Schools Prestigious schools vs where i go

[Pengwuino]

Prestigious schools vs... where i go

What is the difference between the average person who graduates with a BS in physics from say, Princeton or Harvard vs. the average person who graduates from... ohhhh, say... CSU - Fresno... and other crappy places like that :) Do people in the "better" programs know a lot more then people in programs such as the one I am in? Are they just vastly superior human beings!??

It seems like the only people who are really known are people who get phd's from those big name institutes... am i going to be a nobody!

 

[Beeza]

Two of my old mentors told me to start worrying about the "name" of my school when I start looking into graduate school. Other than that, they told me not to stress too much over where I went for my undergrad degree.

 

[JasonRox]

What is the difference between the average person who graduates with a BS in physics from say, Princeton or Harvard vs. the average person who graduates from... ohhhh, say... CSU - Fresno... and other crappy places like that :) Do people in the "better" programs know a lot more then people in programs such as the one I am in? Are they just vastly superior human beings!??

It seems like the only people who are really known are people who get phd's from those big name institutes... am i going to be a nobody!

There is a difference in my opinion, but not enough to imply that the average student doesn't get a Ph.D.

If you challenge yourself, there is no doubt in my mind that you will be more superior than other students at prestigious schools.

I'm not sure what it's like in the US, but in Canada there is a difference. I wouldn't be surprise if it were the same in the US. They may be similiar, but they might teach more advanced, and that's where the difference comes in.

The way I look it, if you push yourself, there is nothing stopping you.

Note: When I say challenge yourself, I mean something that would challenge most students.

The best way to look at it is to check what they expect out of you in graduate school. If you think you can handle it, then what's stopping you from succeeding.

 

[matt grime]

A student at a prestigious school in an undergraduate program *could* know a lot more than one from a crappy place if they pushed themselves to take full advantage of the courses and faculty on offer to them, but that by no means implies that they will do that, nor do they need to do that in order to graduate with a good GPA.

Those ''famous" people are the well motivated and clever ones who probably went out of their way to get into a good undergrad school (or possible it never even occurred to them to go anywhere else; most research pure mathematicians educated in England will have gone to Cambridge, and probably never considered going anywhere else for their undergraduate days) and then to take full advantage of the program once there. Truthfully they'd 've been brilliant wherever they went. In the US it is far more important where you go to grad school than for your undergraduate course. That is almost certainly not true in the UK. But UK undergrad maths programs are far larger than the in the US (Cambridge graduates about 250 mathematicians a year compared to say Harvard which graduates about 12 I think.)

 

[moose]

It seems like the only people who are really known are people who get phd's from those big name institutes... am i going to be a nobody!

They don't always get their BS from a big name institute though

Oh, the head of NASA who has like 7 or so degrees didn't go to any HUGE name universities. The most known would probably be John Hopkins if I recall correctly.

 

[Pengwuino]

What I want to know is how much people are taught in comparison. I have a strange feeling that they use some sort of super textbook that teaches you 10x as much and they all go into secret clubs to laugh at all us state schooled losers

 

[Cyrus]

Pengwuino, that's just because the media likes to glamorize MIT based on the work their GRAD STUDENT LABS do, yet they always fail to mention that. Why don't you just watch the MIT open course videos. The linear algebra teacher puts me to sleep. MIT is not even all that great. There are allot of better schools internationally that make MIT look like a community college. Just worry about learning what your taught and you will be fine.

 

[G01]

State schooled? I didn't know Antartica had states? Lol couldn't resist. But seriously, stop worrying! Learn the stuff, and you'll be fine. Sometimes the smaller schools are better, cause the professors care more about the Undergrads.

 

[Pengwuino]

I'm going to be a bad physicist

 

[Maxwell]

There are allot of better schools internationally that make MIT look like a community college.

While I agree with the overall point of your post, I think you are going a bit overboard with this statement.

 

[matt grime]

Berkeley would be a State School, and would be considered better than MIT, at least for maths. I doubt many people place much academic store by the university of your undergraduate days in the US if you get a good PhD from a good grad school. Sure, there's intellectual cachet from going to Harvard as an undergrad but in terms of academic stuff it won't matter one jot at graduate level that you didn't go there. Look at the faculty list of some departments, they often list the school that gave their staff their PhD's, and they never refer to their undergrad schools.

 

[matt grime]

Pengwuino, that's just because the media likes to glamorize MIT based on the work their GRAD STUDENT LABS do, yet they always fail to mention that. Why don't you just watch the MIT open course videos. The linear algebra teacher puts me to sleep. MIT is not even all that great. There are allot of better schools internationally that make MIT look like a community college. Just worry about learning what your taught and you will be fine.

The MIT exchange students who went to Cambridge (UK) often struggled to cope with the different environment. It wasn't that they didn't work hard enough, far from it, in fact they seemed to work far too hard, but that they didn't understand that staying up all night writing out huge chunks of notes wasn't going to get you any marks. The fact that work isn't positively marked (ie if you say the right thing and 100 wrong things you get the mark) seemed to put them at a disadvantage.

 

[franznietzsche]

Berkeley would be a State School, and would be considered better than MIT, at least for maths. I doubt many people place much academic store by the university of your undergraduate days in the US if you get a good PhD from a good grad school. Sure, there's intellectual cachet from going to Harvard as an undergrad but in terms of academic stuff it won't matter one jot at graduate level that you didn't go there. Look at the faculty list of some departments, they often list the school that gave their staff their PhD's, and they never refer to their undergrad schools.

Along this line, people do tend to underestimate state schools. UCSB is a top ten physics graduate program in the US, so is Berkely. U of Michigan is also a very good one, IIRC. UCSD and UCLA also have very good programs. Stonybrook in New York as well. It doesn't have to be Ivy League, or even a Private institution to have a very good physics program.

 

[Plastic Photon]

As far as a graduate school goes, different graduate schools have professors and a majority of their money, time and effort put into specific fields of physics. For instance, is MIT the best grad school to go to if you want to research high-energy astrophysics or would Rice or Cal-Berkley be better options. But if you wanted to research string theory, MIT might be the better choice.

 

[Pengwuino]

How bout plasma physics? I hear Princeton and UCSD are the top 2 choices.

 

[nbo10]

The level of taching has to be different from school to school. But that doesn't mean you can't get just as much out of school than a person at an Ivy school, You might have to work harder.

Take a look at the textbooks used and the syllabus for classes. I think you'll see a stark difference, udergrad level, between great school and crappy schools.

 

[leright]

How bout plasma physics? I hear Princeton and UCSD are the top 2 choices.

I heard somewhere that UM - ann arbor has the best plasma physics program in the country.

 

[Plastic Photon]

How bout plasma physics? I hear Princeton and UCSD are the top 2 choices.

Why on Earth would you even consider leaving such a nice place as Fresno (I only hear it is great) to head to the frigid and gray NE of the US (I only hear it is miserable)? I suspect you want to do graduate work leaning towards fusion, plasma control, spectroscopy, etc?

Always consider more than just the 'prestige' of a school; consider the city, the food, the night life and the women. If I were in your mindset I would much rather stay put in Cali or choose UTexas-Austin or something similar. But no one is forcing you to choose.

 

[Pengwuino]

Why on Earth would you even consider leaving such a nice place as Fresno (I only hear it is great) to head to the frigid and gray NE of the US (I only hear it is miserable)? I suspect you want to do graduate work leaning towards fusion, plasma control, spectroscopy, etc?

Always consider more than just the 'prestige' of a school; consider the city, the food, the night life and the women. If I were in your mindset I would much rather stay put in Cali or choose UTexas-Austin or something similar. But no one is forcing you to choose.

Have you ever been to Fresno? I don't care about the food or the night life, my employer won't ask me what kind of clubs I've visited or what famous restaurants I've visited over the years

 

[franznietzsche]

Why on Earth would you even consider leaving such a nice place as Fresno (I only hear it is great) to head to the frigid and gray NE of the US (I only hear it is miserable)? I suspect you want to do graduate work leaning towards fusion, plasma control, spectroscopy, etc?

Always consider more than just the 'prestige' of a school; consider the city, the food, the night life and the women. If I were in your mindset I would much rather stay put in Cali or choose UTexas-Austin or something similar. But no one is forcing you to choose.

I haven't laughed that hard all day.

Fresno is to California what Fargo is to the rest of the country. Well, its not that bad(Boron I think wins that dubious distinction), more like Omaha maybe (is there a state more boring than Kansas? I mean really, its miles and miles of nothing in every direction.).

But still that made me chuckle. Fresno is definitely not on the list of places people hope to live in California. Unless they're in Bakersfield. Then Fresno might look ok. I could go on all day about towns in that valley. Sacramento? Yeesh. Lodi? If you like traffic wrecks in the fog, great place. Hmmmm. Stockton? Yeah, 'nuff said.

 

[Pengwuino]

My friend went to UOP for a year and she said stockton was incredible compared to fresno

What does that tell you haha

 

[Plastic Photon]

Well, then I am not sure what I have been hearing. I guess I wouldn't recommend that you go to San Diego either, since I have also heard it is a great city.

 

[franznietzsche]

Well, then I am not sure what I have been hearing. I guess I wouldn't recommend that you go to San Diego either, since I have also heard it is a great city.

Oh San Diego's quite nice.

 

[0rthodontist]

This subject is of personal interest to me as well. I go to a state school (UMass Amherst) and I have attended an inferior school in the past, and there is a big difference between there and here. "Here" means one of the best departments in the school, with some courses in the Commonwealth College program, which probably takes the school quality up a rank, but UMA is still only a moderately good public university and the difference is very great.

I think, though, that it is still a matter of what you do for yourself. You can work as hard as you want to, regardless of the quality of the school, so long as you can self-motivate. If the course didn't go as far as you like, do more on your own.

 

[JasonRox]

This subject is of personal interest to me as well. I go to a state school (UMass Amherst) and I have attended an inferior school in the past, and there is a big difference between there and here. "Here" means one of the best departments in the school, with some courses in the Commonwealth College program, which probably takes the school quality up a rank, but UMA is still only a moderately good public university and the difference is very great.

I think, though, that it is still a matter of what you do for yourself. You can work as hard as you want to, regardless of the quality of the school, so long as you can self-motivate. If the course didn't go as far as you like, do more on your own.

Exactly!

You might not have the time to study further, but then just take it slower.

My school doesn't teach me much at all. There are good profs, so I use them when I can. The school can be much better, but I think the chair or dean is smoking something.

I hate making up for what the school isn't doing, but it's all I got. I'm lucky enough to have profs who know that, so I'm not completely alone in this, but close enough!

I don't know what to say, but just keep at it.

Note: You have all summer to teach yourself stuff too. I also plan on going to another university next summer to get transfer credits, and actually get the oppurtunity to attend a reputable school.

 

[mattmns]

When I took the first semester of Calc-based physics, I saw on MIT's website that they were using the same book as I was and about the same syallbus, and I was at a community college at the time.

 

[Cyrus]

Bingo, you got my point mattmns. I can take you to a Paris University that puts MIT to shame, or a top school in India for that matter.

 

[subodei]

Pengwuino, that's just because the media likes to glamorize MIT based on the work their GRAD STUDENT LABS do, yet they always fail to mention that. Why don't you just watch the MIT open course videos. The linear algebra teacher puts me to sleep. MIT is not even all that great.

If Gilbert Strang from MIT puts you to sleep i'd love to be taught by your LA teacher.

Gilbert Strang is far better than any math teacher I've been exposed to at my crappy university. I learned more in the first chapter of his textbook (about linear algebra) than I did from taking the "advanced" linear algebra class at my school and nearly making a 100%.

From what I've seen on OpenCourseWare MIT students get an education that is worth whatever it took for them to get there. At least compared to my crappy university.

I used to believe people that said "all schools are the same everywhere" until I really looked into the good schools. Cambridge and MIT both look like very very good places to learn math related topics.

In fact I'm comfortable saying that 90% of my science/math professors at university have taught me next to nothing. I learn from the textbook and I learn on my own. My CalculusI teacher literally just copied the textbook onto the board, and couldn't even speak English. He was a first year grad student from the Ukraine. I don't know how universities can get away with calling that educational. The teaching at my univ has been an absolute joke, and I wish I had the foresight to inflate my grades in high school so I could have gone to a top school somewhere. :| I didn't care about marks for the majority of my high school career. :\ Now I'm paying for it by being confined to independant study I guess.

 

[Plastic Photon]

The school I will attend soon had a graduating class of 4,409 (2004 bachelors), of which 344 were Natural Science and Mathematic graduates. OR about 7.80%, is this a good number? The percent of people earning their bachelors in the field I plan on pursuing (currently chemistry) was not even 2 tenths of a percent of that total of 4409. In fact, there were only eight! Maybe these statistics I am looking at do not include BA's?

I am uncertain as to whether there will be any atmosphere of competition once I go to this 4-year school, maybe I should just stick to my current 2 year school...Or maybe I should grow a beard, learn to speak Romanian and change my name to Stanislav Yubchencko.

Then again maybe I am over reacting.

 

[geek.grrl]

They're not in Kansas (anymore?) ...and other thoughts

I haven't laughed that hard all day.

Fresno is to California what Fargo is to the rest of the country. Well, its not that bad(Boron I think wins that dubious distinction), more like Omaha maybe (is there a state more boring than Kansas? I mean really, its miles and miles of nothing in every direction.).

Dude, last time I checked, Omaha was in Nebraska, not Kansas. Not that there's much difference, since nowhere is nowhere. Bah-dum-ching! (Actually I've never been to Omaha and only briefly visited Kansas, so I really have no idea what they're like.)

Seriously though, I failed out of a prestigious institution which was great and all (the institute, not the failing), but went on to have a much better experience at a very small school that is virtually unknown outside of its own town.

With school and with life, it's all what you make of it. Oh, and the ability to find a good match, adapt yourself to where you are, and know when it might be a good idea to just move on.

The biggest problem, with school and with life, is no matter how much research you do, it's still possible for something you didn't even notice during your evaluation to turn out to be pretty important. Still do the research, sure, but also be aware there probably isn't a 100% perfect choice. But there are probably a LOT of choices available between 70 and 80% perfect. (The numbers are complete fabrications of course)

And, although the program of study is probably the prime consideration, a nice location is good for a number of reasons as well. If you like where you study, you might be more likely travel less for holidays, etc., or even settle there permanently. On the other hand if a place is miserable enough it could impact your attitude and possibly your studies. (Then again maybe it would motivate you to finish your program quickly and get the heck outta there?)

Basically, I think it's best to worry a lot less about what OTHER people think about where you go to school and think a lot more about what YOU are getting out of it. If you are getting a good education, that's the important thing, and as several people have pointed out, that depends more on you than on the institution.

If people look down their nose at you because it isn't big-name, maybe they are too focused on brand-name exclusivity and less on the person you are, your skills, and what you have accomplished. So maybe you don't want to work with those people anyway.

By the way, most people outside of academia care very little about the name on your degree. You just need to HAVE one. Although for plasma physics I guess your most promising prospects would be academic or research oriented.

Wow, that was a long post. And without really saying anything! Isn't there some kind of award for that?

 

[franznietzsche]

Dude, last time I checked, Omaha was in Nebraska, not Kansas. Not that there's much difference, since nowhere is nowhere. Bah-dum-ching! (Actually I've never been to Omaha and only briefly visited Kansas, so I really have no idea what they're like.)

Bah, fair enough.