Harvard and MIT, and my university

[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.

 

[kote]

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.

This also happens through pure demographics. Harvard puts out more PhDs than it hires. I was surprised by the number of professors with PhDs from Harvard/Princeton/Stanford etc teaching at my school. I would imagine that at any school the professors can't be too many "generations" away from the big names.

 

[twofish-quant]

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.

Most of the courses at MIT have been taught year after year, so instructors know what to cover and what not to cover. Instructors do skip around the book a lot.

Also students at MIT and Harvard have a wide range of math abilities. There is a minimum set that you need in order to get in, but the math ability among students ranges from good to total scary crazy genius, so there is a huge effort at gearing the course toward the students, so that students with good math skills get the basics and those that are totally scary crazy genius aren't bored.

Freshman year tends to be tough for MIT students, because that's the time people whose math skills are "merely good" meet people that are totally scary crazy math geniuses. It's usually a shock for someone that was the top math student in their state go somewhere that the find that they are in the bottom 20%, but you get use to it.

 

[Shackleford]

What an interesting thread.

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...

 

[LebLlama]

Its all bull. Like in grade school when they had the "gifted" program. Its the same stuff, just more of it.

Also in college, you could graduate with honors, but why? It cost more, is more (of the same)work, that's it. Its just like spending an extra 10,000$ to get a mercedes when the cheaper honda works just as well.

I know someone who graduated with honors and got accepted to the same pharm school as someone with a 3.0 GPA. Hah. Nobody cares about your honors degree or your hardvard stamp.

 

[kote]

Its all bull. Like in grade school when they had the "gifted" program. Its the same stuff, just more of it.

Also in college, you could graduate with honors, but why? It cost more, is more (of the same)work, that's it. Its just like spending an extra 10,000$ to get a mercedes when the cheaper honda works just as well.

I know someone who graduated with honors and got accepted to the same pharm school as someone with a 3.0 GPA. Hah. Nobody cares about your honors degree or your hardvard stamp.

This absolutely depends on your goals, and it's simply not true that nobody cares. There's also a lot more to a resume than school name and GPA, so don't read much into individual cases. Some grad schools and jobs require near 4.0. Some companies hire almost exclusively from name-brand schools. Some employers treat anything between a 3.2 and 4.0 as essentially the same and look at other factors.

The idea that your experience and background are irrelevant to your career options just sounds like wishful thinking to me. It is definitely not based in reality.

 

[twofish-quant]

Its all bull. Like in grade school when they had the "gifted" program. Its the same stuff, just more of it.

It's not. Both MIT and Harvard really does teach physics quite well. That's not to say that they are the only places where you can get a good physics education, but there are things that MIT and Harvard just do differently than other schools which teach physics less well.

You aren't going to tell the difference from the formal curriculum. Since the formal curriculum at MIT is pretty much exactly the same as any other physics university. What you really learn is the *informal* and *hidden* curriculum. What happens is that if you are around a group of people that think and act a certain way and have certain attitudes, those attitudes will rub off on you. If you are in an environment and you do certain things, you get reward for doing it or you get punished and you end up adapting to that environment.

I think it's great that MIT has put everything online, but there is still a difference between watching the Superbowl on TV and being on the 50 yard line.

That's not to say that you can't reproduce MIT elsewhere, you can, but the essence of the place doesn't come from the formal curriculum, which quite honestly (with some exceptions) is not that spectacular. The reason for going there is that it's a research institute, so you get to play with some really cool things.

I know someone who graduated with honors and got accepted to the same pharm school as someone with a 3.0 GPA. Hah. Nobody cares about your honors degree or your hardvard stamp.

It really depends on the field. For physics it doesn't make a huge amount of difference, but for an MBA and Law, it does. The thing about Harvard and MIT is that you get hooked into some very powerful social networks, and its one of the ways that the people that run the world, pass on their power to the next generation. If your roommate in college ends up CEO of a major corporation, this could be useful.

 

[twofish-quant]

This also happens through pure demographics. Harvard puts out more PhDs than it hires. I was surprised by the number of professors with PhDs from Harvard/Princeton/Stanford etc teaching at my school. I would imagine that at any school the professors can't be too many "generations" away from the big names.

It's also rather depressing, because I do get the sense that your chances of getting a professorship are a lot less if you don't have a Ph.D. from a big name school. But on the other hand, because you have Harvard/Princeton/Stanford people all over the place, the system isn't *too* closed.

I heard a talk by Bill Powers, who is President of UTexas Austin and a Harvard Law alum, and he mentioned how he ended up at UTexas, and it was because a college friend from Harvard mentioned that the law school had a job opening, and that he should try out for it. In one sense it was depressing because it show how important those informal social networks really are. But on the other hand, he was telling this story because even though he is a Harvard alumni, he is President of UTexas, and so he was trying to get UTexas students to network with each other.

It's really important to understand how power works, and who runs things and how. That way if you don't like the system, you can change it.

 

[atyy]

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.

junior lab?

 

[-DB]

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.

(...CUT...)

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.

So what if the professors are "giants in the field"? The OP was asking about the differences in the quality of EDUCATION. From my experience, just because a professor is very good in his/her field does not make him/her a good instructor by any means.

 

[twofish-quant]

So what if the professors are "giants in the field"? The OP was asking about the differences in the quality of EDUCATION. From my experience, just because a professor is very good in his/her field does not make him/her a good instructor by any means.

Except that education is more than classroom instruction. If you listen to gossip about a Nobel prize winner and find out that people think they are a total jerk, and then you meet that Nobel prize winner and find out that yes, he really is a jerk, that's part of your education. Part of the reason that I'm less interested in winning prizes now that I was when I was a freshman was that I learned that I'd rather be a nice nobody, than a Nobel prize winning jerk.

There are very smart researchers that are nice, but they are just unable to give a coherent lecture. However, watching someone try to give a lecture and be awful at it is also an extremely educational experience. If you then follow that researcher to the lab, and then watch them do something that they are *good* at, you learn something else.

As I've repeated said, MIT is mainly a research institute. It's classroom instruction is not particularly good. If you learn best in the classroom, then it's may not be the best school for you. It's turns out that in worked for me because lectures are not the best way for me to learn stuff. I learn best by reading myself. Since I like learning stuff on my own, the fact that you have a professor that can't lecture is less bad than it seems.

The reason that *I* think that MIT is cool was that I got to play with this thing called the internet about six or seven years before anyone in the general public did, and I started programming in C++ before too many people on the outside had heard of the language. I remember the exact moment when I downloaded this software package some physicist at CERN, and after compiling it, think, "you know this World Wide Web thing might be useful." When I first looked at this WWW there were no courses on the Web, so I had to teach myself how HTTP and HTML worked, and I could do that because they gave computer accounts to everyone. Now this isn't a big deal in 2009, because every school gives every student an internet account, but this was in the late-1980's, and MIT gave all students internet accounts before most people had heard of the internet (and I think Project Athena was first campus wide system.)

I suppose one of the more important things that I learned at MIT is how education is much, much more important than classroom instruction.

Again, MIT is not the only place that you can get a good physics education, and one of the good thing about the way that US higher education system works is that with some effort, you can find some place that teaches physics well. But if you want to see what makes a good education you have to look beyond curriculum. And what makes a good educational environment is different from person to person.

One reason that MIT is good for me is that I'm an intellectual masochist. I like situations in which people just toss me really hard problems to see where I break, and at MIT it's really is like drinking water from a firehose. I think I got about four hours of sleep during the semester, and then I'd totally crash on the weekends. And pretty much every waking moment, I was bombarded with something new to learn, and I was totally overworked there. Part of the philosophy is to give you more work than any human being can handle. (And one of the big problems that MIT has to face is that the Institute has to have mechanisms to keep students from working too hard.)

For some people that's a vision of hell, but I really, really enjoyed it.

 

[twofish-quant]

One other thing... Today undergraduate research is a pretty standard part of the physics curriculum. It was totally unheard of in 1975, and MIT was the place where someone thought it might be a good idea that undergraduates do research, and a lot of people thought it was a totally crazy and insane idea.

Personally, I think that MIT should have open admissions with ten million undergraduates, and that the world would be better off if we had a million physics Ph.D.'s graduate each year. Yes, it's a totally crazy and insane idea, but one of the good things about going to MIT, is that you learn not to be afraid to think totally crazy and insane ideas.

 

[ahmadmz]

If I had a choice between MIT and some other university, I would choose MIT for sure. I agree that you can have better teachers in other universities. But like twofish-quant said, there is a lot of other things in top universities that other universities may not have.

 

[sportsstar469]

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.

i agree man. i was watching an MIT lecture for a general chemistry class, and it was EXACTLY what we have done this semester in my general chemistry class, and i go to a community college. also i found a mistake in her lecture, and i msure I am correct.

but yeah, i think that going to mit, harvard etc, juust proves youre intelligent to get in. iits kind of like how college students need to take courses that don't relate to their majors, just so they can prove they are well rounded individuals for potential employers. harvard, mit, etc just makes you look like a more intelligent and worthwile person.s

 

[fluidistic]

Wow, that's extremely informative twofish-quant!
I'm doing my undergrad studies in South America and I feel absolutely no special atmosphere from the University environment. In fact I wasn't even aware of such a feeling at MIT or Harvard, etc.
Though I'm conform with my University and I think it's up to me to turn myself into a "crazy" thinker regardless of the other students.

 

[atyy]

A young man goes to the "10 items or less" check out counter at a supermarket in Boston with a trolley laden with groceries. The cashier asks him, "So are you from Harvard that you can't count - or MIT that you can't read?"

 

[-DB]

I think it's up to me to turn myself into a "crazy" thinker regardless of the other students.

It most certainly is. It's not where you go that makes you who you are, it's what YOU do.

A young man goes to the "10 items or less" check out counter at a supermarket in Boston with a trolley laden with groceries. The cashier asks him, "So are you from Harvard that you can't count - or MIT that you can't read?"

 

[jtbell]

The discussion about using drugs to enhance academic performance has been split off into a separate thread, because it's only tangentially related to this discussion.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=363773