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A comment on Is College Working?. Parent comment

Re:Is College Working? by tokenadult on Friday January 30, 2009 @12:45AM (#457750)
a good education for a good price (i.e. not going to Harvard for Engineering

Do you seriously think going to Harvard for engineering is a bad idea? Why do you think so? Would it still be a bad idea if the student enjoys Harvard's financial aid and is paying just a few thousand dollars a year (earned through part-time work) to attend Harvard?

(I'd really like to know, so I'm inviting any onlooker with knowledge of this issue to reply.)

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Re:Is College Working? by smanek on Friday January 30, 2009 @03:30AM (#457880)
The SEAS (School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard) is a actually surprisingly decent. The one thing that gets some people is that CS is taught from a very mathematical bend - about a third of the CS classes don't require any significant work on a computer (besides typesetting the problem sets in TeX). I actually prefer it that way - I'd rather focus on theory in class, I can pick up the idiosyncrasies of the tools and languages on my own time.

I understand that Harvard's Math department is pretty impressive too (near the same level as MIT/Princeton/etc).

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Re:Is College Working? by tokenadult on Friday January 30, 2009 @12:33PM (#458355)
I understand that Harvard's Math department is pretty impressive too

Many people think that Harvard's math department is the best in the world.

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Re:Is College Working? by smanek on Friday January 30, 2009 @02:22PM (#458523)
Depending on who I'm talking to, I've heard that Princeton, MIT, and Harvard are each the best in the world (for undergrads). I'm not really in a position to judge, so let it suffice to say that all three are fairly impressive.
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Re:Is College Working? by Xichekolas on Friday January 30, 2009 @01:29PM (#458450)
If you defined 'many people' I'd be much obliged.

(Not challenging the assertion, just curious who.)

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Re:Is College Working? by tokenadult on Friday January 30, 2009 @04:55PM (#458772)
The sample I hear from about Harvard's undergraduate math program consists largely of participants on the Art of Problem Solving forum

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/index.php?f=143

and those participants include many young people from various countries who have participated in the International Mathematics Olympiad.

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Re:Is College Working? by ninguem2 on Friday January 30, 2009 @08:39PM (#459075)
according to the latest u.s. news ranking

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/mat/s...

Princeton is first and Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley are tied for second. Harvard is always mentioned as one of the top Math depts. more so than MIT in my experience.

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Re:Is College Working? by jaspertheghost on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @06:44AM (#494237)
I don't the decision should be evaluated just as a yes or no decision. There was a piece of research that looked at applicants to Ivy Leagues and applicants to magnet schools. For applicants of High School Magnet schools, the leading indicator was not whether they got in, but rather if they applied. For people who got into Ivy Leagues, the leading indicator was if they "chose" to go somewhere else and get an education there instead.

There's an inmeasuable quality of ambition that cannot be quantified on paper. I personally know many of my friends who have gotten into "prestigious" Universities who are not doing as well as some of my other friends.

It's the same reason why Nobel Laureates come from various universities. If the measuring tool to get into Ivy Leagues were a perfect indicator, these professors would be considered a fluke.

I've come to realize more and more that tests are inherently flawed.

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