Talk:Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Archive03

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[edit] Interview

Thanks for the advice guys. I couldn’t find anything on the main page, but does MIT have any eating clubs or special organizations? Also, what are some good questions to ask the interviewer?


I'm going for an interview with an MIT alum tomorrow. Any tips? What kind of good things or interesting stuff should I say about MIT?

Be yourself?
I'm sure MIT has changed a lot, but I'll bet it is still a school where they care a lot about your basic smarts and hacker instincts, and are not quite as concerned about your emotional intelligence, ability to relate to people, etc. That's not to say you shouldn't apply underarm deodorant, etc. but I would not suggest boning up on MIT to impress the interviewer.
Actually, come to think of it, the interviewer would probably rather show off his knowledge of MIT than listen to yours... and when I was there MIT rather encouraged people to ask intelligent questions... and not to bullshit... so... ummm... 02:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I'll second my fellow alum on this. Personally, I felt pretty sure I'd get accepted when my interviewer mentioned how I'd probably be able to do fewer activities there than I had in high school (I did Science Olympiad, debate team, scholars' bowl team and literary magazine—every type of geek except band and theater). Maybe this advice is too late, but I'd say you're better off answering the interviewer's questions about yourself and—if they're a good interviewer they'll give you the opportunity—sounding out their knowledge about the Institute. In every admissions and scholarship interview I did, and boy were there a few of them, I asked the grownups involved what they regretted about their school, and I always got interesting answers.
Anville 15:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Anville. Do you think there will be any drawbacks to asking as to what they regretted?

Well, you might irritate them by the mere suggestion that the Institvte is imperfect. . . but I don't think it's likely. (smile) Certainly, I didn't meet anyone there who believed that the place and its policies were inerrant. I believe it's better to project the impression that you're a rational and inquisitive being who is capable of making the best out of a less-than-optimal situation, rather than the impression of being an MIT groupie. Just my thoughts, of course! (And if you do find yourself at the Institvte next fall, I suggest looking up Ben Snyder's The Hidden Curriculum in the library.) Anville 07:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Activating the emotional-intelligence-simulation features in my positronic brain, I would speculate that it would not be wise to tell an alum what is imperfect about the Institute, but that it would be quite safe to ask. And asking an alum what they regret about their time at the Institute is safer yet. I mean, even if you got the sort of mindless booster that is so prevalent at lesser schools though never at MIT, they could always give you a safe answer like "I regret that I didn't buy a second Brass Rat to reserve for dress occasions," or "I regret that I lived in Burton House," or "I regret that I wasted time dating instead of taking a heavier course load." Dpbsmith (talk) 12:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Beaver vocabulary from another culture"

From Mark Liebermann's Language Log blog post, 4 December 2003:

As Bill Poser's fascinating post on Carrier beaver words reminded me, both Bill and I are alumni of an institution whose totem has been the beaver ever since 1914. In that year, "Lester D. Gardner 1898 presented the idea to MIT president Richard C. Maclaurin at the annual dinner of the Technology Club of New York." The official reconstruction of Gardner's argument runs like this:
"We first thought of the kangaroo, which, like Tech, goes forward by leaps and bounds. Then we considered the elephant. He is wise, patient, strong, hard working, and like all those who graduate from Tech, has a good tough hide. But neither of these were American animals. We turned to [William Temple] Hornaday's book on the animals of North America and instantly chose the beaver. The beaver not only typifies the Tech [student], but his habits are peculiarly our own. The beaver is noted for his engineering, mechanical skills, and industry. His habits are nocturnal. He does his best work in the dark."
Not surprisingly, MIT students and staff have developed an extensive beaver-related lexicon over the intervening 89 years, just as fascinating in its own way as the Carrier beaver vocabulary. On Bill's account, the Carrier beaver words mostly refer to actual beavers or to aspects of their life and death. By contrast, nearly all the MIT beaver terms appears to refer to symbols or rites of various cultic groups, which are known to be thick on the ground at that estimable institution.

A nice break from ratings, isn't it? In the interests of scholarship, I should note that Language Hat provides similar chants used at Caltech, Rice and RPI. Anville 14:14, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

  • The word "castrate" is derived from the Latin name of the beaver, Castor, based on the mediaeval myth that "The beaver is hunted for its testicles, which are valued for making medicine. When the beaver sees that it cannot escape from the hunter, it bites off its testicles and throws them to the hunter, who then stops pursuing the beaver. If another hunter chases the beaver, it shows the hunter that it has already lost its testicles and so is spared." Voo Doo once suggested that MIT chose this mascot as a signal of the sort of sacrifice the 'Tute expected... Dpbsmith (talk) 19:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Voo Doo being naturally the one and only good source for understanding the Institvte's real nature. I should know; I wrote for it. (wicked grin) Anville 22:31, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I will always remember that John F. Kennedy was assassinated on a Friday, because it was the day Voo Doo came out, and when I heard about the assassination my first reaction was that it must be a Voo Doo stunt, Voo Doo not exactly being a gathering place for New Frontiersmen. A false assassination rumor would have displayed all of the subtlety and good taste for which Voo Doo was renowned. I always found Voo Doo laugh-out-loud funny. Best-remembered Voo Doo article: a petite Voo Doo Doll of the Month, presumably topless, but her modesty preserved by a copy of Romer's well-known textbook "The Vertebrate Body: Shorter Edition." With the caption "I'd like to see what's between the covers of the book she's reading." When for some reason best imagined, they were forced to stop using live models for their Voo Doo Dolls, they had an issue featuring a Barbie doll, in provocative poses, as the Voo Doo Doll of the Month. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:39, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Boosterism in opening paragraph

"MIT is known as a world leader in..." seems like unnecessary use of peacock terms. Who, exactly, "knows" MIT as a world leader? If someone can find a quotation from someone reasonably well-known saying "MIT is a world leader in..." I'd accept that, and if MIT really is "known as a world leader" it shouldn't be hard to find someone, somewhere, who's said so.

Actually I'm not really sure what being a leader in this context would mean, unless it means that other schools are patterning their educational philosophy and curriculum on MIT's. If so, it would be more appropriate to document and say that.

The vague claims of notable alumni are rather boosterish, but in any case they do not belong in the introductory paragraph as they do not say anything specific about MIT. MIT is a big, famous, excellent school and it has lots of notable alumni just like every other big, famous excellent school. Personally I'd prefer to let people read MIT people and judge for themselves.

The anon is complaining about me, as I moved some similar material from Columbia's opening paragraph into a separate section. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Here is how the Britannica handles MIT in its opening paragraph:

privately controlled coeducational institution of higher learning famous for its scientific and technological training and research. It was chartered by the state of Massachusetts in 1861 and became a land-grant college in 1863. William Barton Rogers, MIT's founder and first president, had worked for years to organize an institution of higher learning devoted entirely to scientific and technical training, but the outbreak of the American Civil War delayed the opening of the school until 1865, when 15 students enrolled for the first classes, held in Boston. MIT moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1916; its campus is located along the Charles River. Under the administration of president Karl T. Compton (1930–48), the institute evolved from a well-regarded technical school into an internationally known centre for scientific and technical research. During the Great Depression, its faculty established prominent research centres in a number of fields, most notably analog computing (led by Vannevar Bush) and aeronautics (led by Charles Stark Draper). During World War II, MIT administered the Radiation Laboratory, which became the nation's leading centre for radar research and development, as well as other military laboratories. After the war, MIT continued to maintain strong ties with military and corporate patrons, who supported basic and applied research in the physical sciences, computing, aerospace, and engineering.

No rankings. No Nobel Prize counts. No boosterism. All it feels necessary to say in the way of peck-ordering with other schools, is a mention in a later paragraph that "Admission is extremely competitive." It continues to outline the major schools, notes that "While MIT is perhaps best known for its programs in engineering and the physical sciences, other areas—notably economics, political science, urban studies, linguistics, and philosophy—are also strong," and devotes quite a bit of the article to enumerating unique facilities and laboratories. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:09, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I have the feeling we won't be able to write a good lead until the rest of the article, particularly the "History" section, is in decent shape. Funny how Britannica mentions Karl Compton, and we don't. (By the bye, which edition are you quoting?) Anville 23:08, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh, the 2004 CD. The last time I did a spot-check, the content of the CD edition did seem to match that of the print edition. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
A number of the recent edits to the page to remove POV have been just ridiculous, and smack of someone who either wants to attack MIT or has a pathological need to downplay all of its achievements. I hope everyone would agree that the Encarta entry (http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761555310/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology.html) has no reason to be POV, and yet it describes MIT as "one of the world’s leading research universities" and holding "a worldwide reputation for teaching and research". These phrases and others have all been removed from this article even though they are objective facts! An encyclopedia entry should always highlight what is special and unique about the subject being described. The recent "POV" edits to the MIT entry only serve to dilute the entry's actual utility. -- BrassRat 17:19, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
It smacks of someone who is embarrassed by immodest presentation of his alma mater.
Objective facts can be boosterism. Advertising copywriters are very skilled in creating misleading impressions through the clever presentation of selected facts. A very good example of this sort of technique is the spin on MIT's U. S. News and World Report ranking. MIT currently places seventh. The straightforward way to report this is simply to note that it is in seventh place.
To report "it is one of five universities to consistently receive the highest peer assessment score of 4.9/5.0" is spin in two ways. First, it creates a vague impression that MIT is somehow or other in the top five when in fact it is seventh. Second, it chooses to use the peer assessment score. Why? This is usually considered to be one of the most subjective and least reliable components of the U. S. News ranking. That, after all, is why U. S. News includes other factors as well. Well now, why do you suppose the contributor elected to use this metric? Is it because the contributor disagrees with U. S. News and thinks they should use the pure "peer assessment" score? Or was the element of the score selectively chosen because it happens to put MIT in a better light than using the straight ranking?
I agree with you that an encyclopedia article should highlight what is special and unique about the subject. In fact, that's my point. Ranking seventh in anything isn't particularly special or unique. Nor is there anything special or unique about a big major university's alumni and faculty including "many prominent politicians, corporate executives, writers, astronauts, scientists, and inventors."
Noam Chomsky is special and unique. Henry Kendall was special and unique. Doc Edgerton was special and unique. That's why we have List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology people and it speaks for itself. To simply take the subheads out of this list, glom them together into a sentence is silly. So is a count of Nobel laureates with an MIT association of one kind or another. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I had let that particular U.S. News quotation stand, because at least it referred to something which covered multiple years. I have no particular desire to have it stay; in an ideal world, we would have so much good content that rankings would be superfluous.... Anville 22:28, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for wording of the "rank" statement (see above)

Well, I believe the U. S. News rankings are almost pure evil. I think they deliberately publish data that has a signal-to-noise ratio of about 3 db, and I think they do it because it guarantees that the rankings will change significantly every year, creating excitement and an incentive to buy their magazine. But if we must mention them, we should try to describe them in a way that

  • does not create any impression of false precision
  • does not slant the data to put MIT's best foot forward
  • does plainly cite the single number most fetishized, namely the most recent overall rank number in the "Top National Universities" list

I propose:

As of 2006 MIT ranks seventh (tied with Caltech) in U. S. News and World Report's list of top national universities. In the year 2000, at the height of the tech boom, U. S. News briefly ranked MIT third (the same year in which it ranked Caltech first).

This avoids judgements like "consistently," gives a couple of data points to show the range, and shows what everybody knows: that MIT is one hell of a good school but not quite at the very top.

But I have to say anyone who believes that in the year 2000 Caltech was really the best school in the nation, and that over the last few years both Caltech and MIT deteriorated... while Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Duke, and Stanford truly shaped up... well, I wonder what course they were enrolled in. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:26, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

It's because of all of these issues that the current wording is optimal. The US News rankings are based on a formula which changes from year to year. It's supposed to, and reflects not much more than how they want to put their data together. On the other hand, the interesting fact is that the peer assessment scores for MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Princeton stand alone as the highest based on their survey data EVERY SINGLE YEAR. This survey data is interesting and encyclopedic, the former is just another random magazine ranking. -- BrassRat 20:34, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
"Where possible, rankings should be reported as numeric values, with years and sources provided; and as they are such specific facts, they should not occupy an article's lead section." -- Wikipedia:Avoid academic boosterism. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:49, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nobel prize counts

IMHO Nobel prize counts should not go in the lead paragraphs of university articles. They tell us nothing specific about a university. All leading research universities have Nobel laureates associated with them. People who are curious about this can go to our article on Nobel prizes by university affiliation.

Presumably the actual count is supposed to mean something, but I'm not sure what it could be other than boosterism. As a metric of university wonderfulness, it's pretty dubious data. Other things being equal, bigger universities will have more Nobel laureates, for example, so the fact that University of Chicago has 78 laureates hardly means it is better than MIT; conversely, even though Swarthmore College has only 4, a Swarthmore booster could argue that that is very impressive relative to its size. But of course if we wanted to correct for size, what size should we be using? The total enrollment? The size of the grad school? The size of the departments in fields for which Nobels are awarded?

But then, what ought to count? If Nobel laureate counts are supposed to speak to the important and quality of the university's research activities, presumably what matters is Nobel laureates who were at the university during the years when they were doing their work. Although the number Nobel laureates who are regularly engaged in undergraduate instruction would be interesting, as showing something about the institution's educational philosophy.

In any case, a factoid like this, if it means anything, indicates something or other about the caliber of the university's people, and it belongs in the MIT People section. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:00, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I think your obsession with analyzing all facts only from the perspective of what the intent of the editor was is not only spurious and incorrect, but biased. The Nobel Prize count of an institution is just as objective and useful a piece of data as its enrollment, acceptance rate, endowment or date of founding. Is it boosterism to call Oxford the oldest university in Britain? Please calm down and figure out useful data to add rather than useful data to delete. My two cents. -- BrassRat 21:20, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naval Architecture/Ocean Engineering/Course XIII????

Trying to trace this and finding only elliptical scraps of information... I believe that at one time MIT was an important naval architecture school. This seems not to be true any more. Apparently it was renamed "Ocean Engineering???" And then, this year, Ocean Engineering was, absorbed into Mechanical Engineering.

Can anyone confirm/deny?

Princeton Review does not include MIT on a list of schools offering a naval architecture major. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Have you come across this: [1]? At the end of the page it refers to a book and gives the call number T171.M4224.O248 2000. btm 05:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Bingo! No, I hadn't. Thanks. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:05, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improvement drive

Asteroid deflection strategies has been nominated on WP:IDRIVE. Support it with your vote if you want it to be improved.--Fenice 22:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "The MIT of..."

There is a section of MIT in popular culture called "The MIT of..." that lists a bunch of schools that have been called the MIT of (region). While the section does have references, it strikes me that the only purpose of this section is for it boost MIT to the reader. I'll quote Dpbsmith from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harvard of the Midwest:

This is a completely idiosyncratic nontopic. It verges on original research because, unlike Public Ivies, there is no definitive list of which schools are included, and no objective standard for which schools qualify. A few sources are cited but they do not demonstrate that the phrase is a true idiom with a well-defined meaning.

IMO, the Harvard article should be deleted, as should the "MIT of..." section. btm 21:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I toned it down. Since, unlike the Harvard of the Midwest it at least cited sources instead of merely asserting "Google and ye shall find," I didn't delete it altogether, and I tried to preserve the arguably valid point that MIT has an archetypic status, deserved or undeserved. Exact phrase "MIT of the" has 10,800 Google hits, "CalTech of the" 169. I didn't analyze the actual hits carefully for relevance--in both cases most hits are IRrelevant, the phrase is not being used idiomatically--but I really do think MIT has an archetypic status that CalTech does not. Personally, I really do believe MIT is 63.9 times as archetypic as CalTech, even though it is only 1.16 times as good. To slide-rule accuracy, of course. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC) P. S. I'm not arguing strongly that the section should be kept. I'm just reporting what I did and why. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I pretty much agree with you here. MIT is indeed the standard to which other technical schools are compared and even though Caltech may deserve a similar status, it hasn't quite got it. It's certainly fair to capture this status, but it shouldn't come across as silly and overt boosterism. I think you've improved the section to that end. btm 07:01, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm more or less in agreement too. I moved the string of inline hyperlinks to that article's talk page, since I can't quite see the attraction of having a one-sentence paragraph which is almost entirely bracketed numbers. Anville 18:02, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: MIT

FYI, I've put the above category on a vote for rename to Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Semiconscious · talk 09:41, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reference styles

We seem to have stumbled into an unholy mixture of reference styles. Does anyone actually feel up to slogging through the article and changing them over, or is this one more excessively nitpicky thing I will be doing in my "copious free time"? Anville 11:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Meaning of "selectivity" and MIT vis-a-vis the Big Three

It is not neutral to present rankings while omitting context that would enable evaluations of the meaning of the rankings.

In the United States, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have a special status deriving from their historical connection to the WASP establishment. U. S. News uses somewhat ambiguous language to explain how it evaluates universities, and uses various seemingly objective measures that can stand in as surrogates for social standing. But the bottom line is that U. S. News and everyone else knows that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are special, and U. S. News validates its methodology by its ability to confirm that special status. The New York Times reported that given their weighting methodology (which includes things such as alumni giving):

it's easy to guess who's going to end up on top: Harvard, Yale and Princeton round out the first three essentially every year. In fact, when asked how he knew his system was sound, Mel Elfin, the rankings' founder, often answered that he knew it because those three schools always landed on top. When a new lead statistician, Amy Graham, changed the formula in 1999 to what she considered more statistically valid, the California Institute of Technology jumped to first place. Ms. Graham soon left, and a slightly modified system pushed Princeton back to No. 1 the next year. (Thompson, Nicholas (2003): "The Best, The Top, The Most;" The New York Times, August 3, 2003, Education Life Supplement, p. 24)

Now, here are a couple of facts that are just about as neutral as any such statements can possibly be:

  • MIT's admissions policy has been substantially more meritocratic than the admissions policy of the Big Three, has never taken into account factors that correlate with social status, never had a restrictive policy toward particular ethnic groups, etc.
  • Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have a special status in the United States that is somewhat independent of their academic merit. Numerous references can be cited to bear this out; e.g. by sociologists counting entries in the Social Register, or (much easier to verify if one doesn't happen to have a copy of the Social Register handy) examining the schools attended by Presidents of the United States.

(Actually I'm more certain about the second statement than the first).

If we are going to talk about MIT's admissions being "selective" at all--and I for one would just as soon omit this datum--then we need to point out what this selectivity means.

It does not mean the same thing as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton's "selectivity." In circles that care about such things—and a look at who gets to be a Presidential candidate should show that there are still circles that do—an MIT degree is not the equivalent of a degree from one of the Big Three.

Now, I personally happen to detest this aspect of American society, as well as the veiled way in which U. S. News etc. present their findings. But if we are going to talk about selectivity and rankings and such we should do it accurately and honestly, rather than omitting anything negative about MIT's status and pretending that MIT is somehow is or is close to being equivalent to the members of Big Three. This would be true only if university reputations depended only on their academic quality. U. S. News knows better.Dpbsmith (talk) 19:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding like a sockpuppet, a broken record or a poorly dubbed ghost, I agree with these sentiments. Back when this article actually had a "Criticisms of MIT" section, it quoted some official type saying "Too many MIT graduates are working for Harvard graduates." I seem also to recall a cartoon—maybe it came out of a recent Voo Doo—where an angry man in a suit screams at a programmer, "My MBA from Cornhusk U. says to get back in your cubicle, code-boy!" (This quotation is of course approximate.) Anville 20:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I think your reasoning is sound and verifiable. I'm just not sure that the statement in question is really informative or relevant, since it's not a distinctive aspect of MIT in particular so much as schools that are not Harvard, Yale or Princeton. That is, I'm not sure this is really an important piece of information unless you can somehow support the claim that MIT's admissions is somehow extraordarily meritocratic among all schools, rather than merely compared to those three. --Mike Lin 21:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
An interesting argument, but very US-centric, and ignores the fact that MIT's reputation on the global stage is more important in a Wikipedia article. Let's face it, worldwide, MIT has a far bigger name in many (most?) circles than Yale and Princeton do, and internationally the US big three are probably Harvard, MIT and Stanford. H/P/Y do indeed have a "special" place in American history (just like carmaker "Cadillac" does), but current American society, current world society, and American history are all different things. The selectivity metric is just that, a metric based on numbers relating to admission. The US News peer assessment score is closer to what you might think of as prestige, and it clearly disagrees with you. I think the reason that some people might have a mixed up perception here is because there are many liberal arts majors that can't conceive of MIT being regarded as being as prestigious as Yale, and they're the ones that write the stories and newspapers. But the US News peer assessment scores (and just about every other major ranking/survey you can pull out) bear out that each is super prestigious in its own way. - BrassRat 22:05, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
1) I have no problem with having a variety of viewpoints presented in this portion of the article.
2) I'd be curious to see citations for "internationally the US big three are probably Harvard, MIT and Stanford." I don't say they aren't, I'm saying I don't know, and I've never personally heard such a thing. One colleague of mine who is a Russian emigre who has been here ten years told me that in Russia he had heard of Harvard but that MIT was a completely unfamiliar school to him. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
The perception of Harvard, Stanford, and MIT as the top US schools internationally is more implicitly and explicitly conveyed. As in, rather than composing arguments asserting that these three are the most prestigious in the US, they are the three given most often as examples of the most prestigious US universities. Here is an example[1] from Singapore: "Recently, there were discussions on world-class universities. Names like Harvard, Stanford and MIT were mentioned in the local press. These universities take in only the best and brightest students and faculty from around the world." Another from Australia[2]: "ANU is internationally recognised as Australia’s best research and teaching University [...] ranked the ANU with Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and the Sorbonne." Obviously your Russian friend wasn't studying in a scientific discipline; in general it seems that there is more ignorance of outstanding scientific institutions (and people) by humanities majors than vice versa, particularly in the US, where a lack of scientific or mathematical ability is unfortunately worn as a badge of honor by many. In countries where science and technology are more prestigious (e.g. India, Japan, etc.) the fact that MIT is regarded as the world's foremost scientific and technological university (you know you can find lots of citations for this, starting as close to US culture as Good Will Hunting) certainly places it firmly in the first rank. -- BrassRat 00:15, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Since 1998, US News switched to the current scheme of measuring academic reputation using "peer assessment scores" on a scale to 5.0, and Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Princeton have always received 4.9/5.0. Yale usually has as well, but in a couple of years dropped to 4.8. Prior to 1998, they ranked "academic reputation" explicitly, with MIT, Harvard and Stanford usually being listed as tied for #1. A few years this fluctuated, with Princeton sometimes tying for #1, and Harvard and/or Stanford dropping a notch below. Yale never tied for #1 prior to 1998. The one consistent factor has been that MIT has ranked #1 in academic reputation every year. MITalum 01:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm happy with the present wording of the first three paragraphs (including MITalum's recent changes in phrasing). (I'm assuming this is all factually accurate; I don't have any copies of U. S. News at hand). I don't have any problem with the idea of MIT's academic reputation being comparable to that of the Big Three.
I think the fourth paragraph ("A British research made by The Times Higher in 2005...") should be excised per the verifiability policy unless someone cares to take the trouble to find and cite the source; I'm not going to go look for it because I don't think this item is needed, but I haven't removed it yet because it probably could be sourced if anyone wanted to. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:58, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I've added the link to the Times Higher Education Supplement, which someone else has already documented meticulously in another Wikipedia article. By the way, it appears from an academic reputation perspective that the "big three" according to US News is MIT, Harvard, and Stanford (in that order) with Princeton and Yale comparable but a bit behind. Just an observation. -- BrassRat 03:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Not rhetorical: does U. S. News use the phrase "Big Three" in reference to these schools? Or are you just saying they rank number 1, 2, and 3 and therefore you believe that they could be called the "Big Three? Dpbsmith (talk) 14:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
No, it doesn't use that phrase, but then again I'd never heard that phrase before someone wrote a Wikipedia article on it. From the age of the references it appears to be an antiquated expression that nobody ever uses anymore. My point is that if we were to pick a modern "Big Three", according to US News it would appear that MIT, Harvard, and Stanford have the consistently greatest academic reputation in the country, and that your comment that MIT is "comparable to the Big Three [i.e. Harvard, Yale, Princeton]" does not really recognize that in modern times Yale and Princeton have a somewhat lesser academic reputation than do Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. -- BrassRat 20:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
The "Big Three" is not a reference solely to academic reputation. In fact it was coined during the day of the "gentleman's C" and the Big Three were academically lax. It is in widespread current use (e.g. Karabel's "The Chosen") and I'll try to remember to document that. You may feel that MIT ought to be one of the Big Three, or that there should be a redefinition of the Big Three. If you check out the Penn article you'll see that similarly there are a number of people who say that Penn is or ought to be a member of "the Big Four." But there is no Big Four and neither Penn or MIT is one of the Big Three. IMHO it sucks (but of course I went to an academically excellent school with a meritocratic admissions policy and a strong antiauthoritarian culture, so what would you expect me to think?) I'll believe the Big Three belongs to the past when I see someone from MIT in the White House. (Jimmy Carter was close, but no cigar). Dpbsmith (talk) 21:13, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
A book specifically about university admissions at Harvard, Princeton and Yale is your example of being in widespread use? I'm not saying that MIT should be one of the "Big Three", what I'm saying is that that term holds little or no meaning in the modern day, except as an historical artifact. And your point about US Presidents seems random but is also wrong -- the College of William and Mary would be more "Big Three" than Princeton if that were the criteria, and West Point would be just as much. My main point is that when you ask people to name the "best" US universities (note: not undergraduate colleges, but UNIVERSITIES), Harvard, MIT and Stanford is far more the accepted meme than Harvard, Yale and Princeton. -- BrassRat 21:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Find a good, verifiable reference for that being the "accepted meme" and put it in the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
(Quick rough reality check: Google Books search for exact phrase "Harvard, Yale and Princeton," limited to years 1980 through 2006 (though Google Books searches tend to be heavily weighted toward recent titles anyway): 688 pages on "Harvard, Yale and Princeton" date:1980-2006. Same on "Harvard, MIT and Stanford:" 15 pages on "Harvard, MIT and Stanford" date:1980-2006. Don't have any creative ideas on how to fine-tune the search to limit it to sources that are talking about the best universities.)
(On a side note, I'm not sure I know the context in which it matters which is the best "university" overall. If I'm interested in graduate work, surely I know what field I'm going to be in and surely I'd be more interested in knowing "which university has the best department of X" rather than "which is the best university." I mean, if I want to get a Master of Management in Hospitality, well, it would be silly to choose Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, or Stanford even though they are "better universities" than Cornell) Dpbsmith (talk) 23:26, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
As I said before, it's tough to find people "arguing" for why a certain set of universities are the top group, since the folks that typically make the most vociferous arguments are the ones with vested interests. Thus, there's significantly more literature produced by grads of Harvard, Yale and Princeton on why their institutions are the best than there are non-grads making such arguments or explorations. Most mentions of Harvard, MIT and Stanford as the best US institutions are implied by their choice of those three as the example of the best institutions. Here's one example from a university guide in India, however, that I think typifies the views from there, China, and most of the world: "Schools like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), with arguably the best reputations in the world, get their rankings bounced around from being in the top few to being in the top teens. So what are their "real" rankings? Who knows! But we do know that, despite such variations in rankings, their reputation is very much intact and it isn’t going to change anytime soon." [2] The Times Higher Education supplement further validates this, as does the Nobel Prize count by institution, where Yale and Princeton fall far below institutions like Chicago, Columbia, Berkeley, Caltech, Hopkins and even Cornell. That doesn't mean that Princeton and Yale are considered worse than Chicago, but it does mean that in certain circles, especially internationally, Chicago is more "famous" or "prestigious", and thus the common perception ends up balancing out the two (i.e. Berkeley roughly comparable in reputation to Princeton internationally). But amongst all of that data, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford consistently stand out, with the maximal combinations of fame, prestige, selectivity, Nobel Prizes, citations, etc. -- BrassRat 00:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NRC Graham-Diamond ranking

The Graham-Diamond report, cited by BrassRat, is interesting and seems like a relevant thing to include in the Ranking section. However, it was formerly presented in this way:

According to the National Research Council[3], MIT enjoys the greatest overall research reputation in the United States.

In fact, the report contains eleven pairs of tables. In the first ten, universities are ranked by various programs, e.g. "engineering," "cell and developmental biology," etc. Each pair of tables contains one ranking by "reputation" and another by (variously) awards or citations received by faculty. Finally, the eleventh pair of tables, presumably the one being referred to, is "Top 50 Institutions Ranked by Mean Score of Reputation Rating and Citations or Awards Density of All Programs." Like the others, it is a pair, and MIT indeed ranks first in reputation, but only fourth in awards and citations.

I cannot think of any neutral reason for selectively mentioning one but not the other, so I've reworded this:

The National Research Council, in a 1995 study ranking research universities, placed MIT first in "mean score of reputation rating" and fourth for "citations or awards density" for all programs. [3]

Interestingly, in table 8, "Engineering," MIT ranks first in reputation but only fifth in "citations/faculty." (Not surprisingly, MIT does not appear at all in table 10, "Top 20 Institutions in Arts and Humanities." Dpbsmith (talk) 12:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

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