<p>
[quote]
sakky -- now we're getting somewhere. Caltech/MIT offer a more serious technical education (good #1), on average, and Harvard offers more political connections and skill in politics (good #2), on average. Surely the ordering on these goods isn't lexicographic. For different people, it's optimal to load up on different quantities of these goods. And it might be optimal for certain people, given their tastes and goals, to turn down the most prestigious place.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>First off, what I would argue is that more people would probably be more optimally served by attending one type of school, followed by another. For example, if you've gone to MIT or Caltech for undergrad, then you should go to HYPS for grad school, and vice versa. That way, you would get the best of both worlds. </p>
<p>{But of course most people will never have that option. So if that's the case, then the safe thing for you to do is to choose whichever good is more valuable at the time you get to make the choice, because you won't know if you will get another such choice later on down the road. In fact, this gets back to something I've been saying to you before. You turned down Harvard for Caltech for undergrad, and you did well. Good for you. But what if you had not done well at Caltech? In that case, I would strongly suspect that you would have liked to have gone back in time and chosen Harvard, as it ist the safe choice.} </p>
<p>Secondly, you raise the issue of geting a serious technical education at Caltech/MIT. However, speaking of MIT, like I said before, MIT is changing its focus. Consonant with spirit of the Steinberger NYTimes article, MIT has been raiding scholars from numerous other top universities in building up its own political science department. That goes a long way towards explaining why that department has been able to attain a #10 ranking in just 40 years of existence, a rather impressive accomplishment when you consider that MIT has to compete against many far older poli-sci departments. I believe that it is the youngest elite (as in top 15-20) poli-sci department in the country. Similarly, you know see many of the top poli-sci graduate candidates turning down far older schools to come to MIT. MIT still does not compete toe-to-toe with Harvard or Stanford for the top poli-sci grad students, but the gap has been significantly narrowed. </p>
<p>Similarly, you can see the same sorts of changes at the MIT Sloan School. It wasn't that long ago when basically the only thing that Sloan did well was industrial/technical/operations management - or what was generally deemed 'management science'. The Sloan School then went through a transformation in adding broader aspects of business administration, especially in culture, leadership, organizational behavior, social psychology, and the like such that now Sloan is a fully-fledged and broadly based business school that now attracts numerous students who are more interested in those 'softer', non-technical aspects of management. For example, some of the recent Sloan PhD's who do not specialize in technical subjects but rather have specialized in sociology, leadership, international business, or psychology have been placed at top B-schools like Wharton and HBS. </p>
<p>But this gets back to what I was saying before - do you want MIT to change? Specifically, do you want MIT to enter those less technical fields, like political science or management culture/sociology/psychology? If the answer is 'yes', then I think that inevitably means changing your admissions process to place less emphasis on technical ability and more emphasis on social skills and social knowledge. After all, I would argue that most of the best political scientists are not geniuses at math. Many of the world's best business students, either future practitioners or fuure business academics, are not geniuses at math. MIT is never going to change to become a broader-based university if it solely emphasizes technical acumen in its admittees.</p>
<p>Now, of course, one could argue that MIT shouldn't even be trying to become a broader-based university at all. But if that's the case, then you have to believe that many of the initiatives that MIT has started in the last few decades were ill-advised. For example, it would mean tha MIT should not have started a fully-fledged poli-sci program. It should not have built a strong linguistics and philosophy department. The Sloan School should have remained a technical/operations management boutique school. It should not have launched the Media Lab. In other words, most of the new initiatives that have happened East of Ames Street in the last 50 years should not have happened.</p>