371–380 of 447 posts
Why aren't we working on drugs to make people smart?
This thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general point, or a meta-observation of some kind, quickly gets swallowed in a massive influx of personal anecdotes about things that happened to people during their education. Maybe there are other topics where the same phemonen exists. I'm not sure if off the top of m…
a.k.a. sampling from the distribution of interest. Once you have enough anecdotes, you actually have a representative distribution of the real thing. Selection may be biased but you can weight those data points as you like, it's still good data.
I don’t understand why people praise Ramanuja so much. Why not this praise for Euler or Gauss?
I don’t understand why people praise Ramanuja so much. Why not this praise for Euler or Gauss?
I don’t understand why people praise Ramanuja so much. Why not this praise for Euler or Gauss?
My education prepared me to make millions of dollars by the time I was in my mid-forties. I learned that if I take every task seriously and strive to do the absolute best I can on that task, no exceptions, regardless of how I personally felt about a subject or an assignment, I would end up being an employee that saw to it that anything I did, I did to the absolute best of my ability. Not every task ended up being wor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the same reason why STEM admission became so competitive in UCs in California. UCs historically admitted using a mix of class rank, GPA, and test scores, but the number of seats at UCs didn't really increase in the past decade+ despite a small baby boom in the 2000s, and the growing prominence of STEM in the 2010s, so the average GPAs and SAT scores for UC admissions skyrocketed. Plenty of Californians have a…
I'm convinced good students don't need good universities as much as good universities need good students. I get the same internships and job opportunities as someone that went to UofT and I'm studying much of the same curriculum. A degree from a good university signifies a smart and dedicated student primarily because the school selects the best students for graduation. That occurs during acceptance and by making the…
The main advantage that UofT has for its undergraduates is related to funding. UofT’s engineering design teams tend to be better-funded than TMU’s, though TMU’s engineering design teams still perform very well—proudly outperforming UofT’s teams in certain years despite the funding gaps. In addition, some TMU students I’ve spoken with mentioned that UofT has more research opportunities. The name of the university also has a positive impact on admissions for students applying to graduate school. These advantages are not a reflection of the students who attend, but rather UofT’s ability to raise funds.
There is also a disadvantage I’ve seen at UofT. The TMU engineering students I’ve known have mentioned getting extensions approved easily for assignments and homework, to pursue professional opportunities such as hackathons and conferences. That is generally unheard of, from my experience in a STEM program at UofT. Policies are strictly outlined (with some leniency in many courses, such as dropping the lowest assignment mark), and I generally have not seen professors grant exceptions to these.
But the main difference I’ve seen between TMU people and UofT people is university pride. I’ve met several people who were proud to go to TMU and succeed, whereas I haven’t seen that at UofT (with the exception of UofT’s engineering department). I’m satisfied with the opportunities I’ve gotten due to attending UofT—especially as I was involved with its on-campus work program and an engineering design team there—but I haven’t met many UofT people fiercely proud of their school, in contrast to the TMU people I’ve met.
In any case, I am happy to work with people from either school. Work experience and personality has mattered more to me than the name of the university that a person went to, and both TMU and UofT offer great opportunities for students to gain relevant experience—though these are up to the students to pursue, outside of their required classes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO, you're thinking about this backwards. It's good that public school exposes children to many subjects - hopefully most of them. So that they can discover if they click with one of them. The real danger is that someone never gets exposed to a subject at all. College is the place to specialize in a subject.
Most colleges now inundate students with painful core classes that go on into senior year. It's getting ridiculous.
This thread is a good example of one of the perhaps overlooked reasons it can be hard to discuss education in our societies - any attempt at making a general point, or a meta-observation of some kind, quickly gets swallowed in a massive influx of personal anecdotes about things that happened to people during their education. Maybe there are other topics where the same phemonen exists. I'm not sure if off the top of m…
> massive influx of personal anecdotes a.k.a. sampling from the distribution of interest. Once you have enough anecdotes, you actually have a representative distribution of the real thing. Selection may be biased but you can weight those data points as you like, it's still good data.
