Professor Accessibility, TA's, and Relationships

mathboy98
Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:50:06 +0000

There’s also a sole emphasis on undergraduate teaching as opposed to research and graduates like MIT.



Obviously an alum like Mollie knows exactly what she’s talking about, but I thought I’d put in a word – the one major difference between graduate students and undergraduates is that graduate students are there specifically to work on something or the other with the given professor. I can only imagine the professor being a little more interested in a student that is explicitly interested in him/her in a more specific way, and is committing to several years of work together. So realistically, if you want exactly the same level of attention, you can just go to graduate school early and commit to working with that advisor. But sure, unlike many other schools with vastly stronger graduate students than undergraduates, I imagine the professors would be optimistic about undergraduates being able to do good work.

And I’m going to second the point on TAs. I know what it can take for someone to be an MIT graduate student in my field of interest, and the students are very qualified to teach things.