Djokovic

I applied Early to MIT and I really want to Major in Electrical Engineering and Economics.

But I also heard that the undergrad experience at Princeton is amazing even though it's engineering program may not be as top-notch.

Yes I know getting accepted first will be tough, but Can other people weight in on the pros and cons of both?

I know MIT has way more research opportunities and flexibility with majors. Princeton only allows for one major with some very specific concentrations

silverturtle

You can't double major at Princeton.

Djokovic

yes srry I forgot to mention that. It is part of the personal cons that I know about Princeton

TomServo

Everybody I've met who attended an Ivy League school (okay, it's not many people, I don't hobnob with elites) has said they would not send their kids to one for an undergrad degree, as the actual quality of education at the undergrad degree is terrible, in the sense that you are not taught by real faculty but by grad students, every class has fifty bajillion people in it, etc. Ivies tend to have very high undergrad dissatisfaction rates.

OTOH, people who've been to MIT rave about it, even at the undergrad level.

sakky

Oh really?

Then perhaps you could explain the IHTFP acronym.

MIT Admissions | Blog Entry: "IHTFP"

IHTFP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Or perhaps one could ask why the MIT Brass Rat class ring is worn with the rat facing away from you until graduation day, whereupon the rat is turned to face towards you.

MIT class ring - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An MIT education was once infamously described as drinking from a firehose.

IHTFP Hack Gallery: Fire Hose Drinking Fountain

Don't get me wrong - I'm a fan of MIT. However, I have heard it described, and I tend to agree, that MIT is a great school to be from, but not necessarily to be at.

At some Ivies, I'm sure that is true. But Princeton is the smallest of the Ivies.

Well, dissatisfied or not, at least they graduate at very high rates. Princeton graduates a highly impressive 90% of its students within 4 years; how many other schools can say the same? If the students were really so dissatisfied, why don't they all just transfer elsewhere?

TomServo

I can only report what I hear on MIT.

As for dissatisfaction rates, they don't necessarily tell us what the retention rate will be, as other factors besides satisfaction with one's particular school determine a person's retention.

sakky

The general consensus regarding MIT is that it is an extraordinarily rigorous and demanding school. MIT freely admits it to be such.

MIT Admissions | Blog Entry: "MIT is hard"

If Ivy undergrads truly exhibited high dissatisfaction rates, one would think that more students would transfer out. After all, these aren't mediocre scrub students here: these are Ivy undergrads. Surely most of them have the qualifications transfer to an average school if they really wanted to, for it's not that hard to transfer to an average school. Moreover, as a group, the Ivies exhibit some of the highest yields, both absolute and cross, of any group of schools in the country.

Hence, it begs the question of, if the Ivy undergrad experience is so unsatisfactory, why do so many admittees choose to go, and while there, why do so many of them choose to stay and graduate? Clearly that must mean that there is something desirable about those schools.

boneh3ad

I think you underestimate the power of the human ego. A person will stick to a place or situation they absolutely hate if it has the unbelievable reputation that the Ivies have.

silverturtle

I can only offer three anecdotes, but they are the exact opposite of what TomServo offered.

One went to MIT and graduated with an engineering degree with a good GPA. He is now fairly successful and happy at his job. However, although he admits that his MIT degree and education serves him well, he would not do it again if he had the choice. He considers it the most miserable four years of his life.

One Yale graduate said that the school was O.K., but that the best part was the people and that he would easily do it over. The Harvard graduate shared these sentiments.

TomServo

Yes, there is something desirable, Harvard and Princeton are world-famous names that open many doors. Butt State U. isn't, even if you learn the exact same things. It's the same reason people trust brands they know and may steer away from cheaper, generic brands that they are less familiar with. Brand names are a risk management technique, a way of economizing on scarce information.

Anyway, student dissatisfaction rates *are* high, and that's because these schools, at the undergrad level, don't live up to people's sky-high expectations. You may never even see the Nobel Prize winners the brochures and websites mentioned, as an undergrad. You may realize that your physics class is studying from the same text, and covering the same material, as your friend at Butt State U., but for much more money. Not to mention the enormous pressure on students at these schools.

But unlike Butt State U., students at Ivies have more incentive to tough it out. They make invaluable contacts there that will help them for the rest of their lives. They know the value of their degree when getting that first job/grad school/etc. And their dissatisfaction rates are generally unrelated to the difficulty of the material, so it's not like they can't hack it.

TomServo

silver, what did those Harvard and Yale grads you talked to major in?

nshah9617

If you are dead-set on engineering or something technical, I say MIT. Princeton for anything else.

However, it's too early to count your eggs and I think you should wait until you get your acceptance letters and then visit the colleges.

sakky

Which is exactly my point: however dissatisfactory the Ivies may be, the vast majority of students will still choose to stay to finish their degrees.

I said it before and I'll say it again: if the Ivies were truly terrible schools, students would transfer away. Lots of students would love to transfer from Butt State U (to use Tom Servo's example) to an Ivy, but hardly any students want to transfer from an Ivy to Butt State.

The same is true at MIT: when was the last time that Samuel Ting taught an undergraduate course? MIT's textbooks are the same textbooks used elsewhere; it's not as if MIT provides secret textbooks. The laws of science and engineering, and therefore the formulas and pedagogical techniques, are the same at any school. MIT is also just as expensive as the Ivies. Given MIT's brand name - which is more arguably more powerful than many of the Ivies - students would be justifiably expected to enter with high expectations. And, if anything, MIT students are under far more pressure than the Ivy students are; whereas Ivy students may feel pressure to do well, MIT students feel pressure to simply graduate at all. Subjected to a high grade curve, Ivy students know that the worst that will happen is that they'll earn mediocre grades, but they'll still pass. {As an example, both George W. Bush and John Kerry - both self-admittedly unmotivated students - still managed to graduate from Yale.} So, on this score, I don't see how MIT would be any more satisfactory than the Ivies.

To be clear, I am hardly an MIT basher. Far from it, I consider myself to be largely pro-MIT. However, I am mystified as to what the sources of the supposedly high levels of satisfaction at MIT are, relative to the Ivies. If the Ivies have problems with student satisfaction, then so does MIT. Again I ask - what does the acronym IHTFP stand for and why does it exist?

silverturtle

"silver, what did those Harvard and Yale grads you talked to major in?"

I'm not sure, but it wasn't engineering. This may indeed be the factor that accounts for the differences.

TomServo

"I said it before and I'll say it again: if the Ivies were truly terrible schools, students would transfer away."

All other factors aside, yes. But we've discussed the other factors which prevent that from happening.