admissions "hot spots" spread

[curmudgeon]

As usual we have multi-channel threads. That's why I was checking. As has been oft quoted on these boards , it's a great deal like herding cats around here. LOL.

As to Harvard bashers, I agree with your position.

I just find that some people are real Ivy or top university advocates, and others go on and on that the only true value in education is in LACs.

If these are the two sides , I'm squarely in the middle, advocating for both in a proper situation. LOL.

[twinmom]

Herding cats????

Yep, those are the two sides, and I'm advocating for both.

It's a good thing I'm not an attorney. It took me waaay too long on this thread to make my point. I think I'll go contemplate dinner.

[curmudgeon]

Sometimes you'll start a thread about Christmas trees. The next thing you know someone's remembering some Christmas with a father at war so off we go to Iraq and a discussion of what bogged us down. Then we go to legitmacy of government action and we're back in Florida with "chad" (the hanging kind). Three posts later someone's got a favorite recipe to share that they stole from recently deceased Ed Bradley. All the while the poor OP is still trying their best to find a 10' flocked tree for under $200.

It's a lot like herding cats. (Cat's won't herd and neither will the folks on this board. It seems we are incapable of staying on topic, leading to miscommunication. I'm as guilty as anybody. )

[bethievt]

That was me who said some undergrads might be shortchanged at Harvard. And it's true. Maybe those kids, however high-powered, wouldn't be accepted; I don't know. My point is not that Harvard isn't a GREAT school. Obviously it is. My point is that it's not a great match for everyone. And small LACs might be a way better match for some kids, even some very high-stat, high-powered kids and state Uni's might be better for others. As a psychologist, I've seen kids crippled by their parents' Ivy obsession; it is not pretty and it can lead to depression and suicide. The Ivies are all great schools, but there are hundreds of other great schools out there that are worth full price to some of us and are NOT inferior to HYP, just different.

Kids (and their parents) going to the Ivies never have to encounter the blank stares, like, "Why isn't he going to a real school; I thought he was a good student?". Think about it.

[curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by bethie

My point is not that Harvard isn't a GREAT school. Obviously it is. My point is that it's not a great match for everyone. And small LACs might be a way better match for some kids, even some very high-stat, high-powered kids and state Uni's might be better for others.

I agree with this , too. It's a banner day.

[twinmom]

"...there are hundreds of other great schools out there that are worth full price to some of us and are NOT inferior to HYP, just different."

Agreed. My point, exactly.

[NJres]

Another thread about global warming?

[vossron]

Top schools are certainly very expensive, but aren't their list prices all below the actual cost of education, the rest being made up by endowment earnings and donations? Alums who give back are effectively amortizing the actual cost of their education. Thus, adults subsidize youth, which is as it should be, and we're all better off. We may remark that education is expensive, but should we really complain?

[marite]

off on a tangent to Bethievt:

Interesting about the Stanford post-doc. I just talked to a Stanford graduate who said that one of the things he liked best at Stanford were the courses designed and taught entirely by....graduate students. He took several when he was there. Harvard used to have courses like that but has been reducing them in favor of more faculty teaching. Can't please everybody.

[bethievt]

He's still at Stanford. When he was at Harvard, he felt the UG students were being shortchanged being taught by him (very humble guy) instead of a full prof. I have gotten the impression that Harvard was going in the direction of profs teaching classes to undergads. With their huge endowment, my only question would be, "Why did it take so long?".

[marite]

I don't think that the issue is of faculty teaching or of endowment. For example, there is only one Michael Sandel in the whole world, but 800+ undergrads want to take his course. S was very happy to be allowed into a course that was estimated to enroll only 30+ students but has nearly 300 students; he was afraid he might be lotteried out. Fortunately, the prof succeeded in lining up enough grad students to serve as TFs. The TF do not teach: they lead discussion sections.

The point the Stanford graduate was making is that many undergrads would actually prefer to be entirely taught by TFs. He claimed that the courses he took from the graduate students were some of the best there. The graduate student instructors were knowledgeable about their subjects (having just taken their generals) enthusiastic, fresh. And probably less intimidating than the profs. Part of the distance between undergrads and faculty at Harvard is precisely that undergrads feel more comfortable approaching their TFs than their profs. They go to Harvard because of the big name profs, but they are also easily intimidated.

One cannot always evaluate one's own performance accurately, especially when one knows how much work went into preparing, the difficulties finding examples, illustrations, etc... So I am not sure how to judge Stanford post-doc's own self-evaluation. He may be right that his students got a poor deal--though if he was not good at teaching as a graduate student, the mere fact of becoming a prof won't improve it. Becoming a prof has to do with getting a Ph.D.--which involves writing a dissertation, not acquiring teaching skills. Or he may be wrong, and his students were happy with his performance.

[DocT]

Students who are intimidated by anybody have no business at Harvard.

[marite]

Haha. I've had to prod my S to go talk to his profs.

[JHS]

My experience in college many years ago was similar to what marite describes. Some of the best teachers I had were graduate student TAs. They were no slouches -- they included future chairs of the English Departments at Harvard and Yale and the German Department at Michigan. I didn't have the intimidated-by-famous-professors problem (I was actually rather good at ingratiating myself with them), but good grad students still served as an important bridge between undergraduates and big-name faculty who existed in a very rarified atmosphere.

There was a system where a grad student could offer a serminar that he or she would teach by himself. I met my fave grad student when he was a TA in a course I took the spring of my second year. When he gave his own seminar the fall of my fourth year, I signed up enthusiastically, as did about half of the other people from his section in the earlier class.

[JHS]

I am going to add a pair of more current contrasting grad-student anecdotes:

My daughter -- not a math person -- was taking a calculus class taught by a grad student. She never loved calculus -- she was thrilled to get through the class with a C -- but she thought he was a wonderful teacher, who consistently "reached" her and got her to appreciate the intellectual content and importance of what she was learning, and who convinced her that she could pass the class and didn't need to drop it when she fell behind for a while.

One of my cousins recently got his PhD in math from an Ivy League university. For a number of years, he had to teach undergraduate math classes like that my daughter took. He learned very quickly that he had very little interest in teaching undergraduates. This is what he said about it: "About the only enjoyment I get out of teaching is seeing the students' slow, inevitable progression from initial happiness that they have a native English-speaker teaching them to the sad realization that they would have been much better served by a teacher who didn't know English but who gave a **** about them."