Undergrad. Major Rankings Questions

<p>I disagree with collegehelp tremendously. If you are in a small Chem program its even better. My anthro dept at Dartmouth was less than 20 people my year, but of the 5 going to PhD programs 100% went to top 5 grad schools (Chicago, Harvard, Cal, etc). In fact it was a bonus, since the major was so small the attention was amazing (I got $10K for my thesis research and lots of one-on-one interaction). The name Dartmouth is what mattered not the individual program ranking, and the attention people got and recommendations put them over the top. This is why the LACs do SO well. </p>

<p>Personally, I decided to get an MBA, and my recs (along with other things I did) helped me get in as one of the youngest in my MBA class.</p>

<p>agree 100% with slipper.</p>

<p>I agree somewhat with the two of you, but there is clearly a point at which a school cannot offer a student in a particular field much at all. If you want to study at a school where only the fringe interests of a few faculty members or none at all match yours, you probably won't be well served by going to the school. With many "standard" subjects, students can get by at many schools, but some schools might have nothing or surprisingly little in certain subjects, even those which seem to be the most common of all.</p>

<p>^^You are correct. Many people from small LACish type schools would argue endlessly (until their faces got red) that they got such great educations & wondrous undergraduate experiences in small class size & focus. I don’t blame them… after all they (or their kids) went to (are attending) those schools, LOL. Some even might argue that small LACish type school is better than graduate student-friendly schools like Harvard/Columbia/Berkeley for undergraduate education/experience. Granted, some students might enjoy/benefit attending smaller size college. Some might be better off attending Big Research Type University (most likely techie major students). </p>

<p>If we can step back and think what’s really happening in college, then we know that in your farm fresh/sophomoric years, you are just learning the basic fundamental stuffs (i.e., how to write, basic math/science, an introductory taste of various liberal arts/majors). But, when you become junior/senior and get knee deep into your major courses and begin to learn the red-meat part of your major, the difference in faculty quality does come into play. </p>

<p>Time to time, during your class, you will get enlightened and inspired by the ideas/thoughts suggested/explained by your world-famous professors and just blown away. At that moment, you know that you are transfigured into a totally different person– this is what college education is all about - not making more money, not getting better jobs, but finding “urself” within. My point is that you will most likely get these wonderful opportunities more often in environments where your professors know their stuffs and constantly get involved in learning/researching (like many world-class university professors) – very unlikely from some small LACish type undergrad-focused professors, who love to recycle a 30 year old lecture note book again and again, who don’t do any high-level research but just take pleasure in teaching the same old stuffs to undergrads.</p>

<p>We all know Harvard is a great school. Yes, there is some truth that it is its student body that makes Harvard #1. But we cannot underestimate another significant factor – the quality of faculty and their research strengths. After all, Harvard also gets its glory and fame mainly from its graduate schools (faculty, graduates, and researches/publications).</p>

<p>One thing is certain: You can’t just go wrong if you go to one of the world-class universities.</p>

<p>They are:</p>

<p>Harvard-Berkeley-MIT-Stanford-Yale-Princeton-Columbia-Caltech</p>

<p>
[quote]
One thing is certain: You can’t just go wrong if you go to one of the world-class universities.</p>

<p>They are:</p>

<p>Harvard-Berkeley-MIT-Stanford-Yale-Princeton-Columbia-Caltech

[/quote]
</p>

<p>...uh, where are UPenn, Brown, Dartmouth and Duke (a shout out to thoughtprocess!) ???</p>

<p>Rabban doesn't understand that the focus you get at the senior level from the undergrad focused schools and the resources (I had my own office for example plus 10K for research, and I was an average student!) This is why places like Swarthmore, Brown, Dartmouth, Amherst and Williams do so much better than places like Cal when it comes to placement.</p>

<p>Maybe. I think it might have more to do with input/output. If you input the Swarthmore/Brown/Dartmouth etc students almost anywhere, that place would do significantly better. I respect the undergraduate focused system, but I don't think the systems of the schools you've named are life changing- maybe I'm just not familiar enough with them. It tends to be that the students who come in amazing leave amazing at many different schools, and that while there are some schools that seem to transform average students into great students (such as those on the colleges that change lives lists), the ones you mention aren't like that.</p>

<p>Sam Lee: "Keep in mind the list makes LACs look good only because LACs are usually tiny. Any department is proportionally larger in LACs."</p>

<p>If this were a significant factor, then we would expect the large research universities to rise toward the top of the list when <em>all</em> majors are considered together.</p>

<p>MIT and CalTech are there (from Rabban's list), but LACs dominate, consistently holding seven of the top 10 spots.</p>

<p>For the years given, here are the top 10 institutions in the nation ranked (HEDS Consortium) by the overall percentage of graduates who go on to earn a PhD in all fields:</p>

<p>1975-2004</p>

<p>CalTech
Harvey Mudd
Reed
Swarthmore
MIT
U Chicago
Carleton
Oberlin
Bryn Mawr
Pomona</p>

<p>1995-2004</p>

<p>CalTech
Harvey Mudd
Swarthmore
Reed
MIT
Carleton
Oberlin
Bryn Mawr
U Chicago
Grinnell</p>

<p>2000-2004</p>

<p>CalTech
Harvey Mudd
Reed
Swarthmore
Carleton
MIT
BrynMawr
Oberlin
Grinnell
U Chicago</p>

<p>Drab I completely disagree. THOSE are the colleges that change lives. They are all incredibly rich (which means grants, lots of study abroad (Dartmouth is over 70% study abroad)) lots of classes with under 10 people, large percentages of students who write a thesis, etc.</p>

<p>I read your posts more in depth. I agree that the top LACy schools have top students to begin with, but the opportunities available at these schools allows for an educational experience that simply surpasses the top publics and research schools. My brother goes to a top five public, but there isn't even close to the percentage of students getting research grants, having 5 people culminating seminars, writing a thesis, going on school led study abroad, etc.</p>

<p>
[quote]
If we can step back and think what’s really happening in college, then we know that in your farm fresh/sophomoric years, you are just learning the basic fundamental stuffs (i.e., how to write, basic math/science, an introductory taste of various liberal arts/majors). But, when you become junior/senior and get knee deep into your major courses and begin to learn the red-meat part of your major, the difference in faculty quality does come into play. </p>

<p>Time to time, during your class, you will get enlightened and inspired by the ideas/thoughts suggested/explained by your world-famous professors and just blown away. At that moment, you know that you are transfigured into a totally different person– this is what college education is all about - not making more money, not getting better jobs, but finding “urself” within. My point is that you will most likely get these wonderful opportunities more often in environments where your professors know their stuffs and constantly get involved in learning/researching (like many world-class university professors) – very unlikely from some small LACish type undergrad-focused professors, who love to recycle a 30 year old lecture note book again and again, who don’t do any high-level research but just take pleasure in teaching the same old stuffs to undergrads

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But, as slipper1234 said, then why is it that those LAC's are able to get so many of their students into (and complete) PhD programs, if the students there are uninspired and haven't 'found themselves'? For example, why is it that in many years, of all of the people who complete PhD's at Caltech, almost as many had completed their undergrad at Harvey Mudd than at UCLA, UCI, UCSB, UCR, and USC combined? For example, of the people who earned PhD's at Caltech in 2005, 2 of them were former Harvey Mudd undergraduates, whereas 2 were UCSB undergrads, 1 was a UCRiverside undergrad, and none came from UCI, UCLA, or USC. Note - you don't count people who got master's degrees from those school, as we are only talking undergrad for, after all, Harvey Mudd doesn't even have a master's degree program. Keep in mind the huge differences in size we are talking about. Clearly more people graduate in technical subjects from those LA-area UC's and from USC than from Mudd. </p>

<p><a href="http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/05/phd.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/05/phd.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>So if these Mudd students are not being 'inspired' or haven't been able to find themselves because they went to a LAC, then why is Caltech admitting so many of them for graduate school? Is Caltech being dumb? </p>

<p>
[quote]
Time to time, during your class, you will get enlightened and inspired by the ideas/thoughts suggested/explained by your world-famous professors and just blown away. At that moment, you know that you are transfigured into a totally different person– this is what college education is all about - not making more money, not getting better jobs, but finding “urself” within. My point is that you will most likely get these wonderful opportunities more often in environments where your professors know their stuffs and constantly get involved in learning/researching (like many world-class university professors) – very unlikely from some small LACish type undergrad-focused professors, who love to recycle a 30 year old lecture note book again and again, who don’t do any high-level research but just take pleasure in teaching the same old stuffs to undergrads

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But here you are portraying a highly idealized version of the way that education is supposed to work. The reality tends to be far different. The major assumption you are making is that these world-famous professors actually have the skill to teach undergrads. The truth of the matter is, many world-famous researchers are just bad teachers. They don't know how to communicate their thoughts in a way that is comprehensible to the average undergrad. They don't have good presentation skills. I myself, as well as many others, have had to endure classes run by purportedly world-class researchers that were just extremely poorly taught. </p>

<p>The other major aspect is that a lot of researchers are not good teachers because they don't WANT to be good teachers. The truth is, many universities simply do not value good teaching, instead running a publish-or-perish regime. Hence, profs there would rather spend their time conducting research than in teaching, and as a result, many of them will deliberately spend as little effort as possible in teaching, especially in teaching the undergrads. For example, I knew one prof who deliberately slotted his office hours at a time when he knew that his students all had to be in another class, and the purpose of that was clear - he did not really want to have anything to do with his undergrad students. Or think about pop culture. Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) was a former math prof at Berkeley who was noted for his extremely poor teaching skills, but that didn't matter, because you didn't really need to be a good teacher to advance at Berkeley, all you needed were good publications.:</p>

<p>"In the fall of 1967 Kaczynski was hired as an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Kaczynski's aloofness and reserve made students rate him poorly. Despite the attempt at persuasion by the department staff, Kaczynski resigned without explanation in 1969. Calvin Moore, vice chairman of the department in 1968, said that given Kaczynski's "impressive" thesis and record of publications, "he could have advanced up the ranks and been a senior member of the faculty today.""</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber#Early_life_and_mathematical_career%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber#Early_life_and_mathematical_career&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Think about that. If Kaczynski hadn't gone crazy, he probably would have become a full prof at Berkeley, and he would have subjected countless Berkeley students to bad teaching for decades. That's because the Berkeley math department (and in fact, few math departments at the major research universities) doesn't place much value on good teaching. </p>

<p>Or think about "Beautiful Mind" John Nash, how Nash taught at MIT for a while before going crazy, and how he taught his classes in an extremely hostile and rude manner. Again, this is an example of research universities having brilliant profs who just don't give a whit about teaching. </p>

<p>The point is that undergrad quality has to be measured with multiple metrics. Think of it as the area of a rectangle, where one side comprises the 'brilliance' of the profs, and the other side comprises how much the profs actually want to teach undergrads, and how good they are at doing it. The total area of the rectangle is how much undergrad quality you will get. It doesn't matter how brilliant your profs are if they aren't good at teaching undergrads, and don't want to be good at it. Q=A*B, and it doesn't matter if A is infinite if B is zero, as anything times zero is still zero.</p>

<p>... who says that you'll never use geometry in the real world?</p>

<p>great points as usual sakky.</p>

<p>darkhope, if you are not already, you should definitely look into Northwestern University's Integrated Science Program. It is a small (25 to 35 students a year, if I remember correctly), intense program that gives students a very good education in the general sciences and easily allows a double major in chemistry or some other science. I found it a very tempting opportunity, the cost proved to be too high.</p>

<p>Sakky, </p>

<p>First of all, you just listed two examples of how world-famous professors can be bad in teaching undergrad. Granted, I bet there are more than two professors in Berkeley or other world-class school for that matter, who love teaching undergrads while doing hi-level research. Your examples are too skimpy to make a convincing argument, it’s like arguing you saw two black dogs, so all dogs must be black. Nothing can be further from the truth - Dismissed</p>

<p>It is obvious to see that HMC will never be a world-class school even if all HMC graduates get their PhDs. Why? Simple. They do not perform world-class researches!!! How can professors conduct world-class researches without graduate students, especially in constantly-updating, ever-evolving, tech programs (science/eng.). Why don’t you tell me how? They simply cannot - Dismissed.</p>

<p>Next, the benefits of having great research-oriented grad schools are further explained. Let’s take the chemistry dept for example. You will be much better off to have professors who is up-to-date on what’s going on his fields, especially ever-evolving major like chemistry (by extension, all tech programs like science/eng). In schools with great graduate programs, professors tend to attend seminar/symposium to share his research results and also share ideas with other colleagues and publish a lot. This new knowledge, or know-how, or new technical trend/push if you will, in turn will be fed into undergrad class that he’s teaching. In contrast, for small LACish type schools, those professors cannot simply go to this national technical symposium/conference since they don’t have any research output to show!!! The net result is that the same old stuff is recycled and regurgitated – it’s like water in the Dead Sea.</p>

<p>Concluding remark: I don’t want to waste time arguing with you. I hope it’s obvious for you to see now that there is a tremendous benefit of attending the world-class research-oriented schools than small LACish type schools.</p>

<p>Uh No...you don't participate in WORLD CLASS research as an undergrad anyways...so if you are a great student at a top LAC you can do grad work in WORLD CLASS research</p>

<p>with all due respect, you are missing my point</p>

<p>haha i probably am, I didn't read any of it besides the last sentence....my bad</p>

<p>no biggie, perhaps it's time to update your process (hope he's not going any of those LACish)</p>

<p>One point is being missed: LACs produce BS/BA graduates who later earn PhDs at a significantly higher percentage rate than do the large research universities (where these LAC graduates shine).</p>

<p>
[quote]
Concluding remark: I don’t want to waste time arguing with you. I hope it’s obvious for you to see now that there is a tremendous benefit of attending the world-class research-oriented schools than small LACish type schools.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>...yeah, if you are a grad student.</p>