I turned down Harvard, Princeton and Stanford for Berkeley's Physics programme

simulacrum
Sun, 25 Jun 2006 04:31:28 +0000

Most of this discussion is silly. I’m crazy for posting here, but a student of mine asked me to. I am a professor at what many consider to be one of the best universities in the country. And I used to be a professor at what most people on this board consider to be the most prestigious university in the world. And as far as graduate schools go, trying to rank Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and Princeton in the way people here are doing is asinine. When it comes to hiring, there is no general difference between the institutions. There are differences in particular fields and subfields. For example, in my field, Princeton is far below the other three. But in other fields this is not the case. In other fields I know of Stanford is the laggard etc.