51–60 of 206 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, yes, it is. people from the ivy league run the US, so it's prestigious in the US. people from oxford and cambridge run the UK, so it's prestigious in the commonwealth. it's really not any more complicated than that.
100% this, I'd guess if you asked everyone in the U.S, it'd probably go 9:1 against Oxford and Cambridge
I was a TA at Yale when I did my PhD there and I contrast that experience to when I was a TA at University of Calgary. Whether it’s a higher sense of entitlement or just grinding it out to maximize your official grade the contrast between these two schools was striking. At Yale you’d better think twice about honest grading because if you did there would be an army at your door with pitchforks ready. You then have to…
I've actually seen similar things happen at public schools; I think students may also intuit that very little incentivizes profs to grade honestly: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/13/what-incentivizes-profess...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard first hand stories from friends who did their undergrad at Harvard that spoke to favoritism. One is: while playing rugby, a friend tackles another student. The coach pulls my friend aside and tells him to stop "hitting so hard" (my friend is an average to below average sized guy). Puzzled, my friend asks why, to which the coach replies, "think about the kid's name." He was a Kennedy.
There's favoritism, and then there's pragmatism. This seems like very sound advice.
The article ends with: It’s a system that polishes privilege, its byproduct a contempt for earned authority. Many of the people who started with this attitude had it ratified and encouraged by perhaps the most prestigious university in the world — and now they’re running the whole show. Emphasis on now added. Who in their right mind thinks people who attend Harvard and a handful of other elite universities and prep s…
Is Harvard really considered more prestigious than Oxford or Cambridge? That doesn't follow my perception.
Obviously that's only one measure of prestige.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on your final exam papers. At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later. Of course universities don't like this…
Really? Spreading grades out among various assignments and tests is how I managed to pass university (I coincidentally also attended the University of Calgary, hi rdlecler1!). I would have imploded if it all came down to a single giant exam. Why the heck would you want academic achievement to come down to a handful of hours of actual performance? What goal does that serve? University isn't the Olympics.
If you take AC motors, and fail, and study your ass off and six months later can pass it with 100%, shouldn't that really be... your actual grade? Isn't a grade supposed to represent your ability and understanding of a topic?
And then almost magically: health problems, study problems, (most) test anxiety, and other problems no longer actually matter.
My point is that "rich" and "arrogant" are key words here. Such people tend to get preferential treatment in our society, at Harvard and elsewhere. It's hardly specific to Harvard.
Here's a working link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0... The article is short, and only uses an anecdote to support its claim. While I can generally agree that places like Harvard work more in connections, networks, and money than intellectual rigor, the article is too short and missing enough detail to fall flat.
As a former undergrad, the points about grade inflation are 100% correct, and everything else is garbage. > Many of the better-off young people at Harvard appeared to require intense favoritism to reassure them, perhaps because of the less-moneyed achievement and potential that loomed all around. Though some of the anointed developed their capabilities to the full, the institutional imperative to establish a hierarch…
How do you know for sure though? Naturally such conversations would occur away from the public eye.
Oddly enough, I'm not sure I would support subsidizing more expenses. That seems like a separate issue.
I was a TA at Yale when I did my PhD there and I contrast that experience to when I was a TA at University of Calgary. Whether it’s a higher sense of entitlement or just grinding it out to maximize your official grade the contrast between these two schools was striking. At Yale you’d better think twice about honest grading because if you did there would be an army at your door with pitchforks ready. You then have to…
The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on your final exam papers. At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later. Of course universities don't like this…
I was a TA at Yale when I did my PhD there and I contrast that experience to when I was a TA at University of Calgary. Whether it’s a higher sense of entitlement or just grinding it out to maximize your official grade the contrast between these two schools was striking. At Yale you’d better think twice about honest grading because if you did there would be an army at your door with pitchforks ready. You then have to…
The problem is when the grades given on assignments influence what goes on your final exam papers. At a university, only the final exam should count. This way you can give honest feedback, and the student doesn't feel obligated to point out every little mistake to try to make you change your decision. It also allows them to misunderstand things at first, but then 'get' it later. Of course universities don't like this…
It's not perfect either, a bad performance on exam day might mean a bad grade even if you're good, but whatever, nobody cares about grades, anyway.