Most intellectual schools (i.e. Where to Learn for Learning's Sake?)

College Search & Lists
41

<p>I didn’t mean to pounce on engineering, I just meant to bring up that engineering leads to a job the way physics and math do not.</p>

<p>You can be career and goal-oriented and be intellectually curious, for sure (says somebody whose best friend from childhood is very intellectually curious and is also in the process of establishing a relationship of sorts with Goldman Sachs), but when we say “learning for its own sake,” I hear “learning even if it doesn’t do diddly to lead you to a job.” Is that a misinterpretation on my part?</p>

42

<p>unalove, “learning for its own sake” includes reading books that have not been assigned for a class, studying a foreign language just because, attending a series of lectures on a topic unrelated to one’s major, taking an art class in the evening through an extension program, forming or attending a study group on an important political issue of the day, joining a book club, teaching yourself a computer language that isn’t required for your academic program, etc etc. </p>

<p>I don’t think it matters one whit whether or not one is majoring in an easily employable field. The more I think about it, the more I think it is easier to be an independent learner at a large university than a small LAC, since there will be more opportunities to engage in learning opportunities unrelated to one’s formal classwork.</p>

<p>It sounds to me like some posters think only humanities majors are able to engage in learning for its own sake, since most other majors might accidentally lead to employability!</p>

43

<p>Midmo,</p>

<p>I certainly agree that “learning for its own sake” does not lie in the exclusive domain of humanities majors. But Unalove has a valid point when discussing - specifically - some pre-professional majors. At Vanderbilt, for example, a school you know well, a look at a very non-humanities but still non-pre-professional major - math - reveals requirements that are fulfilled with only 32 credits in the department. Engineering majors at Vandy (BME/CE, for example) must complete 103 of 127 total credits in engineering coursework or math/science supporting fields. The opportunity to study that foreign language or take that art class you reference is simply not the same. A Whartonite or ILR major at Cornell would face an identical problem of overwhelming undergraduate requirements. </p>

<p>I personally don’t see that LACs as an academic entity have any stranglehold on “learning for its own sake.” But relatively few offer engineering and business majors - majors that often dominate a campus. Those majors, one must admit, simply allow for many fewer elective offerings. They certainly allow for fewer opportunities to pursue that “and now for something completely different” intellectual interest. LACs don’t promise a magical answer for the student interested in that “employable” engineering field. But they honestly admit that there is no way to get there with only 4 undergrad years without bypassing many of those great elective courses we all now regret not taking x number of years ago. Their best solution is to offer 5 year double bachelor’s degrees or direct you to a focused MS or PhD once you’ve got that BA/BS in math/chem/bio/physics/astronomy/geology undergrad. So much to learn, so little time.</p>

44

<p>small schools. liberal arts.</p>

45

<p>Well, midmo considers “learning for its own sake” any kind of self-initiated learning, whether it be through classes or not, so you could have your engineering/bio/econ triple major with no room for electives in his/her schedule who is reading Hobbes on the side for fun.</p>

<p>Another way of looking at it… if you were to enter a classroom at a college and ask the students two questions: “How many of you have to be here?” and “How many of you want to be here?” How would those responses vary from college to college? (Certainly some of the “have to be here” people will also “want to be here,” but not all the “want to be here” people will “have to be here”).</p>

<p>Another question to which I think a “yes” shows an unusual commitment to learning: “How many of you are taking this class even though you might not get as high a grade as you’d like?”</p>

46

<p>wbwa,</p>

<p>If the phrase we are concentrating on is “learning for learning’s sake”, I must repeat that automatic dismissal of applied science/engineering types is completely off the mark. I know several engineering students–one of them extremely well–who have many intellectual interests, but the one that can be satisfied best within the structure of formal education is the interest in understanding the details of how the physical world works, and how to manipulate it. In other words, they study engineering because they love to learn about those things. The fact that that knowledge leads directly to employment reflects the value the rest of us put on that knowledge. It is not a reflection of any lack of interest in learning for the sake of learning.</p>

<p>Since you are familiar with the engineering program at Vanderbilt, you must know that one of the ‘hooks’ VUSE uses to convince top students to accept their scholarships is that students are encouraged to take as many non-engineering classes as they can manage. While students cannot double major within engineering (with a couple of exceptions), many students add on one or even two majors outside of engineering. This is possible because VUSE is far more liberal with granting credit or advance standing to incoming students than most engineering programs. The student I know best entered with 64 credits, and is triple majoring. One of his engineering courses is actually housed in the psychology department, but cross-listed in CE and enrolls a lot of neurobiology students also (related to artificial intelligence). The stereotype of the narrow-focused engineering drudge is overblown, as is the notion that history/literature/philosophy/languages are the only fields that enroll students with a pure ‘love of learning’.</p>

<p>BTW, my first undergraduate degree is in history. I believed all that stuff, too, until I finally took my science requirements at the end of my course of study. Then I discovered what an ignoramus I was despite all my history, literature, ancient Greek, Romance language and philosophy courses, so I went back to school (different state) and got an undergraduate degree in biochemistry. Biochemistry is a very applied field, but I still studied it because I loved learning about it–not because it would lead to a job. </p>

<p>So, I end up where I started in my first post on this thread: the OP will find students who learn for the sake of learning just about anywhere he goes to school. If he wants to avoid all students who love to learn about how to use knowledge to manipulate the physical world, then he should avoid all universities that include genetics, engineering, molecular biology, microbiology departments.</p>

47

<p>Yeah, I think that the top tech schools (e.g. Caltech, MIT) are very much into learning for learning’s sake. Any student at these schools could have gone to just about any other school (there are exceptions to this, but not many) and cruised through easily, but instead they went to a school where they figured they’d learn more. </p>

<p>People regularly overload themselves in their class schedules, often with classes they don’t need, because of the kid-in-a-candy-store mentality. I’ve seen plenty of people (not in majors that required or even recommended them) take organic chemistry, complex analysis, the 30 hour/week software engineering lab, quantum physics, and the famed, heavy-workload intro computer science class, among many others, “because it looks like fun.” I had a bio-major friend who took the intro EE class and the microcontroller project lab because she figured it would be fun. I had a friend who was a double major in environmental science and urban planning who took the first six classes of the aero/astro engineering curriculum, which are notorious as killer classes, because “aero/astro looks neat!”</p>

<p>In addition, these schools have a strong research culture among the undergrads, and a tremendous culture of doing your own projects and experiments outside of class (often in dorm lounges or hallways, a la the movie “Real Genius”).</p>

48

<p>“MIT’s curriculum would make toast of a lot of students who enroll at St. John’s. Caltech’s too.”</p>

<p>Saint John’s College curriculum would make toast of a lot of students who enroll at MIT – and Caltech too.</p>

49

<p>I think most of the MIT and Caltech students could keep up. They might find the St. John’s curriculum more limited than the scope of their personal interests. </p>

<p>[College</a> Search - St. John’s College - St. John’s - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board) </p>

<p>[College</a> Search - St. John’s College - SJC - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board) </p>

<p>[College</a> Search - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board) </p>

<p>[College</a> Search - California Institute of Technology - Caltech - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)</p>

50

<p>“I think most of the MIT and Caltech students could keep up.”</p>

<p>The material studied at St John’s would overwhelm the couple of dozen MIT/Caltech grads with whom I socialize (including my spouse.) These people tend to have less aptitude for languages, literature and philosophy, and they tend to be poor expository writers. There’s a difference between the way scientists think and the way students of the liberal arts think, and few people seem to have facility with both ways of viewing the world. </p>

<p>“They might find the St. John’s curriculum more limited than the scope of their personal interests.”</p>

<p>Just as St. John’s students might find the MIT and Caltech curricula more limited than the scope of their personal interests.</p>

51

<p>And yet both MIT and Caltech have higher average SAT scores in Critical Reading. Just because we tech people are sciencecentric doesnt mean we suck at writing (though I admittedly do). </p>

<p>and Im sad Harvey Mudd hasnt been mentioned yet. We have one of the most difficult curriculum in the country and 99% of people havent heard of us. Now thats learning for learning sake!</p>

52

<p>I think a mark of ‘learning for learning sake’ might be the extent to which students talk about the subjects outside of classroom, on their own, for the fun of it, for the joy of digging, the joy of getting to a lower level of understanding. Let me quickly note that this goes well beyond just getting the best grade.</p>

<p>This could be for any subject, preprofessional, or navel gazing liberal arts.</p>

<p>I am not sure Knox showed up on this thread yet, but in my visit to Knox, I asked that very question - how much do the students talk about the subjects outside of class; I suggested that this might be construed as ’ how nerdy is Knox?'</p>

<p>The student tour guide proclaimed, pretty loudly - I was taken by her enthusiastic, proud, innocent, proclamation -</p>

<p>“Everyone is a nerd at Knox.”</p>

<p>Another quick note: another earmark of the love of learning ethos could be that the beauty of the campus or the variety of student activities, or other such special effects, might be irrelevent to this ethos. Again, at Knox, there was, literally, a hold in the wall in the music audition room. There were freight trains around, and the town is trying to recover from its Midwestern rust belt blues, but the campus is ALIVE with students who want to be students.</p>

<p>Another image: recall the Oxford Cleric from The Canterbury Tales. He was so poor, yet he spent all he had on books - almost like a secular version of the widow in Jesus’s widow’s mite story (lady was poor, but gave her last red cent to someone poorer than her)</p>

<p>Beloit C might get close to this ethos, too.</p>

53

<p>“a mark of ‘learning for learning sake’ might be the extent to which students talk about the subjects outside of classroom, on their own, for the fun of it, for the joy of digging, the joy of getting to a lower level of understanding. Let me quickly note that this goes well beyond just getting the best grade.”</p>

<p>Of all my friends who go to so many different colleges all over the country,
it is my friends at Hampshire that best fit the above criteria.</p>

54

<p>

</p>

<p>I think all of these are fantastic questions and really wish there was some sort of organization which would poll students in that way.</p>

55

<p>quote–
The prime example is St. John’s, where there are no electives and no majors.</p>

<p>also no <em>grades</em></p>

<p>grades can introduce artifacts into the teacher - learner process that can obfuscate the ‘love of learning’.</p>

<p>this is why john’s has to be right up there in this list</p>

56

<p>Maybe a the best (and only?) way to get a feel of the intellectual feel of a school is to visit a class and see what the students do afterward. At Chicago, most shuffle out awkwardly, but you will see a few staying to talk to the professor-- 10, 15, 30 minutes after class has ended.</p>

<p>What’s really key, though, is that I can find intellectual discussion everywhere. It doesn’t mean I find it everywhere all the time, but my friends sometimes talk about The Iliad while they are playing Guitar Hero, or they use what they’ve learned in economics to point out why and how a Charles Schwab ad on TV is misleading. Or, I could go to a party, where, after my friend will go “Wooooooooo! I’m so drunnnnnnk!” will proceed to see how much poetry he can recite from memory.</p>

<p>My own GPA at Chicago is unfantastic for the precise reason that I can’t get enthusiastic about learning for grades, and while I’m disciplined enough to do the readings and pay attention in class, I find I can’t really study well at all. I choose courses based on how much they interest me, many of them outside my strongest field, not on what kind of grade I think I can get.</p>

57

<p>

</p>

<p>In this regard, I think that the big-name tech schools also do extremely well. What else would one expect from a bunch of proud-to-be-geeky geeks? :)</p>

58

<p>I think that this is an important thread, bump!</p>

59

<p>I think that it is important to consider the positives and negatives of this ideal as played out in the real world.
I’ve studied at and now work at the University of Chicago. The “Life of the Mind” indeed. On the other hand, there are plenty of people here who just can’t relate to or empathize with others. I understand introverted, but over and over again I say hello to people who pretend that they didn’t see or hear me. I have to laugh about concerns about crime on the South Side of Chicago. Students are, in my experience, about 10-20 times more likely to commit suicide than to be killed in a crime.
With this as a background, and as a background for my first two college applicants as well, the general family consensus was to get away from Hyde Park and to social schools, given smart students.
My son went to Dartmouth. A very social, energetic student body. At the same time a place where women put on a dress and some nice heels and end up in a fraternity house basement playing pong of a Saturday night (and plenty of other nights as well). More than a few graduate with drinking problems.
My daughter is at Princeton. It amazes me how some of the smartest people in the world end up obsessing over the minutia of social status and cliques. Some waste.
So pick your poison. If I discover nirvana, I’ll be sure to post.
As an aside, the academics at all these places are almost unmatched.</p>

60

<p>Without naming names, less endowed schools who cater to the “learning for learning’s sake” crowd tend to attract the idle children of the rich.
I’m sure there are exceptions to this. But I feel for the kid of modest means who unawares ends up in this social milieu. Don’t lose your compass, an entirely easy thing to do. Your roommate goes to Argentina for winter break?
There is nothing wrong with you.</p>