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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The European-educated economist has managed to make comments & ask questions without calling anyone a moron. Thank you, doctor. The following are my answers to his questions based on my experiences at a wide range of institutions. I’m sure someone will disagree and call me an idiot, and that is certainly their right.

He asked if a public school bachelor’s can get you into an elite private graduate program, & the answer is absolutely. Such programs are competitive to get into however, so you’d have to have excellent grades, a high GRE score, and enthusiastic letters of recommendation no matter where you studied as an undergrad. But the good news is that even if you have to drop below the top tier of elite graduate programs you can still be studying under professors who earned doctorates at fine universities. It’s not like Harvard, MIT, & Chicago econ professors know what’s going on & everybody else is trying to figure out how to tie their shoes.

Another question was how the undergrad/grad programs relate in the USA. In most (but not all) cases an academic department won’t make a distinction between who teaches undergrads & who teaches graduate students. So, depending on what classes are being offered, the same person could be teaching graduate and undergraduates in the same term. It could very well turn out that some professors tend to teach undergrads or graduate students, but that might be influenced by personal preference or topic, rather than only on level of expertise. And like you said, it’s not unheard of that big names teach even introductory courses. That said, it’s not always the most brilliant professors from whom you’d want to take undergraduate classes. They could be great, or they could get bogged down in detail that isn’t necessary at the undergraduate level. Or they could have personality traits that make them ill-suited to teach novices. When I said that the advantages of the elite universities won’t be manifested in undergraduate classes, it was not because the faculty teaching undergrads would be less qualified, but rather the subject matter will not generally be so advanced that the difference between a true world-class expert and a merely very good scholar will be apparent. In fact some of the best undergraduate experiences I had were in classes completely taught by graduate students.

A big difference between US & Europe is that American undergrads typically take APPROXIMATELY 40% of their courses in their major field. Some will take more, some less. The 40% figure is my guess. But compare that to most European undergraduate programs where typically undergrads focus exclusively on their chosen subject. This difference is a big part of why I made the point of the world-famous professors being overkill for most undergrad programs. Yes, I know there are exceptions….it’s possible at some schools for an undergrad to take perhaps 80% or more of their courses in their field, & need challenges beyond the undergraduate program. And that’s why there are often graduate-level classes they can take, or independent study classes where they would delve into a topic on their own, with occasional guidance from a professor. [/quote]

Many, many thanks for addressing my questions. This is super helpful and what you say makes a lot of sense.

And again, I fully agree that the biggest name professors are definitely not necessarily the best teachers (which is especially true for less advanced mtrl, though Nils Bohr is famously known to have been the worst physics teacher ever at pretty much any level.)    [/quote]

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