<p>Granted this is merely from my experience as a freshman, but from the seniors I know the school itself helps to find internships so connections don’t really matter. Yes some people here have parents who personally know Obama (my friend’s dad held a fundraiser for Obama in his house). But the internship for the white house is probably not going to come through this contact. AFL-CIO yep, but not the white house.</p>
<p>I got an internship with the Houston Department of Health and Human Services through the university for this summer paying 2.7K and that was late in the cycle. The internship opportunities (and later job opportunities) are outstanding. Our career services office is really top notch.</p>
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<p>Hmmmm, I don’t know the relative difference in pace between our classes here and the classes at other schools, but we generally cover about 50 pages in the textbook for my Cell biology class every lecture. But that class is considered one of the harder classes at Yale. </p>
<p>There is a big difference between the sciences/math and the humanities though. Math at Yale is really hard, averages are in the F range (before the curve that makes that a B) and that is considering that everyone here was near the top of their class in high school. My political science classes however are easy and I regularly skipped my International relations class and still got an A. But that was after I studied like hell for the midterms and final.</p>
<p>“I would image at HYPS, the professor could gp faster and deeper about the contents. Just like the AP classes Vs regular classes in HS.”</p>
<p>The kids brain can absorb only so much. My D. in state school does not feel that she need any more challenge. By the way, the requirements of her Honors were ACT=32 and top 2% ranking. Only top 200 were accepted to Honors, most of them were Valedictorians from Private schools - we went to weekend inforamtion session and did not meet single kid there from public school and D’s Honors dorm consisted primarily of valedictorians. I imagine that most of them had stats to go to Ivy’s. </p>
<p>In regard to AP vs regular classes, by far is incorrect assumption. Some HSs do not offer many APs, it does not mean that they do not prepare their kids even better than other HS’s AP classes. D. found that he was prepared better for college chemistry after her regular class than others after AP Chem.</p>
<p>MP, but that state school is not a Tier 3 school. </p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, do the honors students there only take classes with other honors students or sometime they have to take classes with regular students?</p>
<p>“I would image at HYPS, the professor could gp faster and deeper about the contents. Just like the AP classes Vs regular classes in HS.”</p>
<p>True. In addition, at the top colleges, the professor can use lectures to provide material that’s not in the textbooks, and can use discussion group to have students have intelligent discussions that apply the material in the textbooks.</p>
<p>At the lower ranked colleges (and I have taught at 2), professors may have to literally read textbooks to students or assign homework like outlining that makes students read the material.</p>
<p>^No, D’s Honors requires to complete certain number of honors classes/experiences in 3 different categories. There are classes that do not even have Honors option (Organic Chemistry is one of them, and one of the hardest too). D. takes both Honors and regular classes. Honors kids are not separated from general body, living in honors dorm is open to everybody. I have never researched Tier of her school, simply was not important. I have heard numerous times that if the plan is to get accepted to Med. School, the name of UG school will not make much diff. for Med. School adcom, GPA/MCAT score, and secondarily ECs will make much bigger diff.</p>
<p>"At the lower ranked colleges (and I have taught at 2), professors may have to literally read textbooks to students or assign homework like outlining that makes students read the material. "</p>
<p>-I have not heard this so far. However, I heard of some profs publishing class notes on-line which is very helpful. More on difficulties of classes anywhere, one of D’s classes was taught by 3 profs simulteniusly (all 3 being in class at the same time, teaching their own specialty, talking in some kind of sequence). A lot of kids got weeded out after this class (the very first Bio, that pre-meds are not allowed to skip, even if they have “5” on AP Bio exam).</p>
<p>I think that probably premed classes are reasonably similar across the tier spectrum. Very few students in lower tier schools are premed, and those tend to be the star students at such schools.</p>
<p>I was referring to how social science and humanities courses are taught across the spectrum.</p>
<p>For instance, at Harvard, I took a class on Tolstoy that required 1,000 pages of reading a week. At the 2nd/3rd tier colleges where I’ve taught, I had to give students several weeks to read a 250 page book that was much easier to read than was Tolstoy.</p>
<p>The average student at lower tier colleges lacks the vocabulary and history knowledge to make good sense of literature that’s easy for students at higher tier colleges. So much of literacy is dependent on vocabulary and general knowledge.</p>
<p>I think it’s small discussion classes that vary the most based on student body. There are some fabulous faculty members at most schools, including community colleges. But if learning in a class depends not on lecture but on debate among the students (seminar in poli sci, philosophy, English, etc.) then lack of preparation or comprehension among your fellow students will impact your education negatively.</p>
<p>On some level I feel that the hard science classes are all pretty much the same in that many use the same textbooks, the knowledge base is the same, etc. Differences might be the amount of time to cover the materials…quicker at a school with a higher percentage of achievers, etc. Art/music/theater are so specialized you can’t necessarily equate the quality of the program with the “ranking” of the school. The real differences, in my opinion, lie in the humantities…the life of the mind classes. Even then, I’m not convinced that in all cases the kids with the highests GPA/statistical test scores are necessarily the most intellectual…it becomes a much more investigative approach to seek the “right” colleges/unis. Colleges/unis have taken a strong bent toward career focus (engineering, finance, pre-law, pre-med, etc.) and I have no knowledge how that has impacted religion/philosophy/English etc. professors and where the best want to teach or are teaching.</p>
<p>But Dad II, if your goal is to be a regular old working doctor, who has an office, treats patients, etc. then “getting into medical school” IS the goal. The med schools in the US pretty much teach all the same stuff with the same level of rigor. There isn’t a lot of “prestige” in that world, the same way there is in the law world (with the T14) and the business-school world. Kids from Ivies, state flagships, and directional state schools sit next to one another in medical school and they are all starting at the same level, which is ground zero. When it comes to residencies, the same thing. Kids from Ivy medical schools and state medical schools work in residencies next to one another. The medical world is very “prestige-flat” relative to other professions. The big stars in given fields might just as easily have come from, say, Cincinnati as Harvard or JHU. You are applying prestige standards from other fields to medicine when it doesn’t work that way.</p>
<p>And no insurance company gives you a penny more in compensation because you went to an Ivy undergrad and / or Ivy medical school than a state school. </p>
<p>The exception is academia or research, where it matters more. But there is no a priori reason for a doctor who just wants to be an everyday doctor to want to go to Harvard med school any more than any other med school. It won’t bring him any more benefits.</p>
<p>It is interesting that statistics for our local off charts Meidcal School is very similar to HMS in regard to numbers: "There were 5,138 completed applications for the August 2009 entering class. Annually, Harvard Medical School interviews between 800-1000 applicants for a class of 165. "</p>
<p>As a 30+ year college administrator, I strongly suggest that it’s all about the college peer group which when all is said and done, has a greater influence on a student’s goals and aspirations than any other factor.</p>
<p>If you’re intellectually gifted you may have opportunities to join college communities in which there are many similarly-gifted students or some in which there are (for the most part, but not entirely) less-gifted peers. Imagine if your gift was not in academics but in tennis, and you were deciding to go to a live-in tennis academy to develop that talent. You could go to the Bollettieri Tennis Academy where you’d play with and against the top emerging talent, who would in the coming years be the stars of the pro tennis world. Or perhaps you could go to another tennis academy where the students weren’t so motivated by tennis, but had attended primarily because others told them they should. At the lesser academy, you might play against your fellow classmates and find that no one could return your serves. You’d hit average ground strokes and your opponents would whiff instead of returning competent shots. You might find that you were underchallenged, and accordingly, weren’t getting any better. You might show up for practice and find that your opponent was a no-show, having blown off class for the day. You might be thrilled to learn that Roger Federer or Serena Williams was coming to campus to speak to students and then find that other students weren’t interested in seeing them and weren’t interested in talking with you about the visit that you attended. A really talented tennis player either wouldn’t be satisfied in that kind of environment or may eventually dull down his or her passion and goals to match those of the classmates.</p>
<p>The same dynamic works with academically-talented students. And it’s not just about compiling a resume in order to land a job. It’s about developing yourself to the fullest in order to enjoy your life to the maximum. That’s the main benefit of a top-level college.</p>
<p>The preceding post by GADad should be framed as a “keeper.” Here’s an acid test for you: how often are discussions that began in the classroom still going on over lunch in the afternoon, dinner in the morning, and at late-night study breaks?</p>
<p>My D went to a Top 20 LAC. She needed to knock off a pre-req class before applying to grad school and took a class, while working full-time, at the local U that’s probably somewhere in 80’s by USNWR. She was appalled. 90 percent of the students had little interest in the material and were just interested in getting their tickets punched. The prof tried to teach via Socratic inquiry but D was often the only one who would volunteer to answer questions and she limited herself to the number of times that she would do it.</p>
<p>There was a group project required and she had to organize the group and assign parts. Two students told her she talked “too complicated” or something like that. </p>
<p>The course was an important Econ course for majors.</p>
<p>While I tend to agree in principal with gadad, I would not overgeneralize. Intellectually gifted kids tend to take different classes, hang out in different places, and sometimes do different things. I attended a third or perhaps fourth tier school and found the people I encountered to be extremely smart, inquiring, and fascinated with all aspects of life. One was a concert pianist, one was an extraordinary artist, one an Olympic caliber athlete, some were debaters, some writers, and many were politically active. Almost all are now in major leadership positions, ranging from artists whose art hangs in some of the best museums, to college professors, to movie studio executives, to judges, to the state department, to business entrepreneurs. We would argue for hours in the dorm or student union, often reading books and relating them to Marxist of Capitalist ideology, existentialism or phenomenology, continental or analytical philosophy, classic or absurdist theater, etc. It was exhilarating, and I made lifelong friends. For my graduate degree I went to a top private where I met students from the nation’s top schools. I was at first concerned because of my third/fourth tier background; would I be able to compete? I found none more prepared or more widely read than I. I was more shocked by what they hadn’t read or experienced. The undergraduate population, for whom I served as a TA, was a different story. These students had the benefit of a rigorous Core curriculum and were often much better educated than the grad students from other top universities. So, if one combines a strong Core, and a culture of inquiry with the intellectually gifted, then perhaps one can be in a special environment that is quite different from the lower tiered school, but simply being with other smart folks often tends to work out no matter where one attends.</p>
<p>This is an absolute lie. Our career services office publishes the average GPAs that Yalies who were admitted to medical school had. The list contains almost every medical school in the country and for my state in particular it looked like this:</p>
<p>School / Average Accepted GPA / Yale GPA</p>
<p>Baylor / 3.83 / 3.75
UT-Galveston / 3.78 / 3.7
UT Houston / 3.7 / 3.64
UT San Antonio / 3.58 / 3.38
UT Southwestern / 3.81 / 3.66
Texas A&M / 3.66 / 3.61
Texas Tech / 3.7 / 3.34</p>