Current Events > Why do Americans put Ivy League universities on a pedestal?

(+) Yeah! (+)

When in actually Cambridge and Oxford are better because you don't need to be a legacy applicant to increase your chances to enter significantly all the while being just as prestigious as Harvard/Yale? Plus Harvard is racist and simultaneously SJW. Plus they require an exuberant amount of money and they're all private universities, while Oxbridge is public. How do you claim to be smarter when money is as much as of a factor in getting in than your intelligence and accomplishments?

Americans, amirite?

*shrugs*
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gr8 b8 m8
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Because Americans have a huge crush on the Alt Nueve Nobility
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only rich lizard people care about them
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Honestly I know people with a minimal or moderate education that has more sense than some college educated fool.

Hell even with my half assed knowledge I can make some look dumb.
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A) the universities are American so it should be easy to deduce why Americans like Ivy League universities.
B) at some level, they were created specifically to compete with Oxford and Cambridge.
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They are the best universities in America and Americans are indoctrinated from an early age to think everything in America is streets ahead of the rest of the world.

Oxbridge nowadays is filled with mostly slightly above average students from "prestigious" British high schools that think they're better than everyone else because their shitty A-levels system told them that they actually understand some of the /three/ subjects they took. Due to its high "true" international fees (i.e. non EU), it is almost impossible for excellent internationals to study there, and plenty of Asians are taken in just for their money, without even being able to speak enough English to understand lectures.
Oxbridge is also plagued by affirmative action and minority rates in some colleges, and you can tell that some students have just been accepted to fill their token minority slots.
A major benefit of Oxbridge education is their strong supervision system, which allows even the dumbest students to get a grasp on their subject - unfortunately it slows down the pacing for students who understand the material and is often a waste of time. If you want to know more about Oxbridge, AMA I guess.

The prestige factor at universities is bullshit anyway lol.
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TarElessar posted...

Oxbridge nowadays is filled with mostly slightly above average students from "prestigious" British high schools that think they're better than everyone else because their shitty A-levels system told them that they actually understand some of the /three/ subjects they took. Due to its high "true" international fees (i.e. non EU), it is almost impossible for excellent internationals to study there, and plenty of Asians are taken in just for their money, without even being able to speak enough English to understand lectures.
Oxbridge is also plagued by affirmative action and minority rates in some colleges, and you can tell that some students have just been accepted to fill their token minority slots.
A major benefit of Oxbridge education is their strong supervision system, which allows even the dumbest students to get a grasp on their subject - unfortunately it slows down the pacing for students who understand the material and is often a waste of time. If you want to know more about Oxbridge, AMA I guess.

UK education system encourages specialization. Something I would prefer right now instead of needing a "well-rounded" education.

But yeah, of course the Oxbridge unis have declined since the Post-war period but they're still consistently top 5 along with MIT, Harvard and Stanford.
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We don't give two fucks about british bullshit. It's more likely for us to say stuff like "Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard you know" than whatever you're assuming
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Vita_Aeterna posted...

UK education system encourages specialization. Something I would prefer right now instead of needing a "well-rounded" education.

Ah, no, that's wrong. Oxbridge provides almost no options to specialise before you start postgraduate research. The course structure in NatSci and especially Engineering (which is a hilariously bad course at Cambridge) is atrocious.

Do you need to complete a bunch of courses that has nothing to with your major/ the degree you're trying to obtain?
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Vita_Aeterna posted...

Do you need to complete a bunch of courses that has nothing to with your major/ the degree you're trying to obtain?

It depends on how you define "having nothing to do with".
American / Canadian degree programmes sometimes force you to do humanities courses in a STEM degree, so I suppose the British system isn't quite as bad.
I'll use STEM degrees as an example as I am most familiar with them and it's roughly like that (generally speaking):
US/CA: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, you can't do that without learning about American history.
UK: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, better learn about civil engineering, fluid dynamics, and, uhm, public transport? And also learn a foreign language because wynaut?
Germany: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, you can take courses in robotics, telecommunications, embedded systems, and whatever else you'd like to specialise in.
NZ: Wait, we have universities?

TarElessar posted...

Vita_Aeterna posted...

Do you need to complete a bunch of courses that has nothing to with your major/ the degree you're trying to obtain?

It depends on how you define "having nothing to do with".
American / Canadian degree programmes sometimes force you to do humanities courses in a STEM degree, so I suppose the British system isn't quite as bad.
I'll use STEM degrees as an example as I am most familiar with them and it's roughly like that (generally speaking):
US/CA: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, you can't do that without learning about American history.
UK: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, better learn about civil engineering, fluid dynamics, and, uhm, public transport? And also learn a foreign language because wynaut?
Germany: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, you can take courses in robotics, telecommunications, embedded systems, and whatever else you'd like to specialise in.
NZ: Wait, we have universities?

Can you eloborate a little on the UK and US differences? Granted I studied nearly 15 years ago in the UK so it's possible things have changed but I wanted to study analytical chemistry or astrophysics at university so for my a levels I studied chemistry, physics, mechanics and computer engineering. Is this really broader than what American kids would study in their high school years?

I worked in America in my early 20s briefly at cornel and another top university that slips my mind right now, but I was constantly talking to kids about major and minor subjects and it seemed like they had to do all sorts of wacky topics to make up their final score. The most 'out there' class I took at university was radiology.

knutjob posted...

Can you eloborate a little on the UK and US differences? Granted I studied nearly 15 years ago in the UK so it's possible things have changed but I wanted to study analytical chemistry or astrophysics at university so for my a levels I studied chemistry, physics, mechanics and computer engineering. Is this really broader than what American kids would study in their high school years?

The main difference between high school systems is that most high schools in America are approximately 2 years behind, compared to the UK, but as there are just too many US highschools, it is difficult to make generalisations here (which is why I usually only tend to compare universities). Same with universities, so I usually only compare Ivy League with Oxbridge, I know that there is much more like community colleges, etc, but I'm digressing.

A standard undergraduate + graduate programme at Oxbridge takes 4 years (3+1). Let's say, you want to study physics. While in Oxford all of your course options are locked from first year, in Cambridge you have to choose two subjects excluding physics and mathematics in first year (so you have to do useless crap like Materials Science or everyone's favourite Earth Science which literally has you lick rocks to identify their origin), but from year two upwards, all choices are locked as well. You cannot specialise properly even in year four and don't do any research whatsoever, it's purely lecture based.

In the US, undergraduate + graduate takes 5ish years at most Ivy Leagues, last time I checked (3/4+2). You get to choose your courses (it's basically, you need one of courses x, y, z, one of courses a, b, c, etc to get degree X, this is why you can also do majors, minors, etc). However, I think the key point that is criticised is that you usually also need to pick one of a series of Humanities courses, even if you're doing, say, physics. You can double down on that subject and get a minor in it if you care about it, but it's essentially useless. On the bright side, once you have you finish your undergrad years, the graduate programme is /usually/ research focussed (but takes longer than the UK counterpart). Additionally, Oxbridge holds your hand all the way through while Ivy League universities sometimes expect you to do all the work (including some lecture material) on your own.

I hope that makes somewhat sense.

TarElessar posted...

knutjob posted...

Can you eloborate a little on the UK and US differences? Granted I studied nearly 15 years ago in the UK so it's possible things have changed but I wanted to study analytical chemistry or astrophysics at university so for my a levels I studied chemistry, physics, mechanics and computer engineering. Is this really broader than what American kids would study in their high school years?

The main difference between high school systems is that most high schools in America are approximately 2 years behind, compared to the UK, but as there are just too many US highschools, it is difficult to make generalisations here (which is why I usually only tend to compare universities). Same with universities, so I usually only compare Ivy League with Oxbridge, I know that there is much more like community colleges, etc, but I'm digressing.

A standard undergraduate + graduate programme at Oxbridge takes 4 years (3+1). Let's say, you want to study physics. While in Oxford all of your course options are locked from first year, in Cambridge you have to choose two subjects excluding physics and mathematics in first year (so you have to do useless crap like Materials Science or everyone's favourite Earth Science which literally has you lick rocks to identify their origin), but from year two upwards, all choices are locked as well. You cannot specialise properly even in year four and don't do any research whatsoever, it's purely lecture based.

In the US, undergraduate + graduate takes 5ish years at most Ivy Leagues, last time I checked (3/4+2). You get to choose your courses (it's basically, you need one of courses x, y, z, one of courses a, b, c, etc to get degree X, this is why you can also do majors, minors, etc). However, I think the key point that is criticised is that you usually also need to pick one of a series of Humanities courses, even if you're doing, say, physics. You can double down on that subject and get a minor in it if you care about it, but it's essentially useless. On the bright side, once you have you finish your undergrad years, the graduate programme is /usually/ research focussed (but takes longer than the UK counterpart). Additionally, Oxbridge holds your hand all the way through while Ivy League universities sometimes expect you to do all the work (including some lecture material) on your own.

I hope that makes somewhat sense.

It does help thank you and makes sense from my own experiences. I actually work for Cambridge university now, which gives me an urge to defend it, even though I work in research publication and don't know anything about their undergrad programme.

One final question about the us. At what point are perspective students required to choose their courses? I always got the impression university choice comes first and course is secondary, whereas in the UK it's predominantly the other way around.

TarElessar posted...

Vita_Aeterna posted...

Do you need to complete a bunch of courses that has nothing to with your major/ the degree you're trying to obtain?

It depends on how you define "having nothing to do with".
American / Canadian degree programmes sometimes force you to do humanities courses in a STEM degree, so I suppose the British system isn't quite as bad.
I'll use STEM degrees as an example as I am most familiar with them and it's roughly like that (generally speaking):
US/CA: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, you can't do that without learning about American history.
UK: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, better learn about civil engineering, fluid dynamics, and, uhm, public transport? And also learn a foreign language because wynaut?
Germany: You want to study Electrical Engineering? Well, you can take courses in robotics, telecommunications, embedded systems, and whatever else you'd like to specialise in.
NZ: Wait, we have universities?

That's what I'm getting at here. For me, the UK system makes a lot more sense. Way more sense. US/CA is fucking ridic (I know because I go to a Canadian univ, and currently in the process of transferring to a good global university) with their insistence on me doing math/science/social science and language bullshit as an arts student.
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knutjob posted...

It does help thank you and makes sense from my own experiences. I actually work for Cambridge university now, which gives me an urge to defend it, even though I work in research publication and don't know anything about their undergrad programme.

One final question about the us. At what point are perspective students required to choose their courses? I always got the impression university choice comes first and course is secondary, whereas in the UK it's predominantly the other way around.

I'm currently staying in Cambridge for a research thing, so hit me up if you want to grab a drink and talk about video games or something.
From what I know, you don't actually apply to a set programme in the US when you do your undergrad. For the graduate programme, you need to apply to the Faculty of your choise directly, but for undergrads it's just like a course builder where you can pick virtually anything. As you pay for individual courses in most US undergraduate programmes, it seems to be up to you how much you want to "specialise/optimise" as long as you satisfy all requirements for your degree.
You usually want to put your interests, etc in your statement and it doesn't make much sense to study something entirely different, but in theory it's possible to study a completely different subject (although technically you can do the same at Cambridge if you talk to the right people, but it's more complicated).
In the UK, you can only choose one out of Oxbridge for your application to begin with, so you usually want to focus more on where your course is lectured well, but yeah, you choose both subject and university at the same time (via UCAS these days). In the US, there's no common application system, so it varies from university to university.

TarElessar posted...

knutjob posted...

It does help thank you and makes sense from my own experiences. I actually work for Cambridge university now, which gives me an urge to defend it, even though I work in research publication and don't know anything about their undergrad programme.

One final question about the us. At what point are perspective students required to choose their courses? I always got the impression university choice comes first and course is secondary, whereas in the UK it's predominantly the other way around.

I'm currently staying in Cambridge for a research thing, so hit me up if you want to grab a drink and talk about video games or something.
From what I know, you don't actually apply to a set programme in the US when you do your undergrad. For the graduate programme, you need to apply to the Faculty of your choise directly, but for undergrads it's just like a course builder where you can pick virtually anything. As you pay for individual courses in most US undergraduate programmes, it seems to be up to you how much you want to "specialise/optimise" as long as you satisfy all requirements for your degree.
You usually want to put your interests, etc in your statement and it doesn't make much sense to study something entirely different, but in theory it's possible to study a completely different subject (although technically you can do the same at Cambridge if you talk to the right people, but it's more complicated).
In the UK, you can only choose one out of Oxbridge for your application to begin with, so you usually want to focus more on where your course is lectured well, but yeah, you choose both subject and university at the same time (via UCAS these days). In the US, there's no common application system, so it varies from university to university.

I see. Interesting. That seems in line with every American high school film I've ever seen with a college application subplot. Thanks for the drink offer but I'm actually in Poland til January and then my daughter will be in hospital for surgery so I'm otherwise occupied for the time being. Hope you are enjoying Cambridge however.