Carnegie Mellon Reputation

bruno123
Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:24:24 +0000

General comments: I agree with most of what Sam Lee, Crazyshow, Mathmom and others have said.

Indeed, whereas general HS requirements in the US are a “joke”, a good spread of AP classes in the junior and senior years would give an American student the equivalent of a British or continental European pre-university education. In addition to a high GPA and good scores on the SAT, the London School of Economics for example requires from US applicants at least 4, preferably five, AP exams on relevant (full-year, as opposed to one semester) subjects, with grades 4 or 5. It is fair to assume that is what they would consider equivalent to a good spread of British GCSE’s plus 3 or 4 A-Levels.

On the issue of “paternalism”, I didn’t mean to imply that CMU or any other particular school in the US is paternalistic (maybe it was an unfortunate choice of words). I was just remarking that, for an European university student, the idea for example that one should turn compulsory homework every week or take 3 or four tests in one subject every semester sounds somewhat strange, because it is something one would associate more with High School than uni. That is not an uniform opinion though.

In Oxford and Cambridge for example, your grade is also determined almost solely by big final exams in the end of each year (sometimes, e.g. in most humanities courses, you have a prelim at the end of the first year and then take a new batch of final exams only at the end of the 3rd year !). Your graduation thesis or final graduation project is also a much bigger deal than in the US. Nevertheless, because of the Oxbridge system of tutorials/supervisions, you end up having to turn in work (essays or problem sheets) every week and discuss them with your tutor, even if that counts nothing for your final grade. I also heard that Imperial, under American influence, is now introducing more continuous assessment, like midterms to give students feedback on their performance.

Finally, on the issue of quality of PhD study in the US vs Europe, especially the UK, I believe sometimes it has to do more with money than educational philosophy. In the UK, research (i.e PhD) students are funded by government scholarships (from the research councils), which normally last 3 or 4 years. If a student does not graduate in 4 years, the university he/she attends is heavily penalized by a cut in the total funding they will get next year from the government. On average, UK students are expected to finish their PhDs in 3 years, with a few extra months allowed for thesis write-up and corrections.

Of course, it is not possible to come up with a substantial original contribution to knowledge and prepare it for publication in multiple peer-reviewed journals (with long review cycles) in 3 years only. It is basically unrealistic IMHO. That is why PhD work in the US tends to go deeper in my view than in the UK for instance. But, since I did my PhD in America (at CMU BTW, ECE/Signal Processing, with Jose Moura), my opinion is probably biased.