That’s odd. MIT=STEM in a way far greater than WashU=medicine. WashU has an art school for heavens sake. It’s a “regular” well-rounded typical elite u like the vast majority of other top universities.
I agree. However, what I’m describing is social departments like many of MIT’s social science departments and NYU’s poli-sci departments in which their emphasis on quantitative analysis/rational choice is such it is done at the expense of qualitative approaches by those preferring the qualitative approach. This is especially an issue if one’s studying certain areas where one must account in some depth for non-quantifiable aspects to fully understand what one is studying such as IR or Comparative Politics.
Most elite/respectable social science departments many college classmates I knew and I myself would prefer would be one where there’s a more reasonable balance which doesn’t edge out the qualitative aspects/approach.
Also, this trend has been getting some pushback from social science faculty and grad students in the US and moreso abroad as even those who value quantitative approaches and use it heavily in their own work feel the emphasis in some social science departments has been taken too far and quantitative approaches used in such a manner that they further obscure rather than facilitate better understanding of research into particular social science research questions/subfields.
It would be well to keep in mind that universities such as MIT and UChicago are known for and defined perhaps more for their graduate (doctoral and professional) programs than their undergraduate ones.
Regarding the comment about the “core” at Chicago being just a set of distribution requirements, that’s far too easy a statement to make. Every college has a curriculum, and every curriculum has required and optional courses or tracks, as well as a variety of major and minor fields and specializations. Look online at the curricula of most colleges and universities and you’ll find a “core curriculum” mainly involving distribution requirements and not specific courses that every student must take.
Some colleges, such as Reed – my undergraduate alma mater – do have a few courses that every student must take and sometimes refer to these courses as a core. I loved my Hum 110 and 210 courses (two year-long 6 credit-hour courses – the equivalent of eight 3-credit semester courses). (The specific requirements have been changed since my day.)
One of my brothers attended Caltech and he, like all Caltech students, took required courses in several fields, including taking Physics I – which is as much a core course in the sciences at Caltech as my hum courses were in humanities at Reed. Also, if one chose to attend Caltech in that era, one would want to take Physics I from Richard Feynman. (My brother earned BS and PhD in physics at Caltech, and in graduate school he served as a TA for Feynman in Physics I, teaching from Feynman’s “Lectures” – http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ ) .
Stanford was (2013 article) giving a little bump to applicants interested in majoring in humanities, according to the nYT so was Princeton. MIT may do the same, IDK.
Actually, back when my graduating class was applying to college, most who were interested in humanities/social sciences exclusively or as a component of a double major with a STEM field made it a point to avoid applying or if they did apply…opt to go to another elite/respectable college if admitted for the following reasons:
- JHU was heavily dominated by pre-meds in an academic environment which had a reputation for heavy academic workload/rigor and cutthroat competition. Very understandable considering the perception is that that competition is heavily driven by aspiring/actual pre-meds gunning for med schools. And I heard this from HS classmates/post-college friends who were pre-meds who successfully attended/graduated med school.
- JHU along with MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Reed, Swat, CMU, GTech, etc have been known as schools with extremely heavy workload/rigor even among the elite/respectable colleges. Even most elite/respectable college aspirants/admits don't have a desire to spend the vast majority of their waking hours grinding away without much room for social life/parties/relaxation/sleep above and beyond peers at other respectable/elite colleges for average/mediocre grades(B-s, C level grades).
Very interesting as I and most people familiar with Princeton wouldn’t think Princeton had an issue attracting a critical mass of humanities/social science students as those are not only among Princeton’s strengths, but also even with Princeton’s strengths in engineering…most hardcore engineering majors with Princeton level stats from my HS when we applied to colleges in the mid-'90s also tended to be admitted to MIT, Caltech, CMU, Stanford…and would overwhelmingly opt for those tippy-top engineering/CS schools over Princeton.
There’s also the factor that despite Princeton’s strengths in engineering, the campus culture is heavily dominated by humanities/social science majors. Especially those from upper/upper-middle class families…some of whom are multi-generation legacies with few exceptions.
One notable exception was a former supervisor turned friend’s colleague at a past job who came from a multi-generationed Princeton legacy family and had a domineering father who insisted he attended Princeton at the risk of being disinherited and banished from the family. The father also strongly pushed for that son to be a humanities/social science major as the father regarded the sciences…especially engineering as “too blue collar” for their family back in the late '60s. That son did attend Princeton…but rebelled in his way by standing his ground on majoring in engineering which he admitted made him a bit of an odd minority on the campus.
Also, had another friend who was apparently so sore about his undergrad experience as a Princeton engineering major in the '80s that when he attended/graduated with grad degrees(MS, PhD) in engineering from MIT, he was so gung-ho about being a proud MIT alum that even his close friends assumed he went to MIT for undergrad as well. He wasn’t exactly pleased when his younger sister blurted out one evening that he actually attended Princeton for undergrad.
In short, Princeton didn’t really have too many people like him and he felt socially isolated and regarded as a bit odd for his hardcore engineering interests. He didn’t really find “his people” until he attended MIT for grad school.
Very funny you should say this, because Johns Hopkins probably has THE premier undergraduate creative writing program in the US (which probably = the World, as far as undergraduate creative writing programs go). In your NCES statistics, there were almost as many primary degrees awarded in creative writing as in music, and the music degrees are being awarded to students in a conservatory program with completely separate classes and admissions. Johns Hopkins is a target for people who know they want to study creative writing.
No one should really dispute that as to humanities and arts, although I am sure people at MIT would say that it is part of the university’s educational mission to make certain engineers have a fundamental grounding in art, literature, and history. But as to a number of social sciences, and some hard-to-characterize areas like linguistics, you are just plain wrong. MIT is absolutely a top university in those fields, and it goes to as many lengths as Harvard does to maintain its position. They are very quant-y fields, so it’s not inconsistent at all with the other areas of strength.
I just took a quick look at the University of Chicago’s core, and MIT’s GIR’s are a bit more demanding, especially if you go out of your way to avoid the more difficult classes at Chicago. For example, MIT requires everyone to take multi-variable calculus, which might be a lot to ask of someone thinking about majoring in the humanities or social sciences. At the University of Chicago, it looks like you could get away without taking calculus at all.
A number of Ivies are looking for more humanities kids. Harvard has said it, too. It’s a little pendulum swing off the stem drive of the past decade.
Porsche offers SUV and sedan, but it is mostly known for its 911 sports car. Same for MIT. It is hard to change one’s personality, be it a car company or a university.
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I don’t think the issue is specific to MIT though, I know people that have expressed confusion as to why someone would go to WUSTL and not be pre-med, for example
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Huh? Who equates WashU with being premed? My nephew is there and he’s an eng’g major, not premed.
I would say that many equate Johns Hopkins with being premed. I don’t know the numbers, but I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that more than 50% of JHU frosh are premed.
Actually, I’m remiss: MIT evidently is very strong in philosophy (and obviously linguistics, though that slipped my mind the first time around).
And I agree with @JHS. A ton of people here seem to think that MIT considers non-STEM subjects peripheral, but that doesn’t make logical sense. If MIT didn’t care about non-STEM subjects, why are they trying so hard to be or remain top 10 in the world in econ, business, linguistics, poli sci, and even philosophy? Again, it seems like people are projecting here (not reflecting).
BTW, @JHS, you’re affirming my point: no one I know says that JHU’s writing program isn’t worth attending because they’d be surrounded by a bunch of pre-meds and STEM majors, so why are people saying that econ/business/poli sci/linguistics/philosophy at MIT aren’t worthwhile options because they’d be surrounded by STEM majors? (There are roughly as many econ majors at MIT as writing majors at JHU, BTW, but they are vastly outnumbered by STEM majors at both schools.)
Granted, not everyone wants that type of environment, and I get that, but many would be fine with that type of environment and this goes back to my “lemmings” comment. You see kids who want to enter MC/IB and major in business/econ apply to Wharton/Williams/Amherst/Stern/Ross (who, you have to admit, all have very different environments) but not give MIT/Sloan a look because it’s seen as STEM-only even though both academically and careerwise, Sloan would set them up very well. Likewise with kids who want to get a PhD in econ. They apply to UChicago and a bunch of other top schools but not MIT (even though, when they are applying to PhD programs, MIT will likely be one of the ones they aim for). And yes, MIT requires more math, but econ isn’t exactly a non-quantitative major. Plus, you can’t fail any class freshman year and first semester is “pass/no record” at MIT.
In any case, the “lemmings” comment is more general and not specific to MIT. You see kids who say they want to get a PhD in a science and say they love the strong grounding in all sciences that the Cambridge natural science tripos (or the Caltech core, or MIT, etc.) will give them but they don’t look at Northwestern and its ISP program which is probably as intense as Caltech and covers all sciences as well (and on a per capita basis, does as well or better at placing in to grad school and at students winning prestigious national scholarships/grants/awards than Caltech and MIT). Northwestern also has a math program called MENU where they want to get top math students who they aim to groom to excel in math grad programs with small classes, more individualized attention, more intense study and deeper delving in to math.
Yet while every kid who is a superstar in math/science in the US/world seems to target MIT/Cambridge/Caltech(/Harvard/Stanford/etc.) while barely giving Northwestern a look, where do you think someone like that would stand out more as an applicant?*
Should herd-like behavior and reliance on stereotypes really be encouraged? There’s no value to be had in hidden gems?**
- And yes, I get that the environment between all of MIT, Caltech, Cambridge, and Northwestern are all very different, but you have to get in to one of them first before you have a choice.
** The idea of Sloan being some kind of hidden gem sounds almost absurd, but evidently, it’s hidden to many high schoolers and their parents.
@lookingforward:
"A number of Ivies are looking for more humanities kids. Harvard has said it, too. It’s a little pendulum swing off the stem drive of the past decade. "
Meanwhile, Northwestern is going to hire 20 new CS faculty:
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2016/06/web/major-expansion-in-computer-science.html
Basically, every elite wants to be somewhat balanced. Yet the herd behavior of applicants is extremely strong. Instead of looking for undervalued gems, they behave like, yes, lemmings*.
- Not all, but the majority posting on CC, it seems.
I’ve been wondering, and even moreso now with your last post, if the lemmings are the hordes of people who are going in to the STEM fields at a near-abandonment rate of other courses of study. The markets, especially for CS and some of the engineering fields, are going to be saturated to the point of there being little room for all the graduates seeking work.
Like this comment a great deal, “Yet while every kid who is a superstar in math/science in the US/world seems to target MIT/Cambridge/Caltech(/Harvard/Stanford/etc.) while barely giving Northwestern a look, where do you think someone like that would stand out more as an applicant?*”
“…but evidently, it’s hidden to many high schoolers and their parents.” You know how I feel about how kids choose colleges and how little too many of them know about their choices. So in that respect, yup, a whole lotta mindless copycatting. But where you have a fine institution like MIT, which can offer a deep education in stem while offering rich exploration in other fields, it’s too simple to focus on MIT as full of lemmings because so many intend a stem major.
And in theory, at least, considering the difficulty of getting an admit, MIT would be choosing those applicants who do show interest beyond their narrow specialty interests, who might take a biz class or delve into history or philosophy, on the side. And considering all they say, I’d wager they do.
“And in theory, at least, considering the difficulty of getting an admit, MIT would be choosing those applicants who do show interest beyond their narrow specialty interests, who might take a biz class or delve into history or philosophy, on the side.”
The beauty of MIT is indeed that the university recognizes and applauds those candidates who show interest, experience and capacity beyond narrow specialty interests. I believe those candidates make it easier for the university to say ‘yes’ to them.
It certainly makes it easier for students with a range of interests to continue to say ‘yes’ to the university, despite the rigorous course load which is life at MIT, year after year.
@Waiting2exhale, well, I’m of the opinion that for a thorough education, one should pick up quantitative skills, writing & communication skills, other hard & soft skills as well as engage in introspection and wrestle with big-picture questions. If you do that, you probably will be decently prepared for the future.
Here’s one guy’s advice on how to gain a good college education: http://www.vox.com/2015/1/7/7500705/college-advice
Excellent. Will you make a thread with it?
I must agree with @lookingforward. That link was excellent. Do make it available to others.
The article is one which I think describes the natural inclinations of one of my college-age children solidly, and is one which I am hoping will inform and nudge the other.
You know, @purpletitan, the discussion of what makes a classic education is a topic dear to my heart. My S went to Columbia just exactly because he wanted that type of education. And interestingly, my D went to a requirement-free school for the exact same reason.
And, a discussion of the rich depths of academics available at MIT is also warranted. Which, despite your snarky “your projecting your own feelings onto it” comments to me, is something i happen to know and admire about MIT. I still wouldn’t kneejerk recommend it to a writer, for instance, though I believe Junot Diaz teaches there, without going through the caveats of six “real” science/math courses including MV calc, severe lack of majors in the department, swimming against the stream student-wise. etc. Those are worth giving consideration to.
I think rather than name-calling, an examination about what MIT might do to attract more STEM-majors (if it wants to; I’ve seen no evidence that they are concerned with that), would be an interesting discussion.
As is: what makes a real education. So, carry on!