BF2S Forums EE Chats July

Uzique wrote:

Winston_Churchill wrote:

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i meant it more in the way how you and jay arguing with "i have 15 people in my program, therefore its the best", etc.  my point about larger schools = generally better is exactly what you agreed with in your point. i also lazily grouped facilities with research funding (since for sciences theyre usually the same).  funny enough, u of t publishes the second most amount of research papers of any institute in the world, only behind harvard iirc.  im not really sure how your british system works, but canada has very few (if any) small, private schools.  i cant think of one off the top of my head, and the large majority of universities are within my province.  u of t is also the largest library in canada, and one of the largest in north america.  not being in the arts/humanities skews my views on the use of libraries (in 3 years ive never taken a book out of there), but id imagine that would be a factor in deciding whether or not you'd like to teach at such a institution. 

a lot of the library items are things you cant get online - a large section of our biggest library is a rare books area where only professors/grad students can go.

academic libraries definitely have that benefit, yep, but no self-respecting university would ever be lacking in that department. facilities are pretty much a given. over here we don't have private universities (well, there are 3, and they're complete anomalies) so the funding situation and distribution of support really matters quite a lot. hence our two big elite university groups commanding quite a lot of political importance in the world of academia. the quality and influence of research published is probably the best true way to gauge the academic worth of an institution, but the evaluations of research are of little interest to non-academics and 'world league rankings' which go far more often on spurious stats like 'student satisfaction', 'global influence' (i.e. brand and prestige), 'international student mix', and so on. im sure if you did some snooping into the actual academic research quality of the world's top 100 unis, you'd be surprised: i said myself here the other day, when considering postgraduate options, that my tiny and comparatively insignificant english dept. here at lowly world 88th is significantly better than ucl's world ranked 4th department, academically. but of course, again, unless you're considering a career in academia, this accuracy barely matters. people see harvard/yale on a resume and automatically go yes because it's a social signifier, reinforced by league tables that be-default encourage and support the biggest, wealthiest and most 'influential' institutions.

how the do you guys go to school with 20k plus students...

that's like a good sized town, we only have around 700 kids at our high school.

in canada - which is the only place i was going to go since i dont want to pay 10x the tuition to go to the states - u of t, mcgill, waterloo and ubc are our best universities by far.  out of those, u of t and mcgill outshine the others in every way except for waterloo's stellar comp sci programs.  between u of t and mcgill, u of t has had quite a bit more successful research come out of it.  for one, multi-touch screens came from u of t... therefore, most iphones and the like are based off of the research coming out of here, which is pretty massive when you think about it.  and i actually saw a 100TB hard drive made here 2 years ago.  we're certainly not slacking on our research, its the only thing we really have since, being in canada, we dont have the 'ivy league prestige'

when its a school of 80k in a city of 3 million its really not all that crazy...

we invented good taste.

Winston_Churchill wrote:

in canada - which is the only place i was going to go since i dont want to pay 10x the tuition to go to the states - u of t, mcgill, waterloo and ubc are our best universities by far.  out of those, u of t and mcgill outshine the others in every way except for waterloo's stellar comp sci programs.  between u of t and mcgill, u of t has had quite a bit more successful research come out of it.  for one, multi-touch screens came from u of t... therefore, most iphones and the like are based off of the research coming out of here, which is pretty massive when you think about it.  and i actually saw a 100TB hard drive made here 2 years ago.  we're certainly not slacking on our research, its the only thing we really have since, being in canada, we dont have the 'ivy league prestige'

when its a school of 80k in a city of 3 million its really not all that crazy...

ahem, MCMASTER, ahem

Uzique wrote:

no, i don't think anyone ever gets 'invited'. i looked at colombia for grad school but the fees are literally ridiculous, and sorting out international scholarships and funding is way too much hassle compared to same-quality colleges in the uk. the only other thing was that my university sometimes has a few rhodes scholarships to yale, but i missed that deadline by a long mile, anyway, and don't think yale have much to offer in terms of an MA in the thing that i want to do. if i ever want to do a PhD i'll definitely consider us universities because they're much more lucrative (and my doctorate may be in american postmodernism, hence finally meaning uk uni courses don't cut it).

Not really and invite, more along the way of Scholarships.
Example:

http://www.rhodesscholar.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_Rolle
Sorry, echo!

Last edited by 13rin (2011-07-19 19:02:00)

Uzique wrote:

no, i don't think anyone ever gets 'invited'. i looked at colombia for grad school but the fees are literally ridiculous, and sorting out international scholarships and funding is way too much hassle compared to same-quality colleges in the uk. the only other thing was that my university sometimes has a few rhodes scholarships to yale, but i missed that deadline by a long mile, anyway, and don't think yale have much to offer in terms of an MA in the thing that i want to do. if i ever want to do a PhD i'll definitely consider us universities because they're much more lucrative (and my doctorate may be in american postmodernism, hence finally meaning uk uni courses don't cut it).

doctorate in american postmodernism? i have no idea what that is but i always figured doctorate degrees were focused on one big thing like something in the sciences or an english degree.

also my fucking english ivy died. it was huge. spider mites got to it and started webbing (worst sign of infestation).

apparently they like weed too.

Uzique wrote:

academic libraries definitely have that benefit, yep, but no self-respecting university would ever be lacking in that department. facilities are pretty much a given. over here we don't have private universities (well, there are 3, and they're complete anomalies) so the funding situation and distribution of support really matters quite a lot. hence our two big elite university groups commanding quite a lot of political importance in the world of academia. the quality and influence of research published is probably the best true way to gauge the academic worth of an institution, but the evaluations of research are of little interest to non-academics and 'world league rankings' which go far more often on spurious stats like 'student satisfaction', 'global influence' (i.e. brand and prestige), 'international student mix', and so on. im sure if you did some snooping into the actual academic research quality of the world's top 100 unis, you'd be surprised: i said myself here the other day, when considering postgraduate options, that my tiny and comparatively insignificant english dept. here at lowly world 88th is significantly better than ucl's world ranked 4th department, academically. but of course, again, unless you're considering a career in academia, this accuracy barely matters. people see harvard/yale on a resume and automatically go yes because it's a social signifier, reinforced by league tables that be-default encourage and support the biggest, wealthiest and most 'influential' institutions.

Published research is great for the universities prestige but it's godawful for the students. Maybe it's different over there, but if you have a Nobel Laureate on staff here you pretty much have to be post-grad in order to ever actually meet the guy. He might put his name on a lecture but it will be a Teacher's Assistant in there in front of the 300 kids in the lecture hall. If you're after prestige, go to a school like the ones you jerk off to. If you want to actually learn the material and interact with a real live human being, go to a smaller school. That's my experience anyway with American universities.

night ebugs

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bout to sit down with some beer and watch hobo with a shotgun

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