<p>I’m especially interested about the undergrad student cultures of places like Brown, Chicago, Columbia, MIT, and, Caltech. </p>
<p>I know that undergrad student culture mostly comes from the undergrads and not from the professors/advisors. But in the case of grade inflation, perhaps, professors/advisors are affected too. Brown University, for example, has extremely high rates of grade inflation (part of it, perhaps, because the culture there is extremely permissive and liberal, and professors might be more inclined to give students the benefit of the doubt). So I’m just wondering - are the professors more liberal and permissive at a place like Brown, too?</p>
<p>What about places like Chicago (the place where “fun goes to die”), MIT, and all the other schools that have their unique personalities? Caltech would be a bit different since grad students most likely won’t experience the House system (except for Avery). </p>
<p>Also, I’m somewhat immature, so I’m probably more likely to hang out with undergrads than with grad students.</p>
<p>Me neither. This is really unclear. And it seems to me that you’re making really gross generalizations. Sometimes professors hold similar expectations for both grads and undergrads. Some professors don’t care about undergrads but treat grad students like peers (like adults!).</p>
<p>Grad students have their own academic and social culture where expectations may be different than of undergraduates.</p>
<p>That said, if you’re “really immature,” then I advise you not to go to graduate school until you can be “mature.”</p>
<p>Don’t treat graduate school like an extension of undergraduate.</p>
<p>Please ignore the “immaturity” issue - it’s unnecessary to the question. I’m a lot more mature than I was 2 years ago, but I’m still experiencing some residual distress from my depression (it is getting better).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes that’s true. What I’m asking is this - are there some schools where the cultures are correlated with each other?</p>
<p>OP<
Aren’t you the same poster who asked if there are still class clowns in college classes?
You seem to be very intent on finding an environment where immature behavior is the norm…why?</p>
<p>Virtually none. On a day to day basis I don’t even interact with undergraduates, and the professors interact with us entirely differently than they do with the undergrads. Grades don’t really matter in graduate school and grade inflation is ubiquitous - at most programs an A is the standard, a B is okay and a C means you failed and have to take the course over again anyway.</p>
<p>The culture of a school isn’t shaped solely by the undergraduates, and honestly at some schools they are more assimilated into the culture than shape it. Here, the institutional culture is very liberal and so undergrads are attracted to that, but they don’t <em>make</em> it liberal. It was already liberal before they got here.</p>
<p>And no, you probably won’t hang out with the undergrads. Your schedules will be vastly different, you probably won’t even get a big chance to meet them, and your interests are going to be really, really different. Not to mention that in a lot of programs you’ll be teaching them and supervising them in research, so it wouldn’t really be appropriate for you to “hang out” with them that much. Honestly, you probably won’t even want to - they are at a completely different developmental place. I came into graduate school straight from undergrad, and so I was only a year older than the senior undergrads here (and sometimes not even that - I was 22, and some of them were 22 as well). I still had no desire to hang out with them, and aside from two mixed grad/undergrad classes I didn’t even really get a chance to meet them like that anyway.</p>
<p>Besides, grad students like to have fun too.</p>