When I said PhD grad students, I meant to denote they were either nearing completion of grad coursework/comp stage or at the ABD stage of their program. The point was they secretly managed to get themselves enrolled and completed MBAs at Sloan while still remaining enrolled in the STEM PhD programs at MIT. They had not graduated with their STEM PhDs at the time they received their MBAs. THAT’S one reason why the Profs not only cared, but were a quite perturbed upon finding out several of their grad students were being called up to receive their Sloan MBAs during a commencement exercise.
The whole point about the STEM grad students keeping their enrollment in the Sloan MBA program a secret is logical as much as an LAC math Prof I knew recounted keeping his job as a busboy at a countryclub near Princeton a secret to fund what his grants didn’t cover for the remaining 4.5 years of his PhD studies as Princeton had a strict 5 year cutoff for fully funding PhD students unless there’s one of the exceedingly rare exceptions acceptable to the department/Princeton’s graduate school.
Most PhD programs…especially those run by old-school Profs expect their PhD grad students to dedicate practically 100% of their waking hours/focus on coursework, studying for comps, working as TA/RA in the adviser’s pet projects/labs, research on dissertation. This is the reason why just like working an outside job…especially one not directly related to one’s PhD studies/department…enrolling oneself in another graduate program not related to one’s PhD program is strongly frowned upon by most PhD programs. It’s also a reason why there’s practically no elite/respectable “part-time PhD” programs…especially in the Arts & Sciences/Engineering.
In fact, it can be grounds for some departments to summarily expel such grad students for “not being dedicated/serious enough” for their PhD programs in the eyes of their advisor(s)/department.
The attitude among most Profs I’ve chatted with about this is if one is not fully 100% committed to the PhD program full-time, they should pursue other ventures and leave the PhD programs to those who are willing to do so.
Also, while learning outside of one’s field and broadening one’s academic horizons is fine and even strongly encouraged in undergrad here in the US and other colleges using the US undergrad model, most graduate programs…especially PhD programs expect their students to be focused not only on their department, but also their sub-field within the department. If a grad student cannot or will not gain this focus, that is one reason why some grad students end up washing out/being invited to leave by the department/advisor(s) early in PhD programs.
^^^^^So what became of the secret Sloan MBAs? Did they take jobs in academia or business? How did they fund their Sloan studies? Were they still receiving a stipend from their PHD departments while taking classes at Sloan? I can imagine advisors would be annoyed that their PHD students were supposed to be doing research and writing, but were taking MBA courses as well.
Not sure though my friend did mention the possibility some of those Profs were strongly consider/go through with dismissing those grad students from their respective STEM PhD programs for “not showing enough dedication/seriousness” for their STEM PhD studies.
One thing I also neglected to mention is that some STEM Profs tend to be quite dismissive of the academic gravitas/intelligence of their counterparts in non-STEM fields…including Econ(fallback major for STEM washouts) and Business(same as econ along with being viewed dismissively as a “glorified trade school”).
To be fair, there’s a similar contempt many Econ Profs/PhD students have towards their counterparts in the business school…even at the MBA/PhD level*. This was one of the reasons cited by a couple of Econ grad students along with a Prof as to why despite having many shared academic research interests…most Econ and Business faculty tend to wall themselves off into separate administrative/academic fiefdoms in many universities.
To a lesser extent, I've observed a similar dynamic between those in pure Math/Physics vs Applied. A friend who is now a Math Prof received some flack about his focus on Applied Math during his undergrad years at Harvard from some classmates and Profs because as far as they were concerned, only pure math counted as "real math".
They were because officially, they were still registered as grad students in the respective STEM departments’ PhD programs while they were enrolled in/graduated from Sloan with their MBAs.
They were also still able to juggle their classes/research obligations for their PhD programs in their respective STEM departments while doing so. Granted, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually focused most of their time on their PhD programs while “phoning in” for their Sloan MBAs because of the feeling validated by experience that Business…even at the grad level is much easier and required far less concentration/studying in comparison.
In some ways, it was like a Cardiology fellow friend who while enrolled at Harvard Med felt he had so much unused free time he enrolled himself in some classes at the nearby Mass College of Art during his med school years. Ended up excelling and getting placed at a topflight Boston area hospital where he still works to this day.
Not sure how his med school would have reacted if they found out, but then again…he never felt the need to tell them and they never felt the need to probe on this point, especially considering how well he did there.
You don’t phone-in a Sloan MBA. My stepdaughter is a graduate of the program. The first year class is divided into cohorts and then into smaller groups of 5-6 who are expected to work together on projects in the required first year classes. Plus, students are also expected to participate in various clubs that are related to their fields of interest–it’s a way to network and establish contacts for jobs after graduating. Second-year MBA students also get involved in actual hands-on consulting with businesses–they often go on-site during spring break to work with companies on solving various problems/issues.
I can’t speak to the intellectual merit of the MBA classes, and perhaps your friends’ STEM curriculum was more intellectually challenging, but I find it hard to believe that these STEM renegades were participating in the Sloan program at the same time they were researching and/or writing a dissertation. There are only so many hours in a day and full-time MBA students are busy for many, many hours of the day.
I think the advisors of these STEM students were right to be upset–these folks were taking stipends that were meant to support them so that they could work full-time on their dissertation research/writing . I don’t think these students were clever–I think they were dishonest.
You never explained how they funded their MBA programs? Tuition at MBA programs is not cheap. Also–at most of the top MBA programs, potential students go for an interview (often it is with a current student); at those interviews the interviewer chats with the applicants about their current work experiences. You make it sound like the STEM applicants omitted any mention of their STEM graduate work–what did they tell the interviewer they had been doing since they finished undergraduate school?
I really do think it would be highly unlikely for someone to finish an MBA program (on the sly) like the one at Sloan while actively being enrolled in a STEM doctoral program, even if these folks were ABD and researching/writing a dissertation. There are dual enrollment programs for MBAs (Mitt Romney, for example, did the Harvard MBA/JD program). My D got an MBA from Georgetown and had a classmate who was in a dual MD/MBA program. So it can be done, but the difference is that there’s a set pathway and people don’t hide what they’re doing.
BTW, taking a couple of art classes isn’t like enrolling in a full-time MBA program.
Can someone please explain to me why someone should care that someone in another discipline “doesn’t regard” their discipline as hard enough? Why is this of any importance? It’s about as irrelevant as finding out that my neighbor doesn’t like the color of my living room.
Many good students don’t choose a college solely based on excellence in their intended major. A prospective linguistics or political science major might avoid MIT (despite its strengths in those fields) out of a desire to be around a critical mass of other students interested in related majors or diverse extracurricular activities. What do other students talk about at meals or in their dorms? If nearly 70% of your classmates would be majoring in engineering, math, or CS (and another ~20% in physical/life sciences), one might reasonably conclude the atmosphere just isn’t what you’re after. For sure, some people might be overlooking good programs at MIT. Nevertheless one could sincerely and rationally believe that another college provides a better all-around educational experience (even if it allegedly isn’t quite as “hard” in that major.)
It costs a lot to fund a PhD student, with tuition, medical, and approximately $30,000 year living expenses. Unless the student has a separate NSF grant, the funding comes from the professors pot of funding. Some MIT students manage in 4 years, tho not many. The first 2 years involve lots of classes, being a TA, etc. 5 or 6 years is a norm.
I imagine these MBA students began in their 3rd year. The time they devoted to that program would certainly extend their years in graduate school. Why wouldn’t the PhD profs be vexed?
I know my husband would be furious if his grad students weren’t working in the lab. In most of the science you aren’t sitting around writing a dissertation you are in the lab trying to get papers published, no one actually spends more than a few months writing the dissertation itself. The dissertation is the papers and it’s based on full time lab work.
He’s annoyed enough that kids are spending time on facebook instead of keeping up with the literature or seeing what else they could be doing in the lab.
On one hand it is true that there aren’t very many humanities and social sciences majors at MIT. But on the other hand, you get a tremendous amount of attention. A 3 to 1 faculty to student ratio (from the blog post @HarvestMoon1 posted) is insane.
Note that even the regular economics major at MIT (course 14-1) is more math intensive than the economics majors at many other schools (or is equivalent to the high math version at some schools), since multivariable calculus is a prerequisite for the intermediate microeconomics course.
Of course, they can do that, because multivariable calculus is part of MIT’s general institute requirements for all undergraduates. That level of math may scare off many prospective humanities and social studies majors from considering MIT even if their prospective majors are among those that MIT offers and does well.
110: that's what I was getting at when I was saying earlier that JHU wouldn't be known for creative writing but for only its premed preparation, if it required all creative writing majors to complete the premed core. The VERY high level of math and science required by all at MIT discourages students who'd be interested in its humanities/social sciences rather than its stem offerings. So, they're not lemmings, just rational - they see Calc1 at MIT as harder than what they've taken, know they won't make it through the in-depth stem classes, and can get an equally good humanities/social science degree from a university that is as prestigious.
MIT is a STEM school with strong humanities/social science offerings for stem students.
From my observation over the years, calculus is a subject that separates the best from the rest. When my children were searching for college programmes, every competitive programme in the province asked for that senior calculus course. At the time I thought they were being unnecessarily harsh, then I learned that they expect that level of ability in order to truly comprehend economics and to an even greater degree, finance.
I too believe these students are simply being rational. I can not think of any humanities, and few social science grads that I know can do multivariable calculus. If they can, they probably would have chosen a different major.
To be frank, students choose their major based on what they can do, and not on what they want to do.
There are exceptions of course, but they are rare.
“From my observation over the years, calculus is a subject that separates the best from the rest. When my children were searching for college programmes, every competitive programme in the province asked for that senior calculus course. At the time I thought they were being unnecessarily harsh, then I learned that they expect that level of ability in order to truly comprehend economics and to an even greater degree, finance.”
This may shock you, but there are fields of human endeavor that are just as worthy as finance. Being good at math / Econ / finance isn’t “better” than being paticulay talented in theater, or having a real talent / passion for art history, or writing fiction, or whatever. It’s just different. Since the title of this thread is lemmings, don’t be a lemming about thinking that finance / banking is “the best” or employs people who are “better” than others. It’s just one field among many.
To amplify - I believe that math skills are important, generally speaking. But I have friends who a) run global PR firms, b) have written award-winning books, c) advance solving world hunger through their work. I doubt any of them ever took MV calc. And so what? I can’t imagine being so unsophisticated as to think that they must be “inferior” to the quant jock on Wall Street. It’s a big world out there and lots of different skills are needed.
I mentioned economics and finance simply because my kids had to take them in business school. They found their performance on those courses are highly correlated to their performance on that senior calculus course (relative to their college classmates, that is). Uncanny, in fact. YMMV
I also think the obsession with elite schools (that you so often rant against) is also partly driven by students who are not proficient with quantitative methods. I think this strategy is based on the assumption, and the hope, that employers will be so dazzled by the name of the school and their sky-high GPA that they will fail to notice the major.
The weight of the evidence suggests that they are at least partially correct. Even graduate schools, who should know better, are still committing what we call the fundamental attribution error…
I have no horse in this race, so why not just allow the market place to decide the value of a given set of skill or skills?
@canuckguy- Every one of my kid’s math teachers in HS told her she should major in math- by FAR her most “natural” academic subject, she never broke a sweat. But she never even considered math as a major- she’s an arts girl. Now, you did say there are exceptions- just want to mention that there is one at my house. BTW- she does attend a strong (if not tip top “elite”) school, and I have no doubt that if she chooses a career other than arts- the name of the school (regardless of major) will help her get a job
To be frank, that’s utter b.s. My younger kid, a sociology AB and professional social science researcher, can do multivariable calculus, and he wasn’t extraordinary in the least at his university. His fiance, also a sociology AB, can do multivariable calculus and medical procedures (having also received an MD). His first girlfriend had the highest math score in the state on a standardized math test in 7th grade, 2400 SATs, and accelerated proof-based calculus. She majored in African-American Studies. I don’t know whether she ever took multivariable calculus – probably not – but it certainly wasn’t because of lack of math ability, versus lack of interest in anything she could do with it.
I was the same way. I never got less than an A in math in my life, and got a 5 on the Calculus AP, and never took a math class after that because I found it completely meaningless. In retrospect, I wish I had had teachers who had managed to communicate something of the beauty of math to me, but I didn’t.
Smart people who can do anything generally learn early on to choose how they spend their time based on what they care about, not necessarily what’s most lucrative (unless that’s what they care about).