<p>^ Wrong, modest…
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<p>As for your comments about business spending, companies have different business models to serve different customers. Also, higher cost doesn’t always imply higher quality…look at appliances and automobiles, for example.</p>
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I don’t understand your point here. Can you please clarify?</p>
<p>You always harp on the notion that spending on things like advising and student services, and generally anything which is designed solely to institutionally personalize learning is a total waste. If I gather things correctly, you somehow find that there is glory in the “sink or swim” idea.</p>
<p>I don’t really see any glory in sink or swim-- everyone is better off at a school if all of the students end up learning to a high level. Classes are better, outside of class interactions are better, the students are universally better served, etc. I just don’t see the glory in sink or swim that you and others on this site do.</p>
<p>Because pretty much everywhere in the real world, it’s sink or swim. That’s why top notch research universities better prepare students for the real world.</p>
<p>^ It’s economies of scale…not sink or swim.</p>
<p>Everyone is better off and better served by small class sizes and close nuturing, huh? Frankly, I think this notion is perpetuated by rhetoric from teachers unions and brain washed parents of undisciplined grade school children. </p>
<p>/rant</p>
<p>^^Of course more individual attention better serves a student than huge, impersonal lecture halls. That doesn’t necessarily mean that a teacher or administration is holding your hand for the 4 years of study, just they care about turning out people who are more intelligent than from when they first entered school.</p>
<p>On-Topic: I think Dartmouth is just fine, perhaps a bit underrated. The focus on undergraduate studies is phenomenal. The only reason it’s not more sought after is, indeed, its rural location.</p>
<p>I look at it like this.
There are certain types of schools and every school is different either totally or slightly from the other.</p>
<p>For schools like Dartmouth, Williams, and some other LAC/LAC-Like environments, I can raise the analogy of a student being like a hungry child, and the school being the caring mother that makes the sandwich, cuts the crust off, pours a glass of milk for them, and then makes extra JUST in case the kid wants more.</p>
<p>For schools like Brown, Duke, Yale, Princeton, and others that are midway between LAC and Research University, the school is the mother that may just make the sandwich ahead of time and tell the kid where it is, trusting that he/she will get it, and maybe make one friendly reminder or two.</p>
<p>For schools like Harvard, Hopkins, and lot of intense-research universities like Berkeley, and others, the mother simply buys the groceries and possibly boatloads more than necessary, and tells the kid to make the sandwich for him/herself the way they want it, when they want it, and however many they want, and maybe learn a lesson or two on the way.</p>
<p>For some people, the Dartmouth style of school is ideal. For others, it is not.
For those who prefer Dartmouth’s method, they will always overrate it because people have a tendency to bow down to things they like/love. For those who dislike Dartmouth’s method, it will be underrated because they can’t see the benefits to the method.</p>
<p>Either way, I think Dartmouth is neither underrated or overrated. It just depends who you’re asking (in academia).
In the vast public, however, people don’t even know Dartmouth exists.</p>
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<p>True, in K-12 classes where they’re looking to go from 30 to 15, not true in college courses where the nature of the work is drastically different and we’re talking about 40-45 to 15 (and yes, even in K-12, 40-45 to 20-25 makes a huge difference).</p>
<p>
a) It’s not necessarily true that the world is “sink or swim” purely.
b) I think the goal of higher education is to teach students how to swim, not give them the opportunity to sink or swim.
c) Think about the medical school example-- are we better off in a system where the cream rises to the top or where all the kids at medical school who are going to graduate, graduate all knowing more and all being better prepared to be good doctors. We’re talking about students already selected at the top here. Aren’t we all, in any field, and as a society, better served when all students come out with a top education rather than just those who were empowered to take advantage?
d) Not everyone enters the system equally empowered to take advantage of services and additional attention and resources, along with creative models must be used to reach these students.</p>
<p>@hope2getrice</p>
<p>It’s not a bad analogy, however, I think it’s a bit skewed because of the idea we have in the US that glorifies self-sufficiency. There is an inherent value judgment in the analogy you’re making.</p>
<p>It’s more like–</p>
<p>Group 1) Wrap-around services hospital. Ensures patients find ways to afford the necessary treatment, hires top surgeons and nurses, seeks to make family and the ill comfortable in their space. Offers counseling for patients and their families to help them cope with their family health situation.</p>
<p>Group 2) Offers wrap-around services, but due to scale, they feel a bit less personal. Hires top surgeons and nurses, however, also has a research component which sometimes gives patients access to experimental procedures and new treatment. Sometimes this is risky, other times it saves lives. In an emergency, patients often go to this hospital over hospital one for specialists in certain areas, but if they had to stay a long time for something more routine, group 1 makes more sense.</p>
<p>Group 3) Major research hospital. Best researchers and surgeons, but not operating on everyone. People are there both trying to make a name for themselves and having already done so. There’s no question you want to be here if you can get the world specialist on your side for something major, risky, or outside of normal work. Great reputation. Very impersonal on the human side-- often families feel lost, services for pay and counseling are difficult to access if at all available.</p>
<p>In the end, patients get well at all three hospitals. That’s the real goal here-- EVERYONE should get well. However, your experience is going to be quite different at each hospital, and there certainly isn’t a better or worse for everyone.</p>
<p>^ I know a Princeton grad who could not make a sandwich because he never made one in his life.</p>
<p>The problem with your analogy though, Modest, is that it makes it seem like students at group 3 aren’t going to get quality education. It is a good analogy, though I think it makes a lot of implications at either extreme (group 1 or group 3) though I do agree with group 2 overall.</p>
<p>I still think the sandwich analogy would make a little more sense because at large research universities, you really are given all the resource and opportunities you can imagine, but must actively seek it out to make it happen. They throw great professors, researchers, opportunities, etc at you, and you are left to figure it out and grow on your own, and/or sink on your own (if you happen to not make the sandwich).</p>
<p>edit: I was also trying not to make a value judgment. lol</p>
<p>My point is at large research institutions there’s no doubt you’ll go into a big building, have a great doctor take care of you, and leave healthy. All the stuff in between depends on how powerfully you self-advocate for yourself, and how equipped you are to do that kind of advocacy and know to advocate like that before you even get in the building.</p>
<p>In group 1, you’re going to go in and get out healthy, but you’re not going to be able to get the same care if you had something very odd/extraordinary and may often find that they bring in people from group 3 or refer you to group 3 for certain procedures.</p>
<p>
True, the US is an individualistic society…other cultures are more collective.</p>
<p>However, regarding the class size stuff, I don’t think the classes are large purposely for a lack of resources…its more about conveying the most education while being efficient with the inputs. Classes that are more factual in nature are taught in a larger lecture environment with a smaller discussion element…Classes that are more opinion based are taught in smaller classes to foster discussion/interaction. This is the way courses are taught at all universities… I had humanities classes at Berkeley with 15-20 students.</p>
<p>Ahh, I see your point. thanks modest! :)</p>
<p>I agree with you, UCB, about size changing based on content and purpose. It’s true here and true everywhere else.</p>
<p>However, I wasn’t really making a class size argument, just responding to yours.</p>
<p>intro-science classes will always be big.
However, in my experience (at Hopkins), the more advanced in sciences one goes, the smaller the classes become…like one of my science classes was below 25 students. lol</p>
<p>Underrated, because most people don’t bother to discover the qualities that make Dartmouth an outstanding college.</p>
<p>Overrated, solely because of the Ivy League mystique, which outrageously tips the scales in its favor when compared with the top LACs.</p>
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<p>See… we have totally different perceptions of small class. Many of my science classes at higher levels were 5-10 students.</p>
<p>“Because pretty much everywhere in the real world, it’s sink or swim. That’s why top notch research universities better prepare students for the real world.”</p>
<p>One sees this pseudo-worldly wise sentiment expressed often on this forum. One has to wonder whether this is just an ex post facto rationalization of the aversive learning experiences and academic environments to which some students are exposed.</p>
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<p>This was a pretty silly thing to say. You pretty much lost any credibility you had when you claimed that Dartmouth’s business recruiting is the best among Ivies. </p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Wharton all undoubtedly have better business recruiting than Dartmouth. </p>
<p>Non-Wharton Penn and Columbia also have better business placement than D as well, considering the fact that Non-Wharton students can take courses at Wharton and the fact that Columbia is located in the financial capital of the world. </p>
<p>Arguably, even Cornell has better business placement than D considering how it has the #4 business program in the country and is the #3 most represented school at Goldman Sachs Sales and Trading(see Ibanking forum). This leaves Brown. According to people on this forum, the #1 employer of brown is Goldman Sachs. I don’t see any reasonable argument that can be made that suggests that D is better than Brown for business placement. </p>
<p>Therefore, Dartmouth is arguably the worst Ivy for business placement. It’s a great school, but let’s not kid ourselves here – in no way does it have easily “the best business recruiting among the Ivies”.</p>
<p>With regards to whether or not Dartmouth is overrated, I would say that it incredibly overrated by Slipper1234, but properly rated by others.</p>
<p>UCB is pretty well the mirror image of Dartmouth, if anyone is wondering why UCB guy is bothering to weigh in here.
On the undergraduate level, Dartmouth students are far smarter than the Berkeley folks, the professors are hired to teach undergraduates, and the resources are deep versus constrained as at Berkeley.
Berkeley has the graduate departments and the Nobel Prize winners and the international reputation.
A logical decision would be to go to Dartmouth undergrad, and Berkeley for most graduate studies. Except for business and medicine, of course.
On the overall rating position, undergraduate student strength has guided my estimate of undergraduate schools for my first two offspring applicants, and will for the third. I don’t think a program can be any smarter than its students.</p>
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<p>It’s not the Wharton classes, it’s that we all have access to the same recruiting system with companies dying to get their hands on us (recession notwithstanding of course)</p>