Prestige of Undergraduate College and Grad School Admission

[WannabeNewton]

It's important to note that faculty hires at PhD granting universities seem to be based almost completely on research competence.

In my observations, research competence and teaching competence hardly seem to be correlated.

I never said they were. I never once said prestigious universities had a wealth of good teachers. All I said was that self-studying has its limits and that having classes with good teachers is one of the benefits of having a quality undergraduate education. Never did I say prestigious university => a quality undergraduate education in the above sense. But it is not untrue that a truly bad undergraduate university/college can fail to provide such benefits. I have a friend going to CC in NYC whose professors are absolutely incompetent and cannot teach him proper physics nor answer his course related questions, some of which he crops up while self-studying. To say self-study is fully sufficient is a blanket claim and a rather large one at that. If I had tried to self-study topology, analysis, and differential geometry with no help from good teachers and mentors (e.g. micromass), then I would have been completely screwed. It is very easy to read a textbook and think you are analyzing/interpreting something correctly but totally misconstrue it without ever knowing until you have someone proper come along and set you straight.

In fact, I can't express how grateful I am for having someone like micromass teach me topology in particular because he taught me a lot of important and subtle things that the textbook I was using never once mentioned and if you look at various forum posts on this site, coming from people self-studying topology and whatnot, you can trace many of the misconceptions back to the very things micromass taught me not to misconstrue.

 

[ZombieFeynman]

I never said they were. I never once said prestigious universities had a wealth of good teachers. All I said was that self-studying has its limits and that having classes with good teachers is one of the benefits of having a quality undergraduate education. Never did I say prestigious university => a quality undergraduate education in the above sense. But it is not untrue that a truly bad undergraduate university/college can fail to provide such benefits. I have a friend going to CC in NYC whose professors are absolutely incompetent and cannot teach him proper physics nor answer his course related questions, some of which he crops up while self-studying. Again, self-studying has its limits. If I had tried to self-study topology, analysis, and differential geometry with no help from good teachers and mentors (e.g. micromass), then I would have been completely screwed. It is very easy to read a textbook and think you are analyzing/interpreting something correctly but totally misconstrue it without ever knowing until you have someone proper come along and set you straight.

The thing is that the OP talking about Case Western vs. Ivy. It seems very likely, to me, that each would have professors perfectly capable of answering most questions that come up in undergrad courses or even self study. It's just a matter of diminishing returns for many people when considering to go to the Big Brand Name Schools.

Case Western is a good school. I have known at least one very bright (and well prepared!) graduate of their program. Getting into there with a sizable merit scholarship is a deal.

The question is: Is paying tens of thousands of dollars more per year to go to Chicago, Cornell, etc worth what he'd be getting?

 

[Astrum]

In my experience this false. I have known multiple people who taught themselves graduate level material without any instructor and attained a high level of understanding. It is probably almost impossible to do actual research without contact with practioners in the field. But there is no subject commonly taught at the undergraduate or early graduate level that you cannot study by yourself.

Most people find it much easier to learn with a teacher and fellow students to talk to. But this does not mean self study is impossible.

Aside from the points made by WbN, I've found that self-study is dangerous for a lot of people, myself included.

It's really easy to misunderstand something when you're reading alone, and if you don't have someone who already understands it, you'll go a long time with misconceptions. Aside from the pitfalls of self-study, going to a class with a good and knowledgeable professor far outweighs what can be replicated online/alone. I personally find going to a class with a good professor to be much more motivating than simply reading online or from a book.

Self-study is certainly valuable, and there are times when you need to do it, but in general, everybody will struggle more during self-study.

As an addendum, I think it's a common trait among many people to want to justify that their Major Life Choices have been the Right Ones. Folks from big name schools will want to feel that their (parents?) money was well spent. Those that didn't (couldn't?) go to better schools for undergrad will want to feel like this didn't hold them back.

Too bad we don't have a thumbs up button. Maybe this should be pasted onto the top of the AA sub-forum.

 

[WannabeNewton]

The thing is that the OP talking about Case Western vs. Ivy. It seems very likely, to me, that each would have professors perfectly capable of answering most questions that come up in undergrad courses or even self study. It's just a matter of diminishing returns for many people when considering to go to the Big Brand Name Schools.

Case Western is a good school. I have known at least one very bright (and well prepared!) graduate of their program. Getting into there with a sizable merit scholarship is a deal.

The question is: Is paying tens of thousands of dollars per year to go to Chicago, Cornell, etc worth what he'd be getting?

Oh I wasn't talking about the OP in particular. I was responding to the post above me which was addressing things in full generality (CCs and 4-year colleges inclusively) i.e. not for the specific case of the OP's main choices (at least that's how I interpreted it).

Case Western is a perfectly good university. The OP never replied back (by now he/she would have decided on where to go considering it is June 12th, unless he accepted a waitlist somewhere) so we can't really say anything about the OP's case unless we know if he/she actually got into any of the ivies or what have you and if he/she got enough financial aid/scholarships to make the tuition reasonable at least compared to what he/she would have had to pay at Case Western. If he/she had to pay a lot ('a lot' being relative to the OP) then the answer to your question is no it wouldn't be worth it IMO. If he/she didn't have to pay a lot then why not? What's the harm?

One classmate I had in my HS got into Stanford for physics and got a full ride not on any scholarships but solely on financial aid simply because his family didn't make all that much and Stanford had a lot of money to give away. Two other classmates got into UPenn (one Wharton the other Arts and Sciences) and both only had to pay around 10 grand a year, also due to financial aid grants.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Too bad we don't have a thumbs up button. Maybe this should be pasted onto the top of the AA sub-forum.

You could praise it (which I guess is the 'Thanks' button now)! That's what I did. It really was a brilliant comment.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

... Too bad we don't have a thumbs up button. Maybe this should be pasted onto the top of the AA sub-forum.

There's a "Thanks" button, that is more or less a virtual thumbs up. For instance, if someone responds to you with an exceptionally helpful or insightful post (such as this one; it even has examples!), then you should feel no hesitation to press the "Thanks" button on the bottom left corner of his or her post.

Well, go on.

 

[gsmith]

So since this thread seems to have been raised from the dead, I thought I might reply with how my college search worked out for the benefit of those now in the position I was a few months ago.
After being deferred at Chicago and getting accepted to Pitt, Penn State, and Case early in the game, I just had to wait until March to hear from the Ivy Leagues and the final decision from Chicago. I was rejected from Cornell, Yale, and Chicago, but accepted to UPenn. Upenn offered me a position in their Vagelos Program for Molecular Life Sciences to work for a stipend in a Biophyics laboratory. Penn State then offered me a sizable merit scholarship and the promise of laboratory work in their Braddock Scholars program. So, Pitt and Case did not turn out to be contenders based on what Penn State and UPenn offered. I ultimately chose to go to Penn State because of the incredible research opportunities they offered, and the fact that they recruited me pretty heavily. Additionally, my ability to pay for UPenn was contingent upon my ability to keep up with the Vagelos Program which has a dropout rate of over 70%. Thank you to all those who responded to this and other threads helping us nervous undergrads out.

Regards.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Good luck with your studies gsmith! Hope you do well at Penn State; have fun with biophysics and enjoy the rest of your summer.

 

[gsmith]

Good luck with your studies gsmith! Hope you do well at Penn State; have fun with biophysics and enjoy the rest of your summer.

Thank you!
I neglected to mention that another reason I turned down UPenn was because Biophysics isn't really my thing! More of a Condensed Matter guy, myself.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

Thank you!
I neglected to mention that another reason I turned down UPenn was because Biophysics isn't really my thing! More of a Condensed Matter guy, myself.

How's research in biophysics? As far as job prospects and pay go, I've heard it's a fairly good field to choose for physics research.

 

[WannabeNewton]

More of a Condensed Matter guy, myself.

Finally someone interested in Condensed Matter right off the get go! Well I hope you have fun with CM theory xD. All the best friend.

 

[gsmith]

How's research in biophysics? As far as job prospects and pay go, I've heard it's a fairly good field to choose for physics research.

That is my understanding as well. Biophysicists, I believe, work in a similar capacity to Molecular Biologists. Then there is the field of Medical Physics which deals more with imaging and treatment options (i.e. MRI or Gamma Knife development).

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

That is my understanding as well. Biophysicist, I believe, work on a similar capacity to molecular biologists. The there is e field if medical physics which deals more with imaging and treatment options (ie MRI or gamma knife development)

Alright, thanks for the info.

 

[Arsenic&Lace]

I work in a computational biophysics lab.

My impression talking to the PI is that the prospects in biophysics are pretty good, but getting worse. One major avenue for employment was doing R&D for a drug company; however, this option has vanished in recent years as industrial R&D budgets have been squeezed into nothing.

However, as a computational laboratory, and since you are working on problems closely related to medicine (one of my projects deals direction with a protein involved in the Aspirin drug mechanism, and another project was working on part of the anti-depressant mechanism), I've heard that there are strong programming job prospects/financial mathematics job prospects, and still good research opportunities given the amount of money surging into biology and medicine.