If not pursuing IB, finance, MBB, are Ivies undergrad really that much better than schools like Rice, Swarthmore, CMU?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How good is Brown when it comes to post grad opportunities compared to the other Ivys? DD is deciding between Brown or Rice.

Both a great schools but Rice is regional/local in a way that Brown is not. Look at percent of students from Texas and also focus on Texas related industries, like oil and gas.

Rice is not local!?! Not even regional.

Depending on which source you use 35%-49% of the students at Rice are from Texas. That is what makes it regional, its network is highly concentrated by region and industry due to this. In contrast at Brown, all of the New England states combined, MA, CT, RI, NH, ME, VT on the high side add up to 23%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that if you want to be on a CEO track or make big bucks on Wall Street, Ivy names could open more doors. But if you’re pursuing medical research, tech, natural sciences, are Ivies (undergrad) really that much better than schools a tier below?

With AI changing everything, is old-guard Ivy prestige still as important as it has been before?

The quality and breadth of basic science research at a Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, Hopkins is going to be pretty hard to match outside of a few flagships - Michigan, UCLA, UCSD.

At the undergrad level? There are at least a dozen schools that could offer better research opportunities than Harvard does.

Absolutely not. There are not a dozen non-ivy schools that are better at providing undergrad research experience than even the worst ivy for research.

For research, Dartmouth and Brown are roughly last among Ivies.

Better than them for research/pre-PhD, we have:
Caltech, MIT, Stanford, CMU, JHU, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB CCS, UMichigan, Duke, Rice, Harvey Mudd/Williams/Amherst (depending on field)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you think your kid is going to start a tech or biotech company it's probably worth it to go to an Ivy.

If they just want to work as a scientist or engineer in academia or industry then you should look into what opportunities the different schools offer for getting research/industry experience during undergrad as that will matter more for grad school/job applications than the name of the school. For example, can they get a job working in a professor's lab assisting with their research?

CMU is tops at tech startup, as is Harvard Penn Pton MIT UCB Columbia CalTech. These schools have huge startup culture and funds/links with industry.

Caltech does not have a "huge" startup culture. The only "huge" culture at Caltech is research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that if you want to be on a CEO track or make big bucks on Wall Street, Ivy names could open more doors. But if you’re pursuing medical research, tech, natural sciences, are Ivies (undergrad) really that much better than schools a tier below?

With AI changing everything, is old-guard Ivy prestige still as important as it has been before?

The quality and breadth of basic science research at a Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, Hopkins is going to be pretty hard to match outside of a few flagships - Michigan, UCLA, UCSD.

At the undergrad level? There are at least a dozen schools that could offer better research opportunities than Harvard does.

Absolutely not. There are not a dozen non-ivy schools that are better at providing undergrad research experience than even the worst ivy for research.

There are a dozen SLACs which will provide better basic undergraduate research opportunities than an Ivy. Top R1 labs are not in place to support undergraduates and undergraduates are inefficient when you have a large supply of grad students to work in your labs. There are always some opportunities for undergraduate research at top R1s (it isn't absolute) but it's not the be all and end all that too many people believe.

By this logic, no undergrad at Caltech (a top R1) would ever get research experience since they're all "inefficient".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that if you want to be on a CEO track or make big bucks on Wall Street, Ivy names could open more doors. But if you’re pursuing medical research, tech, natural sciences, are Ivies (undergrad) really that much better than schools a tier below?

With AI changing everything, is old-guard Ivy prestige still as important as it has been before?

The quality and breadth of basic science research at a Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, Hopkins is going to be pretty hard to match outside of a few flagships - Michigan, UCLA, UCSD.

At the undergrad level? There are at least a dozen schools that could offer better research opportunities than Harvard does.

Absolutely not. There are not a dozen non-ivy schools that are better at providing undergrad research experience than even the worst ivy for research.

There are a dozen SLACs which will provide better basic undergraduate research opportunities than an Ivy. Top R1 labs are not in place to support undergraduates and undergraduates are inefficient when you have a large supply of grad students to work in your labs. There are always some opportunities for undergraduate research at top R1s (it isn't absolute) but it's not the be all and end all that too many people believe.

I don't understand this comment whatsoever. Every undergraduate we know at an R1 who wants to do paid research can do paid research. Like it's 100% guaranteed if that's what you want to do.

I have no knowledge of the "quality" of such research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that if you want to be on a CEO track or make big bucks on Wall Street, Ivy names could open more doors. But if you’re pursuing medical research, tech, natural sciences, are Ivies (undergrad) really that much better than schools a tier below?

With AI changing everything, is old-guard Ivy prestige still as important as it has been before?

The quality and breadth of basic science research at a Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, Hopkins is going to be pretty hard to match outside of a few flagships - Michigan, UCLA, UCSD.

At the undergrad level? There are at least a dozen schools that could offer better research opportunities than Harvard does.

Absolutely not. There are not a dozen non-ivy schools that are better at providing undergrad research experience than even the worst ivy for research.

There are a dozen SLACs which will provide better basic undergraduate research opportunities than an Ivy. Top R1 labs are not in place to support undergraduates and undergraduates are inefficient when you have a large supply of grad students to work in your labs. There are always some opportunities for undergraduate research at top R1s (it isn't absolute) but it's not the be all and end all that too many people believe.

This is such a stupid fallacy on DCUM. Repeated by the same people. I like SLACs, mine applied to top ones and ivy/elites. Top R1s get students real research as early as freshman year, and if they stay 2-3 semesters or a summer in the same lab they can get published. The students often help write the papers and are appropriately designated as authors. The top R1s usually pay the students for these positions. Almost every professor, humanities too, allows at least one undergrad in the lab, bigger labs have more, paired one to one with postdocs. It is not just the ivy/elites, UVa and other R1s have similar though sometimes bigger schools have more competition to get an undergrad spot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How good is Brown when it comes to post grad opportunities compared to the other Ivys? DD is deciding between Brown or Rice.

Both a great schools but Rice is regional/local in a way that Brown is not. Look at percent of students from Texas and also focus on Texas related industries, like oil and gas.

Rice is not local!?! Not even regional.

Depending on which source you use 35%-49% of the students at Rice are from Texas. That is what makes it regional, its network is highly concentrated by region and industry due to this. In contrast at Brown, all of the New England states combined, MA, CT, RI, NH, ME, VT on the high side add up to 23%.

36 percent of students at Stanford are from California. Does that make it a regional school? Texas and California are huge states with tons of stellar students. You can't compare some school in Rhode Island or New Hampshire with Stanford or Rice on those terms. Brown and Dartmouth and the other Ivies are perfectly good schools. But they are in tiny states with small pools of top students. There are more than 70 million people in Texas and California alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How good is Brown when it comes to post grad opportunities compared to the other Ivys? DD is deciding between Brown or Rice.

Both a great schools but Rice is regional/local in a way that Brown is not. Look at percent of students from Texas and also focus on Texas related industries, like oil and gas.

Rice is not local!?! Not even regional.

Depending on which source you use 35%-49% of the students at Rice are from Texas. That is what makes it regional, its network is highly concentrated by region and industry due to this. In contrast at Brown, all of the New England states combined, MA, CT, RI, NH, ME, VT on the high side add up to 23%.

36 percent of students at Stanford are from California. Does that make it a regional school? Texas and California are huge states with tons of stellar students. You can't compare some school in Rhode Island or New Hampshire with Stanford or Rice on those terms. Brown and Dartmouth and the other Ivies are perfectly good schools. But they are in tiny states with small pools of top students. There are more than 70 million people in Texas and California alone.

That 70 is not evenly split, California is 39m to Texas' 31m, Rice is more heavily weighted to local applicants than Stanford. Yet, having said that Stanford is more regional than its peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that if you want to be on a CEO track or make big bucks on Wall Street, Ivy names could open more doors. But if you’re pursuing medical research, tech, natural sciences, are Ivies (undergrad) really that much better than schools a tier below?

With AI changing everything, is old-guard Ivy prestige still as important as it has been before?

The quality and breadth of basic science research at a Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech, Hopkins is going to be pretty hard to match outside of a few flagships - Michigan, UCLA, UCSD.

At the undergrad level? There are at least a dozen schools that could offer better research opportunities than Harvard does.

Absolutely not. There are not a dozen non-ivy schools that are better at providing undergrad research experience than even the worst ivy for research.

Stanford
MIT
CalTech
JHU
Chicago
Cal
Duke
Rice
Wisconsin
UIUC
Purdue
GaTech


And those are just off the top of my head. I expect the list is probably about 50 or 60 long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How good is Brown when it comes to post grad opportunities compared to the other Ivys? DD is deciding between Brown or Rice.

Both a great schools but Rice is regional/local in a way that Brown is not. Look at percent of students from Texas and also focus on Texas related industries, like oil and gas.

Rice is not local!?! Not even regional.

Depending on which source you use 35%-49% of the students at Rice are from Texas. That is what makes it regional, its network is highly concentrated by region and industry due to this. In contrast at Brown, all of the New England states combined, MA, CT, RI, NH, ME, VT on the high side add up to 23%.

36 percent of students at Stanford are from California. Does that make it a regional school? Texas and California are huge states with tons of stellar students. You can't compare some school in Rhode Island or New Hampshire with Stanford or Rice on those terms. Brown and Dartmouth and the other Ivies are perfectly good schools. But they are in tiny states with small pools of top students. There are more than 70 million people in Texas and California alone.

That 70 is not evenly split, California is 39m to Texas' 31m, Rice is more heavily weighted to local applicants than Stanford. Yet, having said that Stanford is more regional than its peers.

I think you both are missing how important geography plays in college decisions.

89% of kids don't travel more than 500 miles for college. If you are in CA and want a top 20 school, you have UCB, Stanford and UCLA. If you are in TX you have Rice, and then UT Austin is in the hunt. The neighboring states to CA and TX have relatively small populations, so CA and TX will be the dominant population centers.

If you live in say DC, well you have basically 15 top 20 schools within this radius.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Spouse is a Md/phd educated at Harvard and Hopkins with lots of active NIH funding. We looked at some of the top slacs and he felt the research opportunities were not the equivalent of R1s in terms of basic science. Lots of analysis of common data sets and outcomes based research.

False

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spouse is a Md/phd educated at Harvard and Hopkins with lots of active NIH funding. We looked at some of the top slacs and he felt the research opportunities were not the equivalent of R1s in terms of basic science. Lots of analysis of common data sets and outcomes based research.

False

Dwight Schrute has entered the discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that if you want to be on a CEO track or make big bucks on Wall Street, Ivy names could open more doors. But if you’re pursuing medical research, tech, natural sciences, are Ivies (undergrad) really that much better than schools a tier below?

With AI changing everything, is old-guard Ivy prestige still as important as it has been before?

Rice CMU and Swat (and a couple others) are effectively the same boost as ivy+ schools for pHD MD tech and in some areas CMU and Rice are much better than three of the ivies

How about Amherst and Pomona? Are they as good as the ones mentioned above for PhD MD Tech boost comparable to or even better than some Ivies?

We looked at one of those, so the answer is no. I guess those kids get the experience later in their academic careers, over summer, or just aren’t hard core basic science researchers. Plenty of funded researchers are not, although outcomes medical research seems to be hit harder by the NIH cuts.

You looked at them so the answer is no? You have no idea what you are talking about. The SLAC kids are doing actual lab research all year that is done by grad students at R1s and then if they want to they spend summers at R1s doing research in their labs because of the connections that they have with their professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that if you want to be on a CEO track or make big bucks on Wall Street, Ivy names could open more doors. But if you’re pursuing medical research, tech, natural sciences, are Ivies (undergrad) really that much better than schools a tier below?

With AI changing everything, is old-guard Ivy prestige still as important as it has been before?

Rice CMU and Swat (and a couple others) are effectively the same boost as ivy+ schools for pHD MD tech and in some areas CMU and Rice are much better than three of the ivies

How about Amherst and Pomona? Are they as good as the ones mentioned above for PhD MD Tech boost comparable to or even better than some Ivies?

We looked at one of those, so the answer is no. I guess those kids get the experience later in their academic careers, over summer, or just aren’t hard core basic science researchers. Plenty of funded researchers are not, although outcomes medical research seems to be hit harder by the NIH cuts.

Are you talking about undergrad or still talking about your PhD husband?

Why are you being obtuse? Less sophisticated bench science at slacs, by a good margin. For undergrads and everyone else.

Nonsense

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spouse is a Md/phd educated at Harvard and Hopkins with lots of active NIH funding. We looked at some of the top slacs and he felt the research opportunities were not the equivalent of R1s in terms of basic science. Lots of analysis of common data sets and outcomes based research.

False

Dwight Schrute has entered the discussion.

Are you staring into a mirror?