Harvard as the “most powerful and influential” and sakky’s comments

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
21

<p>ske..."HMS Ph.D. program in medical sciences has a yield that is twice those of the closest competitors, ie. MIT, Stanford, UCSF, and UC Berkeley."</p>

<p>You can't compare a yield for a medical school PhD program to that of a regular PhD program. Of course the medical school MD PhD yield will be higher with all the people fighting to get in. It's apples and oranges. Plus, Harvard's most elite MDPhD program, the HST or Harvard Medical Scientist Program, is actually a joint program with MIT. In this program, one attends Harvard Medical School and completes a PhD at MIT. So comparing MIT and Harvard makes even less sense...</p>

22

<p>Plus, I would be interested in what the stats are for the number of faculty members that are alumni from Johns Hopkins Medical School. Harvard takes many people that aren't really headed toward a hard-core research career.</p>

23

<p>Nonsense. The best of the best choose Yale. Also, yield rates are more like 60% for HLS and 90% for YLS; given a choice, almost everyone (95%+) who gets into both chooses Yale. Also, Harvard's faculty just don't compare. On an overall basis, Harvard Law comes in somewhere in a tier below Yale, probably also below Stanford and Chicago.</p>

24

<p>PosterX, are you taking hallucinogens again? YLS website very clearly states their yield is 77%. I believe we've had this crazy argument somewhere. No one believes anything you say anyway, so please don't bother. I understand your intense emotional need to have Yale better than Harvard at SOMETHING, because there are so few, but please don't make up stuff. </p>

<p>HMS has a Ph.D. program which is just like any other Ph.D. program. You train at a lab physically located at HMS but get your Ph.D. from the Faculty of Arts and Scinces. HMS awards M.D. degrees only and is just effectively lending space and professors to FAS for the Ph.D. program. It has nothing to do with the M.D. program itself.</p>

<p>M.D., Ph.D. students at HMS can choose to do their Ph.D. at the HMS Ph.D. program (called the Division of Medical Sciences) or at MIT. In fact in the HMS Ph.D. program, the vast majority are non-M.D. students, coming straight out of college to attend grad school, with only a handful of M.D./Ph.D.s thrown in. </p>

<p>So yes, you can compare the HMS Ph.D. program to MIT or any other Ph.D. program, and the HMS program is widely favored over others. One reason is the incredible number of top-notch labs that are available to the student, numbering several hundred rather than two or three dozen in other Ph.D. programs.</p>

<p>HST is not an M.D.-Ph.D. program, it is simply a separate track within HMS that emphasizes research. They take some classes at MIT during their preclinical years, so it's considered a joint program between Harvard and MIT (hence the name "Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology"). Many HST students do in fact go for the PH.D. as well (about a third of the class), either at HMS or MIT, but don't confuse HST and M.D./Ph.D. </p>

<p>Actually, Johns Hopkins is a lot more clinically oriented than HMS and it's about half the size of HMS. It won't come anywhere close.</p>

25

<p>The bottom-line is that MIT does not have an MD-PhD program of its own. Neither does Berkeley. Neither of these schools has medical schools. </p>

<p>So you cannot compare their yields to the MD-PhD program at Harvard. I know Harvard has a regular biology PhD program, and you could compare that yield with Berkeley and MIT...</p>

<p>I mean, think about it. Who is going to turn down Harvard MD program? Just because no one turns down Harvard MD-PhD program, that doesn't imply it's PhD program is more attractive to potential applicants. You accept both components of the MD-PhD program when you apply. You can apply for the PhD program after you are finished with the MD, but typically that is not how it's done. The friends I have in MD-PhD programs did the first 2 years of the MD program (classwork), then did 4 years of research, and finally did the last two years of the MD program. So it's typically a joint program.</p>

26

<p>You are still confused. I am NOT talking about the yield for the M.D./Ph.D. program, which would be virtually 100%. I am talking about the Division of Medical Sciences (DMS) Ph.D. program, which is housed at HMS but is administered by FAS, with the ultimate Ph.D. degrees coming from FAS. </p>

<p>What I am saying is that the DMS Ph.D. program has a yield of a little over 50% but that is still twice as high as the yields for any other biology Ph.D. program in the country. The DMS Ph.D. students are NOT medical students, except for a handful - they are regular Ph.D. students.</p>

<p>And the reason why the HMS Dean mentioned this is because the (relatively) high yield is a testimony to the quality and attractiveness of the research environment at HMS.</p>

27

<p>Ske,</p>

<p>1) Re yield at Harvard DMS PhD programs: Martin has been talking about 50% yield, and how that's "twice as high as the yields for any other biology PhD program in the country," as you proudly parrot. But there are many ways to spin and fudge those statistics. See: <a href="http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/archive/06_04_07.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/archive/06_04_07.html&lt;/a>, where the Stanford counterparts present bioscience PhD yield figures >50% as well.</p>

<p>2) Re yield at law schools being influenced by US News: that may or may not have any relevance, but it's extremely unscientific to simply declare that it's a "truth." Your argument is essentially that "HLS is better, but US News says YLS is better; therefore YLS' yield has risen independent of true merit." One could just as easily use that logic to explain why people think more highly of Harvard than it really "deserves" ... which I don't see you doing.</p>

<p>Bottom line = Harvard is a great place, but there are <em>many</em> smart people around and most do not live in Boston. It would help to gain more perspective about education and life before trying to make claims of universal superiority.</p>

28

<p>Look at this guy talk! I can't believe he had the nerve to put sakky on the spot, and people bothered to respond to this egotistical poster.</p>

<p>OP, I suggest you take a look at how long your response was to posterX compared to his post. You are clearly, a tool.</p>

29

<p>Professor Henry Hansmann at YLS clearly believes that YLS's yield has risen primarily because of the US News rankings. If you have another plausible explanation for a sudden jump from 50% to 77% in 2 years, I would be quite interested in hearing it.</p>

<p>Kingduke, I hope you think Yale President Richard Levin has sufficient "perspective about education and life" (certainly much more than you anyway). And Levin believes "Harvard is blessed with the broadest and deepest assembly of intellectual talent and academic resources in the world, and it is to Harvard that the whole world looks for leadership." He notes that "these are mere facts", however reluctant he may be to admit it. Harvard President Lawrence Summers also noted that Harvard is the "greatest research university in the world". Do you have problems with their judgment? To put Harvard is first is not to deny the existence of excellence elsewhere, as you imply. </p>

<p>Big Brother, I graciously took your suggestion despite your unpleasant attitude and noted that only the first brief paragraph of my reply is directed at PosterX, with the remainder being a discussion of programs at HMS.</p>

30

<p>Hold on, now, wait a sec. You believe President Levin is giving you a completely unbiased perspective when he's asked to give a speech at HARVARD'S presidential inauguration? He might go down to New Haven the very next day and give a speech about why Yale is chief. He's a public spokesman. He's not telling you his honest opinion. He's achieving a purpose. That said, most people probably agree that Harvard is a great school and is extremely strong in many areas. This very much does not mean that it is undeniably superior in every area of study. I would agree with previous posters in saying that by most people's estimation, YLS has a better reputation in the legal profession than HLS. Like I said, though, in my earlier post - the purposes and climates of the two schools are different - in comparing apples and oranges, it's hard to say definitely that one is definitively better.</p>

31

<p>Er no. I don't think President Levin's ever claimed that Yale's number one. He's used phrases such as "one of world's great universities", "one of the leading universities in the nation", et cetera, but he's never said that Yale has "the broadest and deepest assembly of talent and resources in the world". And while he's obviously spoken at many schools, he hasn't used the kinds of phrases he used at Harvard to refer to other universities.
<a href="http://www.yale.edu/opa/president/speeches/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/opa/president/speeches/&lt;/a> He is obviously trying to compliment Harvard but it doesn't mean that he is not being honest.</p>

<p>Just to reiterate, I've never said HLS is "better" than YLS, because it depends on how you define the term. But it's hard to deny that HLS has had a far greater impact on law, politics, and government service. It of course has to do with the fact that HLS is much larger, but it's not an automatic consequence of being large.</p>

32

<p>
[quote]
You ask repeatedly why YLS has a higher yield than HLS. It obviously has a lot to do with the U.S. News rankings, which increased the YLS yield by 60% in just two years. Do you think YLS suddenly got better by 60% in two years? HLS's large size (which can be an asset to some people) and relatively rigid grading system are probably the other major factors.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yeah, maybe it does have something to do with USNews. But so what? Frankly, it doesn't really matter what the reasons are. The only thing that matters is that YLS has a better cross-yield than HLS does. </p>

<p>
[quote]
But most people will agree that the yield is not a meaningful indicator of how "powerful and influential" a school is in the profession. Rather than go through the same arguments with you over and over, I'll let the readers ponder the meaning of "power and influence", examine the data I presented above, and reach their own conclusions.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Then we're arguing over 2 different things. After all, it seems to me that what * really* matters is not "power and influence", strictly speaking, but rather where would you, as a prospective student, prefer to go to? Again, YLS beats HLS in cross-admit yield. Hence, even if HLS is more powerful and influential according to whatever definition you want to use, YLS is more preferable regardless. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Harvard is not merely one of many great universities. It is clearly ahead of the pack. I will close by quoting Yale President Richard Levin:</p>

<p>"Harvard is blessed with the broadest and deepest assembly of intellectual talent and academic resources in the world, and it is to Harvard that the whole world looks for leadership. These are mere facts, but, believe me, these are not easy things for a Yale president to say." </p>

<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/opa/president/sp.../20011012.html%5B/url%5D%5B/quote%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/opa/president/sp.../20011012.html

[/quote]
</a></p>

<p>But that's not what you said. If you insist, I will search through your old posts and throw them back towards you. What you said is that EVERY professional school at Harvard is clearly "the most powerful and influential" in its class. I said it before, and I'll say it again - EVERY one? Really? Is the Harvard GSE really clearly the most powerful and influential Ed School in the country? Is the Harvard SPH clearly the most powerful and influential public health school in the country? Is Harvard DEAS clearly the most powerful and influential engineering and/or applied science school in the country? These are all professional schools, so they should fall under the purview of your previous statement. Unless you can answer these questions in the affirmative, I think you should admit that your prior claim went too far. </p>

<p>Look ske293, like I said before, there is nothing wrong with making a statement that in retrospect proves to be too strong. Surely everybody here at some point in their life has been carried away with their thoughts and emotions and made statements that proved to be indefensible. The honorable thing to do would be to just admit that you went too far and now you'd like to return to a defensible position. It's hard for me to see how you can defend the notion that every one of Harvard's professional schools really is the most powerful and influential in its class. If you want to continue to do so, go right ahead, but I think your best move is to simply retreat. There's no shame in that. </p>

<p>There is also no need to make unnecessarily provocative statements such as "Johns Hopkins Med School is an also-ran". Come on, what's up with that? It's one thing to say that HMS is better than JHU. Fine, I could go along with that. It's quite another thing to simply diss other schools. Any way you cut it, JHU is one of the best med schools in the world, so if JHU is an also-ran, what does that say about all the other med-schools out there? Furthermore, HMS hires plenty of professors who went to med school and/or residency and/or were former profs at other med-schools, including JHU. Would you tell them in real life that you thought that they went to an institution that was an "also-ran"? Heck, you yourself might end up working at JHU someday. </p>

<p>Look, ske293, I recognize that you said a lot of things in the previous thread out of emotion. Somebody was dissing Harvard, and you felt the need to defend it. Fine, do so. But there is no need to fight fire with fire. You don't have to defend your school by dissing others. </p>

<p>Furthermore, like I said, when you say things out of emotion, the honorable thing to do is to later admit that you were just being emotional and hence got carried away and made statements that were too strong. Again, there is nothing wrong with that. We've all done it. The problem is that you continue to try to defend the statements you made when you were emotional.</p>

33

<p>"Yeah, maybe it does have something to do with USNews. But so what? Frankly, it doesn't really matter what the reasons are. The only thing that matters is that YLS has a better cross-yield than HLS does."</p>

<p>Look, I outlined possible reasons why YLS has a higher cross-yield than HLS (based on anecdotal information, although no official data is available) BECAUSE you asked for it. You said: "What is in dispute are your previous words - that HLS is "by far" the most influential law school in the world. If that really is the case, then why exactly does YLS beat HLS on cross-admit yields? Are all those cross-admits being dumb?"</p>

<p>Now, don't turn it around and blame me for listing possible reasons. Unfortunately, most of those reasons have little to do with YLS offering a higher quality of legal education or producing more successful lawyers.</p>

<p>"After all, it seems to me that what really matters is not "power and influence", strictly speaking, but rather where would you, as a prospective student, prefer to go to? Again, YLS beats HLS in cross-admit yield. Hence, even if HLS is more powerful and influential according to whatever definition you want to use, YLS is more preferable regardless."</p>

<p>Again, don't attribute something to me that I didn't claim. I've never said anything about HLS being better or more preferable to YLS. I've only said that HLS is far more powerful and influential than YLS, which it is. </p>

<p>Also, you don't seem to realize that there is a difference between having a higher cross-admit yield, which is being a "preferred" school, and being a "preferable" school in the general sense. Because people may be choosing that school for the wrong reasons. You make too much of the yield numbers and rankings.</p>

<p>"What you said is that EVERY professional school at Harvard is clearly "the most powerful and influential" in its class. I said it before, and I'll say it again - EVERY one? Really? Is the Harvard GSE really clearly the most powerful and influential Ed School in the country? Is the Harvard SPH clearly the most powerful and influential public health school in the country? Is Harvard DEAS clearly the most powerful and influential engineering and/or applied science school in the country? These are all professional schools, so they should fall under the purview of your previous statement. Unless you can answer these questions in the affirmative, I think you should admit that your prior claim went too far."</p>

<p>You are sounding like a broken record. You said all these things before elsewhere. My exact quote was "Not to mention the professional schools that are easily the most powerful and influential in their respective fields."
Note that I did not say "every single" professional school. I also qualified it by saying that I do not consider that description to fit the Ed School, the Div School, the Design School, the School of Public Health, et cetera. This isn't because I think the Ed School is worse or better than Columbia's Teacher's College, or whatever, but because I do not associate the fields of education, design, divinity, public health, etc. with the words "power and influence". I hope that makes it clearer. </p>

<p>"if JHU is an also-ran, what does that say about all the other med-schools out there?"
Well, JHU IS an also-ran. Isn't that the term referred to someone who is perennially in second-place with no hope of ever catching up?
Look, perhaps you are prone to making the error of thinking school X is better than school Y, and therefore person A, who went to school X, must be better than person B, who went to school Y. I never do, so don't worry for me. I've indeed worked with stellar clinicians who went to Johns Hopkins, I have brilliant classmates who went to Johns Hopkins (undergraduate), and the institution is a national treasure. All I'm saying that JHU is always in second place to HMS by virtually every major measure.</p>

<p>I'm going say this again to make it absolutely clear:
To put Harvard first is not to deny the existence of excellence elsewhere.</p>

34

<p>
[quote]
Look, I outlined possible reasons why YLS has a higher cross-yield than HLS (based on anecdotal information, although no official data is available) BECAUSE you asked for it. You said: "What is in dispute are your previous words - that HLS is "by far" the most influential law school in the world. If that really is the case, then why exactly does YLS beat HLS on cross-admit yields? Are all those cross-admits being dumb?"</p>

<p>Now, don't turn it around and blame me for listing possible reasons. Unfortunately, most of those reasons have little to do with YLS offering a higher quality of legal education or producing more successful lawyers.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I am not blaming you for listing reasons. I am simply saying that, for whatever reason, YLS is preferred to HLS by the majority of candidates. We can argue about the reasons why that is, but, frankly it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, those who have the choice tend to prefer YLS to HLS. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Again, don't attribute something to me that I didn't claim. I've never said anything about HLS being better or more preferable to YLS. I've only said that HLS is far more powerful and influential than YLS, which it is.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>And I, in turn, am placing your comments within the proper context by asking what does it matter if HLS is (according to your definition) "far more powerful and influential", if people tend to prefer to go to YLS? This reminds me of numerous examples of history in which powerful organizations were losing population. </p>

<p>May I remind you that the original thread that sparked our confrontation had to do with the general desirability of Harvard for a particular student. It had nothing to do with any general sense of "power or influence" - you were the one who brought that concept into play. I am attempting to return the thread to its original spirit. </p>

<p>This is the original thread:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=343118%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=343118&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]

Also, you don't seem to realize that there is a difference between having a higher cross-admit yield, which is being a "preferred" school, and being a "preferable" school in the general sense. Because people may be choosing that school for the wrong reasons. You make too much of the yield numbers and rankings.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That's rather rich don't you think? You say that people may be choosing a school (presumably YLS) for the wrong reasons. I might argue that such a notion could easily apply to HLS, or any other school of Harvard for that matter. After all, plenty of people surely attend Harvard just for the name, only to find out that the school fits poorly, or actually does not have a strong program in the field they are studying, or so worth. For example, I strongly suspect that most of the students at HLS who are not doing well would almost certainly be better off at YLS (if they had been admitted), simply due to the difference in grading philosophies between the two schools. If you do poorly at YLS, that fact is not easily ascertained, but the opposite is true at HLS. </p>

<p>And besides, what you do not seem to understand is, again, the original thread had nothing to do with overall 'power or influence'. It had to do with PosterX's assertion that Harvard does not offer strong teaching or strong student satisfaction and general preferability. Note, that's not to say that I necessarily agree with PosterX. But we have to keep in mind what the original topic of the thread was. </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=343118&page=2%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=343118&page=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
You are sounding like a broken record. You said all these things before elsewhere. My exact quote was "Not to mention the professional schools that are easily the most powerful and influential in their respective fields."
Note that I did not say "every single" professional school. I also qualified it by saying that I do not consider that description to fit the Ed School, the Div School, the Design School, the School of Public Health, et cetera. This isn't because I think the Ed School is worse or better than Columbia's Teacher's College, or whatever, but because I do not associate the fields of education, design, divinity, public health, etc. with the words "power and influence". I hope that makes it clearer.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Sir, you are spinning. When you say "Not to mention the professional schools that are easily the most powerful and influential in their respective fields", that inherently * means every single professional school. Why wouldn't it? You didn't qualify your statement before to only include *certain professional schools. In fact, I have shown that the majority of Harvard's professional schools (i.e. GSE, GSD, SPH, KSG, Divinity, Dental) are almost certainly not "the most powerful and influential in their respective fields". They're all perfectly solid schools, but certainly not 'the most powerful and influential'. Hence you made a statement that not only was not qualified, but does not hold for even the *majority * of the relevant cases. </p>

<p>I appreciate that you modified your statement later. But that also means that your original statement was simply too strong, and that's what I have been pointing out all along. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Well, JHU IS an also-ran. Isn't that the term referred to someone who is perennially in second-place with no hope of ever catching up?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>See, there you go again, making irresponsibly strong statements that I think you know cannot be backed. Johns Hopkins Med has NO hope of EVER catching up? Really? Not EVER? Keep in mind that JHU Med School is only slightly over 100 years old. In that time, they've already established themselves as the #2 med school in the world. You don't think that there is the possibility that JHU Med could EVER be the equal to HMS at some time in the future? </p>

<p>Keep in mind that when you're talking about education, things change all the time. Just a couple generations ago, Stanford was basically a regional backwater school of only minor consequence that had survived several close brushes with bankruptcy, and Silicon Valley was little more than a bunch of fruit farms. Look at Stanford now: the educational dynamo of Silicon Valley, and indisputably one of the elite schools in the world. Or take, say, the MIT economics department. MIT didn't even establish a serious scholarly economics department or offer an economics PhD program and until the 1940's. Yet by the 1950's, MIT was already recognized as a serious player in the realm of economics research, and a few decades later was vying for the #1 ranking. I see that USNews this year ranked the MIT economics department #1 (tied with Chicago), and ranked above numerous economics departments that are much older, including Harvard's. Heck, if you want to go further back in time, it wasn't that long ago when no American school (including Harvard) was not the preeminent school in the world - such a lofty position was held by Oxford and Cambridge. After all, it wasn't that long ago when the UK was the strongest nation in the world with an empire that ruled 25% of the entire world (both from a population and geographic standpoint). People from throughout the world preferred to attend OxBridge just to partake of the power of the empire. </p>

<p>Look, to say that no school can not EVER surpass another is deeply irresponsible and foolish, given the dynamism of history. I could go along with the notion that HMS is right now, and perhaps for the near future, a more powerful school than JHU Med is. But to say that JHU Med has no hope of EVER catching up to HMS? Come on. Get real. </p>

<p>Besides, let me put it to you this way. Ask yourself - would you be willing to say, in real life, the things you are saying on this board? Would you be willing to go up to a JHU Med grad and say to his face that JHU Med has no chance of * ever* catching up to HMS? Not ever? This reminds me of New England Patriots fans who used to assert that Brady would always "own" Manning in the playoffs, or similarly how Yankees fans loudly boasting that the Yanks would always own the Red Sox in the playoffs. Oops. You don't hear that kind of talk anymore. </p>

<p>Look, all I am asking of you is to be responsible and calibrate what you are saying. It is one thing to state that you believe that Harvard has numerous strengths. I believe that too, and I think anybody who is fair would agree with you. It is quite another to make unsupported and unsupportably wild assertions; and stating that one school (that is already #2) has no chance of ever catching up to another clearly falls in that category.</p>

35

<p>ske: "MIT students can take pride in their "Integration Bee Competitions" (apparently they hold a competition to see who can do integrals faster) and other geeky rituals while their counterparts at Harvard (even the math majors) experience the true meaning of a liberal arts education, choose from hundreds of exciting extracurricular activities, and prepare to be their masters in the real world."</p>

<p>I'm an MIT grad and I'm looking for a "master" from Harvard...Where do I find my "master"?</p>

36

<p>
[quote]
MIT students can take pride in their "Integration Bee Competitions" (apparently they hold a competition to see who can do integrals faster) and other geeky rituals while their counterparts at Harvard (even the math majors) experience the true meaning of a liberal arts education, choose from hundreds of exciting extracurricular activities, and prepare to be their masters in the real world."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>To this, I would say that the average MIT bachelor's degree recipient almost certainly makes a significantly higher starting salary than his counterpart at Harvard. </p>

<p>Note, I don't think this should be surprising to anybody when you think about what's going on. The majority of MIT undergrads are engineers/CS majors, and engineering/CS has the highest average starting salary of any bachelor's degree out there, certainly higher than that received by liberal arts bachelor's. The 2nd most popular major (after EECS) at MIT is Sloan management, another highly lucrative bachelor's degree to have. Harvard, in contrast, not only does not offer an undergrad management degree, but bars undergrads from even taking classes at HBS in all but the most special of cases. </p>

<p>To be sure, some Harvard liberal arts students can get highly lucrative positions in consulting or investment banking (but then again, so can MIT students, especially the Sloan undergrads). But plenty of other Harvard lib-arts students will not get a consulting or banking offer, and will be forced to take relatively low-paid jobs. For example, I know one Harvard humanities PhD student who did her undergrad at Harvard who said that her PhD stipend, low as it may be, was still almost equal to what she made in the job she had after graduation. Furthermore, even after she completes her PhD, she will probably *still * not make a lot of money, in fact, perhaps not as much as even an engineer fresh out of school. </p>

<p>Let's be perfectly honest. A lot of liberal arts grads, Harvard or otherwise, do not have jobs that pay particularly well I strongly suspect that a lot of them wouldn't mind making the salary that an engineer, even from a no-name school, earns.</p>

37

<p>Hey, collegealum314, chill out - it was just a joke. We love you MIT guys here at Harvard. After all, MIT almost became a part of Harvard, not just once but twice. And in addition, there were several other takeover attempts by Harvard that didn't get as far as these two. </p>

<p>"Henry S. Pritchett (MIT’s President, 1900-1909) and Charles W. Eliot (Harvard’s President, 1869-1909) attempted in 1904 and 1905 to negotiate a merger between their respective institutions despite rampant resistance from MIT alumni and faculty. Under the terms of the proposed plan MIT would have retained its name and charter, but would have become in effect the engineering school of Harvard University, replacing Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School and absorbing its faculty.</p>

<p>Arguments in favor of the merger emphasized the redundancy of having two competing schools of engineering and applied science in the same area and suggested that MIT students could benefit from the broader educational opportunities and humanistic perspectives available at Harvard. Opponents believed that such a merger would betray MIT’s ideals and inevitably result in the Institute’s domination by its more established and wealthier neighbor."</p>

<p>The first time around, in 1900, it failed because of alumni opposition. But the second time around, in 1914, MIT people were going "Take us! Take us! We want to be the engineering department of the great Harvard University!" MIT would've been placed right next to Harvard Business School, across the Charles River from Harvard Square.</p>

<p>The only reason it failed the second time was because of a technicality: </p>

<p>"The proposed merger nearly became a reality. A majority of trustees from both institutions approved the scheme, but it was financially contingent upon MIT’s ability to sell its property in Boston’s Back Bay to raise funds for rebuilding on Harvard’s land at Soldiers Field. In September 1905 the intended merger failed because the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court determined that MIT could not sell its Back Bay lands without violating the terms under which it had originally acquired them. Letters, post cards, minutes of meetings, and other documents relating to the merger controversy of 1904 and 1905, as well as previous attempted takeovers, are available for use in the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections, 14N-118."</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology&lt;/a>
<a href="http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/harvard-mit/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/harvard-mit/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Despite the failure of the merger, to express their sadness and to forever commemorate their servitude to Harvard , the MIT folks named the bridge connecting them to Boston "the Harvard Bridge". </p>

<p>See? Who's your master now?</p>

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<p>ski, sometimes I can't tell whether your posts are serious or whether they're intentionally written to sound ridiculous. But I assume they're meant to be serous. They remind me of an editorial in the Crimson during my freshman year. It complained that students from "lesser schools" were being offered summer jobs over Harvard students because there was no technology course requirement at Harvard. To me, that illustrated a complete loss of perspective about the overall world, and a blind over-reliance on perceived "prestige." I know so many H students who spend way too much time promoting how great they are because of their diploma (often to compensate for some underlying insecurity), and your posts make you sound like one of them.</p>

<p>With regard to the "ratings," you can choose to either trust or not trust them. But what you do is to: (1) Trust the ones where H is rated high, and make up excuses and explanations for those where it is rated lower (like HLS vs. YLS). (2) Invent metrics such as "influence" and "real quality," and somehow declare that HLS has those where others do not. (3) Announce that schools where H is rated lower (e.g. SPH, Div School) are simply unimportant because they don't reflect "power." My goodness.</p>

<p>With regard to Levin's comments about H's quality, of course I don't disagree that Harvard is the most prestigious university. But that only gets you so far, and there is certainly excellence elsewhere (as you admit). I strongly suspect that Levin would be very amused to see that he's being quoted by a pompous graduate student in support of the statements you're making. The relationship between his quote and your claims is tangential at best, and honestly it's childish to keep repeating it (equivalent to a kid in kindergarten sticking out her tongue and yelling "nah nah nah"...).</p>

<p>If you have the background you claim, then you almost certainly you have no clue about what things are like outside of the big-H (i.e. a few interviews or conversations with friends don't count). For example, if you ever spend non-trivial time at JHU's hospital, you'll learn something that most experts have long known -- it's better than MGH and BWH.</p>

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<p>"With regard to the "ratings," you can choose to either trust or not trust them...."</p>

<p>Indeed, I've made it abundantly clear that I see significant value in rankings that depend primarily on objective data (such as the J.-T. University Rankings, which assess prizes, publications, citation impact, etc.) and do not assign much credibility to rankings that rely primarily on popularity surveys. And the fact is that objective rankings almost always put Harvard at the top. There is no inconsistency or selective reliance on rankings favorable to Harvard as you claim.</p>

<p>"With regard to Levin's comments about H's quality, of course I don't disagree that Harvard is the most prestigious university."</p>

<p>Levin did NOT say Harvard is the most prestigious university. He said that Harvard has the BROADEST and DEEPEST talent and resources in the world. Which is very true, and it is exactly what I said. That Harvard has the largest and deepest pool of talent and resources in the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences, physical sciences, law, medicine, and business administration. </p>

<p>"For example, if you ever spend non-trivial time at JHU's hospital, you'll learn something that most experts have long known -- it's better than MGH and BWH."</p>

<p>And how would YOU know this? You've rotated through the Johns Hopkins Hospital, MGH, and BWH yourself? </p>

<p>In addition to having visited friends who are residents and faculty at Hopkins, I've read medical textbooks, clinical journal articles, and subscribe to the New England Journal of Medicine, so I have a reasonably good sense of where the leaders are. There have been 242 articles with authors from Hopkins in the New England Journal, 278 from the Brigham, and 3131 from Mass General (the latter number is probably inflated by the weekly Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital). This is despite the fact that Hopkins is larger than both BWH and MGH in number of beds and Harvard researchers do not always list both their hospital affiliation and their school affiliation. In the journal Nature, there are 216 articles from Hopkins and 783 from Harvard. In the journal Science, there are 341 from Hopkiins and 851 from Harvard. In the journal Cell, there are 163 from Hopkins and 609 from Harvard. I simply don't think you can compare the amount of cutting edge research, both clinical and basic, done at Hopkins and Harvard.</p>

<p>Now purely in terms of patient care, there's no question that Hopkins has an outstanding hospital. But it's extremely difficult to measure and coompare the quality of clinical care at top hospitals, much more so than with universities. The kinds of parameters that the U.S. News uses, such as R.N.s per bed, mortality, etc., not to mention surveys, border on being absurd. Hopkins has a major advantage in the rankings system that U.S. News uses in that it's really the only major hospital in the area and has a comprehensive service. In Boston, there is not just one but many top hospitals. MGH, for example, does not have ophthalmology or otorhinolaryngology department because those services are provided by the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, which is physically adjacent to and connected to MGH. Neither does it have rehab department, which is provided by Spaulding Rehab right next door. One department of ophthalmology, dermatology, etc. serves all Harvard hospitals. BWH does not have a pediatrics department because it's provided by the Boston Children's Hospital. Harvard also has other top-ranked specialty hospitals, such as the McLean Hospital for psychiatry, Mass Mental Health Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for oncology, which again is unified with BWH and MGH in a single program. So MGH and BWH do not get ranked in many areas, while Hopkins gets ranked in every field. Let me put it this way. A fourth year medical student given the choice between an MGH residency program and a Hopkins program will almost always pick the MGH program, unless there are compelling personal reasons, e.g. to be with a significant other.</p>

<p>If you read "The House of God" by Samuel Shem, there are references to a Boston hospital called MBH, or "Man's Best Hospital". It's MGH.</p>

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<p>"I know so many H students who spend way too much time promoting how great they are because of their diploma (often to compensate for some underlying insecurity), and your posts make you sound like one of them."</p>

<p>Whoa, now getting personal. Listen, I may have promoted how great Harvard is on this board ad nauseam, but I don't think I've said anything about how that makes me great.</p>