Harvard and MIT, and my university

[budala]

I read the course syllabus' of MIT and Harvard universities and my university. There is no difference between assignements, labs, exams, etc between those 2 famous universities and my university.

Then why would someone say their graduates are better trained than me and/or graduates from other universities.

 

[ZapperZ]

I read the course syllabus' of MIT and Harvard universities and my university. There is no difference between assignements, labs, exams, etc between those 2 famous universities and my university.

Then why would someone say their graduates are better trained than me and/or graduates from other universities.

Course syllabus is as accurate at depicting the quality of education that you get as much as a book cover conveys accurately the content of a book.

How about looking at a citaton index and figure out (i) how many published papers come out of the department (ii) how many citations are made out of those papers (iii) the amount of research funds spent per year, etc.?

Now, having said that, I'm one of those people who believe that one can get a decent, if not as good, of an undergraduate education at other non-brand name universities. However, going about this simply by looking at course syllabus will not give you much indication of anything.

Zz.

 

[Office_Shredder]

Then why would someone say their graduates are better trained than me and/or graduates from other universities.

To cite one example, their graduates don't waste a day reading other schools' course syllabi

 

[devious_]

To cite one example, their graduates don't waste a day reading other schools' course syllabi

That was one of the most pointless comments I've ever had the misfortune to read.

 

[buddyholly9999]

their graduates don't waste a day reading other schools' course syllabi

Got to know who your competition is...;)

 

[sean1234]

Typically the best go in, and the best come out. But this is not to say that you have to go to a top school to be equal to their best graduates when you graduate from your school.

 

[JasonJo]

I read the course syllabus' of MIT and Harvard universities and my university. There is no difference between assignements, labs, exams, etc between those 2 famous universities and my university.

Then why would someone say their graduates are better trained than me and/or graduates from other universities.

you control your own destiny, you control your own life, nothing else. don't worry about what everyone else is doing, stick to your own plan and you'll do fine.

 

[leon1127]

For one of my course, the syllabus of it says that it was a course about Laplace and Fourier transforms, special functions, systems, signals, and their applications in physical sciences and engineering.
In fact, the class was mainly about linear algebra, Fourier Analysis, Quternions, and Matrix Algebra.

 

[leright]

Course syllabus is as accurate at depicting the quality of education that you get as much as a book cover conveys accurately the content of a book.

How about looking at a citaton index and figure out (i) how many published papers come out of the department (ii) how many citations are made out of those papers (iii) the amount of research funds spent per year, etc.?

Now, having said that, I'm one of those people who believe that one can get a decent, if not as good, of an undergraduate education at other non-brand name universities. However, going about this simply by looking at course syllabus will not give you much indication of anything.

Zz.

Generally for undergrad school, if the syllabi of the smaller lesser (and cheaper) school is identical to the larger prestigious school and the profs at both unis cover everything on the syllabus (which I suppose some profs do not) then it seems like there is no significant difference. Even at the "lesser" school, at the ugrad level the profs (who are still experts in their fields) are still definitely qualified to teach the courses, and might be better at teaching than the big MIT prof...also, at the smaller uni the profs are more focused on teaching, and less on research...not to mention at the smaller university you're sitting in a classroom with no more than 20 students in the courses every takes, and many courses have 3-5 students. Also, no ugrad classes at the smaller university are taught by TAs.

For ugrad, I feel, and many other people feel (such as profs) think that going to a smaller (and often less prestigious) uni with much more personalized attention is the best choice for ugrad school. However, grad school is a completely different story.

Also, the prof has a much closer eye on your progress in a small uni setting and in that sense you are being scritinized more closely and you performance is being evaluated and corrected more readily.

 

[budala]

i also would like to add that i have looked at MIT's and Harvard's previous exams and solutions and i honestly had no problem solving their questions. I did not find that they went more into depth than my university had, and i had no difficulty in completing their previous exams. I do agree that graduate studies is a different study. I was just wondering, then why do these universities charge significantly more and find it somewhat unfair how their undergraduate degree's have such a prestige attached to their names, yet its misleading. This reminds my of high school, and those students who went to private schools in Toronto, you paid and honestly did not gain anything except a high percentage and in most cases had the false belief that they knew their course material but failed at university. So why are these universities seen as significatly better institutions when they did not offer a better education than many other universites?

 

[SpiffyKavu]

But an undergraduate program isn't all about the academics. Sure, learning in classes is a big part, but students should also interact with the faculty and do research. The big named universities may have more research opportunities, and also allows undergraduate students the chance to talk to and learn from world class physicists. And it boils down to these things more often than not, when applying to graduate schools: what research you've done and recommendations. If you can get a recommendation from a true expert in the field of interest, it will look great.

And while this is important, I'm not sure if it is worth paying extra tens of thousands of dollars.

 

[leright]

But an undergraduate program isn't all about the academics. Sure, learning in classes is a big part, but students should also interact with the faculty and do research. The big named universities may have more research opportunities, and also allows undergraduate students the chance to talk to and learn from world class physicists. And it boils down to these things more often than not, when applying to graduate schools: what research you've done and recommendations. If you can get a recommendation from a true expert in the field of interest, it will look great.

And while this is important, I'm not sure if it is worth paying extra tens of thousands of dollars.

You can do an REU at another university during the summers, and with personalized attention and professors that know you well (since you were in a couple of their 5 student classes) they really push hard to get you into one.

And you can talk with profs at other universities also. You are mainly paying for you lecture time.

 

[fliptomato]

Big School / Small School

I read the course syllabus' of MIT and Harvard universities and my university. There is no difference between assignements, labs, exams, etc between those 2 famous universities and my university.

Then why would someone say their graduates are better trained than me and/or graduates from other universities.

Hi Budala, this general question of "big school" versus "small school" for undergrad has been brought up a couple of times in this forum (I've commented on a few of them). For some background I went to a 'big name school', so you'll probably want to normalize my statements against my background. That being said, I've graduated don't feel any need to validate my undergrad institution. :tongue2:

Pithy comments aside, you shouldn't think too much about what university you are currently enrolled in versus other universities. There are plenty of students in big name schools who end up doing poorly and there are plenty of students in smalls chools who do very well. Just because a student goes to one school or another it doesn't say anything about their potential as a gradaute student.

(As a side note, I do believe there is a correlation between the 'prestige' of one's undergrad school with one's performance in high school. But once you're in college, nobody cares how you did in high school.)

I was just wondering, then why do these universities charge significantly more and find it somewhat unfair how their undergraduate degree's have such a prestige attached to their names, yet its misleading.

But you did raise a decent question asking how big name universities can justify their tuition relative to smaller schools with, as you note, nearly identical curricula. Here are my thoughts:

1) Prestige. What's the value of prestige? Not much if you're a scientist. But if you're the son/daughter of an influential politician or someone interested in becoming a politician, then it might be a different story.

2) Brand-name diploma. This is another thing that I saw around me and that I find disappointing. From a slightly more cynical point of view, it doesn't matter whether or not the students are any better at big-name schools versus smaller schools. If employers perceive a difference between the students just because of their school, then this validates the tuition. It's unfortunate that there are several bums who go to a big-name school who get good jobs over more qualified people who went to smaller schools, but it does happen. There are some companies (such as brand-name consulting firms) that I've heard will only look at applications from a handful of the biggest-name schools. ((Another way to look at this is that students are rewarded excessively for doing well in high school.))

3) Other students. Now here's something that's a little more reasonable. Big-name schools attract the best students. Do *all* the best students go to big-name schools? Of course not. Nor is it true that all the students at big-name schools are that great. However, I imagine there is a good correlation between the top students in high school and the top 'big name' universities. The value of this is being able to live and work with intelligent students, to network with them, etc. I've seen lots of students (primarily computer scientists) get together and form startups immediately after college.

4) Research. As mentioned before, research is a large part of the pitch that big-name schools make to prospective students. These schools have the top faculty and large research budgets that often trickle over to undergrads. The opportunities often extend beyond summer REUs, as students can work at their home institution over the course of the academic year as well. Also, the projects tend to be associated with 'hot' research topics. There's a lot one can learn from doing research with top name faculty (how to think about problems, novel approaches, etc.)... this may or may not offset discrepancies in the lecture-based education.

5) Grad Students. Big research universities also attract the top grad students (in the same sense that they attract the top undergrads). Undergrads benefit from this in two ways: (1) graduate coursework. (2) graduate student mentors (often associated with research).

6) Silver spoon treatment. Also, at the end of the day, big-name schools have lots of money to spend on undergraduates. This can take the form of extensive overseas programs (actual school-sponsored campuses abroad), NCAA-caliber sports facilities for student use, extensive extracurricular activities that are funded by the school, an alumni association that sponsors lots of activities, having big-name speakers/bands/whatever visit etc, etc.

Anyway, does all this mean that a big name school is better than a small school? Certainly not. Everyone has to find the undergraduate experience that is right for him/herself. It may not be bad to have an eye on other schools to make sure you're competitive with their students (I felt very similarly about another big -Tech school, even though I went to a big-name school), but don't obsess over it.

I understand that it can be really frustrating when big-name schools get the 'reputation' for having the best students, especially when you yourself are working hard at being one of the best students yourself. However, you must take these statements in stride and know that some of the best students do come out of smaller schools. Even if the second coming of Ed Witten graduated from No-Name University, people will still say Harvard/MIT/etc. are the best schools with the best students (warranted or otherwise).

 

[budala]

fliptomato, i read your reply and found it VERY insightful, interesting and i appreciate you taking the time to respond. I believe that you really replied in an honest manner and gave me a real look at how these universites operate. I found it useful when you mentioned that these universites usually had 'hot' research topics, because this is true, i have read several articles on the interesting research topics MIT has done in their engineering research :D anyways, thanks for you post, i really enjoyed reading it!

 

[mathwonk]

tell me the name of your school and i will read the various syllabi and see if i agree with you. harvard's course syllabi certainly are a lot more ambitious than those at my school, the university of georgia.

 

[Haxx0rm4ster]

To cite one example, their graduates don't waste a day reading other schools' course syllabi

Now, I got to say that THAT was a good one!

:!) :rofl:

 

[mathwonk]

ok i looked at harvards course desriptions and they are very miodest, i do not fault you for not realizing how advanced they are from the descriptions, but the first thing you should notice when you go to harvards website is the names of the professors offering the cousres. many f them are fields medalists. this is just unheard of most places.

i can assure when a FIELDS MEDALIST GIVES A COUSRE it is not the same cousre you get from a nudge like me at a state university.

and look at the desriptions of the grad cousres. at harvard the best undergrads always take several grad courses. in fact even i started in a grad course as a freshman at harvard.this is the desription of the basic grad diff geom and complex courses at harvard:

Mathematics 213a. Complex Analysis
Catalog Number: 1621
Curtis T. McMullen
Half course (fall term). M., W., F., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 5
Fundamentals of complex analysis, and further topics such as elliptic functions, canonical products, conformal mapping, extremal length, harmonic measure and capacity.
Prerequisite: Basic complex analysis, topology of covering spaces, differential forms.

Mathematics 213b. Advanced Complex Analysis
Catalog Number: 2641
Curtis T. McMullen
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., 10–11:30. EXAM GROUP: 12, 13
Fundamentals of Riemann surfaces. Topics may include sheaves and cohomology, potential theory, uniformization, and moduli.
Prerequisite: Mathematics 213a.

mcmullen is a fields medalist.

Mathematics 230ar. Differential Geometry
Catalog Number: 0372
Shing-Tung Yau
Half course (fall term). M., W., F., at 2. EXAM GROUP: 7
Elements of differential geometry: Riemannian geometry, symplectic and Kaehler geometry, Geodesics, Riemann curvature, Darboux’s theorem, moment maps and symplectic quotients, complex and Kaehler manifolds, Dolbeault and de Rham cohomology.Mathematics 230br. Differential Geometry
Catalog Number: 0504
Ilia Zharkov
Half course (spring term). M., W., F., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 5
A continuation of Mathematics 230ar. Topics in global Riemannian geometry: Ricci curvature and volume comparison; sectional curvature and distance comparison; Toponogov’s theorem and applications; sphere theorems; Gromov’s betti number bounds; Gromov-Hausdorff convergence; Cheeger’s finiteness theorem, and convergence theorems.
Prerequisite: Mathematics 135.these guys are also giants. i assure you these courses are on a higher level than those almost anywhere else. go sit in on one sometime and see for yourself.of course maybe you are at berkeley or ihes, but if you are at georgia tech or univ of washington, or even michigan, or illinois, i am guessing your course is probably not on this level. for one thing the students are not on this level.

but i could be wrong.

 

[abdo375]

Normally I wouldn't reply to such topic since it's not my place and I don't know a lot about the subject, but I've been reading an autobiography about Ahmed zewail an Egyptian Scientist and a Nobel prize winner, who got his bachelor and master's form the Univ. of alexandria in Egypt, and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and done his postdoctoral research in UC Berkeley and is currently a professor at Caltech.

I said this to say that and I'm quoting from his book (with some translation) :

"In the mean time there was no scientific barrier in my life, but there was something more important that had appeared, it was the type of science itself ,the science that I have learned in the University of Pennsylvania was all the way different from the kind of science that I found at berkeley.

The University of Pennsylvania has earned it's reputation from the effort of certain research groups that work under great professors, and there is a small number of these groups here in Pennsylvania.

But Berkley has allowed me to log in into a new and extreme kind of science leading to new and extreme scientific discoveries"

 

[mathwonk]

it is not a simple matter. there is a real difference between harvard, mit, etc and most other schools, but that does not stop the talented student at another school from achieving at the highest level anyway.

in my case going to these top schools gave me a lot of help and advantages, without which i personally would likely not have reached the goals i did, but many of the more talented and accomplished people at my school went elsewhere.

i.e. going to top schools can help you, but the best people may outperform you even without those advantages. these people do usually wind up eventually at the top schools however. i.e. it is not so exclusively the top schools that produce the best scholars, but they do recruit them after they become visible.

take a recent fields medalist: curt mcmullen. he went to williams college but then took a phd at harvard, and after winning the fields medal was recruited back to harvard where he is now.

there are many such cases.

 

[axeae]

in fact even i started in a grad course as a freshman at harvard.

you took a graduate course during your freshman year of undergrad?? wow, what course?

 

[mathwonk]

math 280, mathematical logic, from Willard Van Orman Quine. This sort of thing was not unheard of then. While waiting to interview, I met a 17 year old senior at Harvard.

In my dorm was a 15 year old genius named Eddie Ross, who was taking the Loomis and Sternberg math course (taught then out of Apostol's analysis book by Sternberg) while i was taking the "Spivak" course, taught then out of Courant, by John Tate.

I did not continue though in math 280, as the requirement was for me to read his entire undergraduate logic book the first week, and I only made it through half of it before getting tired and stopping. So the prof said I knew some but not all the prerecs and could decide for myself what to do, so I bailed. After that though the undergrad course was pretty boring.

There were several other kids there taking grad courses as undergrads, indeed that was normal. Such as Spencer Bloch, Jeff Cheeger, John Mather. Those guys are all famous mathematicians now.

 

[mathwonk]

the loomis and sternberg course was also mostly subscribed by freshmen, and that course would be a grad course at my current school if we even offered it.

 

[nikola-tesla]

Harvard's program I don't find equal and/or more appealing than the programs at The University of Toronto or University of Waterloo, Ontario.
http://www.deas.harvard.edu/press/FactBrochure.pdf

 

[leright]

Harvard's program I don't find equal and/or more appealing than the programs at The University of Toronto or University of Waterloo, Ontario.
http://www.deas.harvard.edu/press/FactBrochure.pdf

Harvard's engineering program is nothing spectacular though...you're comparing a school known most for its engineering to a school that is really not that good for engineering. A better comparison to U of T would be MIT, for instance.

 

[nikola-tesla]

leright, I am sure you are right, thank you very much.

 

[mathwonk]

although i like harvard, toronto and many other Canadian schools are also excellent.

i think you have to go to harvard to appreciate the atmosphere there. but i have never been to toronto.

 

[mathwonk]

that link for harvard was a pr brochure. you need to compare the courses and the faculties and the students.

 

[mathwonk]

im going to agree with you though, harvards engineering courses do not seem nearly as extensive as torontos.

i am a pure math guy, and i think in that realm harvard is hard to touch.

 

[twofish-quant]

I did my undergraduate at MIT. So... It may be the case that your university is better at teaching physics than MIT is. First of all, the formal classroom instruction at MIT is decent, but it's not particularly spectacular. Also just because someone is a Nobel/Fields prize winner doesn't mean they can teach. There is no shortage of brilliant researchers at MIT that just can't teach worth a darn. (There are some brilliant researchers that are also brilliant teachers, but the two don't seem to be correlated.)

Now what is the strong point of MIT is that you learn a culture and meet interesting people. You should *NOT* go to MIT for the formal classroom instruction, but there are lots of informal things that make a huge difference. One small thing that's a big thing. All tests at MIT are hand graded. There are no scantron or multiple choice tests. MIT does not have "weed out" classes.

MIT has a pretty average "formal curriculum" but the things that you really learn are in the "hidden curriculum." You learn to hate MIT. That's good. If you hate something in the right way, then you make it better. Curiously, if you study physics, you learn to love physics even more. This is not a small thing since I've seen lots of people in state schools wanting to be physicists, and then hating physics, whereas I've never seen that happen with many people at MIT.

So there is a lot about MIT that makes it a strong school, but nothing about that is rocket science, and other places with motivated faculties can also reproduce what makes MIT work.

 

[twofish-quant]

I was just wondering, then why do these universities charge significantly more

Because they can.

find it somewhat unfair how their undergraduate degree's have such a prestige attached to their names, yet its misleading.

It's marketing and branding. MIT can charge large amounts of money for the same reason that Coca-Cola can charge more than generic Colas. One thing about MIT is that it's a known quantity. You can be reasonably sure that a graduate of MIT isn't totally incompetent, whereas if you have a less well branded school, you don't have that assurance.

So why are these universities seen as significatly better institutions when they did not offer a better education than many other universites?

Social brainwashing.

MIT and Harvard are run by people with money and power, and people with money and power are good at convincing everyone else that they are better and therefore deserve money and power. Also learning how this social brainwashing works is part of your education, which is one reason to go to MIT.

One thing that I really like about MIT is that they don't try to box you in with departments, so it's easier to be interdisciplinary than most schools. Suppose you want to start a company. Well, you'll need to learn engineering, but you also need to know some basic management, finance, and marketing. It's much easier to do that at MIT than at a lot of other schools. Also, listening to entrepreneurs is very educational. One problem with a lot of biographies is that they just talk about good things. If you have someone that started a company talking with you, they'll tell you some things that never makes it into books (like the 50 times they totally messed up before they got something right).

 

[kote]

One thing that I really like about MIT is that they don't try to box you in with departments, so it's easier to be interdisciplinary than most schools. Suppose you want to start a company. Well, you'll need to learn engineering, but you also need to know some basic management, finance, and marketing. It's much easier to do that at MIT than at a lot of other schools

The openness of the curriculum is probably a good thing to consider for any school. I don't know if there is a certain type of school where it's easier to do this than others, except in general smaller schools are more likely to be flexible. I definitely recommend trying to get some cross-disciplinary training in general, especially if you're not focused on getting a PhD in your field.

 

[twofish-quant]

the first thing you should notice when you go to harvards website is the names of the professors offering the cousres. many of them are fields medalists. this is just unheard of most places.

One thing that I learned at MIT is that just because someone is brilliant doesn't mean that they can teach. It's sometimes a *bad thing* to have a teacher that is too smart because they just cannot understand why you cannot grasp a concept that is totally obvious to them. I can think of two Nobel Prize winners that make *dreadful* teachers. Everyone knows that, and they try to keep people as far away from the undergraduate students as possible.

But learning that Nobel Prize winners are human, and they they do have their faults may be useful.

However, curiously it matters less. The weird thing about MIT is that you can have a professor that is totally and utterly incompetent teaching a course, and the students learn the material anyway.

of course maybe you are at berkeley or ihes, but if you are at georgia tech or univ of washington, or even michigan, or illinois, i am guessing your course is probably not on this level. for one thing the students are not on this level.

I don't think this is true at least for University of Texas at Austin.

 

[story645]

I read the course syllabus' of MIT and Harvard universities and my university. There is no difference between assignements, labs, exams, etc between those 2 famous universities and my university.

If you were looking at the engineering curriculum, they're all pretty much the same 'cause ABET (the big accreditation board-the people who evaluate if a degree has merit) has a list of requirements for what engineering schools should be teaching for every major it oversees. In general accreditation ends up somewhat standardizing curriculums.

There's a lot one can learn from doing research with top name faculty (how to think about problems, novel approaches, etc.)...

Some small schools end up being more advantageous for undergrads in this respect, 'cause a lot of the large schools have so many grad students that it can be difficult for undergrads to get any real experience, whereas many small schools don't have that many grad students so there can be a ton of opportunities for undergrads. (My school has a few great, funded, programs for undergraduate research, so a lot of our undergrads get published.)

 

[twofish-quant]

If you were looking at the engineering curriculum, they're all pretty much the same 'cause ABET (the big accreditation board-the people who evaluate if a degree has merit) has a list of requirements for what engineering schools should be teaching for every major it oversees. In general accreditation ends up somewhat standardizing curriculums.

One other thing that ends up standardizing curriculum is that professors move around. What happened in physics and astronomy is that in the 1950's, most of the work was done in Harvard, MIT, Columbia. When Sputnik happened, you had all of these Ph.D.'s starting programs at other schools, and trying to make things work at Big State University the way that things worked at MIT.

The other thing about things is that technology changes a lot. You can take Walter Lewin's 8.01 physics lectures and put them on youtube. If you have a Fields medal winner giving outstanding lectures at Harvard, well those can go on youtube also. Also, the fact that anyone can go to the MIT website, look at their physics and math curriculum and find out that it's more or less the same as the physics and math curriculum at any other university is something that you couldn't do in 1985.

Part of the reason that I really want people to ask these tough questions is because I was involved with educational reform at MIT in the late-1980's. The thing about educational reform is that you have a huge number of meetings, lots of screaming, tons of dead trees, and in the end nothing serious gets done, and nothing will get done because there is no reason to change things.

If you put the President of MIT on the spot and ask her point blank why people should pay $$$$$ for the same education that they can get for $, and she can't come up with an immediate answer, then stuff will happen and things will change at MIT.

 

[mrb]

I can add that at my school, the actual courses often fall far short of the course descriptions. Often important topics get left out completely. I have had courses that cover less than half of the book chapters we were supposed to cover. This is because there is a high proportion of weak students, and instructors don't feel comfortable leaving half the class behind.

I have to imagine that this kind of thing doesn't happen often at MIT and Harvard.