Which is better: MIT or Yale?

[jhooper3581]

I don't know.

 

[Dickfore]

Mit.

 

[ZQrn]

Yale's more of a humanities place isn't it?

Also, why is it 'Yale' vs 'I don't know', missed an option?

Some psychological experiment to see how many people press 'I don't know' there that I just contaminated?

 

[Evo]

I fixed the poll.

 

[Loren Booda]

I believe that most people will judge their answers to this poll on name recognition.

As a freshman at Yale I studied under Serge Lang. If you've never heard of him, you probably haven't taken higher math.

MIT is an excellent school (#1 or #2, imho) for engineering and related math.

Yale has some beautiful humanities courses, too.

 

[ZQrn]

I believe that most people will judge their answers to this poll on name recognition.

As a freshman at Yale I studied under Serge Lang. If you've never heard of him, you probably haven't taken higher math.

MIT is an excellent school (#1 or #2, imho) for engineering and related math.

Yale has some beautiful humanities courses, too.

Ahhh, Bourbaki?

To be honest, I think numbers, vector spaces, anything related with magnitudes is particularly boring. The stuff about what's provable, what's not provable, what's decidable in given contexts, that's a lot more fun.

 

[yuqiao]

I believe that most people will judge their answers to this poll on name recognition.

As a freshman at Yale I studied under Serge Lang. If you've never heard of him, you probably haven't taken higher math.

MIT is an excellent school (#1 or #2, imho) for engineering and related math.

Yale has some beautiful humanities courses, too.

You are student under Serge Lang? That's cool!

 

[yuqiao]

Ahhh, Bourbaki?

To be honest, I think numbers, vector spaces, anything related with magnitudes is particularly boring. The stuff about what's provable, what's not provable, what's decidable in given contexts, that's a lot more fun.

It seems that I am standing exactly the opposite, haha~

 

[Vanadium 50]

MIT Pistol beat Yale Fencing. (See http://www.mit.edu/activities/voodoo/archive/pdfs/1989-Winter.pdf")

 

[SixNein]

I don't think school selection matters so much in mathematics; instead, how hard you are willing to work is what makes the difference. So I would say they are equal.

 

[Loren Booda]

You are student under Serge Lang? That's cool!

In 1978. He is deceased now. He was a very motivated man, gentle yet fierce.

 

[Anonymous217]

MIT obviously has better opportunities and focuses more on mathematics. Yale's usually listed a bit lower on many different top school lists for math, below Harvard, Princeton, Caltech, and close to Berkeley. The most notable thing I know about math related to Yale right now is a freshman/sophomore who became a Putnam fellow last year.

 

[arunma]

Dude, I went to a state school for undergrad, and another state school for grad school. Who am I, a mere mortal, to even hold an opinion concerning the gods of heaven? :)

 

[Office_Shredder]

Dude, I went to a state school for undergrad, and another state school for grad school. Who am I, a mere mortal, to even hold an opinion concerning the gods of heaven? :)

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankings...ate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings

I see 3 state schools on this list ranked over Yale

If we're talking about where to go as an undergraduate, I think the correct answer is: who cares? They both rock. Go wherever you feel most comfortable. It's not like you're going to be rejected from a Phd program because you went to Podunk Yale instead of MIT

 

[arunma]

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankings...ate-schools/top-mathematics-programs/rankings

I see 3 state schools on this list ranked over Yale

Oh wow, my undergrad (U of M Twin Cities) is only six spots below Yale in math. Not bad!

Actually when I was majoring in physics over there, I spent my free time doing a second major in math. Most of the profs sucked at teaching and didn't speak English, which means they were probably world class researchers.

 

[Office_Shredder]

Certainly the graduate school rankings don't take into account how well the undergraduates are taught

 

[mheslep]

I believe that most people will judge their answers to this poll on name recognition.

As a freshman at Yale I studied under Serge Lang. If you've never heard of him, you probably haven't taken higher math...

As a freshman? In the undergraduate curricula of many large and top U's, especially for the freshman, my take is that often one usually studies under a famous professor's TA, while the great one is busy with graduate students and research.

 

[ZQrn]

This difference in organization is pretty interesting, where I come from all universities are basically the same, what matters is the location, people typically go to the nearest except for some fringe stuff that's only offered on a few universities. Most people here also don't go to universities or college which is pretty much seen as an intellectual privilege here. Consequently what's called 'university' here is comparable to Ivy League and the all students are typically expected to obtain a Ph.D. which is also state-level, officially authorized by the Queen I believe. There's no need here to mention where you got your diploma because it doesn't really matter and a lot of students have gotten their diploma from courses at multiple universities. I know some one who got his M.Sc. in computer science from courses at three different universities and is now doing his Ph.D. in game theory in two different institutions.

I suppose there are plus sides and downsides at our system here. At least one thing is that discrimination is out of the question, universities simply have no right to refuse as long as they have enough spots, they have to advertise how many spots they have at the start and have to allow all people that have the qualifications on paper, that's it, no interviews, nothing.

Obvious downside is that it's capped. Universities are the top tier and no one can do higher, you can take extra courses, do two studies at the same time (what I did, in all flaunting) but that's it. Also, it's a terrible breeding of elitism as there is really no debate about what level of schooling is superior.