependent on algorithms, and increasingly incapable of sitting with a difficult text long enough to let it change your mind. Ninety percent of college students use AI academically. This makes you more reliant on the authority of others. Most professors will also stand between you and the text. They’ll tell you what Marx “really meant,” what Aristotle “failed to see,” as though an academic in 2026 has outsmarted minds that shaped civilizations. The good professors do the opposite: they put you in front of the book and they work with you to find what a great mind has to teach us directly. Find those professors, and read everything yourself. Say what you actually think. Seventy-three percent of conservative students report withholding their political views in class out of fear their grades will suffer. Our advice isn't political; it's intellectual. If you spend four years learning to say what's expected instead of what's true, you’ll graduate roughly where you started — just older, more credentialed, and more practiced at self-censorship. One study finds that nearly half of students show no measurable gains in “critical thinking” after two years in college. Keep this in mind as you make decisions about which professors to take and how to do your assignments. Taking a small hit on your paper to gain integrity and wisdom is usually worth it. Ask for real grades. Sixty percent of Harvard undergraduate grades are now A’s. Twenty-five years ago, it was 20%. It got so bad that the legendary Harvard professor, Harvey Mansfield, started giving students two grades: the official one for their transcript, and a private one reflecting what they actually earned. He called the official grades “ironic.” So here's a suggestion: Take your A, but also ask your professors for a “Mansfield grade” so that you know where you stand. And don’t avoid difficult courses to keep your transcript clean for law school. Get work experience before you graduate. Forty-two percent of recent college graduates are working jobs that don't require a degree. Many employers are projecting the next few years to be the worst college grad job market in years. A degree alone — even from an Ivy — is not a job guarantee. Seek out apprenticeships, internships, and real work starting freshman year. The students at UATX are connected with entrepreneurs and business leaders from day one. Many will graduate with four years of work experience alongside their degree. You can build something similar at your school, but you'll have to do it yourself. Understand how debt shapes your life. If you're paying full freight or even half, do the math with your eyes open. Your decision to take on debt will quietly reshape the trajectory of your adult life through countless small surrenders: the job you take because it’s safe instead of starting the company. The city you choose to live in. The relationship you delay and the kids you don’t have. For women, a $1,000 increase in student loan debt lowers the odds of marriage by 2% per month in the first four years after graduation. None of that shows up in the college brochure. If you're going to take on debt, treat it like the constraint it is from day one: save aggressively and make sure every dollar is buying something that will actually compound in your favor. Find the people who take school seriously. The best thing about a great school isn't the lectures or the library. It's the handful of professors and students who are genuinely there to learn — who read ahead, argue in good faith, and push you to be sharper. Find them. UATX is a small community of those who seek a serious education. At a larger university, you have to build this community yourself. * The most dangerous thing about an elite university is that it is very easy to do nothing for four years and still come out looking successful. The transcript will say you excelled. The diploma with the fancy crest will open certain doors. Your parents will be proud. And yet you will have coasted — through inflated grades, unread books, and borrowed opinions. Getting in is an accomplishment. Making the next four years worth it will be harder, and the right decisions will change everything. We wish you luck.

the goal of life is to be excited to go to work and excited to go home

Don’t just read books, re-read books. What's your favorite book to re-read?

Over the last two years, I started using an amazing new digital anti-depressant. Five years ago, I woke up and didn't want to get out of bed. Work had become...hard. The fire had gone out of me. I was flat out exhausted. Why? Because every time I'd have a great idea, I found that I needed to execute it via other people. And people are hard. I invariably needed a developer, a copywriter, a lawyer, an accountant—some middleman to move things along. People who want to do things their own way. Have their own incentives. Work at a slower pace. Or flat out don't want to do what I want them to. I would get excited about an idea, make as much progress as I could myself, then the project would get stymied and stuck in the mud of bureaucracy and coordination problems. Sure, I could be run through the wall, but it required increasing amounts of energy which I just didn't have as I approached my mid thirties. I'd have a business idea in the shower and where I previously would have been fired up. Instead, I just I felt depressed. I'd think: "That will just be exhausting and not turn out the way I'd hoped. Why bother?" It was a bleak period. But that all changed when ChatGPT came out. Now, many things that previously would have required people, can simply go to ChatGPT or Claude. It's my strategist. My designer. My accountant. My lawyer. As Steve Jobs pitched the original Mac: "A bicycle for the mind." Except that AI is an automated electric bicycle that travels miles in a matter of seconds. Since all these incredible tools came out, I've felt completely reinvigorated at work. I jump out of bed, sometimes at 4:30AM because I'm so excited to get to work. Something I haven't felt since my early twenties. While it represents massive disruption and change to many jobs, I could not be more excited for AI to give anybody the tools and knowledge to achieve whatever they want to achieve. No matter how advanced and crazy. Who would have guessed that AI would be such an effective anti-depressant?