<p>"No, you are incorrect. Just because you don't graduate from Harvard doesn't mean you can only get a professorship at a third tier school."</p>
<p>I didn't say that. I did indicate that a person who is good enough in math to, for instance, be a math major in a less competitive college than Harvard, but wouldn't have been able to survive as a Harvard math major, may end up teaching secondary school or at a 2nd or third tier college.</p>
<p>"People don't have to be naturally good at things. College is a place for learning. You can LEARN to be a good mathematician."</p>
<p>Many smart people can learn to be a good enoughn mathematician to teach math in secondary school or at a third tier or community college. It takes a great deal of math ability and natural talent in that field, however, to be able to teach math at a first tier university.</p>
<p>For instance, I would never have had the music ability to have survived at Julliard, but I could have been a music major at college with a mediocre music program. No matter how hard I worked or who mentored me, I never, however, would have had the world class talent and ability to reach the heights in the field that top Julliard students can.</p>
<p>Making the big time in any field requires a great deal of skill and natural talent, not just hard work or general smarts.</p>
<p>Hsmom,
" While I think he really likes the idea of an LAC, he is afraid he might outgrow it. What my son would like is the opportunity to interact and be mentored by top professors in the field -- not in every class, but in areas that he decides to major in."
Those are 2 reasons my son decided not to go to any of the LAC's he was accepted at-including Pomona and Carleton, and is going to Chicago instead. He has done 3 years of research at USGS in Geophysics and was concerned that he would not be challenged enough at a LAC. At Chicago, qualified UGrads can take graduate school classes, and throughout the College, [which is what the Undergraduate school is called], the interaction with professors, not TA/s is second to only Cal Tech.
Chicago does not offer degrees in some areas -engineering for example, so make sure the areas you son is interested in are offered there.</p>
<p>LACs do pretty well at preparing math majors to go on to get PhDs. According to this list, a LAC (Harvey Mudd) actually beats out Harvard. Go figure.</p>
<p>menloparkmom -- very good information, it making University of Chicago look like a good fit. I like the fact that they offer merit aid, too.</p>
<p>His interests are Arabic, middle-eastern studies, religious studies/theology and international relations -- all areas that Chicago has good departments, I think. He also loves math and history.</p>
<p>Because a school produces more Ph.D.'s doesn't mean that they are better than another school. A better indication is to see what percentage end up at top level research institutions.</p>
<p>Whoa hsmom- re U of C and merit aid- just know that they only give out 30 full scholarships , and 100 -$10000 scholarships to incoming freshman, and those go to incredibly gifted students or very exceptional students Chicago seriously wants to grab for URM purposes. Chicago has had the reputation for being very miserly with financial aid for middle class families- they don't have the huge endowment like HPY. etc.That may begin to change with the recently announced $100 M gift for undergraduate financial aid, but don't count on Chicago to match more well endowed colleges.</p>
<p>yes -- I know about the FA and merit aid situation at Chicago, but it wouldn't be the only school he applied to -- we would just have to see what they offer him. Who knows what the FA package would be -- I just liked the fact that they have merit aid in addition to FA.</p>
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What my son would like is the opportunity to interact and be mentored by top professors in the field
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<p>Be careful with this perception. Some of the top professors are amazing researchers but poor teachers. A friend from UChicago told me one of his professors (econ) is a top candidate for the Nobel Prize, but is always disorganized and doesn't teach well. Many professors at research universities get their tenure and their jobs from research and view teaching, especially to undergraduates, as distractions from what really counts (research).</p>
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It's also true that if the person had gone to the smaller college, they may have done fine in math, but never would have had the math abilities to, for instance, hold a math professorship at a major university.
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<p>This is sometimes true at the graduate level. However, when a person is trying to get a faculty position, the name of the undergraduate school doesn't matter. Undergraduate students at liberal-arts colleges (which are smaller) generally get better recommendations and have more research opportunities in the absence of graduate students (whom professors prefer as research assistants). Statistical evidence points to a higher percentage of PhD students coming from Liberal-Arts Colleges.</p>
<p>After graduate school, how much is learned as undergraduates matter very little.</p>
<p>None,
" Many professors at research universities get their tenure and their jobs from research and view teaching, especially to undergraduates, as distractions from what really counts (research)."
This is true at many colleges but less so at Chicago.</p>
<p>Professors at Chicago [ most are already tenured] who choose to teach at the College have different expectations placed on them by the University than those who teach graduate students, i.e. research is secondary while they devote their time to teaching undergrads, which is not true at most other research universities- Harvard being one example of an outstanding research university with a less than stellar reputation for close undergraduate/ professor interaction.</p>
<p>hsmomstef, what other schools are your son looking into? Princeton, Yale...other top Ivys?</p>
<p>I think aside from people saying that Harvard might have flaws in its teaching system, you should really focus on the positive aspects Harvard offer. One thing Harvard (and other top school) can offer that in my opinion even top publics can no compete against is the people and different connections. Going to Havard will open up so many new opportunities!</p>
<p>I am sure your son will apply for lots of schools. If he has room, he should really try for Harvard!</p>
<p>UChicago does have pretty crappy financial aid. </p>
<p>His goal is to only apply for schools that he would really want to attend that have the potential for decent financial aid.</p>
<p>right now his top choices are Georgetown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Chicago and Tufts. Other possibilities that he hasn't really researched in-depth: Duke, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Brown, George Washington.</p>
<p>His interests are International Relations, Religious Studies/Theology, Arabic and Middle-Eastern Studies.</p>
<p>well International Relations is amazing at Harvard. I am a junior and trying to put together my college list as well, and I really suggest picking colleges based on your intended major. </p>
<p>One thing about Harvard Financial Aid is that they tend to give as little as possible and you have to really fight for the money. The aid office is more than happy to match offers from other similar schools.</p>
<p>Well, for IR: Tufts, G-Town, Johns Hopkins, Princeton are where you want to be, simply because of the grad programs being there. As a Tufts student, I must point out that your son's interests are nearly identical to mine, as I am a History/Middle Eastern Studies major taking arabic, with a passion for comparative religion as well, and the faculty here at Tufts are great. Obviously all the schools he is looking at are great, but for IR, G-Town and Tufts are the two best on his list by quite a bit.</p>
<p>"One thing about Harvard Financial Aid is that they tend to give as little as possible and you have to really fight for the money."</p>
<p>While that may have been the experience of the person who posted, I don't think it's generally true. I suggest that you post on the Harvard board and ask for the financial aid experiences of other students.</p>
<p>Actually, financial aid at Chicago is improving significantly. They just got a hundred million dollar donation designated for financial aid and starting in the fall of 2008, depending on your stated income, you might be able to get up to a full ride or at least a half scholarship if you are middle class. Furthermore, the International Studies program at Chicago is top rate and depending upon your specific areas of interest, it could be the best choice. Its certainly worth exploring as it is one of the largest majors on campus. For example, if you are interested in international human rights it has a sensational funded internship program in various world locations.</p>
<p>Gtown, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, and Princeton are the best IR places to go. And that's not by US New's ranking, that's by Foreign Policy Magazine's ranking for best places to study IR undergraduate. </p>
<p>Harvard is an excellent school. Your son will receive a phenomenal education. I don't doubt that there's a lack of teacher-student interaction, but everyone makes it sound like having the professor in the class room ordains the class legitimate. In your lower level classes you can be sufficiently taught by a TA. Harvard doesn't just hire any Joe Schmoe who doesn't know what he's talking about. From what I've heard, at any top school with great grad programs (Chicago, Harvard, Yale, etc) the TAs aren't too big of a drawback.</p>
<p>Consider also that Profs have office hours. No, Harvard isn't going to nurture you, but if you've got the gumption to just walk a little bit to a professor's office between certain hours of the day and ask questions, I'm sure they're wonderfully helpful. It's not like everyone is some hardcore research physicist with a poor command of English and a resentment towards students. I don't know why people are painting this picture.</p>
<p>And also, consider that the people you're going to school with are amazing, talented individuals. You can learn a lot from them, and sometimes, people and dealing with them are the best teachers in life.</p>
<p>I personally chose UChicago (Econ's my major), but for people to be pretending that Harvard isn't a magnificent school is just preposterous.</p>
<p>Harvard is one of the best, likely the best research institution in the world. It is also more connected to the world than any other educational institution in the world as a result of the practice-focused approaches of its law school, business school, public policy school, education school, and other professional schools. In addition, it is a node in the network of power in the world in a way that few if any educational institutions are. For example, earlier this year, I had to choose between attending a lunch with a lawyer who negotiated one of the major cross-border deals of the year and one of the world's preeminent diplomats. Later in the year, I attended a lunch with the CEO of Lazard, who is one of the world's great investment bankers. [Stanford and MIT are similar, but only in the technology arena.] However, the benefits of this do not come automatically to undergraduates at Harvard.</p>
<p>Harvard can be a great school for a kid who is extroverted, proactive and self-directed. Such a person can find an area of interest and then find a professor to work with. Contacts and horizons are great. It's also a great place for the brilliant kids with extremely well-defined research interests.</p>
<p>Many other students get sort of lost at Harvard. There is no one watching out for them. The Ivies and their buddies do a survey on how happy the undergraduates are at various schools and Harvard is pretty low in terms of satisfaction. This was mentioned in an article a year or so in the Boston Globe.</p>
<p>My understanding was that Princeton was relatively generous in FA. Relatively speaking, it is harder to get lost (though one can certainly do it). There is more focus on undergraduate education. Proactive kids will also do well there, but I think it's almost a prerequisite for getting what you want from the educational part of Harvard. Being with fascinating, sometimes brilliant kids is a big part of what one of the original posters like so much about Harvard.</p>
<p>I suspect that at smaller LACs, it will be even harder to fall through the cracks. I don't know that for a fact, but most of the professors who are there are there because they love to teach, which is probably not true for the folks at institutions such as Harvard and Princeton that tenure based upon research quality and output.</p>
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While I think he really likes the idea of an LAC, he is afraid he might outgrow it. I know it would depend on the LAC, but his experience has been with Colorado College. He has taken numerous classes there, worked in one of the departments and participated in many ECs there (we live across the street from CC) and he has loved it -- but thinks that in four years of college he would feel very limited by the opportunities.
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<p>There are LACs and there are LACs just as there are different levels of academics and opportunity in universities. My son's experience was exactly the reverse of what you fear -- he never felt that he "outgrew" his LAC academically, artistically, intellectually, socially. In fact, he felt that he could have continued to delve deeper and deeper. </p>
<p>In four years the chance to take some 32-40 courses is not much -- less if you study abroad -- especially for the student who has a wide range of intellectual curiosity. The opportunities that my son took advantage of -- internships, connections, recommendations, and most importantly the friendships -- were extraordinary.</p>
<p>Before drawing any conclusion I'd suggest that your son actually spend some time at an academically top ranked LAC -- like Amherst, Williams, or Swarthmore and possibly Weselyan and Pomona. They're not for everyone and each has a distinct personality. In the end, he may prefer a larger arena, but Colorado College does not offer the same level of intensity as the more rigorous LACs.</p>