Ivy Rigor

[blossom]

<p>Quant, I will eat Pizza with you, Pizzagirl, and ALH any day of the week and we can orate from Cicero until the wee hours!</p>

[LoremIpsum]

<p>

Quant, I will eat Pizza with you, Pizzagirl, and ALH any day of the week and we can orate from Cicero until the wee hours!

</p>

<p>Cicero is a major street in Chicago. Undoubtedly you can find a pizza place along it somewhere to meet and orate. ;)</p>

[QuantMech]

<p>Actually, I have to admit that quotation is about my limit unless I have the text in front of me. Toss in a line or two of Vergil, one of Ovid, one of Catullus, and a single ablative absolute from Caesar, and I’m completely out, in 90 seconds! (But it would be fun to hear someone who could orate till the wee hours!)</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>Well done, QuantMech I don’t even like pizza very much. It was an unfortunate choice of a screen name linked to a real-life business situation I was involved in. Nonetheless, I’m in!</p>

<p>BTW, I also don’t agree that prestige is all some marketing ploy. (That is, I agree with blossom #419) I think the elite schools, for the most part, fully deserve their prestige, and Drexel isn’t MIT.</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>

@cobrat

If anything, they’d be wondering at the sanity of someone who’d turn down those schools for Harvard. This was clearly shown in the reaction of most HS classmates when a HS classmate in my year turned down admission to Berkeley, MIT, and CMU to attend Harvard for engineering.

</p>

<p>These days (perhaps not back then), an engineering student may “settle” for Harvard over the others simply because it is likely to be the least expensive after financial aid (unless in-state for Berkeley). Then again, someone needing the money and with the credentials to get into Harvard and MIT should also have had Stanford and the competitive full ride scholarships at Georgia Tech and NCSU on his/her application lists.</p>

[ucbalumnus]

<p>Re: major in English, history, or history and philosophy of science at Caltech</p>

<p>

@JHS

You can indeed. But it looks like practically no one does. In whatever year the statistics for which are presented on the NCES website, the total number of bachelor’s degree recipients who majored in any of those three departments was . . . 1 (a history major).</p>

<p>That said, Caltech has an impressive number of faculty in those departments. Much larger than the physics faculties at most LACs of comparable size.

</p>

<p>Would a humanities major get a lot of faculty attention at Caltech?</p>

<p>In terms of building up the faculty, given the postings here about the intense competition for the relatively few humanities faculty positions compared to the number of humanities PhDs seeking them, it should not be hard for Caltech or any school to recruit a decent number of them to round out its faculty.</p>

<p>That may be different from a humanities-focused school looking to expand its faculty in, for example, math and computer science, in order to be more attractive to students majoring in such subjects, due to the non-academic jobs that they are competing against to attract math and computer science PhDs.</p>

[Hunt]

<p>

So those who feel the kids should have gotten in based on academic achievements alone, are aiming for 400 seats at Harvard. That eliminates about 75% of the seats for pure academic achievers?

I think what Harvard means is that they have about 400 kids in each class who are academic superstars and who don’t ALSO have other impressive achievements. Most of the other 75% are also academic superstars by any sensible measure of what it means to be one.</p>

[lookingforward]

<p>Let’s not make PizzaGirl the latest target. (416)</p>

[cobrat]

<p>

@ucbalumnus

These days (perhaps not back then), an engineering student may “settle” for Harvard over the others simply because it is likely to be the least expensive after financial aid (unless in-state for Berkeley). Then again, someone needing the money and with the credentials to get into Harvard and MIT should also have had Stanford and the competitive full ride scholarships at Georgia Tech and NCSU on his/her application lists.

</p>

<p>If you’re talking FA, certainly. However, the highly generous aid given out by the Ivies didn’t exist until well after that classmate and I graduated from college in the late '90s. </p>

<p>In general, among the hardcore engineering/CS types in HS and among those in hardcore tech industries…the general consensus seems to be that Harvard lags behind many other Ivies in the engineering/CS field…and those top engineering/CS Ivies are regarded by them as a cut below schools like CMU, Caltech, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.</p>

<p>

Would a humanities major get a lot of faculty attention at Caltech?</p>

<p>In terms of building up the faculty, given the postings here about the intense competition for the relatively few humanities faculty positions compared to the number of humanities PhDs seeking them, it should not be hard for Caltech or any school to recruit a decent number of them to round out its faculty.

</p>

<p>If it is anything like how I’ve seen/heard folks respond when they find MIT graduates whose only major is “Humanities”, probably similar/worse response to how the hardcore engineering/CS folks would have of someone majoring in Engineering at Harvard. </p>

<p>Even if the faculty are superb, the general impression is the campus culture/academic environment is such that it under-serves those who aren’t majoring in something that’s given much more prioritization of support compared with their dominant academic areas. </p>

<p>It’s been a complaint of that Harvard Engineering HS classmate while she was an undergrad.</p>

[cltdad]

<p>

I think what Harvard means is that they have about 400 kids in each class who are academic superstars and who don’t ALSO have other impressive achievements. Most of the other 75% are also academic superstars by any sensible measure of what it means to be one.

</p>

<p>No, I think they mean those 400 kids are more likely than the rest of the class to become superstars in academia. My daughter is a senior at Harvard majoring in physics and by any “sensible measure” that you are referring to she would be an academic superstar, but she recognizes that there are others who truly are geniuses and will be on the fast track in academia.</p>

[mathmom]

<p>Veni, Vici, Visa (I came, I saw, I charged) is about the limit of my Latin, but both my boys took it in high school.</p>

<p>I think a humanities major gets quite a bit of attention at Caltech, the faculty are thrilled to have someone to play with. I actually (slightly) knew someone at Caltech who majored in English I believe. She decided she really didn’t want to be a scientist, but thought she might enjoy doing science writing for lay people. (Scientific American type writing.) Don’t know what became of her in the end.</p>

<p>We kind of got the impression Harvard might be thrilled to have our computer science nerd son. (He got a phone call from the head of the department at any rate.) Harvard started a project to spiff up their science and engineering options the year my son applied (2007) some of which fell prey to the 2008 financial debacle, but I believe they are stronger now than when cobrat’s cohort was applying to colleges. I think you go to Harvard because you want the other things Harvard offers (for one the ability to spend significant time shooting the breeze with serious humanities and social science scholars and whatever cross pollination that might result in,) not because they are the top ranked engineering program.</p>

<p>And I’ll say it again, I am so, so, so glad my son didn’t attend cobrat’s high school!</p>

[collegealum314]

<p>

Let’s not make PizzaGirl the latest target. (416)

</p>

<p>OK, but just one more. ;)</p>

<p>In my estimation, Pizzagirl resents intellectuals because she associates devotion to intellectual excellence and in being responsible (academically and in her personal life) with her rebuffing that movie star who was trying to put the moves on her in college.</p>

[SlitheyTove]

<p>Dunno if anyone’s matriculated to Caltech intending to be a humanities major, but it would be highly unusual. Students arrive intending to be some kind of STEM major, and then change course. Here’s a recent story of one such student: [Engineering</a> & Science](<a href=“Caltech Magazine”>Caltech Magazine)</p>

<p>Anyone graduating from Caltech pretty much has a STEM undergrad degree due to the the school’s distribution requirements, even if they were “only” a humanities major. :rolleyes:</p>

<p>Trick question: what’s the largest department at Caltech, as measured by # of faculty? Yup, the humanities dept. :)</p>

[coureur]

<br>

<blockquote>
<p>Quo usque tandem, Pizzagirl, abutere patientia nostra?<<</p>
</blockquote>

<br>

<p>Mortua lingua sola est bona.
(The only good language is a dead language)</p>

[StillGreen]

<p>Sandra Loh, not the “typical” physics major. :-)</p>

[QuantMech]

<p>coureur, the data tables for the SAT Subject Tests ™ in Languages–Performance by Years of Study (available here: [SAT</a> Data Tables | Research and Development](<a href=“http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/sat-data-tables]SAT”>http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/sat-data-tables)) give the mean (650) and standard deviation (105) for native speakers of Latin. Clearly the language is alive, and therefore no good. I rest my case.****</p>

<p>****Ok, they do put four asterisks after Latin and admit that “Technically, there are no native speakers of Latin.”</p>

[cobrat]

<p>

@mathmom

I think you go to Harvard because you want the other things Harvard offers (for one the ability to spend significant time shooting the breeze with serious humanities and social science scholars and whatever cross pollination that might result in,) not because they are the top ranked engineering program.

</p>

<p>For the hardcore engineering/CS folks who wanted tippy top engineering/CS or top Ivy engineering/CS programs and interactions with strong humanities/SS folks, they seemed to gravitate to schools like Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Cornell, UMich, or Columbia. </p>

<p>Moreover, the ranking I mentioned above wasn’t just from HS classmates which could easily be dismissed, but by nearly every senior/supervisory engineer/programmer in hardcore engineering/CS tech firm I’ve worked I’ve visited or worked with. </p>

<p>General consensus was that in the engineering/CS world, there are many Ivies and private/state* schools which are rated higher in their own pecking order of which schools to give hiring preferences. </p>

<p>Incidentally, I recalled you felt it was odd your son preferred CMU to Harvard in past postings. </p>

<p>To someone who is a hardcore engineering/CS person him/herself or those of us who worked with and/or studied alongside them…your son’s preference was completely understandable and made quite a bit of sense. </p>

<p>*I.e. UIllinois-UC</p>

[lake42ks]

<p>

To someone who is a hardcore engineering/CS person him/herself or those of us who worked with and/or studied alongside them…your son’s preference was completely understandable and made quite a bit of sense.

</p>

<p>If such a student chooses not to go a tech school, will that hurt him/her in the long run? some CC posters convinced me it won’t and I certainly hope not.</p>

<p>Back to rigor, I’m pleased that my kid had to choose a course from a former government official or one that has authored a half dozen more books. Both got their PhD from an Ivy. I’m not worry about rigor there, lack of it or not.</p>

[tk21769]

<p>

Elite private research universities are amazing, complex institutions, and generally have huge chunks that are NOT primarily about academics. …</p>

<p>… Look at the natural controlled experiment provided by the University of Chicago. There is an institution whose faculty strength and academic facilities has ranked in the very top tier of American universities for at least a century. Yet its college virtually collapsed… As, over the past 10-15 year, Chicago largely abandoned its separate path and started looking a lot more like Yale, its popularity, selectivity, and general reputation have skyrocketed . . . and it still has something of a unique culture, but there is hardly a voice there arguing that the past was better than the present.

</p>

<p>I agree with some elements of this argument. The College of the University of Chicago has improved since the mid-1990s. However, this isn’t because it started looking a lot more like Yale. It has in fact preserved its own unique culture, but has done so while paying more attention to the quality of student life. </p>

<p>That unique culture was defined under Robert Maynard Hutchins in the 1930s and 40s. Some features of the Hutchins model did not survive very long. The faculty rejected a purist Great Books model even under his tenure. Other features persist today. These include the interdisciplinary Core curriculum, a focus on primary source documents and classic works, and an emphasis on discussion not lectures. First year Chicago students do not sit in 279-student lectures on the workings of Congress. They read Leviathan and the Federalist Papers, then examine what they mean in small class discussions moderated by professors (not TAs). </p>

<p>One could argue that the College “collapsed” demographically in the post-war era (~1945-1995). Admit rates and enrollments did not keep up with the Ivies. However, there was never any marked decline in academic quality. The undergraduate faculty was always superb. The College continued to attract strong students. Undergraduates in that era included future talking head David Brooks, presidential advisor David Axelrod, film critic Roger Ebert, Nobel laureates Frank Wilczek and Robert Lucas Jr., composer Philip Glass, Morningstar CEO Joseph Mansueto, and legions of future college professors. </p>

<p>Since the mid-1990’s Chicago has slightly relaxed its Core requirements, constructed attractive new buildings (including athletic facilities, dorms, and study spaces), and adopted the Common App (while retaining its quirky application essays). Undergraduate enrollment has grown from fewer than 1400 students in the 1950s to about 5000 today. However, you’d still have a hard time finding huge chunks of the University of Chicago (including the graduate business school and definitely the College) that are not primarily about academics.</p>

<p>The Chicago model is not a good fit for all good students. I would hardly call Harvard a diploma mill; a more balanced approach to ECs and academics does have advantages. Still, I think either approach needs continual oversight and perhaps occasional rebalancing. Declining enrollment is one signal that something isn’t working. A 100-student cheating scandal is another.</p>

[Canuckguy]

<p>

Wow, what a simplistic, reductionistic view of how people really act and behave. You might want to acquaint yourself with Myers-Briggs and ponder upon people who have both strong “N” intuition and strong “T” thinking skills.

</p>

<p>I am actually interested in what people who are strong in “N” and strong in “T” study in college. It is, however not on my priority list. Don’t you think it would be a lot less intrusive to ask a person for his major than his Myers-Briggs?</p>

<p>As far as the other part of your question goes, I can only do what I can with the deck of cards I am given. Since I have not been privileged with the intellect of a StillGreen or be a lucky sperm and born a Bush, I have to take solace in a quote from Henry Longfellow:</p>

<p>“Most people would succeed in small things if they weren’t troubled with great ambitions.”</p>

<p>What do you think?</p>

<p>While still on the topic of President Bush, do you remember the strange tale of Euan Blair? Here is a perfect example of what you were talking about(see #628):</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a-42.html#post13839929[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a-42.html#post13839929&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This neatly dovetails with:</p>

<p>[Ivy</a> League universities: Merit in motion | The Economist](<a href=“Merit in motion”>Merit in motion)</p>

<p>Just as you suggested. Very impressive analysis, may I add.</p>