I think the set {MIT, CMU, Harvey Mudd} dominates all the other places you are considering. Roughly speaking, MIT/CMU are the clear best in terms of academics, but if you are worried that the academic programs would be too difficult for you to have time to explore other topics on your own, then Harvey Mudd is a more laid-back school that still has good academics and the sort of quirky student body that might appeal to LWers.
In more detail: first, you almost certainly shouldn’t go to Harvard. Harvard is an excellent school, particularly in terms of theoretical math and physics, but it doesn’t focus much on engineering. You also probably shouldn’t go to USC, UMD, or Swarthmore, because the only reason to choose those over MIT/Harvard would be to have an easier degree program, which Harvey Mudd provides while having a better academic program. Note: I am not completely sure of this statement, look up the relative rankings of engineering at USC, UMD, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd yourself to make sure.
In terms of overall strength of academics as well as student body, {MIT,Harvard} are better than the rest of the colleges you listed, with CMU comparable enough to not rule it out entirely on academic grounds. As I already noted, Harvard is not an engineering school, which rules it out. Therefore, if your goal is to have the best engineering education possible, and to be surrounded by the brightest possible group of peers and instructors, you should go to MIT, or possibly CMU. Further, if undergraduate research is important to you, this is a further reason to consider MIT.
The only reason to not go to the best school possible is because better schools probably have more difficult classes, which might give you less free time. I personally have not run into this issue except by my own volition (I’m currently taking five classes, play sports, and spend 10+ hours/week on research; you only need to take four classes/semester to graduate on time). However, I could imagine this being a problem, especially if you come in without much background and choose a major with many graduation requirements.
The question then becomes how to determine if going to a top university would be an enriching experience or just suck up all your time for 4 years. For this you may want to consider your current background. Are you generally mathematically mature, or will you spend your first semester taking introductory calculus? Do you know at least one programming language? Can you pick up new information quickly? Have you taken at least a couple AP science courses? If you answered yes to all of these, you’re probably reasonably well-prepared for any university. If you answered no to all of these, then you probably would not have a good time at the most rigorous universities like MIT/CMU. If it was a general mixture, you could get an improved estimate by looking at typical classes on OCW and seeing if the pace is reasonable or not.
Finally, please don’t underestimate the relevance of being able (at a top research university) to interact with the world experts in most fields, as well as extremely bright students. I’ve discovered numerous academic gems through conversations with these people that I would have been unlikely to get by participating in online communities or reading papers off of google scholar (including entire fields of study / research programs that I didn’t know existed).
I’d hope that you’re biased towards what you had decided for yourself :P.
In short, I entirely agree with everything you said about MIT ultimately being the best school in terms of providing the best education, smartest peers, and probably not destroying my free time. If my only goal were to become the best technically-skilled person I can be, MIT, CMU, or Harvey Mudd (prolly MIT) would hands down be my top choice.
I’m somewhat concerned about my ability to maintain my non-traditionally-technical skills at MIT though, particularly in fields like writing.
However, the main argument against the best schools is that they’re also more expensive, and less likely to give me any money. Going to MIT would probably cost at least $200k, and I have a sibling, and parents who’d like to retire (they’re in the range of a decade away from that). I’m not sure if my going to a more expensive school would be worth their working for the rest of their lives, but I’d have to talk to them about that.
Alternatively, I could just take out loans. The main argument against this seems to be the fact that I’d then need to pay them off, and doing so would probably require me getting a job. I’m not worried about my ability to do so, but I might prefer to have a few years of freedom during which I don’t need to worry about paying off any debts, and only need to make enough money to support myself.
I see, so the potential issue is financial. I have been fortunate enough to not have to deal with financial issues, so I’m not sure I’m particularly qualified to comment in this area. One comment is that you realistically don’t know what you’re going to be doing with your life, and if a better college has, e.g., a 10% chance of improving your decision-making in this area significantly then that is fairly worthwhile (unfortunately the actual probability is pretty hard to measure, so it’s hard to put a specific value on this).
If you feel particularly competent academically (e.g. plan to take more than four classes per semester), an option is to graduate in under 4 years to alleviate debts somewhat, or to spend your 4th year as a Masters’ student so that MIT pays your tuition (this latter option might only be possible for CS majors at MIT, and otherwise is college-specific). But $150k is probably still a substantial sum.
Class-wise, your concern about writing is probably valid; we have plenty of writing classes, but my impression is that the grading in said classes doesn’t usually incentivize quality, at least from my perspective. But there are at least some humanities professors that take writing seriously, so if you can find them and take their classes, you could get good feedback. Otherwise, if you don’t care about feedback and just want to practice, you could take the opportunity to get easy A’s in (some of) your humanities classes.
Yeah, pretty much. I don’t feel like a better college would substantially improve my life-choice decision making, but I’m pretty sure that it would have a big influence over what life-choices I notice myself as having, can follow through on, or have available to me.
$150k is $50k less, which is probably a year or so of post-graduation income, so its pretty significant. Thanks for the advice.
Writing improvement could probably be done over the internet.
And if I fail at finding those professors, I could probably convince one of my English teachers to hang out with me after I graduate.
Disclaimer: I go to MIT and am probably biased.
I think the set {MIT, CMU, Harvey Mudd} dominates all the other places you are considering. Roughly speaking, MIT/CMU are the clear best in terms of academics, but if you are worried that the academic programs would be too difficult for you to have time to explore other topics on your own, then Harvey Mudd is a more laid-back school that still has good academics and the sort of quirky student body that might appeal to LWers.
I will also note that MIT is probably unique in terms of the ease with which undergraduates can do research.
In more detail: first, you almost certainly shouldn’t go to Harvard. Harvard is an excellent school, particularly in terms of theoretical math and physics, but it doesn’t focus much on engineering. You also probably shouldn’t go to USC, UMD, or Swarthmore, because the only reason to choose those over MIT/Harvard would be to have an easier degree program, which Harvey Mudd provides while having a better academic program. Note: I am not completely sure of this statement, look up the relative rankings of engineering at USC, UMD, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd yourself to make sure.
In terms of overall strength of academics as well as student body, {MIT,Harvard} are better than the rest of the colleges you listed, with CMU comparable enough to not rule it out entirely on academic grounds. As I already noted, Harvard is not an engineering school, which rules it out. Therefore, if your goal is to have the best engineering education possible, and to be surrounded by the brightest possible group of peers and instructors, you should go to MIT, or possibly CMU. Further, if undergraduate research is important to you, this is a further reason to consider MIT.
The only reason to not go to the best school possible is because better schools probably have more difficult classes, which might give you less free time. I personally have not run into this issue except by my own volition (I’m currently taking five classes, play sports, and spend 10+ hours/week on research; you only need to take four classes/semester to graduate on time). However, I could imagine this being a problem, especially if you come in without much background and choose a major with many graduation requirements.
The question then becomes how to determine if going to a top university would be an enriching experience or just suck up all your time for 4 years. For this you may want to consider your current background. Are you generally mathematically mature, or will you spend your first semester taking introductory calculus? Do you know at least one programming language? Can you pick up new information quickly? Have you taken at least a couple AP science courses? If you answered yes to all of these, you’re probably reasonably well-prepared for any university. If you answered no to all of these, then you probably would not have a good time at the most rigorous universities like MIT/CMU. If it was a general mixture, you could get an improved estimate by looking at typical classes on OCW and seeing if the pace is reasonable or not.
Finally, please don’t underestimate the relevance of being able (at a top research university) to interact with the world experts in most fields, as well as extremely bright students. I’ve discovered numerous academic gems through conversations with these people that I would have been unlikely to get by participating in online communities or reading papers off of google scholar (including entire fields of study / research programs that I didn’t know existed).
Thanks for the reply.
I’d hope that you’re biased towards what you had decided for yourself :P.
In short, I entirely agree with everything you said about MIT ultimately being the best school in terms of providing the best education, smartest peers, and probably not destroying my free time. If my only goal were to become the best technically-skilled person I can be, MIT, CMU, or Harvey Mudd (prolly MIT) would hands down be my top choice.
I’m somewhat concerned about my ability to maintain my non-traditionally-technical skills at MIT though, particularly in fields like writing.
However, the main argument against the best schools is that they’re also more expensive, and less likely to give me any money. Going to MIT would probably cost at least $200k, and I have a sibling, and parents who’d like to retire (they’re in the range of a decade away from that). I’m not sure if my going to a more expensive school would be worth their working for the rest of their lives, but I’d have to talk to them about that.
Alternatively, I could just take out loans. The main argument against this seems to be the fact that I’d then need to pay them off, and doing so would probably require me getting a job. I’m not worried about my ability to do so, but I might prefer to have a few years of freedom during which I don’t need to worry about paying off any debts, and only need to make enough money to support myself.
I see, so the potential issue is financial. I have been fortunate enough to not have to deal with financial issues, so I’m not sure I’m particularly qualified to comment in this area. One comment is that you realistically don’t know what you’re going to be doing with your life, and if a better college has, e.g., a 10% chance of improving your decision-making in this area significantly then that is fairly worthwhile (unfortunately the actual probability is pretty hard to measure, so it’s hard to put a specific value on this).
If you feel particularly competent academically (e.g. plan to take more than four classes per semester), an option is to graduate in under 4 years to alleviate debts somewhat, or to spend your 4th year as a Masters’ student so that MIT pays your tuition (this latter option might only be possible for CS majors at MIT, and otherwise is college-specific). But $150k is probably still a substantial sum.
Class-wise, your concern about writing is probably valid; we have plenty of writing classes, but my impression is that the grading in said classes doesn’t usually incentivize quality, at least from my perspective. But there are at least some humanities professors that take writing seriously, so if you can find them and take their classes, you could get good feedback. Otherwise, if you don’t care about feedback and just want to practice, you could take the opportunity to get easy A’s in (some of) your humanities classes.
Yeah, pretty much. I don’t feel like a better college would substantially improve my life-choice decision making, but I’m pretty sure that it would have a big influence over what life-choices I notice myself as having, can follow through on, or have available to me.
$150k is $50k less, which is probably a year or so of post-graduation income, so its pretty significant. Thanks for the advice.
Writing improvement could probably be done over the internet.
And if I fail at finding those professors, I could probably convince one of my English teachers to hang out with me after I graduate.