How much fun is MIT as a graduate student?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Well, it's not just about "name" -- it's the general idea of how people from a given school are doing. I'm a "reasonable person" and well know that it's not a super easy world out there. But am I going to consider what graduates from university X are doing after they graduate? Probably.

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<p>OK, but then you must be willing to accept the consequences of your decision. If you happen to be one of those unlucky few who went to a school that places more people in positions they wanted to be in, but didn't wind up with the job you wanted after finishing your PhD (if you even finish), you have only yourself to blame, because you knew that this was a possibility. Especially if you had the option to go somewhere else with a lower placement %age, but had professors who were willing to back your research 100%, because they were as passionate about it as you are; who believed in you; who would have supported your endeavors fully to do the type of research that would have gotten you the position you wanted.</p>

<p>I was always told that at the end of the day, it is the quality of one's individual research that matters most, not the "brand" of the school.</p>

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I don't know that I quite understand yet exactly what Sakky proposes, but his general message seems to work -- I'm interpreting it to mean that schools should look out for their students.

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<p>Is that what he was proposing? I must have lost it amidst all that discussion of how universities who don't help students in their careers take advantage of students who are overconfident because they've never failed; how complainers are lowering the brand value of unversities that don't help them in their careers; how marketing managers understand the success of brands ...</p>

102

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Is that what he was proposing? I must have lost it amidst all that discussion of how universities who don't help students in their careers take advantage of students who are overconfident because they've never failed; how complainers are lowering the brand value of unversities that don't help them in their careers; how marketing managers understand the success of brands ...

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<p>I guess we should pause and first figure this out =] </p>

<p>Maybe, as a question to Sakky, what is an example of something MIT doesn't do very well in supporting its grad students? I think yagottabelieve and you might be debating general philosophies, though here it seems to be a fine line between how far you two would have the universities go in looking out for the students, which is why I think an example might help.</p>

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I was always told that at the end of the day, it is the quality of one's individual research that matters most, not the "brand" of the school.

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<p>This might be true for the most part, though I'm pretty sure academia's a rough enough world that having a famous adviser really couldn't hurt even a great researcher.</p>

103

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This might be true for the most part, though I'm pretty sure academia's a rough enough world that having a famous adviser really couldn't hurt even a great researcher.

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Having a famous advisor is not the same as going to a well-branded school. Famous advisors exist even in unimpressive programs.</p>

<p>If I had to pick, I'd say that as an academic, I'd much rather have a famous advisor in a mediocre program than be with a mediocre advisor in a famous program. The quality of your individual research is related (although not absolutely) to the cleverness and grant-writing ability of your advisor. Well-funded advisors tend to both be famous and produce trainees who do outstanding work.</p>

104

<p>Generally though, would the famous advisers not be most concentrated in the top programs?
I mean, sometimes one could legitimately choose a lesser known program over a top 5 program, and have a famous adviser, but that tends to be if the top program you're accepted to happens not to have many people in your chosen area of study. </p>

<p>My friend is actually in the process of making such a decision, and was advised by professors that attending a top program can have a nontrivial impact on the work one does, just given the atmosphere + caliber of your peers. One of our most famous professors here actually said explicitly that it's almost always a good idea to go to the most reputed program one gets into. This is specific to math Ph.D. programs, of course. As an anecdote, that same professor apparently went on the very first day of graduate school at Harvard to John Tate, and said "Hi, I'm your new student."</p>

<p>So while attending a good school with very few people working in one's area of interest is a bad idea, it seems generally true that this brand name thing can affect both one's research and one's job prospects, even if a good school isn't exactly the same as good faculty.</p>

105

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You know what they say: "It's not your research that matters, it's your advisor."</p>

106

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But it's all interrelated. If you have a crappy advisor, the odds that your research is going to be fabulous and sparkly and published in the top journals in your field are very low. Your particular advisor directly influences the quality of your work both by helping you to formulate the right questions, and by providing ample resources (monetary, interpersonal, equipment-related) for you to investigate those questions and interpret your results. </p>

<p>Your advisor also directly influences the impact your work has on the world by helping you write your results for publication -- the same set of results can be written in a way that's interesting and broadly applicable and aimed for a high-impact journal, or it can be written in a way that's narrow and uninteresting and only worthy of a junk journal.</p>

<p>Research doesn't happen in a vacuum, and great research doesn't happen without great resources.</p>

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Could be different in fields like math, where there's less of a lab atmosphere.</p>

<p>In biology, your lab is your society, and once you're done taking your required courses, your program is just a mechanism to award you a degree. You don't gain anything by going to a highly-ranked program for the other students, because all that matters is that you end up in a lab that has smart people. It's true that there are more top PIs in a top program, but there are top-caliber PIs at programs all over the country (and the programs themselves tend to be quite large -- there are hundreds of life sciences faculty affiliated with my PhD program, for example).</p>

107

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Could be different in fields like math, where there's less of a lab atmosphere.

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<p>I think this is exactly the answer, in fact -- I didn't know that biology and similar fields had such a different style, actually. I'd be interested to know in a bit more depth what you mean by "your lab is your society," actually. </p>

<p>Because basically, all the math graduate students I know kind of know each other -- I meet them in different classes, and they somehow seem to have run into each other, and sometimes organized seminars together. When this sort of thing goes on, it's just plain that it helps to have terrific peers, and at that, interested in similar things to yourself -- sometimes, of course, similar but slightly different works for a good balance. </p>

<p>Actually, I find that a ton of grad students take the same classes (in their first and second years). They choose based on the professor, not even on the content, kind of interestingly -- i.e. if a famous guy is teaching something, they're going to sit in on it no matter what.</p>

108

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These are questionable assumptions, at best.

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<p>A mountain of psychology literature confirms all of this to be true. I therefore consider these assumptions to be well-founded, and those who disagree now have to shoulder the burden of proof. </p>

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And even if they were true in all cases, reasonable people acknowledge that there are no guarantees in life. So if these overconfident people complain about how unfair it is that they don't have the jobs they want, and the universities didn't do enough to help them get better jobs, reasonable people ignore them and go about the business of trying to make their way in the world.

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<p>Or, those very same 'reasonable' people try to improve the situation. Or ought to. See below.</p>

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Reasonable people make adjustments when confronted with such circumstances. They don't feel they've been taken advantage of, because they realize there is no guarantee they will have the job they want, when they want.

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<p>And the same 'reasonable' people would presumably include the school administrators and faculty themselves, who should realize that not all of their graduate students are actually going to obtain research jobs, or want to. There should therefore be no pressure for every grad student to obtain such jobs or else feel unworthy, pressure that surely every graduate student has felt at some point. They should also be provided the resources so that they can find the jobs they want. </p>

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OK, but then you must be willing to accept the consequences of your decision. If you happen to be one of those unlucky few who went to a school that places more people in positions they wanted to be in, but didn't wind up with the job you wanted after finishing your PhD (if you even finish), you have only yourself to blame, because you knew that this was a possibility. Especially if you had the option to go somewhere else with a lower placement %age, but had professors who were willing to back your research 100%, because they were as passionate about it as you are; who believed in you; who would have supported your endeavors fully to do the type of research that would have gotten you the position you wanted.

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<p>Similarly, the school has itself to blame. Like I said, if the school admits people who don't want to become researchers, and the school fails to provide adequate career resources for those people, then the school is at fault for admitting those students. Both sides are to blame. The school bears responsibility for running a faulty admissions system. </p>

<p>I've said it before and I'll say it again, if the school doesn't want to have problems with unhappy graduates who make the school look bad, then don't admit those people. If the school does, then that's the fault of the school. </p>

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I was always told that at the end of the day, it is the quality of one's individual research that matters most, not the "brand" of the school.

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<p>Sadly, you've been told wrong, especially at the beginning of your academic career. The brand of your school matters greatly in terms of where you will receive job talk invitations. Granted, you're obviously not guaranteed to get an offer. But at least you'll receive the invitation. </p>

<p>I'll give you an example, with names removed to protect the innocent. A certain department at Harvard recently extended job talks to 5 candidates. Most of the candidates' talks were terrible - and in fact, some of them didn't even make it completely through their talks at all, as they were barraged by comments on the weaknesses of their research findings. {One candidate was strong, and likely to get an offer.} But the reasons that those candidates got the job talks at Harvard at all is because they were all coming out of the most prestigious programs in that field. Not a single invited candidate came from a program outside of the very top in that field, and there are a lot of programs out there. Surely, some of the candidates from non-prestigious programs probably had better research and could have therefore given better presentations than actually occurred. But they didn't even get invited for a job talk. </p>

<p>The fact of the matter is, academia is unfortunately arguably the most elitist industry in the world. School brand name matters greatly. So-called "CV-snooping" is rampant and accepted. People want to see where you graduate from and what school you work for now, and then will judge your work accordingly. Peters & Ceci (1982) proved how important brand name was even within the academic publishing world, by taking previously published papers written by scientists at top schools, and resubmitting them back to the same journals, but with authorship names and unprestigious school affiliations. While some of those papers were caught as resubmissions, the vast majority were rejected as unworthy. Remember, these were the same journals that had previously published those papers. </p>

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Ultimately, no school can be all things to all people. In the end, it can only make a best effort to provide educational services. If the marketplace can only support but so many researchers, the rest will have to do something else. This is true regardless of whether the school grants PhDs, MBAs, joint PhD-MBAs, certifications, or anything else. Reasonable people understand this, and make adjustments.

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<p>I agree - and those same reasonable people would presumably serve on admissions committees. and can and should then simply not admit those people who the school cannot serve. </p>

<p>Put another way, I think it is fair for both sides to be reasonable. The students should be reasonable as to what sort of career they should expect, and the schools should be reasonable as to whom they should admit. To say that it is only the students who should be reasonable is to lay the responsibility on only one side.</p>

<p>And even if we were to lay that responsibility on only one side, I would argue that we should lay it on the side of the school. After all, a single student will apply to, at very most, 10-20 PhD programs in his lifetime. But an adcom officer may easily see thousands of applicants during his tenure. Furthermore, each individual student will only know about the career outcomes of maybe a handful of other people (i.e. his friends). But an adcom can track the career outcomes of all of the graduates of its program. The adcom should also have deep knowledge of the true nature of the job market. Hence, the adcom is always at a tremendous informational advantage relative to any single student. If the adcom then chooses to admit a student who then has career goals that the school cannot accommodate, then the adcom is clearly far more blameworthy than the student. </p>

<p>The problem is that while the adcom clearly has the best information, it doesn't have the incentives. It is the student who bears the brunt of a bad decision. After all, it's the student who may end up having to work at McDonald's, not the adcom officer. {Which is why I've always maintained that if an adcom officer consistently makes poor admissions decisions, then that officer should be fired.}</p>

109

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The purpose of a PhD program is not to produce "marketable human capital". It is to provide resources so that its graduates may become functional researchers. It may be years, decades, even centuries before the fruits of that research become valuable to society, let alone marketable. People who enter into PhD programs must realize this. If they do not, it is not the universities' fault. At best, the universities can make a best effort to provide career services, but they cannot guarantee that all the graduates will get the jobs they want, when they want. Reasonable people understand this, and make adjustments. But if there are enough complaints to cause the university to go out of business, it should just acknowledge that it is no longer needed.

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<p>First off, nobody is proposing that anybody guarantee anything. What we are proposing is that the problems be minimized. </p>

<p>Secondly, as I addressed before, it is the universities' fault, just like it is also the students' fault, if the students cannot find satisfactory jobs. Everybody is at fault. You say that reasonable people should understand the reality of the situation and make adjustments, and (I hope), a university is run by these reasonable people who you have cited, which therefore means that the universities should be adjusting to market realities by providing better career services to those who can't find research jobs. Or simply admitting fewer students in the first place. After all, why should the students be the only people who are expected to be reasonable and therefore have to adjust? Why can't we also expect reasonable behavior from the universities? </p>

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Is that what he was proposing? I must have lost it amidst all that discussion of how universities who don't help students in their careers take advantage of students who are overconfident because they've never failed; how complainers are lowering the brand value of unversities that don't help them in their careers; how marketing managers understand the success of brands ..

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<p>All of that is happening, and it all highlights a basic point: universities are at a great informational advantage relative to their applicants and are therefore to be in a prime position to - as you say - 'be reasonable'. If there are not enough good research jobs to accommodate your graduates - and the universities would know this better than any student would, or ought to - then it behooves the university to provide alternative career services to those students who can't get those jobs. Or else just admit fewer students in the first place. Or, if it isn't even willing to do that, then they should at least be willing to provide information on what jobs their former graduates ended up taking (i.e. McDonald's), so that the admittees can make a fully informed choice as to whether they still want to come. Yet I have noticed that most programs actually hide this information, as if to deliberately keep their students in the dark.</p>

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I'd be interested to know in a bit more depth what you mean by "your lab is your society," actually.

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I'll try to explain -- definitely press me if I'm being unclear.</p>

<p>I'm a third-year. I picked a lab at the end of my first year, after rotating through three labs total. In my program, we take classes mostly in first and somewhat in second year, so after first year, when you pick your thesis lab, you don't really go to class anymore. You get up every day and go into lab, where you interact almost exclusively with the other people who are also in your lab -- other graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, undergraduates, lab technicians, and your advisor. Those other grad students aren't necessarily from your program (of the five grad students in my lab, I'm the only one from my particular program), and most or all of the postdocs won't have gone to grad school at your institution.</p>

<p>It's a little more stark for me, because the lab I work in is located at a hospital across the city from the campus where my program is located. I can go weeks without seeing anyone else who's affiliated with my program now that I'm done with classes.</p>

<p>So the major thing my program has done for me is to allow me access to a particular lab headed by a particular faculty advisor, and the minor thing is to set the requirements for me to get my degree. But on a day-to-day basis, I'm interacting only with the other people in my lab, a group of people selected by my advisor.</p>

111

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Don't you think MIT would have noticed? I mean MIT has eyes and ears in many of the topic academic departments and companies of the world. If MIT's name was being sullied and that resulted in any noticeable name brand damage, don't you think MIT would know this and consciously act on it? I don't think MIT is going to significantly change their stance / position on this matter unless there is good evidence that students who fall out of the PhD program are getting screwed big time. This is probably because MIT has a very small humanities graduate school.

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<p>Like I said before, I think MIT is a bad example because, as you pointed out, I have already stated that MIT is probably one of the very best schools in terms of helping its grad students find alternatie careers. For example, I am highly impressed with the ChemE PhD+Sloan program, so much so that I think all of MIT's PhD programs should do the same. I'm even more impressed with the general freedom that grad students throughout MIT can sign up for Sloan MBA courses and otherwise can and do participate in the Sloan environment. In contrast, it is somewhat difficult for a Harvard PhD student to register for Harvard MBA courses. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, to answer your question directly regarding would MIT really change in response to damage to its brand name, I would say that the story is one of simple organizational inertia. History is replete with examples of large organizations that failed to change despite undeniable evidence of problems. As a premier example, look at the Big 3 Detroit auto manufacturers. One major reason why they may all be going bankrupt despite government bailout is that their brand names are sullied in the minds of the customers. For several decades, they made shoddy cars such as the Ford Pinto and Chevy Citation that frequently broke down and gravely damaged the brand names in the eyes of the consumer, especially relative to the highly reliable Japanese marques. Despite a constellation of reports attesting to the low quality of the American cars and resulting decline in the value of their brands that was well-documented within the media, the Big 3 refused to implement large-scale quality changes. That is, until they were faced with crises, such as the near-bankruptcy of Chrysler that necessitated, yes, a government bailout in 1980 and the heavy financial losses suffered by GM throughout the 80's. The Big 3 did respond by vastly improving its quality, but their brand names were sundered. Even after the Big 3 enacted vast quality improvements recently, customers still think that their brands are synonymous with poor quality. Decades of organizational passivity and unwillingness to confront what were well-known problems with reliability resulted in devastating damage to their brand names that have never been fully healed. Consider this 2006 (hence, boom years) quote: </p>

<p>**Perception is reality in the car business. And it takes a long time to change perceptions.</p>

<p>Witness the tale of two companies — Toyota and General Motors. Despite recalls and public relations woes, Toyota's image of bulletproof quality persists, and sales and market share rise. Despite concrete evidence to the contrary, GM's reputation for inferior quality remains, while sales and market share decline....Nevertheless, the perception that GM's quality lags behind Toyota's by quantum amounts persists...The disconnects are that Toyota has built years of goodwill while GM has collected decades of ill will.*</p>

<p>Perception</a> Is Reality</p>

<p>So, to answer your question directly, would MIT know that some graduates were not performing well and were then sullying and badmouthing the school? Sure, they would probably know. The question is - would they care?. More importantly, would they change? Organizations are hard to change. The Big 3 surely knew about the extensively reported quality problems, and the resulting decline in the value of their brands, but they didn't care. Or, at least, they didn't care enough to change until they forced to change via a financial crisis. The problem is that a school like MIT is rich enough that they probably will never face a serious financial crisis, the current woes notwithstanding. After all, MIT doesn't have equity investors who persistently pester Susan Hockfield to make the quarterly numbers. MIT can never be taken over in a leveraged buyout. Hence, MIT will probably never be faced with a truly existential crisis, and crises are often times the only effective spur to effect major organizational change. </p>

<p>Now, to be fair, I actually happen to think that MIT has been an unusually adaptive and well-managed school, just like how GM used to be widely admired for its highly innovative management processes, especially during the 1920's and 30's (not coincidentally, under the groundbreaking leadership of Alfred Sloan whose name now graces the Sloan School of Management). But the point is, there is no guarantee that an organization will remain flexible. Just because an organization knows of problems - even ones that are widely circulated in the press and that have gravely damaged its reputation - doesn't necessarily mean that the organization will do anything about them. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they have to be forced to make changes.</p>

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Or, if it isn't even willing to do that, then they should at least be willing to provide information on what jobs their former graduates ended up taking (i.e. McDonald's), so that the admittees can make a fully informed choice as to whether they still want to come. Yet I have noticed that most programs actually hide this information, as if to deliberately keep their students in the dark.

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<p>The programs may not have that information to begin with. After all, the graduates are not obligated to disclose anything about themselves after graduation. The identities of the doctoral recipients are a matter of public record, so future PhD candidates can certainly get their names from the university, and also copies of their dissertations (perhaps for a fee). After that, it is a personal matter for the doctoral recipient to decide what information to disclose.</p>

113

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Those other grad students aren't necessarily from your program (of the five grad students in my lab, I'm the only one from my particular program), and most or all of the postdocs won't have gone to grad school at your institution.

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<p>This is very interesting. I see, so a lab-based program is highly, highly different then. In math programs, obviously the graduate students live in their offices in the math building, and typically will head downstairs for classes and/or seminars. They bump into each other + professors frequently.</p>

<p>So do biology (and other lab science) students undergo anything like the preliminary and qualifying exams that math students go through? (If these aren't the terms commonly used -- the former refers to a written exam on a certain breadth of topics, and the latter to a session where professors in your chosen field of study orally examine you before you begin work on the dissertation.)</p>

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<p>We do have a preliminary exam (my department's is actually called the Preliminary Qualifying Exam, just to be extra-thorough ;)), and in most biology departments it involves writing a proposal for your thesis, then defending that proposal orally to a committee of professors in the department. My program has our PQE early in the second year.</p>

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department's is actually called the Preliminary Qualifying Exam, just to be extra-thorough

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<p>Very thorough :) </p>

<p>I really wish this is what they did in all math programs. I think MIT's doesn't do a written preliminary exam, yet Harvard's does an exhaustive one. The Qual, where one gets bombarded about topics of choice, sounds much more fun than the prelims. It sounds like your Prelim-Qual is more like the Quals at math programs -- generally done right before a faculty member accepts the given student as a "Padawan."</p>

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The programs may not have that information to begin with. After all, the graduates are not obligated to disclose anything about themselves after graduation. The identities of the doctoral recipients are a matter of public record, so future PhD candidates can certainly get their names from the university, and also copies of their dissertations (perhaps for a fee). After that, it is a personal matter for the doctoral recipient to decide what information to disclose.

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<p>The information is often times well known, or can be easily discovered, especially due to the proliferation of Web 2.0 bsites. Even if you choose not to disclose your career information to your program, once you've published it on LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook (and you choose not to implement the privacy settings that prevent anonymous viewing of your profile), then your career information is now part of the public domain, which means that your program has every right to compile that information into its database. In fact, several companies such as YoName offer 'social aggregation' services to search all of the social networking sites and top blogs to find somebody's profile(s). {Moral of the story: if you really don't want anybody to know where you work, don't talk about it on a publicly-accessible site.} </p>

<p>Similarly, the company that you do join may make your bio publicly available, especially if you're coming in at a senior position, which some newly minted PhD's do. For example, Dave Danielson finished his PhD in materials science at MIT last year and then joined General Catalyst Partners - a venture capital firm - who published his bio online. </p>

<p>General</a> Catalyst Partners :: Team</p>

<p>Publishing of bios is also highly prevalent within academia. If you get an academic job - even as a post-doc or a staffer - it is likely that at least your name and maybe even your entire CV will be made available to the public. For example, Harvard's Health Policy PhD program, according to its official graduate placement list, may not display the status of recent graduate Sara Singer, but it isn't that hard to figure out that she's now an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. </p>

<p>Sara</a> Singer - Assistant Professor of Health Care Management and Policy - Department of Health Policy and Management - Harvard School of Public Health</p>

<p>Programs therefore have the capability to ascertain the career status of many of their former graduates if they wanted to do so. Now, could they find all of them? Probably not. But you don't need to. You can just append "Unknown job" to the names of the 'lost' graduates', and leave it to the prospective students themselves to determine what that means, and perhaps perform their own inquiries, i.e. through their own social networks (i.e. chatting up former students and asking: "Whatever happened to Person X?") </p>

<p>This all gets back to a basic point. You say that prospective students should be reasonable as to what their career choices will be. However, people can make reasonable decisions only when they are provided with full information, which many programs refuse to disclose, at least, before those students have decided to enroll. For example, once somebody has decided to join a program, the student may now be provided with access to alumni databases and graduation placement lists by which he can now ascertain the career paths of students in the program. But he did not have access to that information before he joined. I think it is deeply unfair to expect that person to then make a reasonable ex-ante decision.</p>

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The information is often times well known, or can be easily discovered, especially due to the proliferation of Web 2.0 bsites.

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<p>This doesn't contradict my initial point that the program may not have the information. If the doctoral recipient did not disclose their post-graduation employment to anyone, the program does not have the information.</p>

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Even if you choose not to disclose your career information to your program, once you've published it on LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook (and you choose not to implement the privacy settings that prevent anonymous viewing of your profile), then your career information is now part of the public domain, which means that your program has every right to compile that information into its database.

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<p>The program doesn't have the obligation to do this. Parties interested in this information are are free to conduct their own searches.</p>

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I think it is deeply unfair to expect that person to then make a reasonable ex-ante decision.

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<p>Well, this is the crux of our disagreement. You think the departments ought to provide this information; I think the parties interested in the information ought to conduct their own searches. No more comment needed from me on this topic.</p>

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The program doesn't have the obligation to do this. Parties interested in this information are are free to conduct their own searches.

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<p>Sure, the program doesn't have the obligation to do this. But they should do it. That's the point. </p>

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Well, this is the crux of our disagreement. You think the departments ought to provide this information; I think the parties interested in the information ought to conduct their own searches. No more comment needed from me on this topic.

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<p>And how can you reasonably expect those parties to do that? They don't know the names of the former graduates. They don't (yet) have an established network of current and former students of the program via which they can contact people. The program has all of these things. </p>

<p>I find it absolutely shocking that you place zero responsibility on the shoulders of the program. None. According to your stance, it is entirely up to the individuals to do everything, and the programs should do nothing to help them, and if the individuals make poorly informed decisions, it is entirely their fault with the programs bearing no responsibility whatsoever. I am quite certain that most readers here would find that to be an opinion clearly outside of the mainstream.</p>

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You think the departments ought to provide this information; I think the parties interested in the information ought to conduct their own searches.

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<p>It's nice that you think this, but maybe give some sort of reasoning why you're arguing against schools providing such information? I'd like to be well informed about what graduates from schools I'm considering are now doing. As a prospective student.</p>

<p>Believe me, I am interested in math graduate school for the intellectual experience and thrill, but anyone who has the slightest clue probably is going to be looking around for the info Sakky suggests be made available. </p>

<p>There is a reason for availability, hence -- i.e. being helpful towards prospective students. "Obligation" aside, I don't understand what you're arguing against, yagottabelieve.</p>

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I find it absolutely shocking that you place zero responsibility on the shoulders of the program. None. According to your stance, it is entirely up to the individuals to do everything, and the programs should do nothing to help them, and if the individuals make poorly informed decisions, it is entirely their fault with the programs bearing no responsibility whatsoever. I am quite certain that most readers here would find that to be an opinion clearly outside of the mainstream.

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<p>I do find it out of the mainstream, for one. This isn't to suggest that you have to agree, but I'd certainly like to know what you're trying to say better. I hope this discussion hasn't degenerated to where "schools being helpful towards prospective students" is not intrinsically good to an extent. At that point, I'll just say the discussion is lost.</p>