Why is Johns Hopkins not mentioned much here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Johns Hopkins is a national treasure not a local school. It is the premier medical school in the entire country. Not for spoiled kids who need coddling(aka wussies).
The only institutions in the country that are irreplaceable are
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Hopkins
USNA
Stanford.

2 of the schools are in maryland. These schools fulfill a national purposes and needs.

Um, how about West Point?Wellesley? Columbia? Sooo narrow minded.

Those are not as good.

MIT belongs as unreplacable.

Very broad-minded of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Johns Hopkins is a national treasure not a local school. It is the premier medical school in the entire country. Not for spoiled kids who need coddling(aka wussies).
The only institutions in the country that are irreplaceable are
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Hopkins
USNA
Stanford.

2 of the schools are in maryland. These schools fulfill a national purposes and needs.

Not sure how the above "irreplaceable" list was "developed," but here are some glaring omissions:
West Point -- USMA
William & Mary
UVa
Notre Dame
U. Chicago

Presuming that the list reflects historic significance and substantial contributions to American culture/educational advancement.

Both of you forgot DCUM. And Micky Mouse.

[Anonymous]

It is interesting to see the impressions that people get. Having been at Hopkins, Harvard and several other places (either as a student, researcher, faculty or more than 1-day visitor for work) and from a little bit of feedback from colleagues, here is my categorization:

Total ignorance of undergrads:
Caltech
Harvard (to some degree)
UCSB

Much but not total ignorance:
Berkeley
U Chicago
JHU
Yale
University of Washington


Attention paid
MIT
Princeton
Penn

At the center:
Harvey Mudd
Reed / other SLACs

Just my two cents, not at all scientific.

I went to Reed and then went to graduate school at a large, well respected flagship research university. I have also spent significant amounts of time on other college campuses. My experience--which seems to be the same as what my peers experienced--is that any place that has top notch graduate programs is not going to be very undergraduate oriented/have undergraduate teaching be a huge priority. If you want that, go to a SLAC like Harvey Mudd, Reed, Swarthmore, Amherst, Middlebury, Williams, etc. Places like Texas, Berkeley, Michigan, Harvard, Yale, Chicago etc. don't have undergraduate teaching as a top priority--for many it is a chore. For the professors it is something they have to do, for the grad students it's something they do to get paid, but their real work is on their dissertation. This is not to say that you can't get a great education at someplace where undergrads are not the priority, and research is prioritized. For one, if you are an extremely motivated undergrad, you can get involved in some pretty top notch research/have access to great scholars. Also at places like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, even if undergraduate teaching isn't the priority, the peer effect is pretty great--you're around really really smart people so the classes can be taught to a very high level. But if you want classes that are really focused on pedagogy and critical thinking, attention from professors, ample opportunities to pursue undergraduate research (rather than just striking lucky or the possibility of doing some grunt work or dishwashing for a grad student), classes that are organized in a way to teach you rather than to grade easily so it doesn't eat away too much time from research, etc. then go someplace where there is no graduate program.

[Anonymous]

The thing I wonder in all of this is whether profs at SLACs are generally better teachers. I guess the theory would either have to be that you learn on the job (but if and only if the administration cares about teaching). PhDs who end up at SLACs aren't trained any differently from those who end up in research universities and I didn't see that much self-selection at least at the first job stage. Basically, when the market is tight and especially when you're coordinating location with a significant other, you take your best offer.

[Anonymous]

Oops, left out the "or" after the "either."

or given small class sizes, most academics become (or are able to be) good teachers -- and profs in SLACs get that opportunity, but successful profs in research universities don't (or don't take advantage of it if they do).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The thing I wonder in all of this is whether profs at SLACs are generally better teachers. I guess the theory would either have to be that you learn on the job (but if and only if the administration cares about teaching). PhDs who end up at SLACs aren't trained any differently from those who end up in research universities and I didn't see that much self-selection at least at the first job stage. Basically, when the market is tight and especially when you're coordinating location with a significant other, you take your best offer.

Well but at SLACs the focus is on the undergraduates which is not the case at university. I went to an Ivy but I think education my DC is getting at a SLAC is superior -- more faculty attention, more classroom discussion.

[Anonymous]

The thing I wonder in all of this is whether profs at SLACs are generally better teachers. I guess the theory would either have to be that you learn on the job (but if and only if the administration cares about teaching). PhDs who end up at SLACs aren't trained any differently from those who end up in research universities and I didn't see that much self-selection at least at the first job stage. Basically, when the market is tight and especially when you're coordinating location with a significant other, you take your best offer.

There is a considerable amount of self-selection in terms of who decides to teach at a SLAC. The top more selective SLACs (Reed, Amherst, etc.) are extremely competitive jobs as well, and to land them you need to demonstrate that you have a particular interest in undergraduate education. No, you are not trained any differently, but in most graduate programs people TA at least for a semester or two and get an idea of whether that is something they find fulfilling or not. Most people who apply for jobs at SLACs, especially the more selective ones are people who had an interest in teaching/mentoring in the first place. And their record of teaching (as measured by student evaluations and faculty evaluations) is taken seriously for tenure.

As far as professors at research universities go--well some of them enjoy teaching. Some of them don't as see it as a necessary evil for their job, which is why they didn't apply to jobs at SLACs. I have even met several professors that are too busy managing their labs, flying around the world attending conferences, writing grants, and editing journals in their field to really teach at all who essentially delegate all these duties to their graduate students. But mostly there is no real incentive to do it well. When it comes to tenure, your record as a scholar in terms of research articles, books, and (at least in the sciences) grant money brought in, as well as service roles play a much larger role in your tenure package than your record as an undergraduate professor. So even if you do value teaching undergraduates, when push comes to shove, if the tenure evaluation is 75-90% productivity measured by your record as a scholar--publications and grants--and 10-25% your teaching record, then you can see what professors are going to be more focused on. Aside from a few awards that you can list on your CV which matters far less in prestige than some great lifetime achievement award for your research, there is no real reward for doing a great job teaching...the worst thing that can happen if you do a bad job is you get a slap on the wrist. And professor's attention is very divided between a lot of different obligations. So people don't go above and beyond in teaching. Overall, this is generally good for the university. Most universities get a cut of the research grants to pay for overhead, so if you bring in a lot of money, it's good for the department and the overall financial health of the institution. Also having top notch scholars (nobel laureates and the like) is great PR for a university.

Of course the two body problem and taking the best offer period is part of it, but fundamentally teaching at a SLAC versus a research institution is a completely different beast in terms of what is expected of you, what you need to do to get promoted, and what the overall environment is like. And different people are drawn to it. Perhaps this is different in the humanities, but in the sciences, the self selection factor is huge.

[Anonymous]

I was a PhD student at Harvard and professors held undergrads in a very high regard. They were not necessarily fond of teaching classes, but as a rule liked them and didn't mind interacting with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing I wonder in all of this is whether profs at SLACs are generally better teachers. I guess the theory would either have to be that you learn on the job (but if and only if the administration cares about teaching). PhDs who end up at SLACs aren't trained any differently from those who end up in research universities and I didn't see that much self-selection at least at the first job stage. Basically, when the market is tight and especially when you're coordinating location with a significant other, you take your best offer.

Well but at SLACs the focus is on the undergraduates which is not the case at university. I went to an Ivy but I think education my DC is getting at a SLAC is superior -- more faculty attention, more classroom discussion.

Keep in mind that most decent jobs in the humanities will have 400-800 applications (not an exaggeration), so I'm not sure that self-selection among job candidates is the key factor in the teaching ability of new faculty. Typically, teaching ability and experience are much more important to SLAC hiring committees than to research university hiring committees. In my experience, a job candidate at a SLAC will teach a demonstration class to undergrads, and have multiple "informal" meetings with undergrads, in addition to a research presentation. For a job candidate at a research university, the big event is the research presentation-ability to teach undergrads is given some lip service, but doesn't really matter that much-and I know a few people who had absolutely horrible teaching evals from grad school and are now R1 professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, STEM field (which probably makes sense given that I listed MIT + Caltech). Anyhow, interesting that humanities for the most part align.

My sense at Harvard is that teaching is not a priority for faculty and I haven't heard ever of any teaching initiatives that originated at Harvard (as opposed to Princeton, for example). Not sure why it's not with Caltech + UCSB except that I think they have enough money that they can sometimes create original programs that many other places can't). It also depends on the major.

Oh, I forgot stanford -- it would be in the "much but not total ignorance section."

With regards to research, you want to look at that different from how much profs care about teaching undergrads in the classroom. When you go to a school you want to ask what percentage of STEM students do research, whether they publish papers and do so in the summer. MIT + Caltech + Hopkins + UW do great with undergrad research. So does Harvey Mudd Princeton has an undergrad thesis program that gets students involved. Harvard, UCSB, Yale and some others I am less sure of. But the thing to be clear on is that the "culture" of the classroom and of research are different. And having good grad students would actually be good for undergrad research -- my grad students are the primary supervisors of the undergrads since I couldn't possibly supervise the 10 or more undergrads currently working in my group with any regularity. I meet with these students once every couple months but the grad students make sure they know what they are doing in the lab.

Also, at some schools doing research in different areas is harder or easier than others. If your kid is interested in medicine, research at MIT or UCSB will be different because there is no med school, than a place where students work at the med school like Penn (whose med school is right on campus). Another question is what to do over the summer. MIT has a fabulous summer research program. Others have nothing and resulting ad hoc approaches if summer research is a goal

Any feedback on Rensselaer or Worchester Poly for undergrads? Not engineering focused?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's close and highly ranked...
Is it the neighborhood? Miserable student body??

It's like going to a third world country.

That is a silly comment. I live right next to the campus in a little rowhouse surrounded by small businesses, coffee shops, and 3+ parks. I love it, and no, we're not dodging bullets or stepping over starving children.

[Anonymous]

I work in Baltimore and while the Homewood campus area is lovely, the city has deteriorated in my view. Panhandlers at red lights all over town. Bail bondsmen all over town. I don't know what you call this. Urban blight. It's very sad. Hopkins itself knows it has to sell applicants on Baltimore, for both undergrad and medical campus programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in Baltimore and while the Homewood campus area is lovely, the city has deteriorated in my view. Panhandlers at red lights all over town. Bail bondsmen all over town. I don't know what you call this. Urban blight. It's very sad. Hopkins itself knows it has to sell applicants on Baltimore, for both undergrad and medical campus programs.

Hopkins has to "sell" its med school/ hospital to would-be students/residents/fellows? You clearly don't know any physicians.

[Anonymous]

I think it's not mentioned much because so few applicants actually get accepted

[Anonymous]

16:03 It's a fact. A student accept to Harvard or Stanford considers Cambridge versus Baltimore or Palo Alto versus Baltimore.