[danaris]

> get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale

Based on everything I've seen over my roughly 20-year career in academia, plus the 18 years before that living in that world (my parents are both professors), what you get from going to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and all the other "Big Name" schools is just that: the name.

The education you get there is not better than the education you can get at a small liberal arts college—in fact, it's often worse, because you're just one of tens of thousands, lost in the crowd, and you're extremely unlikely to get one-on-one attention from the professor if you have any trouble with the material.

Small liberal-arts colleges, on the other hand, so long as you're avoiding the ones that are specifically party schools, generally tend to focus much more on the teaching aspect, and especially on the personal attention aspect.

For more specialized degrees like engineering you may need to narrow your pool of those schools to find one that has a good program, but there are enough that unless your field (at undergrad level) is suuuuper-niche, you're very likely to be able to find one that works for you.

And while it's not universally true, they tend to be pretty good about taking transfer students.

[Hydraulix989]

As someone who grew up in a no-name mid-western town, I can't stop counting my lucky stars for becoming one of the first students ever in my high school's history to become accepted to a Top 10 university. Every job opportunity and connection I've made since graduating is directly attributable to my school's name. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that going there changed my life. I know for a fact that there would have been a lot more societal barriers had I gone to the nearby state school instead (my startup would not have been able to raise venture capital and my would-be resume would not have made it past the resume screening stage at FAANG companies because of all of the subtle social signaling involved; people from my school would not have even given me the time-of-day). Things wouldn't have just been a lot harder; they might have even been impossible.

[danaris]

Sounds to me like you benefited specifically from what I mentioned: not the education you gained at the unnamed Top 10 school, but its reputation and connections got you where you are.

I want to be very clear that I'm not saying "you shouldn't go to these schools"—I'm saying "if you go to these schools, recognize that what you're getting that you won't get anywhere else is not a better education, it's the school's name."

[Hydraulix989]

I would even go one step farther and say it's a mixture of both.

The classes at my uni could move at a more intense pace than other schools, and the problem sets and exams were also more difficult, given the academic aptitude of my class. Go on the MIT Open Courseware web site, and take a look at the physics problem sets to get an example. I'm not sure there are too many other freshman physics classes that require pulling all-nighters to solve the challenge problems.

Sure, I could always challenge myself more wherever environment I was in (I taught myself linear algebra and C++ coding in high school, even though nobody I knew in real-life could help), but there is a LOT said to be surrounded by peer pressure, mentorship from world-class professors, and other motivated, top-notch students with the same drive for success. I would not have pushed myself to do better to the extent that I did at my uni.

[sfifs]

I didn't study in the US, but having studied in college faculties staffed by professors who are at the cutting edge of their fields in my country, I can confidently say that the experience was unparalleled vs. my friends who didn't. In my undergrad one of my profs was a "may have been" Nobel prize winner. In my B-school, some of the profs essentially created the government's public policy in some fields. Their perspectives and insights during classes was quite enriching.

So I find your comments quite curious. Nowadays I tell my younger cousins and nephews/neices to research the faculties in colleges they are applying to and look at the quality and impact of their publications.

[wink]

How deep is your connection to that star professor though? I tend to believe I visited a good university, and we also have some leading researchers. The problem is that you wouldn't know beforehand if they are even giving the lectures you're interested in. The other people in the department can still be bad at their job. Being a researcher doesn't transmit to being a good teacher. Or not a complete idiot.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, also I'm not trying to deliberately shit on my uni education, but let's just say I didn't find it great for many reasons. One course by a "leading expert" could have been pretty great, just that it was done in not so stellar English (the prof was German, so am I) and so it wasn't so great to understand.

If you just show up to learn and don't plan to stay in academia there (do a PhD, get to know the faculty) I really don't see a point.

[danaris]

Outside the US, I don't know much about top universities beyond Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne, but my point really was pretty specific to the schools in the US that have big names—not big-name professors, but the schools themselves have names which, for whatever reasons, are well-known and confer prestige.

A university having a prestigious name is not synonymous with having Nobel Prize winners and influential professors. Hell, one of the professors at the small liberal arts college I work at is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet.

[kurthr]

I don’t think any of the schools I mentioned have 10s of thousands of students or faculty ratios of more than 10to1. I think you’re comparing small schools (which most ‘mafia schools’ are) to big state schools which are usually much cheaper. Why liberal arts would be a good choice for a tech degree I don’t know, but I agree it’s not so important undergrad.

The big thing you get besides ‘the name’ is your relations and links to your cohort. That really helps get good jobs!

[KMag]

When I was in high school, my state had a program where if you were eligible for high school but got accepted to any in-state college, the state would pay tuition. So, by the time I went to MIT, I had about 2.5 years' worth of credits from the University of Minnesota, including honors-level mathematics up through differential equations.

I was an arrogant superstar before I went to MIT. It wasn't that I thought that I was worth more than other students, but I felt my classes were a bit below me. I got all As, except for a B or B+ in my Intro to World Politics class at the UofM. As I remember, the way honors GPAs were calculated, I my GPA was above 4.0 at the UofM. In my high school "Enriched Chemistry" class (one level above honors, no extra GPA boost beyond, but all the kids there really wanted to learn), after I caught a couple of mistakes in exams, the teacher started marking my Scan-Tron answer sheets as the exam answer key, and in class, the whole class would together grade my exams the day after the exam to make sure the answer key was correct. There was one exam where the second-highest score was 90/100, so the teacher just added 10 points to everyone's score. At some point, I made one mistake the whole semester, so I ended the semester 9 points above 100%. At the UofM in my honors mathematics course, I was being graded on attendance and felt it was a bit of a waste of my time. I would read a newspaper in class. One day, the TA asked a couple times if anyone knew the answer to a problem, and I made a bit of a show of folding up my newspaper and proceeding to answer the question nobody else could answer. The honors math professor took me out into the hallway and proceeded to tell me "I don't care who you are. I don't care what kind of grades you get. If you bring a newspaper to class one more time, I'll have you thrown out of the program."

MIT was another level of challenges and expectations. Most of the kids there were used to being at the top of their class and getting cut a bit of slack from the teachers/administration because they were head-and-shoulders above their peers in high school. For most of us, it was a big ego hit and a big adjustment having to work very hard just to get a median grade.

The instruction at MIT was top-notch, but the real value was increased expectations, and excellent peers for both competition and support.

On the flip side, the ego hit is soul-crushing for some students.

The honors programs of state schools definitely have students every bit as smart and capable as people at MIT. The extra level of competition and expectations at MIT really does help some people shine, though. Also, the name is helpful as there's a pretty high minimum bar for getting an MIT degree. You might not be getting the best by hiring the MIT grad, but you're hiring someone who's pretty good.

That being said, I hope the age of GitHub, HackerRank, etc. diminishes the effects of brand-name schooling. I had a friend back in my honors math classes who also got into MIT, but couldn't justify the expense due to his dad being a welder and his mom a homemaker. MIT offered him a lot of loans and grants, but he got a full scholarship at the UofM honors program and could live at home while going to school.

[woofie11]

I went to MIT, and I can confidently say it's no better than many schools a tier or two down. What you describe is a difference in personality, more than in tier. There are party ivies, and there are some really awesome 2nd or 3rd tier tech schools. Some of the lower-tier tech schools are just like MIT in virtually all respect, except brand.

That said, brand matters.

MIT now invests incredibly heavily in brand development, compromising integrity, research quality, and teaching-and-learning. For grads, that's paid off. My degree has gone up in value a lot over the years.

[Melting_Harps]

What do you make of Eric Weinstein's recent interview on Lex Fridman's AI podcast (both MIT alumni) specifically the taking back MIT portion:

https://youtu.be/rIAZJNe7YtE?t=6418

I've been conflicted with MIT as an institution ever since the death of Aaron Swartz, it stood by and then participated in what ultimately took the life of a great member of the hacker/tech community, but I understand and accept that so many great minds go there to create some of the greatest innovation the Human Species' is capable of.

It was sad to hear Eric's plight was the same trivial political non-sense and administrative corruption that I encountered in the low tier State Schools I attended, his impact was far greater to say the least of course. Which apparently also the case with Harvard. This seems systemic, and not just a prestige campus based occurrence.

The closest I ever got to MIT was a clim co-lab project I was involved in that was accepted into the finalist rounds in sustainability and presented on campus at the awards.

I couldn't attend the event as I was working on my startup in CO, so I didn't see it from within; but I was told by the project lead that it was a great experience, even if nothing really came of it--there is lots of hand shaking, but ultimately prize winners are given a small token sum, not really even seed money to get a project off the ground so the best thing you can do is network for well endowed collaborative partners and find leads for real funding.

[woofie11]

I can't comment on the whole talk, since I only watched a little segment of it, but yes, for MIT to be a force of good in the world, it would need to be taken back by the nerds. I'd love to see that happen.

The leadership is overrun by brand-focused, power-seeking, money-grubbing sleaze-balls. That's drifted down, taking over some parts of the Institute, and leaving others okay-ish. But if left unchecked, it will take over the whole thing and ruin it.

We definitely still need a place in the world where nerds can do their thing.

It's hard for me to express how much less visible MIT was when I went there, and how much higher the quality of the research was as well. When I applied, scientists respected it, but popular audiences confused MIT with ITT. A highly-branded high-dollar MIT of the type we have today brings in the wrong sorts of people. Nerds have no chance of competing with them for power, and they have no chance of competing with nerds for intellectual curiosity.

But I think the time for taking back MIT may have passed.

Aaron Swartz is far from the worst thing that happened at MIT; things like that now happen regularly. MIT "wised up" to the use of NDAs and non-disparage agreements in protecting its branding.