What is difference between ivy league school and non ivy league?

[bjnartowt]

So I got to thinking about what my next few years in a PhD program were going to look like. I know I'll be taking core classes. I also know that eventually, after doing enough quality research, I'll get to teach those core classes someday. This must mean that I'll know the stuff being presented forward, frontward, backwards, and inside out. I also know that I'll do this at ANY PhD program in physics I go to.

So I'm wondering if my reasoning is correct here: if the core classes are just about the same at any institution (although: there's probably a bit more crammed in at the Ivy League schools), is it the *research quality* that differs from school to school? I'm just wondering *what* exactly I'm going to be sacrificing by going to a tier-100 or lower school for theoretical physics, and *how* to compensate for what I'll be sacrificing, if at all possible.

Of course: my aim is to have as strong a CV as possible (by doing lots o' good quality research) when I apply for postdocs, just to mention what I mean by "compensating".

 

[Calrid]

Well you probably need to look how strongly or highly a subject is rated at say MIT and Harvard and Picketywich college X. For example Cambridge and Oxford aren't rated the best for chemistry research or the undergrad subject. The difference is of course variable from subject to subject.

Generally though if the standard is rated highly specifically on a course or research then it is probably a bit better. Plus of course the fact that you went to an ivy school opens doors anyway so you are buying into an idea too.

I suppose you are buying both prestige and reputation with ivy league and a generally higher standard. Although of course that may not be the case specifically. I live in the UK but I doubt the top 10 bottom 90 is any different over here than their.

Cambridge is of course the highest rated college in physics here. They forbid you from having a part time job or much free time and the course is way beefier than say at Portsmouth. So I don't know what the difference is over there specifically?

 

[bjnartowt]

Perhaps I didn't phrase my question clearly: I mean to ask "what exactly is it that makes these schools so great?" There's a lot of hype about them, I tried (unsuccessfully) to beef up my CV in order to get into them, and now I'm scrambling to find out *what* I'll be *missing* because I'm not going to an Ivy league school for my PhD. Then, I'll do my best to try and "simulate" what I'll be missing.

 

[Calrid]

Perhaps I didn't phrase my question clearly: I mean to ask "what exactly is it that makes these schools so great?" There's a lot of hype about them, I tried (unsuccessfully) to beef up my CV in order to get into them, and now I'm scrambling to find out *what* I'll be *missing* because I'm not going to an Ivy league school for my PhD. Then, I'll do my best to try and "simulate" what I'll be missing.

Reputation is earned.

Do you not have league tables in your country? Surely they will tell you how highly rated an institution is for both a subject and research. People put a lot of time into compiling these so you can say, whilst they may have some biases, clearly some universities will give you a more grounded and better education than others.

What makes them so great? The amount of alumni with Nobel prizes? I don't know what all the statistics are but there are a lot, such as research in industry standards, quality of subject, alumni etc, look at them and make up your mind for yourself I guess?

I suppose you need someone who went to Harvard and community college *** end of the union, to tell you what you will be missing. Or someone to detail a sylabus and compare it to your own. Can't help you there.

 

[bjnartowt]

I need specifics... perhaps how a day in the life will differ.

 

[Calrid]

I need specifics... perhaps how a day in the life will differ.

Yeah I know sorry can't help.

You might be in danger of ending up with a larger ego if you went to Harvard, but that's all I can say.

Like I say Cambridge's work load is extremely tough compared to low end colleges. To the extent that they even give the degree a different name to reflect the more rigorous standard. US I have no idea.

 

[derDenker1992]

In the Ivy league schools, you are generally around much smarter people, be it the students or the professors. For example, in the field of mathematics, their is a correct way and an incorrect way to learn (i.e. mediocre and truly brilliant teachers). You will miss the collaboration with brilliant minds.

 

[Pengwuino]

I need specifics... perhaps how a day in the life will differ.

The hallway you walk through is occasionally frequented by a Nobel Prize winner.

On a more serious note, think of it this way: the best people attend the best universities. Everything follows from there (and by best, i obviously don't mean a person is inherently better). You're surrounded by people who are much more competitive than you would see elsewhere, more is expected of you, etc. People working there are better capable of getting grants, expected to published more, do better research, etc. This, of course, creates a positive feedback with good research and lots of money creating better labs and more recognition bringing in even better students who work even harder etc etc.

Your day to day life will be different only because you have to make it different. More is expected from you and the work ethic can't be the same as someone who goes to a random second tier school in middle-of-nowhere, USA.

Also, the better the university, the more you're pretty much on your own. At my university, which is indeed a second tier university, students are coddled and if they don't know something, it's fine. The professors can't expect much and the environment isn't conducive to pushing students to learn. If students don't know something, it's the instructors fault. At the better universities, that thinking is laughable.

 

[bjnartowt]

\For example, in the field of mathematics, their is a correct way and an incorrect way to learn (i.e. mediocre and truly brilliant teachers).

Hmm...let me see if I got you right. Last Fall, I took an abstract algebra class with Joe Gallian, who wrote "Contemporary Abstract Algebra". The guy is just intense, and he had some awesome advice for doing proofs (e.g. "Always use the hypothesis!" "That's false!" That's true!")...at least, some advice that seemed awesome to a semi-outsider of mathematics (I am an aspiring theoretical physicist for condensed matter). People like that, you mean?

 

[derDenker1992]

Hmm...let me see if I got you right. Last Fall, I took an abstract algebra class with Joe Gallian, who wrote "Contemporary Abstract Algebra". The guy is just intense, and he had some awesome advice for doing proofs (e.g. "Always use the hypothesis!" "That's false!" That's true!")...at least, some advice that seemed awesome to a semi-outsider of mathematics (I am an aspiring theoretical physicist for condensed matter). People like that, you mean?

At least that's how it was for me. My studies in UPenn compared to my studies in CUNY were completely different. At Cuny, I had a math teacher who just went about the wrong way in solving a problem. The way that she went about solving it, she would have never reached an answer. When I interjected, she scolded me. She also failed me for not showing my work on a math test. Studies at Upenn were extremely different, where the teachers were truly brilliant.

 

[twofish-quant]

Reputation is earned.

By good marketing and social networks.

In the US, the reason that Harvard, MIT, and Princeton are such big names is that they were the first physics universities in the United States. During the 1960's when physics expanded, you had a ton of graduate students from the big name schools start programs all over the US.

So you have a weird situation in which you have departments that are just as good in their fields as the big names, but when people look for people to hire and which names are big, they tend to look for people that went to the same school as they did.

People put a lot of time into compiling these so you can say, whilst they may have some biases, clearly some universities will give you a more grounded and better education than others.

In the US, rankings are more of a political thing that anything else. The thing is that you can get pretty much any ranking you want by changing the criterion for the ranking, and then so there is a lot of politics about what those criterion are.

I suppose you need someone who went to Harvard and community college *** end of the union, to tell you what you will be missing.

I went to a big name school (MIT) for undergraduate and a large public university (University of Texas at Austin). My advice to you which is the same advice my teachers gave me was to go to a graduate school that is as different from your undergraduate as you can get. If you went to a big school as a undergrad, look for small schools as graduate schools, and vice versa.

Asking which is *better* is a lot like asking whether New York Pizza or Chicago pizza is better. You are better off if you've at least tried both.

 

[twofish-quant]

You might be in danger of ending up with a larger ego if you went to Harvard, but that's all I can say.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. One thing that I have noticed with Harvard graduates is that they have a certain amount of arrogance that can be helpful. If they get rejected for a job, well then *obviously* the interviewer is incompetent for rejecting him.

The interesting thing is that makes him try again whereas someone else might give up.

 

[twofish-quant]

In the Ivy league schools, you are generally around much smarter people, be it the students or the professors. For example, in the field of mathematics, their is a correct way and an incorrect way to learn (i.e. mediocre and truly brilliant teachers). You will miss the collaboration with brilliant minds.

Except that there is no particular reason to think that the big name schools have better teachers. I can say that there are some pretty incompetent teachers at MIT. One reason that works is that if you have good students, the teacher can be incompetent and the students learn anyway.

There are reasons for going to MIT, but good classroom teaching is not one of them.

 

[Calrid]

That's not necessarily a bad thing. One thing that I have noticed with Harvard graduates is that they have a certain amount of arrogance that can be helpful. If they get rejected for a job, well then *obviously* the interviewer is incompetent for rejecting him.

The interesting thing is that makes him try again whereas someone else might give up.

No I suppose not.

 

[twofish-quant]

The hallway you walk through is occasionally frequented by a Nobel Prize winner.

Which helps you when you realize that some Nobel prize winners are jerks. Something that did help me in going to MIT is that since I've seen Nobel prize winners up close, I'm really not in awe of them. They are human just like the rest of us, and some of them are just total jerks.

The other thing is that Nobel prize winners aren't limited to the Ivies. If you go to UT Austin astronomy, you will run into Nobel prize winners rather regularly. There's no one there that is a jerk, but there was one winner that was a total crackpot if you got him starting to talk on a particular topic that was outside of what he got his prize in.

Just to give you the type of thing that I learned in graduate school. At one friday lunch we got to talking about astrophysics, and then resident Nobel prize winner started asking my about the topic of my research (i.e. supernova). It soon become obvious to me that he didn't know anything about supernova. It was an interesting experience that made me realize that "Nobel prize winners are human." He didn't get his prize in supernova, and there was no reason to expect him to know anything about the topic, and he was asking me lots of questions because I was doing research on the topic, he wasn't, so he thought it was a good idea for me to teach him what I knew. My advisor knew a ton more than I did, but he wasn't at the lunch.

On a more serious note, think of it this way: the best people attend the best universities.

Which means that if you attend a competitive university, you more likely than not are going to find yourself at the bottom of the class. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I have incredible amounts of sympathy for someone that "just doesn't get math" because I've been in that situation myself.

One thing that you have to learn when you are with the "best" is that you really aren't that good. Learning to deal with your own incompetence is one of those life skills.

You're surrounded by people who are much more competitive than you would see elsewhere, more is expected of you, etc. People working there are better capable of getting grants, expected to published more, do better research, etc. This, of course, creates a positive feedback with good research and lots of money creating better labs and more recognition bringing in even better students who work even harder etc etc.

Until you end up in a mental hospital with a nervous breakdown. I'm not kidding about that. I think one anonymous mental health survey at MIT showed that 90% of the people responding admitted to some major mental health issue within the last year.

More is expected from you and the work ethic can't be the same as someone who goes to a random second tier school in middle-of-nowhere, USA.

Until you burn out and then wonder if it is really worth it. I can pretty much guarantee if you go to MIT that you will have some sort of nervous breakdown while you are there.

Also, one thing about Ivy League schools (at least Harvard and MIT) is that they really don't try to screw you over with the grading system. One thing that I think that MIT does better than UT Austin is that UT Austin sets up the grading to weed out students, whereas MIT will let you fail freshmen physics without any penalty.

Also, the better the university, the more you're pretty much on your own. At my university, which is indeed a second tier university, students are coddled and if they don't know something, it's fine. The professors can't expect much and the environment isn't conducive to pushing students to learn. If students don't know something, it's the instructors fault. At the better universities, that thinking is laughable.

That's not true.

One thing about MIT is that it takes student evaluations very very seriously. The reason for this is that if you go to UT Austin, and you have a class of students that think the instructor is incompetent, then you can argue that its the fault of the students. You really can't argue that with MIT. If you have a bunch of MIT students that think that you are an incompetent teacher (even if you have a Nobel prize) then the odds are good that you are in fact an incompetent teacher.

There are a reasonably large number of incompetent teachers at MIT, because undergraduate teaching is not the primary focus of MIT, research is.

One of the things that MIT does that I think is very different from UT Austin is that student opinions are given far, far more respect by the administration and alumni. You have students on the major faculty committees, and you have student input on the major governance issues.

 

[twofish-quant]

So I'm wondering if my reasoning is correct here: if the core classes are just about the same at any institution (although: there's probably a bit more crammed in at the Ivy League schools), is it the *research quality* that differs from school to school? I'm just wondering *what* exactly I'm going to be sacrificing by going to a tier-100 or lower school for theoretical physics, and *how* to compensate for what I'll be sacrificing, if at all possible.

First of all, the odds are that you won't have a choice in the matter. If you get into Yale and University of Hawaii, then it matters, because that's probably not going to happen.

Second, research quality is one of those things that is very field dependent. Schools are good at some things, bad at other things. For example, if you are interested in observational astronomy, and you get into both Yale and University of Hawaii, you would be *MUCH* better going off to Hawaii since they have a better program at it.

I think the big difference is that the big name schools are usually the best in the world at about ten different things whereas other schools are best in the world at one or two things.

Of course: my aim is to have as strong a CV as possible (by doing lots o' good quality research) when I apply for postdocs, just to mention what I mean by "compensating".

Once you get to the Ph.D. level, what will matter is the reputation of your advisor and your reputation, and especially for the smaller departments, your reputation will influence the department's reputation more than the department's reputation will influence yours.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Until you end up in a mental hospital with a nervous breakdown. I'm not kidding about that. I think one anonymous mental health survey at MIT showed that 90% of the people responding admitted to some major mental health issue within the last year.

Citation, please.

 

[Calrid]

Minor correction you can't study Physics at Portsmouth, they dumped their physics courses ages ago which is ironic as it has a very highly rated maths dept I think it's 14th, definitely in the top 20 so kind of strange..?

 

[twofish-quant]

Citation, please.

Actually, I misremembered the report. The number was 74% rather than 90%.

http://web.mit.edu/chancellor/mhtf/#data


Significantly, 74% of the respondents reported having had an emotional problem that interfered with their daily functioning at MIT while 28% reported having used the MIT Mental Health Service. Students reported overwhelmingly that they would discuss an emotional problem first with friends and family followed by a mental health provider or a counseling dean.

 

[cgk]

Perhaps I didn't phrase my question clearly: I mean to ask "what exactly is it that makes these schools so great?"

The students, mainly. And the students come because of the reputation, and the reputation rises with the quality of the students. It's a self-stabilizing process.[1]

The situation is this: At such schools you have a much higher chance than at other schools that any given student or prefessor is top tier. But that's because such people are drawn to such institutions. It's not like the institutions made them that way; it's the other way around! If said top tier student would have studied at another institution he would still be top tier and learn the same things in the same amount of time. He might just have a harder time proving it to other people, because he's automatically assumed to be top tier solely because he got into the school.


[1] The interesting thing is: If the students are great, the professors don't even need to be that great to get things going.

 

[twofish-quant]

The students, mainly. And the students come because of the reputation, and the reputation rises with the quality of the students. It's a self-stabilizing process.

It also rises with marketing and social networks. A lot of the reasons why Harvard has such a good reputation aren't that different from why Coca-Cola or McDonalds have their reputations. Also how stable the process is is questionable. The problem is that if you have more smart people then the system can absorb then you end up with more smart people on the outside than on the inside, and those systems are never stable.

I should point out that general reputation is a pretty horrid reason to make graduate school selections. There are schools with excellent general reputations that are weak in physics, and there are schools with great general reputations in physics that are weak at particular types of physics. If you go to eat that the highest rated restaurant in the world, you are stuck if it happens to be a French restaurant and you want to eat Indian food.

The situation is this: At such schools you have a much higher chance than at other schools that any given student or prefessor is top tier.

One thing that messes with this is the fact that if you are in physics, you are already part of a small elite. Having seen both, my impression is that the average student at UT Austin is less sharp than the average student at MIT, but that might be misleading because I think that the average student in science or engineering is roughly comparable.

But that's because such people are drawn to such institutions. It's not like the institutions made them that way; it's the other way around!

Hard to say. It's a chicken and egg process. Also it's a matter of priorities. I happen to care more about physics than football, but there are people that have different priorities, and so they didn't end up at MIT.

If said top tier student would have studied at another institution he would still be top tier and learn the same things in the same amount of time. He might just have a harder time proving it to other people, because he's automatically assumed to be top tier solely because he got into the school.

Something that does help you a lot if you go to a big name school is alumni networks. If you keep your networks going, you end up meeting all sorts of interesting and useful people.

Also there is this weird relationship between "top tier" and "second tier." The thing about "second tier" schools is that their faculty often come from the "big name" schools which gives a set of weird loyalties. On the one hand, they have old school ties and networks. But on the other hand if you are a Harvard-educated head of a physics department, you aren't going to hold your department back from competing with Harvard, and you know enough about how Harvard works to try to copy it in your department.

A few years back, Bill Powers the President of UT Austin gave a speech to the graduating Ph.D. class. He talked about how he get his job at UT Austin, and he wasn't shy about admitting that he got it through the Harvard network. One of his old college friends had just been hired by UT Austin, and told him about a new job opening and encouraged him to apply for it, which he did, and he got the job. So the Harvard network really helped him.

But he ended up President of UT Austin, and his point in making that speech was that we UT Austin students should try to form our own alumni networks.

One final point is that if you are a physics Ph.D., you are in a tiny elite, and what school you went to isn't terribly important. Something to remember is that the US puts out about 1000 physics Ph.D.'s each year, and the biggest school (MIT) puts out about 40. By contrast, the Harvard only produces about 900 MBA each year out of about 100,000 MBA's.

 

[G01]

The hallway you walk through is occasionally frequented by a Nobel Prize winner.

Ehh. We got one of those (and quite a few other impressive faculty as well) with none of the ivy...

The Ivy League is an NCAA sports league. Yeah, the schools in it have good, overall reputations but you shouldn't immediately assume you are going to miss anything by not going to an Ivy school. You should use the school's reputation in your discipline to judge whether or not it is a good program.

For instance, SUNY Stonybrook has a great physics program, and they're not an Ivy school.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Actually, I misremembered the report. The number was 74% rather than 90%.

http://web.mit.edu/chancellor/mhtf/#data.

Yes, and had you read more carefully, you would have noticed that the 74% number is hopelessly biased. That same survey had 28% of respondents report they had visted MIT's mental health service, while records show that it was in fact 12%.

If you argue that the fraction of people who have had an emotional problem that interfered with their daily functioning and do not seek treatment is the same among those who returned the survey and those who do not, the fraction of people who have had an emotional problem is 31%, not the 90% that you first claimed. That number is comparable to (a little smaller than) 4-year incidence rates for the population at large.

What you wrote was complete, unadulterated hogwash.

 

[twofish-quant]

Yes, and had you read more carefully, you would have noticed that the 74% number is hopelessly biased.

It is, but it's not clear what direction the numbers are biased in.

If you argue that the fraction of people who have had an emotional problem that interfered with their daily functioning and do not seek treatment is the same among those who returned the survey and those who do not, the fraction of people who have had an emotional problem is 31%, not the 90% that you first claimed. That number is comparable to (a little smaller than) 4-year incidence rates for the population at large.

Sure, but if but you can make other assumptions about the differences between people that return the surveys and people that don't then you get different numbers. There are ways of getting better numbers, but based on personal subjective experience the numbers do not seem out of line, and I don't remember people arguing at the time that the mental health report was issued that the survey overstated the amount of mental health problems at MIT.

One reason for this was that in the 1980's and 1990's, the traditional adminstration response to questions about MIT mental health was that there was no problem and MIT students were no worse off than students in other universities. So this was an excuse to do nothing, and it took a multi-million dollar lawsuit before the administration had to admit that yes there was a problem.

If you have weak data, and then your reaction is to point out that it is weak and to think of ways to come up with stronger data, that's one thing. On the other hand, it's also very easy to argue data to death. We have these surveys that say that in 2001 that MIT had pretty severe mental health issues. You can argue that data to death, which let's you ignore any problems if you want to, but in 2001 that just wasn't possible.

What you wrote was complete, unadulterated hogwash.

Take it up with the MIT Chancellor's office, it was their numbers and conclusions and not mine. The data is weak, but it is consistent with what I remember about MIT.

 

[bjnartowt]

This discussion has been eye opening. Thanks to all, especially twofish-quant.

 

[twofish-quant]

This discussion has been eye opening. Thanks to all, especially twofish-quant.

I should point out one of the reasons that I post as much as I do is because I think it's a really bad thing to have rigid social hierarchies. One reason that "big name" schools have such an advantage is that you have these social networks that share information, and by broadcasting that information more widely you reduce the "information advantage" that the big name schools have.

The only real advantage I can think of to going to a big name school is that you can say bad things about big name schools. Suppose I *didn't* go to MIT. If after not having gone to MIT, I start criticizing MIT, then I'd be looked at as some sort of loser that i complaining out of spite. Because I have a degree from MIT and I've taken courses at Harvard, I have permission to complain about those places.

I think the most important thing that I learned at MIT was to absorb the culture of the place. There's nothing particularly magic about the culture that can't be duplicated elsewhere, but to use the pizza analogy, if you are trying to duplicate NYC pizza, it helps to have been in NYC so that you know what it is that you are trying to duplicate.

 

[bjnartowt]

One reason that "big name" schools have such an advantage is that you have these social networks that share information, and by broadcasting that information more widely you reduce the "information advantage" that the big name schools have.

Naturally, then my next question would be: what should a student who's going to get his PhD *probably* at U-Missouri Columbia starting next year know?

Again, my aim is to get a postdoc in 5 years in a bear market (my friend just got his PhD at SUNY-Albany after doing research in highly-fundamental physics, like deriving Schrodinger's Equation by maximizing entropy, and also got ramifications of general relativity from maximizing entropy; he applied to 20 postdocs, and only heard back from 4 places, all of which gave rejections). I hope to specialize in some subfield of condensed matter theory.

 

[darkchild]

That's not necessarily a bad thing. One thing that I have noticed with Harvard graduates is that they have a certain amount of arrogance that can be helpful. If they get rejected for a job, well then *obviously* the interviewer is incompetent for rejecting him.

...potentially ignoring any improvements they can make to increase their chances of being hired in the future. Positive side-effects doesn't mean that arrogance itself is positive.

The interesting thing is that makes him try again whereas someone else might give up.

Not many people are going to give up on a job search if they really need the money. I could just as easily make the argument that a Harvard graduate is more likely to give up than anyone else, because people who went to Harvard are more likely to have money in the bank already, wealthy parents, connections to get them a job they don't have to work for, etc.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Take it up with the MIT Chancellor's office, it was their numbers and conclusions and not mine. The data is weak, but it is consistent with what I remember about MIT.

I'm not going to let you off the hook quite that easily. First you said it was guaranteed. Then 90%. Then 74%. The 74% comes from a survey that overestimates the actual measured clinical data by more than a factor of 2.

You are making the data fit your perceptions.

 

[twofish-quant]

I'm not going to let you off the hook quite that easily. First you said it was guaranteed.

I said that based on my personal experiences, you are practically guaranteed to have some sort of personal crisis while you were at MIT. The basis for that statement was my experiences going to MIT. The Chancellor's report was intended as data to support my personal experiences, but it's weak data, and that can be challenged.

If the Chancellor's report had indicated that everyone at MIT was happy and smiling, I would have argued that something was weird, because that contradicts my strong subjective impressions of the place, and my experiences there. It could be that I just hung around people that were prone to emotional trouble. It could be that things were different between 1991 and 2001, it could be a dozen other things.

You are making the data fit your perceptions.

So are you. That's the problem with weak data. One thing that social scientists have done is to lots of things to strengthen data so that it's harder to make the data fit your perceptions. Unfortunately, most people at MIT are engineers and there is a strong bias and even contempt for social scientists at MIT, so that some of the basic techniques for getting strong data aren't used.

You are arguing that the Chancellor's report vastly overstates the mental health issues at MIT. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, but I'd appreciate it if you could explain why you think that it is the case. If you think that's the case based on your personal experiences in the place, that's great. More data.

Also for the purposes of this discussion, what I think people are interested in are my personal and subjective perceptions of MIT. If you have different views of the place (and different people do have different views) you are welcome to share them. I *am* biased, but for the purposes of this discussion, people are more interested in my biases (and your biases) than for getting statistically valid samples.

Getting back to my point about "one of the great things about going to a big name school is that you talk about the bad things about big name schools." If I had gone to Dartmouth, then you will have won this argument since you'd be able to criticize the data that I have about MIT, and I would have had nothing. However, that's only one card in my deck. I did go to MIT, and my experience there is that everyone that I knew had some major emotional crisis while there.

So my experiences do affect my perception of data, especially when it is weak. So do yours. If you have experiences that are fundamentally different from mine, that's great, and I'd be interested in hearing what they are.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Yes, my experiences with MIT do not match yours, but my objection to the 74% stems from something far more empirical: that same survey says 28% of people visit the mental health services, when counting noses gives you a much smaller number.

 

[twofish-quant]

Yes, my experiences with MIT do not match yours, but my objection to the 74% stems from something far more empirical: that same survey says 28% of people visit the mental health services, when counting noses gives you a much smaller number.

Right, and what I find interesting is that you immediately seize on that to argue the number down, without looking that possibility that the explanation for that may be something else.

For example, it's not clear what mental health defines as "utilization." If someone calls a help line but doesn't walk in, is that counted as "utilization"? If someone tries to use mental health, but then cancels the appointment because the wait time is too long, that could also change the results.

Doing a google for "MIT mental health utilization" gives me...

http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N26/health/mentalstats.html

Statistics only include those officially registered with Mental Health Services. For
example, they do not include those who take part in support groups or one-time
consultations.

Which means that the mismatch between "utilization" and the "self-reporting" could be because they are measuring different things. Or not.

What I find interesting is that you are are quick to look for things that reduce the issue rather than increase it, and I'm curious why that is. It may be that you find the numbers implausible because in your own experience people just don't have that many problems. That's a perfectly valid response, but it would be better if you stated that explicitly.

 

[Vanadium 50]

What I find interesting is that you are are quick to look for things that reduce the issue rather than increase it, and I'm curious why that is.

Because your original number was 100%. It seemed difficult to argue that the true number would be higher than that.

 

[Shaun_W]

Minor correction you can't study Physics at Portsmouth, they dumped their physics courses ages ago which is ironic as it has a very highly rated maths dept I think it's 14th, definitely in the top 20 so kind of strange..?

There is no official rankings of UK universities nor specific departments, so you cannot possibly say that.

 

[Calrid]

There is no official rankings of UK universities nor specific departments, so you cannot possibly say that.

There is The Times and Guardian rankings every year which gives a broad amount of information (including revealing where universities are ranked in subjects, mostly the ones that are considered the "tougher" subjects, but not all) it's taken as if it is. Usually I tend to think averaging out the right wing Times and Left wing Guardian gives a good picture of how they are rated.

Have you ever tried posting on a University forum during the time the figures come out. It's taken extremely seriously by everyone. Official or not everyone treats it like it is anyway. Both papers are fairly well respected journalistically as well, and they go to a great deal of trouble to rank the top performers, probably as much if not more than the government would go to if it had the means or political will to do so.

 

[Shaun_W]

There is The Times and Guardian rankings every year which gives a broad amount of information (including revealing where universities are ranked in subjects, mostly the ones that are considered the "tougher" subjects, but not all) it's taken as if it is.

I am fully aware of newspaper rankings. They use a broad amount of data, most if which isn't particularly relevant to anyone, nor will much people attach the same amount of weightings to each bit of data.

Usually I tend to think averaging out the right wing Times and Left wing Guardian gives a good picture of how they are rated.

That's a silly thing to do. The position a university appears in a newspaper ranking is dependent on the data used, and the weightings given to each piece of data. Obviously The Times and Guardian use different data and attach a different weighting to each bit of data used, but that absolutely does not mean that the "truth" is somewhere in the middle.

Have you ever tried posting on a University forum during the time the figures come out.

What, you mean an internet forum comprised of a bunch of 17-21 year olds?

It's taken extremely seriously by everyone. Official or not everyone treats it like it is anyway.

No. The only people who give the slightest bit of a damn are A-level students and first years.

Both papers are fairly well respected journalistically as well, and they go to a great deal of trouble to rank the top performers, probably as much if not more than the government would go to if it had the means or political will to do so.

They go to the "trouble" of "ranking" universities because there is money to be made. It is as simple as that. Journalistic integrity does not come into the equation, as you may notice that it is not the newspapers themselves that do the ratings, but rather an external company. (See: how Exeter University ranks high in The Times, as The Times hires a company from Exeter to do the rankings.)

 

[bjnartowt]

UPDATE: I have been accepted to the University of Florida! I'm very excited to go there: 1) the TA's get to grade graduate level coursework 2) the professors seem smart enough to write their own physics questions, not just give questions already written in the textbooks, so I bet they really know the stuff! 3) I know the campus really well: I got my M.S. in engineering there a couple years ago. I have no worries that I'll learn the material "the right way".

: )