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<p>It’s interesting that you already know what his needs are before he even enters college. I’m curious as to exactly what these “needs” are–they must be pretty extensive if a place like Harvey Mudd can’t meet them.</p>
<p>[Courses:</a> Course Descriptions](<a href=“http://www.math.hmc.edu/program/courses/descriptions/]Courses:”>http://www.math.hmc.edu/program/courses/descriptions/)</p>
<p>And then you edit your post to completely remove your statement rather than respond…classy.</p>
<p>coureur, aspiring scientists have to be trained to have the basic skills and knowledge to be able to do top-notch research. A kid who’s been lucky to learn the basics and the undelying theory of HPLC and LC/MS will be much more comfortable designing the experiments needed to isolate and identify the active compound from the extract of the bark of an exotic tree than a kid who has no idea how HPLC works. I believe that the LACs’ mission is not to generate publications in Nature or Science; instead, they generate thinkers who are equipped with the knowledge and the skills needed to do top-notch research at top-notch research institutions.</p>
<p>^ “Classy” is really the word for those posts (141-142). The statement is still there, big guy.</p>
<p>Marite’s son just graduated from college, and I believe he will be in a math PhD program. And, yes, there’s lots of indication that Harvey Mudd didn’t have enough classes that met his needs. It’s not a controversial statement at all. (Check out some of the information on Math 55 on the web, then ask yourself what those people do the next three years.) And marite’s other son did go to a good LAC, if I recall correctly.</p>
<p>The data from Reed for PhD productivity is useless if the quality of the graduate schools is not included in the rankings. While it is very difficult to get into a top Phd program, we don’t know the quality of the PhD programs these students entered.</p>
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This is a very common opinion among the many foreign engineering faculty I know. American LACs are not well-known overseas. In many countries, the public universities are the most competitive, while the private colleges are considered less prestigious. In retrospect, I probably would have preferred a small LAC to the Ivy I attended, but my foreign-born husband considers LACs to be glorified high schools.</p>
<p>anneroku, my foreign-born H (and his friends) has the opposite view of LACs! When he told his college buddy thast our baby was attending XYZ LAC, the reply was, “WOW!!!”</p>
<p>Who cares about the quality of graduate school anyway? It is where they get their postdoc training matters the most! And as soon as they enter the workforce, none of that will matter too much.</p>
<p>You’re probably right, idk why I responded so harshly. It must have been something about the wording of the original post that set me off, my apologies. It also probably has something to do with my lack of mathematics ability that makes me find it difficult to imagine that someone could exhaust the courseload at an LAC, but it appears to be the case.</p>
<p>“The data from Reed for PhD productivity is useless if the quality of the graduate schools is not included in the rankings. While it is very difficult to get into a top Phd program, we don’t know the quality of the PhD programs these students entered.”</p>
<p>We know the top 15 PhD destinations for Reed grads:</p>
<p>UCB
U Washington
Stanford
U Chicago
U Oregon
Harvard
Cornell
Yale
U Wisconsin (Madison)
UCLA
Columbia
Johns Hopkins
UCSD
Princeton
MIT</p>
<p>[REED</a> COLLEGE LIFE AFTER REED](<a href=“http://web.reed.edu/ir/success.html]REED”>Life After Reed - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>
<p>^Thanks, I hadn’t seen that. These are all impressive schools, though of course, we don’t know which particular departments. I would assume they were mostly highly ranked graduate departments, but it’s impossible to know. (For example, I know someone who entered a PhD program at Princeton only because he was rejected from all the higher ranked programs in his field, including the University of Arizona. Most people thought he must be in a prestigious program; anyone in his field knew that he was not.)
Many students entering PhD programs are aiming for college teaching careers, in which case the quality of the graduate program is very important.</p>
<p>Here is the CV of a Reed faculty member. What I like about it is that he bolds the undergrad coauthors, many of whom are the senior author: <a href=“http://academic.reed.edu/psychology/CVs/allencv.pdf[/url]”>http://academic.reed.edu/psychology/CVs/allencv.pdf</a> </p>
<p>Looks like they got to do some solid, important research.</p>
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Hampshire! You go to Hampshire! j/k</p>
<p>But nah, the Smithies say that Amherst classes they’ve taken are easier than the Smith classes. Now if you went to Swat, that would be a different story… I think Swat is the LAC version of U/Chicago.</p>
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<p>Yes, and if we knew which particular departments they attended, one could object that we don’t know which sub-specialties they pursue.</p>
<p>Getting a Ph.D., even from a “second tier” university, is no cake-walk. The HEDS Consortium data suggests that the best LACs tend to have higher rates of Ph.D. production than national universities do. Many factors play into these outcomes, but I’d be surprised to see good evidence that graduates of top LACs gravitate toward weak graduate programs.</p>
<p>About the guy who has his head stuffed with so much math that he is too good for a LAC.</p>
<p>He could go to a LAC, finish off a pretty good math major, and also study maybe Chinese, and politics, and film theory, and anthropology. All in small classes with intelligent students where he has to speak and defend his opinions in situations where there are no exact answers.</p>
<p>At the end of this he would have a strong liberal education, and be able to go into a graduate program in math (if he still wanted) with a much better perspective on life.</p>
<p>No one said that the young man was “too good” for an LAC. It just didn’t meet his particular needs. Different people have different needs, both academically and socially. For some, it will be a mid size research U. For others, an LAC. For still others, a state flagship. It’s all good. As my teenagers say, don’t be a hater!</p>
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<p>Not directed at you, anneroku, but I feel like this is yet another installment of caring about the opinions of those who don’t have real knowledge of something. If I had a dime for every posting on CC that said “But the people in my home country don’t know about XYZ!” I’d be rich. And? So what? They’re typically dealing with incomplete information and working just off general impressions and awareness rather than a true understanding of what’s good and what isn’t. But … oh, let’s all make sure we take it seriously. It’s tiresome. Caring that the people in the home country don’t know XYZ so it can’t be any good is just the international version of being upset that the person at the drycleaners never heard of the college on your sweatshirt.</p>
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[QUOTE=bigp9998]
You’re probably right, idk why I responded so harshly. It must have been something about the wording of the original post that set me off, my apologies.
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Kudos to you for owning up. This takes guts and class.</p>
<p>sorghum:</p>
<p>Do you know about Gen Ed requirements? My “too good for a LAC” son --your words, not mine–, took more than twice as many non-math classes as he did math classes. Some of these were Gen Ed and some were electives. And of the math classes, fully half were grad courses. this is par for the course for advanced math students.</p>
<p>There is no one size fits all. LACs are great; mid-sized research university are great; large state universities are great. Different folks, different strokes.</p>
<p>Not sure why ethnic Chinese friends who are professors gives their opinions more credibility but FWIW, we have a Chinese friend who is a professor at Mt. Holyok. He thinks the students are top notch and the eduction is great. What does this prove, other than different schools meet different needs. </p>
<p>For the record, my H is a social science professor at a large research university, and he never does graduate research with undergrads. He’s too busy working with his graduate students. He does have undergrads in his graduate seminars, but it’s on a space available basis. In these tight budget times, space is rarely available.</p>
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<p>What are you talking about? I didn’t feel like sifting through all the responses to see if this was adressed but Emory and Tufts are universities and (top 50 ones at that) and not LACs.</p>
<p>To the “average person on the street” Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, Brown, Cornell and Tufts are all in the category of “sounds like it might be a college but maybe it is a high school or maybe it is a store that sells kitchen stuff ( – and sonoma)”.</p>
<p>All are second tier compared to Penn State and Ohio State.</p>