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Having great smart profs is rewarding and challenging. You also misstate my premise when you say you don’t understand why a prof’s abilities/experience shouldn’t be relevant. Of course it is, but that prof doesn’t have to be a high powered researcher or famous or part of a highly ranked department for that to be true. At the vast majority of schools, most profs have a lot of ability and experience. At the graduate level, where everything I said about time with that prof is far less true, then those credentials of fame and respect in their community for their work is highly relevent to the mission at hand. The undergraduate mission is very different from that. The ability and experience of the lesser known profs can be equally valuable, or even more so because of the time they might have to give an undergrad more attention. I think that what you are missing is the qualitative difference between the graduate experience, where research reputation and ability has a direct impact every day, and undergraduate where it is much more diluted. I am not saying it is just the personality of the prof, but at the undergrad level if a highly competent prof can relate to you and the famous one cannot, which is more effective? There is no correlation between these two things, other than many of the most “driven” people can be difficult, and in any case as I said the most famous ones are often less accessable.
You’re saying that professors must merely meet a certain baseline standard of competence and experience, after which their personality and lecture skills become much more important. Am I interpreting that correctly?</p>