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They take education seriously sure, but a school that is 10x more competitive and 10x as expensive as a state school has at most 1.5x better teaching. It doesn'

They take education seriously sure, but a school that is 10x more competitive and 10x as expensive as a state school has at most 1.5x better teaching. It doesn't scale. The real asset is the student body. The department is good because it's competitive more so than it's competitive because it's good.

hga 17y ago
Please define "competitive". E.g. MIT does not grade on the curve; that would be insane, instead they grade on mastery of material. I've e.g. never heard of someone sabotaging another work to improve their own grade, we're all in it together and tend to help each other out. As for costs, about 5 minutes with Google suggests a 5x difference compared to average state school tuition costs. Based on my experience, the difference in teaching quality is a LOT more than 1.5x, but I wouldn't be able to pin it down. I'd say the real asset is not the student body per se, but the whole community and the ingrained meritocratic attitudes. It's assumed by default that everyone at MIT is serious about what they're doing (which of course is not 100% academics, not that we've ever managed to top CalTech's Rose Bowl hack :-), and there's a tremendous amount of respect all around. It's said that undergraduates are treated like grad students (and that includes serious cutting edge research (e.g. through UROP; in both my experiences there, the problems had not been solved, period)) and grad students like junior facility, and on up for faculity (except, I will add, everyone in the Math Department is treated like shit, but it's not entirely horrible (my first job was maintaining a computer system in that department)). And in the end, if you're trying to get into a good grad school, which is the better foundation? If you care about how your resume impresses people and opens doors, which school would you rather have on it (note that in lower quality tech areas MIT envy doesn't make this entirely a good thing, but then again it acts as a filtering function).
- metamemetics 17y ago
  competitive=admissions acceptance rate\exclusivity. I completely agree that schools like Stanford (7.6% acceptance rate) and MIT (9.7% acceptance rate) are an amazing foundation. My argument is: As competitiveness\exclusivity of a university increases, the quality of the student body increases at a much faster rate than the quality of instruction. I once took a single semester at a local state school in the middle of my college career solely to get cheap credits for a new university\department I was transferring to. The professors were still very bright, had PhDs, and repeatedly encouraged students to come into their office (the vast majority didn't). They were however ALL foreign, from India, eastern europe, or china. In addition, the one programming class I took was taught by someone who had spent more time in industry than research. Also, they had to teach at a MUCH slower rate than they were capable of to cater to the student body. The limiting factor was the students.
  - hga 17y ago
    Yes, I see your point, and it's a significant and important one (but I'm not in position to comment well on it, knowing only MIT and Harvard students, the latter through various friends of mine from Up Chuck River :-). It's significant based on what I've heard of India's famed IITs. They don't have top of the line equipment, their professors aren't always the best; it's their student bodies that make them more than anything else. When you get the very best (in their areas) out of 1 billion people.... As for MIT numbers, you might find these interesting/useful: current yearly applications are something like 13,000, a bit more than 3,000 are judged as being able to do the work (that's the number one thing that's important to MIT; while mistakes are inevitable, it accepts no one who they don't fully believe can make it). 10% of those are "obvious admits" and the admissions staff, augmented by anyone on the staff with a clue who volunteers (especially to make absolutely sure every application gets at least two readings) then agonize over who amongst the rest to offer a slot to. (It's hard and not really fun; I have a very good friend who does this on a time available basis and I helped her a bit one year when I was on the staff.) MIT shoots for a yield of around 1080 the last time I checked (that figure is old, but is tightly constrained by available student housing, all freshman must spend their first year in it; one year the the admissions office made a big enough mistake they had to turn a graduate dorm's basement into makeshift housing, which perhaps not surprisingly worked out very well (they bonded into a tight and self-supporting group)). The self-selection in applications is tremendous. Nobody attends MIT who doesn't think they wanted to (that can of course change once they arrive ^_^, but I didn't see much of that in the '80s). Thanks for the intelligent discussion and observations.

hga 17y ago

Please define "competitive". E.g. MIT does not grade on the curve; that would be insane, instead they grade on mastery of material. I've e.g. never heard of someone sabotaging another work to improve their own grade, we're all in it together and tend to help each other out. As for costs, about 5 minutes with Google suggests a 5x difference compared to average state school tuition costs. Based on my experience, the difference in teaching quality is a LOT more than 1.5x, but I wouldn't be able to pin it down. I'd say the real asset is not the student body per se, but the whole community and the ingrained meritocratic attitudes. It's assumed by default that everyone at MIT is serious about what they're doing (which of course is not 100% academics, not that we've ever managed to top CalTech's Rose Bowl hack :-), and there's a tremendous amount of respect all around. It's said that undergraduates are treated like grad students (and that includes serious cutting edge research (e.g. through UROP; in both my experiences there, the problems had not been solved, period)) and grad students like junior facility, and on up for faculity (except, I will add, everyone in the Math Department is treated like shit, but it's not entirely horrible (my first job was maintaining a computer system in that department)). And in the end, if you're trying to get into a good grad school, which is the better foundation? If you care about how your resume impresses people and opens doors, which school would you rather have on it (note that in lower quality tech areas MIT envy doesn't make this entirely a good thing, but then again it acts as a filtering function).

metamemetics 17y ago
competitive=admissions acceptance rate\exclusivity. I completely agree that schools like Stanford (7.6% acceptance rate) and MIT (9.7% acceptance rate) are an amazing foundation. My argument is: As competitiveness\exclusivity of a university increases, the quality of the student body increases at a much faster rate than the quality of instruction. I once took a single semester at a local state school in the middle of my college career solely to get cheap credits for a new university\department I was transferring to. The professors were still very bright, had PhDs, and repeatedly encouraged students to come into their office (the vast majority didn't). They were however ALL foreign, from India, eastern europe, or china. In addition, the one programming class I took was taught by someone who had spent more time in industry than research. Also, they had to teach at a MUCH slower rate than they were capable of to cater to the student body. The limiting factor was the students.
- hga 17y ago
  Yes, I see your point, and it's a significant and important one (but I'm not in position to comment well on it, knowing only MIT and Harvard students, the latter through various friends of mine from Up Chuck River :-). It's significant based on what I've heard of India's famed IITs. They don't have top of the line equipment, their professors aren't always the best; it's their student bodies that make them more than anything else. When you get the very best (in their areas) out of 1 billion people.... As for MIT numbers, you might find these interesting/useful: current yearly applications are something like 13,000, a bit more than 3,000 are judged as being able to do the work (that's the number one thing that's important to MIT; while mistakes are inevitable, it accepts no one who they don't fully believe can make it). 10% of those are "obvious admits" and the admissions staff, augmented by anyone on the staff with a clue who volunteers (especially to make absolutely sure every application gets at least two readings) then agonize over who amongst the rest to offer a slot to. (It's hard and not really fun; I have a very good friend who does this on a time available basis and I helped her a bit one year when I was on the staff.) MIT shoots for a yield of around 1080 the last time I checked (that figure is old, but is tightly constrained by available student housing, all freshman must spend their first year in it; one year the the admissions office made a big enough mistake they had to turn a graduate dorm's basement into makeshift housing, which perhaps not surprisingly worked out very well (they bonded into a tight and self-supporting group)). The self-selection in applications is tremendous. Nobody attends MIT who doesn't think they wanted to (that can of course change once they arrive ^_^, but I didn't see much of that in the '80s). Thanks for the intelligent discussion and observations.