Most Influential Graduate Degrees

UCLAri · November 18, 2006, 2:48pm

Yes, of course. But when RHSstudent makes his army of giant robots, you’ll want all the name-brand you can get.

RHSstudent07 · November 18, 2006, 9:21pm

“giant robots”

great joke,

first we wouldn’t have giant robots, a machine isn’t that stupid (Strong AI)

second,
a machine doesn’t care about name-brands. It’s good to have funding, but eventually it will be useless. It’s information that will be worth anything, not brands.

Honestly, if it weren’t for engineers and scientists, we would still be in caves fighting over meat.

UCLAri · November 18, 2006, 9:26pm

OMG NO WAI.

Robots care about brand name. Movies, TV, and comics have so made that clear. In fact, just check out the comic Diesel Sweeties for an EXTREMELY accurate portrayal of what human-robot relations may be like.

The fact is, robots are capricious too.

And yes we’ll have giant robots. Without all of our fleshy mortal limitations, why wouldn’t the evil robot armies build huge juggernaut sentient tanks? C’mon. Robots are like zombies without any limitations.

RHSstudent07 · November 19, 2006, 2:31am

large robots? I believe your underestimating what an “Strong Artificial Intelligence” would be able to do. If there were a evil robot, we would be dead before we could figure out this robot had in mind. This is getting off topic, I recommend doing some research and avoid science fiction.

merper68 · November 19, 2006, 2:39am

Yes, yes. We’ve all read Kurzweil.

CITATION_X · November 19, 2006, 2:44am

JD/MBA (with bar admission) most powerful, however (american trained) MD is most prestigious and significant in terms of actually helping society

Note the republican primary for next Presidential election will (likely) have both a JD/MBA and an MD - (current) Gov of Mass Mitt Romney and heart surgeon/Senator Bill Frist

UCLAri · November 19, 2006, 2:54am

RHSstudent,

I’m just joking around. Sheesh.

I swear, everyone on this board takes things too seriously. It won’t matter though…especially when the zombie robots take over. ;)

CITATION X,

Would you add or omit Jack Thomson? :p

14_of_spades · November 19, 2006, 11:48pm

in my list above, i wasn’t trying to rank the degrees in order actually.

i think the Yale JD is probably the most single prestigious degree in the world - if u actually know what it takes to get one. what is it, like >175 and >3.75 GPA gives u a better than 1 in 2 chance of getting in? sheesh.

bluedevilmike · November 20, 2006, 12:33am

Yale JD: Numbers you listed: ~20% odds of admission. See: <a href=“Search for Law Schools – LSAC Official Guide | The Law School Admission Council”>Search for Law Schools – LSAC Official Guide | The Law School Admission Council, then click LSAC Data Search.

Perfect GPA and LSAT give odds of approximately ~55%.

<hr>

And I don’t think the MBA is all that powerful, but I vote for the business world in general. The founders of WalMart, Dell, Amazon, Toyota, etc. all impact my life a lot more than my doctor, any lawyer I’ve ever met, or my politicians - Arnold included.

CITATION_X · November 21, 2006, 2:37am

Would you add or omit Jack Thomson?

He’s a conservative activist lawyer, so in that sense - his JD (and bar admission) is the basis for significant “influence” - that much is true

In terms of making useful and often important significant things, I would have to add engineers - as the original poster states “Ph.Ds (engineers and scientists)” They seem to be the key to making most things happen

There seems to be a difference between the terms “influence” vs “significance”. I would accept the argument that one could in theory eliminate all the JD’s and MBAs and simply have scientists, engineers, and medical doctors - and supporting workers to produce things - and the world would not necessarily be all that bad

sakky · November 21, 2006, 3:13am

Yeah, but once you’re in, you’re almost guaranteed to graduate. Practically nobody actually flunks out of YLS.

If you want to go down the road of sheer difficulty of getting a particular degree, I think it’s almost certainly a doctorate, especially one from a top school like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. Not only is it hard to get into the program, but more importantly, it is also EXTREMELY hard to complete. Something like around half of all incoming PhD students will never complete the program.

<a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i19/19a01001.htm[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i19/19a01001.htm</a>
<a href=“http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2004/01/phd/[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2004/01/phd/</a>
<a href=“http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3860/is_200011/ai_n8922845[/url]”>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3860/is_200011/ai_n8922845</a>

Hence, the main difficulty of getting a degree from YLS is simply getting in. Yes, that’s a very difficult hurdle. But once you’re in, you’re basically assured of graduating. In contrast, doctoral students have to pass TWO hurdles - first, getting in, and second, actually completing the degree. Both are extremely difficult. Thus, in the aggregate, I think it’s fairly clear that a doctorate from an elite school is probably more difficult than getting a degree from YLS.

14_of_spades · November 21, 2006, 9:01pm

i dunno.

if ur IQ just isn’t high enough to get 177 on the LSAT, ur not getting into YLS at all. that’s the fact of the matter.

with enough hard work (and a minimum acceptable “excellent” IQ), i’m sure u can plow through and undergrad to get a decent GPA, get good-enough GRE scores, and eventually make it through a doctoral program.

as such - i think the raw ability of someone in YLS is probably overall higher than the avg. PhD student at the top schools in whatever field. this isn’t to diminish their abilties at all (i know some who were in ICO, IMO etc.) but even in an earlier post someone was pointing out that even Harvard PhD students weren’t necessarily all that. i don’t think it would be possible for someone to get into YLS without first being, the cream of the exceptional.

so main point: basically ALL YLS are amazing. while PhD students at top universities do include the same caliber, but some might get it through pure nose-to-the-grindstone.

as long as hard work can get u somewhere, that’s all it takes. but if u don’t have the IQ, u ain’t getting into YLS.

sakky · November 22, 2006, 2:20am

Uh, how is that? The 25th/75th LSAT percentile at YLS is 168/175. So why do you need a 177? Plenty of people who don’t have 177’s are apparently getting in.

<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/directory/dir-law/premium/admis_03027.php[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/directory/dir-law/premium/admis_03027.php</a>

Uh, we’re not talking about that. We are talking about people ** who have the degree **. We are comparing somebody who HAS a YLS degree, compared to somebody who HAS the elite-school PhD. That latter guy has successfully completed the process of the PhD. That person has survived 2 steps - first, getting in, and second, actually completing the degree. Plenty of people who enter doctoral programs do not complete the degree, whereas practically nobody who enters YLS does not finish.

You might be able to GET IN to a doctoral program (although even that’s questionable when we’re talking about a top one) if you’re not as good as a law student. But actually completing it is an entirely different ballgame. To do so requires that you do original research - meaning something that nobody in the field has ever done before. A lot of people just aren’t capable of that. At YLS, or any law school for that matter, you don’t have to do ANYTHING original in order to pass.

The main problem is the nebulous issue of the PhD. At law school, you know what you need to do to graduate - just take a certain set of classes and pass them. With a PhD, things are far less structured. Few guideposts exist. Your research might not come up with acceptable results. The problem you are working on might get ‘scooped’ by somebody else who is doing the exact same research you are doing, and then publishes it, therefore invalidating your entire project (because your project is supposed to be original, and if somebody publishes it, it’s no longer original).

Uh, that was me that said it. And read that post again - I said that Harvard PhD students weren’t “all that” ** relative** to PhD students at other elite schools such as MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, and so forth. You have to place that quote ** in context **.

Specifically, I don’t see people with Harvard PhD’s as being any more impressive than somebody with a PhD from any of those other peer schools. But having a PhD from any of these schools is still a major achievement. It’s just that I don’t think see any reason for the ** Harvard ** PhD to be specifically singled out, with no mention of the PhD’s from the other places.

Again, we’re not talking about that. We are not talking about what it takes to get in. We are talking about what it takes to ** finish ** the degree A lot of people who enter PhD programs do not finish. In contrast, in the last 3 years, 1 person dropped out of YLS. And that person dropped out voluntarily, not because he was forced to leave because of bad grades. Hence, a 0.5% attrition rate. Contrast that with PhD programs that generally average about a 40-50% attrition rate.

<a href=“Search for Law Schools – LSAC Official Guide | The Law School Admission Council”>Search for Law Schools – LSAC Official Guide | The Law School Admission Council;

Think about what that means. By far the hardest part of getting into YLS or any other top law school is just getting in. But once you’re in, you can be extremely lazy and do the absolute bare minimum, and still graduate. I’m sure there are some people who do that. For example, Mark Warner, former Governor of Virginia and potential Presidential candidate of 2008 (before he cancelled his candidacy recently), went to Harvard Law School and has admitted that he was an extremely lazy student who was more interested in drinking and partying than in studying.

"As young men in law school in the 1970s, neither Mark Warner nor George Allen set the legal world on fire. At Harvard, Warner founded a group called the Somerville Bar Review—that’s “bar” as in drinking studies, not professional ones. “I was the only guy I knew who didn’t get law-firm offers after summer internships,” he says. "

<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10509653/site/newsweek/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10509653/site/newsweek/</a>

PhD’s are totally different. If you enter a PhD program and you’re extremely lazy, you’re not going to complete your project, and hence, you’re not going to finish the degree. However, at the top law schools, you actually can get away with it, because the attrition rates are negligible. So you can do the absolute bare minimum and still pass. You probably won’t get a good job afterwards, but you will still graduate.

14_of_spades · November 22, 2006, 4:15am

whoa.

big post. so ur final point please?

u seem to be trying very hard to drive home a point that is simply an opinion.

my opinion is that Yale JD is the most prestigious degree. that’s my opinion. that’s all i’m trying to say. look at my post from “11-19-2006, 11:48 PM”

u may be able to show that characteristics of certain elite PhDs are better or worse than a Yale JD student, that’s fine.

but what is it - like some 30% of the Yale law class is made up of Rhodes and Fulbrights?

vienna_man · November 22, 2006, 4:22am

<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_A._Walsh_School_of_Foreign_Service[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_A._Walsh_School_of_Foreign_Service</a>
Any degree (graduate or otherwise) from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.
Look at this alumni list; if its not what they teach there, find out what they serve in the cafeteria. If you want to put the marker President, Cardinal, Ambassador, Emmy Award Winner, Senator, Secretary, High Commissioner, Correpondent, Anchor, General etc., in front of your name, this is the place.

14_of_spades · November 22, 2006, 4:38am

SAKKY WROTE: (MY TEXT IN CAPS CAUSE I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BLOCK QUOTE)

Uh, that was me that said it. And read that post again - I said that Harvard PhD students weren’t “all that” relative to PhD students at other elite schools such as MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, and so forth. You have to place that quote in CONTEXT .

HERE IS THE CONTEXT U REFER TO: YOUR POST FROM 11-18-2006, 02:37 PM

Podunk U may not be that bad. Some people don’t get placed anywhere at all.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that there are some Harvard Phd’s who, frankly, aren’t all that interested in doing good scholarly work. Their dissertation is mediocre, they don’t publish in any good journals (or perhaps have no publications at all), and they’re not really trying to make any real discoveries. They’re just there for the Harvard name. Many of them take just the consolation master’s - a wiley strategy in my opinion, as not only do you get a Harvard degree to put on your resume, but you actually GET PAID to get it, in the form of your doctoral support. But some of them do actually make it all the way through the PhD process, but submitting a dissertation that is barely good enough to pass committee. They’re not going to get much of an academic posting that way, but they don’t care, because all they want is to have a PhD from Harvard so that they can run off to a lucrative career in private consulting or investment banking or whatnot.

I don’t want to paint an overly bleak picture. So let me give you an example. I know a guy who is getting his PhD in Applied Mathematics at Harvard. And frankly, he’s lost heart. He’s tired of academia. He’s pretty close to finishing his thesis and graduating, but he’s not seriously pursuing a career as a mathematician anymore. He’s not submitting any more articles for publication, he’s not attending any more conferences, he’s not revising any of his working papers. Instead, he’s interviewing with a bunch of hedge funds, investment banks, and consulting firms. In fact, he’s not even taking any more math classes - the classes he is taking are all at Harvard Business School. This guy would have difficulty getting placed at even Podunk U, because he’s not producing anything mathematical. Not that he would want to get that placement anyway.

The point is, I don’t know that there any more of a ‘wow’ factor of the Harvard PhD, as compared to a PhD from any other top school, as I don’t think it’s any more difficult to get a Harvard PhD than a PhD from a peer school. What ‘wow’ factor that exists seems to come from just the word ‘Harvard’, rather than the Harvard PhD specifically. Like I said, there are people with Harvard PhD’s out there who aren’t really producing good scholarly work, either because they are tired, or not interested anymore, or whatever.

I DUNNO - WHAT U CLAIM TO HAVE MEANT AND WHAT U ACTUALLY WROTE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. THE ONLY PLACE WHERE U SEEM TO “COMPARE” HARVARD TO OTHER TOP SCHOOLS IS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST PARAGRAPH (AND EVEN THEN, UR MAIN POINT IS JUST ABOUT RELATIVE DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING THE DEGREE). THAT PARAGRAPH IN FACT SUPPORTS THE IDEA DEVELOPED IN THE REST OF YOUR POST THAT BEING A PHD STUDENT AT HARVARD DOESN’T NECESSARILY IMPLY MUCH. THAT’S WHAT I GATHER WHEN I READ THE POST.

UCLAri · November 22, 2006, 4:57am

14ofspades,

[Here’s</a> a link to vB code usage on the site](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=bbcode]Here’s”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=bbcode)

In regard to your post, I think you’re missing something maybe… The point isn’t that Harvard PhDs always get good placements. But they have to almost certainly do original work in order to get the PhD. Don’t conflate the amount of emotional bleakness with the academic market with a lack of work needed to get a PhD.

sakky · November 22, 2006, 6:17am

Well, you gathered wrong. Because you didn’t put it in the proper context, and specifically, it seems to me that you didn’t see that this was an entire subthread of posts that I was responding.

Let me trace it out for you. It was YOU who said, in post #14:

Then, I respond, in post #17

Then, UCLAri, in post #18, responds to my comment regarding my statement of academic placement of Harvard grads:

And now, ** only now **, do I write post #20, in response to UCLAri (and also to your old post #14).

Podunk U may not be that bad. Some people don’t get placed anywhere at all. 

But that’s not really the point. The point is that there are some Harvard Phd’s who, frankly, aren’t all that interested in doing good scholarly work. Their dissertation is mediocre, they don’t publish in any good journals (or perhaps have no publications at all), and they’re not really trying to make any real discoveries. They’re just there for the Harvard name. Many of them take just the consolation master’s - a wiley strategy in my opinion, as not only do you get a Harvard degree to put on your resume, but you actually GET PAID to get it, in the form of your doctoral support. But some of them do actually make it all the way through the PhD process, but submitting a dissertation that is barely good enough to pass committee. They’re not going to get much of an academic posting that way, but they don’t care, because all they want is to have a PhD from Harvard so that they can run off to a lucrative career in private consulting or investment banking or whatnot. 

I don’t want to paint an overly bleak picture. So let me give you an example. I know a guy who is getting his PhD in Applied Mathematics at Harvard. And frankly, he’s lost heart. He’s tired of academia. He’s pretty close to finishing his thesis and graduating, but he’s not seriously pursuing a career as a mathematician anymore. He’s not submitting any more articles for publication, he’s not attending any more conferences, he’s not revising any of his working papers. Instead, he’s interviewing with a bunch of hedge funds, investment banks, and consulting firms. In fact, he’s not even taking any more math classes - the classes he is taking are all at Harvard Business School. This guy would have difficulty getting placed at even Podunk U, because he’s not producing anything mathematical. Not that he would want to get that placement anyway. 

The point is, I don’t know that there any more of a ‘wow’ factor of the Harvard PhD, as compared to a PhD from any other top school, as I don’t think it’s any more difficult to get a Harvard PhD than a PhD from a peer school. What ‘wow’ factor that exists seems to come from just the word ‘Harvard’, rather than the Harvard PhD specifically. Like I said, there are people with Harvard PhD’s out there who aren’t really producing good scholarly work, either because they are tired, or not interested anymore, or whatever.

Now do you see the whole thing in context? This whole thing started off by you saying that you were ‘wowed’ by the Harvard PhD. I was therefore making 3 points:

<h1>1 I don’t find the Harvard PhD any more ‘wowing’ than a PhD from any of the other top schools. A PhD from any top program is difficult and deserves a ‘wow’. I don’t see any reason to single out Harvard speifically.</h1>

<h1>2 - Related to UCLAri, is that even Harvard PhD’s often times have trouble getting academic placement, especially in those disciplines where far more PhD’s are produced than there are available academic openings. In other words, we shouldn’t look down at somebody from Harvard who ends up being a prof at Podunk U. Plenty of PhD’s from Harvard or other top schools can’t even get the prof job at Podunk U. This is not a statement of how ‘bad’ Harvard Phd’s are, but rather how difficult it is in many fields for even the best candidates to get ANY academic placement.</h1>

<h1>3 - At any PhD program, even the top ones, there are PhD students who are burnt out and are no longer interested in really working hard to become star researchers, but just want to do the bare minimum necessary to graduate. The difference is that, at Harvard, the networking, recruiting and career services is so strong that students really do have other job options, just because of the Harvard brand name. I wouldn’t call this a weakness of Harvard, I would actually call it a strength. Plenty of PhD students come in all fired up about being an academic, but get disillusioned while doing it and decide that they don’t really want that anymore. The beauty of the Harvard PhD (and also to a large extent a PhD from MIT or Stanford or Yale or Berkeley or other name-brand schools), is that you can take it an do something completely different, just by leveraging the brand name. Like management consulting. Like investment banking.</h1>

But it all gets back to my disputing your original contention that the Harvard PhD deserves a ‘wow’ over any other top-line PhD. I don’t think it really does. I am no more impressed by a Harvard PhD than a MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley PhD.

14_of_spades · November 22, 2006, 6:22am

my opinion is that the Yale JD is the most prestigious degree.

that’s my opinion. feel free to disagree. that’s really all i’ve said. again, feel free to disagree.

count how many people are doing their PhDs at Harvard. count them at Stanford. count them at Columbia, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and on and on.

add them up.

i’m talking very specifically about one degree. the Yale JD. not Harvard. YALE.

if i had to build myself from a very early age to either graduate from a top school with a PhD vs. a Yale JD, i’d take my odds with the PhD. in fact, i’d almost prefer trying to win a Rhodes scholarship over admission to Yale.

that’s my opinion.

i don’t think i fall into the “We” category. i think sakky is talking about what it takes to finish the degree. i’m just talking about the prestige, wow factor.

for me, it’s Yale JD. no external links needed to prove anything.

14_of_spades · November 22, 2006, 6:28am

fine. on this point, u’ve made it. fine. i obviously wasn’t paying that close attention to the thread. look at the length of my responses and my posts. however, i’d definitely take a Harvard PhD over any other school’s PhD (all other things made equal). i’m not american, so maybe that’s the difference (assuming u are).

second point. i like the Yale JD.

Most Influential Graduate Degrees

CONNECT WITH US