<p>Look, I don’t have time now for a full response. However, as I’ve posted before, I don’t necessarily think the firehose mentality is better. As I posted on the Harvard forum, Math55 at Harvard and MIT (or Caltech) engineering are both like playing for Bobby Knight. Is it harder? Yes. Is it beneficial? Maybe. Sometimes yes, sometimes not. </p>
<p>The fact the firehose exists is undeniable, though. It’s not just a figment of my (our) imaginations.<br>
Historically, it has been MIT’s attitude that you should know everything there is to know coming out of undergrad. And many of the projects just sort of throw you into the fire and expect you (and your friends) to figure everything out. In the past 10 years, MIT has tried to lessen the graduation requirements within some of the engineering and science majors to make them less restrictive, and maybe, to turn down the firehose a bit. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t call it “unsufferable arrogance.”</p>
<p>^ yes, I felt saying “insufferable” was a bit strong, so I added “nearly.” In previous times when I visited the MIT forum, the flagrant displays of superiority and complacency were grating; after a while, compounded with a few (minor) incidents in person at MIT, these displays start to approach insufferable.</p>
<p>I’m sure that MIT students are very much partaking in the teat of the firehose. But so are STEM students at Stanford and similar schools. The reason this is relevant, of course, is that rigor is an implicit reflection of the quality. But I cannot conceive of a qualitative difference between Stanford and MIT engineering. That coincides with my inability to conceive of any noticeable difference in rigor.</p>
<p>I’ll re-emphasize that I think you are totally on target that MIT on the whole can be considered more rigorous than Stanford, for obvious reasons. But I firmly believe that that difference breaks down when you consider more specific instances of disciplines’ rigor (namely, STEM fields).</p>
<p>I don’t believe that recognizing the intense rigor of the MIT education takes away anything about the quality of education at other schools with different approaches. It has nothing to do with arrogance and everything to do with educational philosophies.</p>
<p>MIT (and arguably Caltech) undergraduate educations are notorious as the closest academic equivalents to a Marine Corps training. The Military Academies are obviously very tough but in a different way, by combining academics with intense physical and military training. In that sense MIT is much more transformational than other selective colleges. I have heard faculty refer to the education as deconstructing-reconstructing. It takes your knowledge apart by showing how little you really know and then it rebuilds your foundation block by block. However strong your background was prior to enrolling, MIT loves to make you feel inadequate by setting the bar arbitrarily high and throwing you all types of curves. This is part of the reason for the IHTFP feeling that most MIT students will experience at times during their education. </p>
<p>My D is just finishing her senior year at MIT and her feeelings for the school have oscillated between extreme frustration and total elation, very much like most of her friends. Extreme frustration when working many nights on endless problem sets with no clear solutions; tests with little relation to the material studied in class, getting a 50 on a test she thought she aced, constant quizzes and tests that don’t let up throughout the semester, extremely short review periods. Memorizing does not help as any formulas required are typically printed at the back of the testbook which feels like a small binder. It does not get better in upper level classes: textbooks become pretty useless as much material discussed is typically from primary research; classes turning into seminars where you are supposed to intelligently critique the work of some well-known scientist (who BTW may actually be one of the lecturers). Professors won’t give you any slack if you have two major lab reports due the same week for other classes. This feeling of frustration may be followed in short order by total elation when she finally has a breakthrough on some research project she worked on seemingly forever without results or when she critiqued a major paper in a graduate level class in front of a notoriously difficult Nobel Prize laureate who actually congratulated her on her presentation. Then all the hard work, sleepless nights feel all worth it. But the next day she may again hate the place! These are the typical lives of the MIT underclassmen and it is clearly not for everybody. </p>
<p>My D was able to compare a typical chemistry class at MIT with a similar class at Harvard which she cross-registered for one of her premed requirements. She had taken Orgo I at MIT the previous semester and was now taking Orgo II. She had found Orgo I at MIT to be needlessly complex covering items well beyond what was typically required of premeds. She now had a very busy semester with a full academic and research load and did not want to go through the same ordeal again. She and more than a dozen other MIT students (her tactic was apparently quite common!) took the Harvard class loaded with Harvard premeds. The Harvard Professor commented the class on the first day that the MIT students would most likely take many of the As in the class to the visible frustration of the Harvard premeds. Which they did! It is not that the Harvard class was not rigorous, it certainly was. But it was simply geared at a different audience with many liberal arts majors struggling to stay on the premed track and the material and intensity of the class was adjusted accordingly. The MIT students were just much better prepared and all had strong science backgrounds.</p>
<p>So MIT’s “drinking from the fire hose” approach is not necessarily a better educational philosophy but it is clearly a distinctive characteristic. Even in the STEM fields, other schools (except Caltech) do not put their students through the same grinder.</p>
<p>I would say that there would be some differences in philosophy, as is true across all universities and their departments. But again, I don’t think that the difference lies in the rigor, but in what skills or knowledge they emphasize, etc. Most of what you described in your third paragraph is exactly what happens at Stanford too, mainly in STEM fields. (In fact, Stanford’s started a [url=<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/01/14/new-project-addresses-failure-on-the-farm/]project[/url”>New project addresses failure on the Farm]project[/url</a>] to try to combat the frustrations/feelings of failure that students have when they don’t do well.) Just as MIT has the stereotype of “drinking from the firehose,” Stanford has the “duck syndrome,” wherein students appear to be calm and composed when they’re really paddling furiously to stay afloat (emphasis on struggling), though Stanford students don’t pride themselves on the duck syndrome like MIT students do the firehose.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Saying that Stanford’s “education [is] just not at MIT’s level” does qualify for the former.</p>
<p>There is a big difference between an Institute-driven philosophy of purposely forcing the students to drink from a fire hose to build problem-solving skills and approaches to dealing with struggling student’s frustrations (what you call the duck syndrome). The first I argue is unique to MIT (and Caltech). The second is common practice at many private universities through counseling, tutoring and the like. </p>
<p>Stanford is not known as an institution where its students are routinely pushed to their limits, whether in the STEM fields or not. Like most schools, Stanford has departmental honors where only a limited number of top achieving students are admitted. More is expected of them than non-honor students. This creates a stratification in the rigor of education not present at MIT. At MIT, just graduating is an achievement and there are no rankings or honors of any kind to distinguish one graduate from another. Just getting your degree (and turning your brass-rat ring around) is an achievement. Stanford also has a number of unaccredited engineering programs significantly less rigorous (by objective standards) than their accredited cousins. At MIT essentially all engineering programs are accredited and of similar difficulty so as not to create any distinction between hard and soft engineering majors. At Stanford, if you don’t do well in the STEM fields you can change fields entirely and major in the liberal arts. At MIT, there are no BA degrees. Even students in departments such as Political Science have to take the same math/science core as STEM students. </p>
<p>So sure, an individual EE student at Stanford may well work just as hard as any MIT EE student, but it is not in the “DNA” of Stanford to drive such behavior as it is at MIT. This is in part why some students explicitly choose Stanford over MIT.</p>
<p>I don’t have numbers by department for a direct comparison, but Stanford is not known as having as explicit grade deflation as MIT by any stretch. Like at most schools STEM majors have probably lower GPA than non STEM majors at Stanford, but as a whole STEM majors at Stanford have higher average GPAs than MIT students which hovers around 3.2/3.3.</p>
<p>^I’ve heard the duck analogy before. In other words, Stanford students stay composed despite hard workloads. The MIT students, despite taking classes of the same difficulty, complain about how hosed they are and are dramatic about it. That’s pretty arrogant to me–MIT students don’t actually have more work–they just like to complain more.</p>
<p>By the way, I have also taken undergrad classes at or taught at other top 10 universities, but not Stanford, so my opinions are partly based on that as well. You can say it’s anecdotal, but having friends at Stanford say they didn’t working any harder than at high school (which was advanced) does tell me something. </p>
<p>Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully so as to avoid negative connotations. However, I never said that MIT graduates are superior to Stanford’s. Nor did I imply it. Probably if you search my posts you can find a fuller explanation of the cost/benefits of the firehose. As I pointed out before, MIT’s greatest engineer (Vannevar Bush) went to Tufts undergrad. I think having some breathing room in the curriculum can have its merits, as it allows some time to think creatively about things. As long as it is reasonably rigorous, someone who has talent can fill in the gaps and learn how to make advances in the field. The added rigor at MIT can be good if it’s right for your style of learning, but it does crush some people. If you don’t stay on top of it, it can be like an assembly line at 100 miles per hour.</p>
<p>oh please guys, enough with the “my schools harder than your school” ****ing contest. Really . Both schools offer challenging engineering programs.
Either one will will be plenty hard and will prepare a graduate for the future. NO employer or grad school is going to question WHY a student choose to go to one over the other.</p>
<p>^It wasn’t a ****ing contest before Phantasmagoric got here. The OP wanted to know the differences, not a “they are all the same, go where you want” answer. MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, University of Illinois are all top 5 engineering schools. They are not all exactly the same. Anyway, if the OP wants to know the differences in the curriculum, he/she can ask a Stanford prof with an undergrad degree from MIT or vice versa. There should be plenty of both. And feel free to post what they say.</p>
<p>Well i made up my decision and am going to MIT … am going to chew on the first tree i see now and build some dams in my rooms soon i hope my parents wont object.</p>
<p>Actually, it isn’t a contest unless someone makes it a contest. I was not arguing that Stanford is more rigorous than MIT, rather that they’re equal; that’s not making a contest. It becomes a contest when you argue that they are not equal, as you are steadfast in your superiority that MIT is not only more rigorous, but offers an education that’s on a “level” higher than Stanford’s.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Exactly–and some of us (who have actually experienced Stanford engineering) didn’t want you to mislead a student to think that this difference actually exists. There are actual, meaningful differences to point out.</p>
<p>Those people who think MIT is superior to Stanford in engineering either don’t have a brain or have a brain already damaged.</p>
<p>THey are equal in quality. But Stanford is more innovative, and tends to generate more technologies that change the world (HP, Google, Yahoo, CISCO, SUN).</p>
<p>We are talking about the undergrad curriculum, not grad school or the strength of the faculty. I agree that there are negligible differences in the latter two.<br>
And the word “superior” is an oversimplification. I never used it. </p>
<p>Tennis player Andre Agassi spent a lot of years at Bolletieri’s training camp, where they hit thousands of balls a day. It was kind of like a trial by attrition. It contributed to Agassi’s second-to-none ability to hit the ball on-the-rise, something which requires tremendous timing and conditioning (to be in the right place.) </p>
<p>Sampras had different training. Het hit plenty of balls too, but there was more emphasis on putting points together. In general it was more relaxed environment. </p>
<p>
Stanford has contributed more to Silicon valley, at least in the area of software companies. But software isn’t everything. There’s an interesting article in MIT’s newspaper in which a former president of MIT described that, in the 60’s, they decided against investing heavily in developing a “silicon valley” in Mass Ave. I’m not going to list other technologies developed by MIT. Anyone interested can look it up themselves.</p>
<p>If a new species is discovered today, Harvard would like to find out where it came from; MIT would study the structure of the species; Stanford would like to think a way to make money out of it; and I would just like to eat it to have the taste of it.</p>
<p>MIT’s way sucks, I like my way or Stanford’s way better, and Harvard’s does not matter. :)</p>
<p>collegealum314, it’s best not to take datalook too seriously. ;)</p>
<p>On the topic of Silicon Valley (by the way, Stanford has contributed a lot more in SV than just software), here’s an interesting article from the late 90s:</p>
i hope my parents wont object.</p>