<p>Molliebatmit, I think you’re idealizing things. It’s not so much a matter of perspective as it is the kind of lab you get into and what kind of person is directing it, as well as what work he or she is doing. If you get into a lab where the advisor thinks undergrads are more in the way than helpers, or where most of the work being done requires an advanced knowledge of the field, you may be stuck labeling vials and feeding the animals no matter how you think of yourself. But if you get an advisor who really wishes to engage undergraduates in meaningful research, then you will be more intellectually involved.</p>
<p>Also, the absence of a “superstar” reputation doesn’t mean the absence of solid research skills. There are plenty of great researchers at LACs. You have to understand the way university hiring works – only a very few students and post-docs get hired at places like Yale, Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. Many of their peers at top LACs got their graduate training at the same schools and do research just as well; they just couldn’t get jobs at R1s and/or didn’t want them for whatever reason. For example, we (at Columbia) had a seminar about getting jobs at LACs (instead of research universities) and the room was packed. And if you look at the faculties at top LACs, their professors come from distinguished places (I’ve been chronicling them because I’d like to teach at an LAC if I become a professor at all).</p>
<p>The answer to this question is also different by university and even by department. In my department intro classes are taught by professors but TAs do the grading and advising; upper level classes are mixed undergrad-grad and many of the undergrads do develop close relationships with great professors. But the professors have to be willing. One of my best professors loves undergrads and grad students alike, even though she has a full lab back at Yale where she came from. Another of my advisors…I never see him with undergrads! </p>
<p>bclintonk is right. This varies largely by school and department.</p>
One point that I’m trying to make is that, in my experience at MIT and at Harvard, nobody gets stuck labeling vials – I actually can’t think of any of my friends in various departments who weren’t participating in original, independent, often publishable, research in their labs. Professors at both schools strongly value the contributions their undergraduates are perfectly capable of making.</p>
<p>This may partially be a culture-of-the-school thing, but in my first-hand experience, professors at MIT treat undergraduates like junior colleagues who have contributions to make to the knowledge enterprise. In that sense, superstar faculty are absolutely not a waste for undergraduates, any more than they are for graduate students at the same institution.</p>
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Agreed, but it can mean the absence or near-absence of a high-quality research program. I don’t think the pedigree of a professor is nearly as important as the quality of his or her current work, not to mention the cold, hard reality of the professor’s funding situation.</p>
<p>I don’t think that going to MIT or to Harvard is the right choice for every student, or even every prospective scientist. But for the students for whom MIT and Harvard are the best fit, superstar faculty are not a waste.</p>
<p>That didn’t answer the question about whether or not Wellesley women flee crying into the night when approached by MIT guys. And surely SOMEBODY is labeling the damn vials…they don’t just label themselves! I DEMAND to know who is labeling the vials!!</p>
<p>Well, as neither an MIT guy nor a Wellesley woman, I don’t feel qualified to answer the question. Certainly a lot of Wellesley women come to MIT for frat parties, but a lot probably do not.</p>
<p>In my lab, everybody labels his or her own vials. And we employ a dishwasher to wash the dishes.</p>