<p>With the same logic expressed by so many experienced LAC proponents, students should go to Undergraduate-Focused LACish school foregoing Graduate Student- Friendly Harvard.</p>
<p>Yupppp, Riiiiiight</p>
<p>That's exactly right, Rabban. It's all a matter of fit, anyway. I personally, never had any desire to attend Harvard.</p>
<p>good for you.Dorian, however, i respectfully disagree. Harvard (the ultimate bellwether of all WCUs) is still number 1 in MY book!</p>
<p>WCU = Blue Chip
LACish = Small Cap </p>
<p>In the long run, Blue Chips are the ones that benefit you most :)</p>
<p>If Harvard is number one in your book, you should try to get into Harvard; however, that does not make it the best choice for all students, and it certainly does not mean that the education one would receive at a LAC-type school is invalid.</p>
<p>
[quote]
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, its like arguing you saw two black dogs, so all dogs must be black. Nothing can be further from the truth - Dismissed
[/quote]
</p>
<p>By the same token, I know a guy who smoked 2 packs a day, and yet still lived to be over 90. So I suppose we should conclude that smoking is not only perfectly safe, but will actually HELP you to enjoy long life? If that is your logic, then by all means, I would like to see you try to argue that smoking is actually good for you.</p>
<p>The salient point is that teaching quality IN GENERAL tends to be worse at the research universities than at equivalent-quality LAC's. This is something that has been noted not just by me, but time and time again by numerous social science observers. I quote from Thomas Sowell:</p>
<p>"Those professors who enjoy teaching more than research are likely to seek out the small liberal arts college-or have to go there after being forced out of research universities for not publishing enough. Winning the "teacher of the year" award at a research university will carry very little weight when time comes to have one's contract renewed or to be voted on for tenure. In 1987, a Harvard professor whose credentials included such an award was notified that his contract would not be renewed. I personally know three other professors at three different institutions who were notified that their contracts would not be renewed after they had won "teacher of the year" awards. One referred to the award as "travel money." The issue of teaching versus research has been debated innumerable times and is unlikely to be settled any time soon. What is important to someone seeking good teaching is to find out where it is most likely to be found. At a top research university, where the professor knows that "publish or perish" are his career choices, it is unrealistic to expect that most will make teaching their top priority. To some, teaching is purely incidental."</p>
<p>
[quote]
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 dont you tell me how? They simply cannot - Dismissed.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am not talking about a school being "world-class". I am simply talking about a school that is able to prepare its students with a strong education, and that is ultimately what a student is attending school for. You still haven't answered the question of if Mudd is not 'world-class', then why are its graduates so successful in getting into and completing PhD's? Like I said, Mudd seems to produce nearly as many graduates who later complete PhD's at Caltech than do UCLA, USC, UCI, UCR, and UCSB all combined. Why is that, if Mudd is no good? Is Caltech being stupid in admitting and conferring PhD's upon all of these 'unqualified' Mudd alumni? Please answer the question. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Next, the benefits of having great research-oriented grad schools are further explained. Lets take the chemistry dept for example. You will be much better off to have professors who is up-to-date on whats 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 hes teaching. In contrast, for small LACish type schools, those professors cannot simply go to this national technical symposium/conference since they dont have any research output to show!!! The net result is that the same old stuff is recycled and regurgitated its like water in the Dead Sea
[/quote]
</p>
<p>See, there you again, you are simply assuming that the profs actually ARE ABLE TO EXPLAIN WHAT THEY KNOW TO UNDERGRADS. Plenty of research prof don't have the communucations skills to be able to do that, and plenty of others simply don't want to do that. So how do these profs actually help anybody?</p>
<p>I'll give you an example. Yuan Lee won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry at Berkeley in 1986. He hasn't taught an undergraduate class since at least the early 90's, and probably for some time before that. So, how exactly does it help the undergrads to have a guy like that around? You never see him, he doesn't hold office hours, his lab is barred to all except his hand-picked grad-students and postdocs, and basically it's as if he didn't exist at all. So he happens to be around campus every once in awhile - so what? What does that do for you? </p>
<p>What you are missing in your analysis is that you simply assume that these researchers actually want to spend time interacting with undergrads. Some do, plenty do not. Hence, to the undergrad, it's as if these profs basically don't even exist.</p>
<p>With all due respect, looks like so many more students share my view than yours.</p>
<p>I did not say "invalid", but "less beneficial" compared to WCU's</p>
<p>Rabban, what is the point of linking to the US News? In the first place, it is not decided by the preferences of students, and secondly, it doesn't even compare research universities to LACs. They are in two entirely different rankings. Also, this doesn't support your claims of "world class" universities, seeing as Brown is ranked above UC Berkeley, one of your "WCU's."</p>
<p>Okay, sakky. Please answer this then.
Would you choose MIT ( another bellwether of WCUs) or Mudd if you have to make a choice between the two?</p>
<p>My point, Dorian, is that more students prefer WCUs than LACish type small schools as evidneced by the link</p>
<p>
[quote]
Oh
I can give you a good example- you interpret as you like. We all know brown is the most LACish type school in ivies. Many many brown graduates join peace corps or non-profit organizations ( I dont know why, I can only guess ) After that, most of them are living off of his dad and mom cuz they couldnt get a job (maybe they didnt get an updated, state-of-the-art undergrad education, I donno)
then go for graduate schools (again, I can only guess why ). Yeah they got PhDs all right from very notable depts.. like art history, ocean science, zoology
In other words, they get educated beyond their intelligence.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh, trust me, there are PLENTY of alumni from the major research universities who end up with crappy jobs. I happen to know quite a few people who graduated from Berkeley who ended up working at the mall. Take a gander at the salaries earned by various Berkeley grads, and you will notice that, apart from the technical fields and business administration, many majors make little money. </p>
<p>Contrast that with the salaries reported from Mudd. Heck, I showed in previous posts (which you can search) that Mudd grads actually make HIGHER salaries than even the Berkeley engineering grads do, yet not all Mudd grads are engineers, as there are also some lower-paid natural science and math grads. </p>
<p>So ask yourself, if Mudd is not world-class, and Berkeley is, then why are Mudd grads actually getting HIGHER salaries than Berkeley grads are? Are these employers being stupid? And even if they are being stupid, so what? At the end of the day, your employer to pay you as much as possible, and if they are giving you more money than you really deserve, that's their problem, not yours. You're laughing all the way to the bank. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky, with all due respect, your math is full of errors. When you state Q=A*B, you are implying A, B must be greater than zero. By simple physics, the length of a rectangle cannot be zero. So if A approaches /inf and B is non-zero, you will get huge Q.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Huh? This isn't "physics", this is geometry we're talking about. But more importantly, you can think of it this way. If A is 1 million, and B is 1 millionTH, then the total area is 1. However, is A and B are both 2, then the total area is 4. Hence, the total area of the second rectange is literally FOUR TIMES the area of the first rectangle. </p>
<p>If you want to take this analogy further, you are welcome to. But trust me, I really dont think you want to imply that I don't know my math. If you want to persist in this matter, we can compare biographies, and we can figure out who here really knows their math.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My point, Dorian, is that more students prefer WCUs than LACish type small schools as evidneced by the link
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Huh? How does the link serve as "evidence" of this? </p>
<p>Here is the USNews LAC link. Where in either of these links does it show any evidence of students preferring WCU's to LAC's? </p>
<p>How is that evidenced? That list is not based on student preferences, and even if it did, it still ranks Dartmouth above Columbia and a large number of schools over Berkeley. Even so, the idea of student preference is beside the point. A ranking of student preference in no way equals a ranking of education quality.</p>
<p>sakky, please answer my question</p>
<p>
[quote]
Okay, sakky. Please answer this then.
Would you choose MIT ( another bellwether of WCUs) or Mudd if you have to make a choice between the two?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't know. It would depend on what I would want, and I'm a bit old to be putting myself back into the shoes of a 17-year-old choosing colleges. And besides, you're muddying the waters by choosing something like MIT, which ITSELF is something like a LAC, in that the school has a relatively small student body and the profs are indeed somewhat focused on undergraduate teaching (at least as far as the UROP program is concerned).</p>
<p>I think a FAR more useful example would be something like Berkeley or UCLA, which tend to display far more prototypical attributes of the research university. The Hoxby revealed preference study shows that students do tend to prefer several of the LAC's to Berkeley or UCLA. Notably, both of these schools also lose out to Dartmouth and Brown. </p>
<p>
[quote]
sakky, please answer my question
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I believe I asked first. So why don't you answer my questions.</p>
<p>stop sidestepping sakky, answer my simple question;will you choose</p>
<p>1) MIT (WCU)
2) Mudd (LACish)</p>
<p>Like I said, I don't know what I would choose, considering that MIT is itself something of a LAC. However, what I would say is that it is fairly like I would have chosen one of the top-end LAC's over, say, Berkeley, UCLA, or Michigan. At least one of those I have seen you list as one of your WCU's. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I am quite certain that, knowing what I know now, I would have chosen Brown or Dartmouth over Berkeley, UCLA, or Michigan. And so would most people, according to the Hoxby study.</p>
<p>Okay, i will make it simpler</p>
<p>1) Harvard (the bellwether of WCU)
2) Swatty (LAC)</p>
<p>Now that I have answered your question (despite the fact that I asked first), I think the honorable thing for you to do would be to answer my questions.</p>