Caltech and Harvey Mudd are not representative of elite schools, no matter how much you would like to pretend that they are. Other elite schools offer math courses for students not yet ready for single variable calculus (and they obviously offer regular single variable calculus courses). In comparison, Caltech and Harvey Mudd have their lowest math courses which are more advanced than regular single variable calculus that is the usual baseline for college frosh.
OP-- I’ll share our reason. My daughter is about to enter her Freshman year of college at an Elite, and the reason she chose it over the highly selective honors program at our state flagship is that the final cost of attendance for her at Princeton, Stanford, Rice, and Cornell was half of what final cost of attendance would have been at our state flagship. We are a family whose household income is between $80,000 and $100,000. After a ton of research, we realized that IF she could get in, the tip top meets full need elites would likely be our best deal financially, and it turned out to be correct. She will graduate without undergrad debt BECAUSE she chose the elite over the state flagship.
They’re STEM schools. Harvard is obviously willing to accept kids who have achieved in some area other than STEM, and give them the basics they need in math.
HMC and Caltech aren’t taking brilliant historians or writers and helping them get through basic math.
MIT is a little more forgiving:
https://math.mit.edu/academics/undergrad/first/calculus.php
As an aside, Caltech’s “Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences” professors are much more diverse in terms of gender. Their undergrads: Stanford, Carleton, St Petersburg Tech, Caltech (2), Tufts, Princeton (3), Hopkins, Zagreb, Bucknell, U Buenos Aires, CSU Sacramento, London Econ, Uruguay, Cornell, WUSTL, Hebrew Jerusalem, Creighton, Oberlin, Harvard (4), U Chicago, Yale, Tsinghua, UC (unspecified campus), MIT (3), University of Iowa, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Instituto Tecnologico Automomo de Mexico, University of Birmingham (UK), Trinity College (Ireland), University of Michigan, Oklahoma State University, Torino (IT), University of Western Ontario, Auburn , Reed, Tokyo, Marquette , Columbia, Tel Aviv, Brandeis (2), Yale, Peking.
“Elites” seem to me to be over-represented, even the international ones are mainly the elites in their countries. But there are some flagships and a regional campus too.
For lower to middle class (to 150k or so, give or take) families, this is often true. The trick is getting in.
Highly elite STEM schools like MIT/Caltech might have higher math level courses and definitely have a student body which reflects this. Yet, it is not only math/STEM in which students can excel. Many highly gifted students who are good in multiple fields will chose another school because they don’t know what they want to study or they want to combine disciplines.
Still, having one to five kids in a flagship class that are stellar ( and are there because of economic reasons) isn’t the same thing as having a high % of highly gifted kids. Also, higher level classes at many elite schools tend to be smaller than at a flagship ( not always but often). That matters if you are looking for interaction.
If you are in a situation where you get more aid at the best places, Go. If not, then there are multiple options. All can get you where you want to go. I just won’t pretend they are all the same. Throw in the internships and job ops and it just multiplies.
Also, as noted, most of the international schools noted are the best in their home countries. And STEM students already know that when they enter college their international peers are years ahead in math and science. Kids who attend a high school with international students learn that most average peers are a couple of years ahead of the best American students. So it’s not surprising that down the road the best and brightest in these fields studied elsewhere. US Universities continue to attract students from across the world.
Technion… Nice ?
Yes, this supports the point that Caltech is an outlier even among elite schools, so it is not a good representation of what @1NJParent is trying to claim.
And MIT even lets students with a 5 on AP calculus BC skip 18.01.
But that baseline math course is still higher level than at other elites, which have to accommodate more “hook” students for whom academic criteria is presumably relaxed more. E.g. Harvard MATH MA, Yale MATH 110a, Princeton MAT 100, Amherst Math 105, Williams MATH 102T.
“Nobody in her cohort at any of the three companies went to any school below top 30 universities or top 10 LACs, give or take.”
You will not find that in high tech, I looked at Apple’s leadership and think it’s representative of high tech and not anecdotal. Here’s their undergrad college:
CEO - Auburn
Chief legal - Brown
VP of software - UC Berkeley
VP of internet - Duke
SVP Ops - Tufts
SVP HR and retail - Michigan State
SVP hardware - UMass Amherst
SVP marketing - Boston College
COO - NC State
How many of these people are recent college grads applying for. Jobs at Apple?
How many of them have at least 20 years experience in the game? As far as this group is concerned, it was probably easier to get an entry level position at Apple than it is now.
How many recent grads are applying for these positions?
Funny, people are quick to post where the CEOs went to school, like these same people are not providing input on how the company markets and brands itself through its recruitment and hiring.
Looking at corporate officers is interesting but not really informative. Officers for FaceBook with undergrad, grad schools listed:
CEO – Harvard (dropout), none
CFO - Georgetown, Stanford
COO - Harvard, Harvard
CTO - Stanford, Stanford
VP and General Counsel - Dartmouth, Harvard
VP Business and Marketing Partnerships- Cornell, Stanford
That’s leadership. I’m talking about internships and first job out of college. It all gets jiggered around as time moves on. People change careers, leave the workforce, etc.
I realize it’s just a subset of one but dh’s company’s first choice for a recent new engineering hire was a student from U. of Alabama. He beat out a student from MIT for the position. The student from Alabama had more impressive and pertinent job internships, plus better social skills. Another student that made the final cut for interviewing was from Princeton but also didn’t have as impressive of a work resume.
“Funny, people are quick to post where the CEOs went to school”
I posted the leadership team to show the diversity of undergrad schools, not to say elite schools don’t matter or that public universities are great. My first product team out here had undergrads from Stanford, Berkeley, Ohio State, Michigan, San Diego State, my mgr went to MIT, his mgr (director), Wisconsin. It’s still anecdotal so I used the Apple leadership group to show that imo, it’s pretty typical in hi tech.
I will concede, right here and now, that Facebook looks at school prestige more than other companies. That being said, listing grad schools is not the point of discussion, it’s undergrad.
I’m not sure what your point is. My basic point is a more “elite” school (in a field where it’s considered “elite”) would offer courses that are more advanced, more rigorous, and at faster pace in that field than a less “elite” school. In STEM, for example, Caltech or MIT would offer those more advanced courses. Similarly, in humanities, a school like Yale or Harvard would offer more advanced courses in those fields than a less “elite” school. Do you disagree with that?
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After a ton of research, we realized that IF she could get in, the tip top meets full need elites would likely be our best deal financially, and it turned out to be correct. <<
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Same here. The financial aid was amazing. In addition to any benefits an “elite” school may offer, my son will graduate with total debt of less than $20K in subsidized loans.
I am just as happy with my daughter’s essentially free Nursing degree at local community college, leading to her new RN job at the local university hospital, where they will pay for her BSN.
Very different paths, but great results.
I disagree somewhat with @1NJParent because there are a host of schools good at math and many of them are public schools. See Rutgers University, in New Jersey for instance, that school offers a very top math PhD program and all the classes any gifted math undergrad would need. Again, I don’t think “classes” are what determines eliteness. Eliteness is how much mentoring a student gets, so at Rutgers, maybe very little, but MIT a ton of mentoring for a math student, MIT student would get to work in a top math lab in Europe, MIT student would have travel options not open to the Rutgers undergrad, the MIT student would forge relationships that might last a lifetime, Rutgers student might, but no guarantees, and the Rutgers student would have to be a squeaky wheel as an undergrad, to get the same attention an MIT student gets from math faculty.
I think one thing that needs to be said is that some companies have a preference or alligiance to one school over another one. My friend works at Microsoft in Chicago. He went to UIUC. Guess where they like to recruit from? I know a tech company is Georgia with strong ties to Georgia Tech. The 2 main people on the board went to Purdue. Guess what 2 "colleges they like to hire from?
“Eliteness is how much mentoring a student gets, so at Rutgers, maybe very little, but MIT a ton of mentoring for a math student…the Rutgers student would have to be a squeaky wheel as an undergrad, to get the same attention an MIT student gets from math faculty.”
This seems unreasonably pessimistic given that it is relatively easy to identify a truly gifted math student. I look at my D’s school and see a “ton of mentoring” and considerable success for the top math students every year:
“Under the direction of Tom Alberts, assistant professor in mathematics at the University of Utah, Simper has worked on two research projects over the past year and half…Simper continued her research experience this past summer on a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates fellowship” https://unews.utah.edu/university-of-utah-student-awarded-prestigious-churchill-scholarship/
“Zhao has also done research in computer science. In the summer of 2015, he participated in the Research in Industrial Projects for Students Program held on the campus of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology…In spring 2016 he was awarded the prestigious Barry Goldwater scholarship for excellence in STEM research. This past summer, Zhao was an intern at Google” https://unews.utah.edu/university-of-utah-student-awarded-prestigious-churchill-scholarship-2/
“While at the U, Neville has presented his research in Japan, completed advanced courses in modern algebra and number theory, took second place in the national collegiate mathematics championship in 2017, been awarded many scholarships for his academic achievements and co-authored three publications with U faculty.” https://unews.utah.edu/university-of-utah-student-awarded-prestigious-churchill-scholarship-3/
Topic caught my eye, but TBH, I only skimmed thread:
Outlander wrote:
“the reason she chose it over the highly selective honors program at our state flagship is that the final cost of attendance for her at Princeton, Stanford, Rice, and Cornell was half of what final cost of attendance would have been at our state flagship.”
While that might be true in their family’s case, my daughter went to an honors program at a state flagship on a full ride+ (so zero out of pocket for us except for the semesters she opted for a more expensive housing or meal plan). And she’s about to start a fully funded PhD at an Ivy (my alma mater). As the various POVs and experiences how, it’s really tough to generalize.
I also saw above that someone mentioned that it’s easier to get into STEM PhDs from the elites. My daughter got into a program out of an undergrad school well outside of the Top 50. Look at the NSF GRFP recipients. The Ivies certainly do not have a monopoly on smarts (especially at the undergrad level).
There are so many different ways to get to the same end point. In my field (not finance, law, medicine, or consulting), my Ivy degree is more of a curiosity than an asset.
I dint think you can truly be elite if your Basketball team is not a regular contender to make it to the Elite Eight! 