<p>Texas, I'd be interested to know what the numbers are for last summer's Rickoids. Do you happen to know?</p>
<p>" The only way to have a cross comparision would be for students from all campuses to visit and evaluate in-depth, all other campuses."</p>
<p>Do you feel the same way about college deans? ;) (The surveys are undertaken to allow colleges to compare student perceptions of academic quality and campus life - nothing more, but nothing less, either. That's why Harvard contracts with the Consortium. That Harvard undergraduate students (or more than 50% of them), with in-depth knowledge of their own academic experience, should have such relatively low opinions of the education they are receiving should pretty much speak for itself, regardless of how the dean at Scripps - educated at Baylor and the University of Iowa, and with 25 years of educational work, all on the west coast -- thinks of H.'s peer reputation.)</p>
<p>26th.</p>
<p>1moremom - no, don't know, although I would also be interested in where Rickoids end up. Some of the Caltech Rickoids chose Caltech. Siemens-Westinghouse is trying to get semi-finalists and above, plus AP scholars, to register in a data base with various info including college plans. I suspect MIT beats Harvard for both group of kids. I know it does for Olympiad kids. One of the big appeals of MIT for these kids is that they can, and do, cluster at a particular dorm.</p>
<p>Harvard does very well, head to head, vs MIT for top math and science kids. If I dug a bit I could come up with stats for recognizable sub-groups, but whether its Intel Award winners or whatever, Harvard take a back seat to no one in attracting the top students in math and science.</p>
<p>I agree byerly, but it is interesting to not that out of the top 5 intel finalists only 1 is going to attend Harvard. The winner this year is attending CUNY ...eek, this goes to show that H doesnt necessarily capture ALL the talent</p>
<p>My son, who will be attending Harvard, was an Intel finalist this year. It was striking that out of the 40 finalists, a significant number listed Harvard as their first choice school (this was before the EA decision date). See student bios from <a href="http://www.sciserv.org%5B/url%5D">www.sciserv.org</a>.</p>
<p>Donemom, others,</p>
<p>Which is a better competition to enter if a student is a Math type a bit more than a science type? Seimens/Westignhouse or Intel?</p>
<p>Or just make that a generic question.</p>
<p>Sorry for taking this thread off the car topic. I think it is time to start up the otehr thread "I school x were a car it would be a y".</p>
<p>My son entered both competitions with a medical project--he was a semi-finalist with Siemens. Among the Intel finalists, there were a good number of math projects, along with medicine, and a wide variety of other scientific fields. I think I remember being told that math/tech tended to do well with Siemens, but my son's girlfriend was a finalist with that competiton also with a medical project.</p>
<p>Harvard does very well with top math/science kids, but they certainly do not get the biggest share of that group, much less the kind of yield they get for applicants overall. I know where all but 3 of the IOI and IMO kids have gone to college since 2001. The numbers so far, (the 2005 IMO team hasn't been selected) are MIT 9, Harvard 8, Caltech 2, Princeton 1, Duke 1. I don't know about the IPhO kids off the top of my head, but I doubt if Harvard leads. (Caltech does very well with the physics kids.) I'm guessing RSI kids choose MIT over Harvard by a large margin.</p>
<p>Eagle - both Siemens-Westinghouse and Intel are good for math projects. Most seniors enter both with the same project.</p>
<p>I drive a Saturn because it is what I can afford, I'm going to Princeton because it is where I've always wanted to be, and whether I meet one or five Intel finalists next year is, in a class of 1200, irrelevent.</p>
<p>Sorry for hijacking the parents' forum!</p>
<p>ICargirl - the number of uber-geeks at a school is only a consideration for other uber-geeks, not for the rest of the student body. Interestingly, Princeton, with it's fine reputation for graduate study in mathematics, does not seem to recruit or attract the high school math stars into the undergrad program as much as one would expect, at least among US students. This would only be of interest to someone who WAS a math star, in which case they might prefer to be with a larger group like-minded peers somewhere else (like Harvard or MIT). If Princeton suddenly got a critical mass of them, others would probably follow. This doesn't apply to people who are interested in political science, say, or history, because there are plenty of those at any school.</p>
<p>The same would be true if someone was interested in an extremely high level of competition in a particular sport, or was seriously involved in a particular EC and wanted to find like-minded peers. Harvard is not going to do as well with the subset of kids who have a very strong specific interest which might be more concentrated at another school as they will with the large mass of accepted students.</p>
<p>I was trying to hijack the thread? Byerly you just misunderstood my point and you have to know that. And Donemom is sending her kid to Harvard as she says so presumably she is as objective as they get. As idler says, please stick to your statistics and cease the personal needling. It's pretty fun to argue with you when you stick to numbers and pretty infuriating when you get personal or just plain misleading on purpose.</p>
<p>Do you guys think Stanford poses a threat to Harvard's prestige? I mean Harvard has been around for 400 years give or take a few decades. Stanford has been around for what....... a little over a hundred maybe? And Stanford has been steadily climbing so fast that it surpassed MIT, Princeton, and maybe even Yale in prestige. I dunno, but given Stanford current rate of increase I think Harvard should be on its toes. When stem cells become the new big thing, Stanford is the perfect school to capitalize on the bio-revolution just as how it capitalized on the digital revolution. Stanford's Stem Cell insititute (which has surreptitiously already attracted all the big names in that field), combined with California's multi-billion dollar state-sponored initiative for stem cell research, may make Stanford an even more killer university in the next 10 years.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Mini -- The surveys are undertaken to allow colleges to compare student perceptions
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My point exactly. The perceptions are based on their expectations and experience at one school. This certainly can't be considered comparative against other schools. It can, however, be valuable to the individual schools for correcting impending problems. Best in class companies do this all the time. Just because you have areas for improvement does not, by itself, mean you can't be the best in your field.</p>
<p>Why is it appropriate to discount as biased the opinions of those favorably disposed toward Harvard - whether posters, professors or journalists - on the grounds that they are alumni, and yet to rise up in righteous indignation (your specialty, it sometimes apppears) when one inquires into the possible biases of those whose posts are (now, at least) generally hostile towards the W.G.U.?</p>
<p>oooh, lets all remain civil here</p>
<p>I haven't discounted your opinions as biased. I have risen up in righteous indignation when you go after people who disagree with you in a personal manner, in particular when you have the odd urge to mention their children. Argue the facts please. It's infinitely more civilized that way.</p>
<p>With all due respect, it is not inappropriate, I truly believe, to at least note that the views of Harvard critics may <em>possibly</em> be influenced by the fact that their children were not admitted. This is only indirectly "mentioning the children."</p>
<p>Exhibit "A" of course is Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews. As a youth, he first enrolled at Occidental, then transferred to Harvard, from which he graduated. His wife went to Harvard. He sent his son to Harvard. Then his daughter was not admitted. (She wound up at Pomona, I believe - a very fine school.)</p>
<p>Ever since, all you hear from Mathews is "Harvard Schmarvard" - insisting that "what you will be measured by in life is your talent and energy, not your colleges name" ... at least as long as you attend one of Mathews' "top 100 outstanding but underappreciated colleges," which include, as one might expect, Occidental.</p>
<p>This syndrome is well known. I can tell you that many a Harvard graduate has never contributed another penny to Harvard - and retained bitter feelings towards his alma mater for the rest of his life - after one of his children was denied admission.</p>
<p>I can't say for sure whether the same phenomenon is observable at Princeton, but I suspect it is, since both Harvard and Princeton are reluctant to reject legacies, and admit upwards of 40% of legacy applicants.</p>
<p>So, in summary, the suspicion that a school's critics can have an "ax to grind" under such circumstances is not unreasonable.</p>
<p>The views of such critics - IMHO - can just as easily be discounted as the praise from loyal and enthusiastic grads. Comprende?</p>
<p>Without entering the fray: I took Byerley's mention of my son, who was ultimately rejected from Harvard and is now at Stanford, as friendly. Byerley always refers to Stanford with respect, as well he might, since S competes well with H in cross-admits (cf. the "Revealed Preference" study) and in luring top faculty away, though H still has the upper hand in cross-admits. I think many at H see Stanford as the greatest future threat to their preminence. And, for what it's worth, like so many kids, son is now persuaded that his school is exactly the right place for him, a budding scientist: in fact, though his admiration for H is undiminished, he claims to be glad H rejected him, because otherwise he probably would have ended up there instead.</p>
<p>This thread is a hoot. The debate will never end, in our eternal quest for "the best".</p>
<p>IMHE, (the "E" stands for "experience"...) the only ones who truly care if you have a Harvard diploma are fellow Harvard grads, with maye a sprinkling of Harvard wannabees thrown in. </p>
<p>There is so much disinformation thrown into discussions like these, much prompted by the PR offices of various constituencies, that it is hard to know where to begin in throwing some balance and rationality into the discussion, but let me start:</p>
<p>"... but the fact that - year after year - Harvard has its pick of the best students, including many of those ardently courted by its "rivals," does indeed make Harvard a "better school" in the eyes of each succeeding generation of academic superstars." This, of course, presumes that one can accurately identify the "best" students based on the limited information that is available to adcoms, or that anyone can agree regarding what the "best" are, much less the best of the best, which I presume was the intent (would someone REALLY imply that Stanford, Yale and Princeton get the leftovers????)</p>
<p>Or, try this:</p>
<p>"Look at the ratio, then. Ivy grads represent a mere 1% of all college grads but end up with 10% of the top executive jobs in the Fortune 100. Sure, an ivy degree is no guarantee of sucess, but it does seem to hold at least some value :-)" - A classic example of the fallacious analysis prevalent in discussion such as this. We should ask, and it has been asked, if a kid of Ivy quality were to go elsewhere, what is the career impact. Some research has shown no impact. Hoxby has shown a very small, statistically significant impact, far below the level commonly discussed. This area is much like the fabled "contacts' discussion. Most Harvard grads started college with the rolodex of contacts (through family connections, of course). Their career contact had little to do with networking at college. Just start asking alums if you don't believe me, but remember to compare to, say state U alums before you draw too many conclusions.</p>
<p>Folks are perfectly entitled to pursue brand names. Folks may even believe that some brand names imply superiority. Be aware though, that many background forces are working to build that impression, and most have nothing to do with educational quality, difficult though it may be to define. Yes, for some folks, belonging to the "right" clubs, owning the "right" brands, associating with the "right" people (heck, even attending the "right" (=ivy) colleges) is very important. If you need that for happiness, fine. Not all of us do. </p>
<p>Harvard is a great place. Heck, I used to work there, and I would only work at a great place, of course. So is Stanford a great place. So is Penn State. So what.</p>