<p>You are correct, the costlessness of the education surely encourages slacking off and recuces the academic quality of students. The important point is how great the reduction is. I don’t have any idea.</p>
<p>I am thankful for the tips concerning recommendation letters, because they are my biggest concern. Luckily I should still have time to get to know two or three professors better. Do you know how much more professor’s title is impactful than some lecturing senior researcher’s? That is, should I “focus” only on professors?</p>
<p>I take it you are happy you decided to go to the United States? Anything you dislike? Anything you particularly like?</p>
<p>I’m very happy with the decision. I particularly like the structure of the US Ph.D. where you first get a firm base in your subject and only then start doing research. In Finland it’s pretty typical to just work on one topic till you’ve published enough to earn the Ph.D. I don’t particularly like the idea that you can actually get a Ph.D. in math in Finland without even knowing some rudimentary stuff in other subfields. Last summer I talked to a full professor in math at the University of Helsinki and realized that he didn’t know the structure theorem for finite abelian groups (this is REALLY basic stuff in math). It just shows how specialized you can be.</p>
<p>Another good thing is that many schools really want to make you a good teacher too, because teaching is seen as an important part of the work of a professor whereas in Finland it’s often seen as just a nuisance. At my school you get paired with a junior professor when you start teaching and the professor will sit in the class while you’re teaching and provide you with constructive feedback. This really helps, because you often think you’re great even though you’re far from it.</p>
<p>Teaching is also very good due to the fact that the trivial stuff is always assigned as readings and the classes only go through the hard and important stuff and you’re assumed to have read the material before you come to the lecture. This means that there’s often time for good class discussions too. In Finland there’s rarely time to discuss much as the professor is in a hurry, because he has to cover lots of material.</p>
<p>I don’t really have much negative to say. Of course, at top schools your studies are lot more stressful, but you are there to learn and they try to push you to your limit. You’ll also have some problems with the culture. I really hate answering the question “how are you?” 100 times a day when no one actually expects you to answer truthfully… The only thing I don’t like about academics is that in the US your grades are very important when you apply for e.g. consulting and finance jobs, so when working as a TA you might have a class full of people who only care about their grade instead of actually learning. However, in Finland you have a class full of people who don’t care at all, so I don’t know which is worse. :)</p>
<p>You also asked how good the education is at TKK. I’ll say it is good. At TFY you start with stuff in math that is usually covered during the 2nd or 3rd year in the US. In physics you start with stuff that is usually studied in the 2nd year. However, courses at TKK are much lighter than graduate courses at top US schools and the best undergrads in the US have mostly taken graduate courses in their last year or two, so they are in general ahead of someone graduating from TKK.</p>