Ask HN: Do ivy universities teach students well or do they pick good students? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do ivy universities teach students well or do they pick good students?

When I went to college I had teachers that had great reputations but used lectures that they had used for years or didn't even bother to put a lecture together and relied on the teacher's assistant or textbooks to do the teaching. Somere were just terrible teachers. It seemed to me that we could have had the same education at a fraction of the cost somewhere else.

The majority of students could have succeeded in any environment. Are these universities just good at selecting the best students or do they have some power to create great graduates?

What do you think?

Note:

There's a comment below that points out networking as being the magic potion. That's a very strong point.

Whomever is still attending a university, make sure you take advantage of it. :)

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Pretty much it's "pick good students". I'd suggest skimming these two, for starters:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/does-it-ma...

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2015/10/29/our-firs...

Or do they do both?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Or neither.

i.e. they just let you network with other well connected people.

The whole point of the Ivy League is that smart kids (who are in these schools by merit) will get to network with the children of the elite (who are in these schools for reasons mainly because their parents are successful and/or major donors).

Or maybe they are designed to keep your family well connected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

This is a strong point. Who you meet in life has a big influence on your success.

I don't know.

I was involved at teaching introductory physics at a famous university and I was 100% proud of what we did. The conventional course had a few hundred students but between (1) a Nobel-prize winning lecturer who I think did a good job, (2) an ex-marine in the back room who maintained awesome demonstration equipment, and (3) a large team of section and lab TAs that broke out into small groups I think students got a lot. There also was an autotutorial class that forced students to learn the material better because it would not let them progress with a bad grade; the results were well documented but some students found it nerve-wracking because it would force them to revisit work they found hard.

That's my opinion, though, as a TA and a person who always found physics easy. If you asked 50 students about these classes, however, you might get 50 different opinions.

A friend of mine who now teaches at a small Christian college, takes undergraduate education seriously, and cares about the general flowering of his students was a TA in a similar course in another quantitative department in the same Uni and he was not happy with the quality of the intro undergraduate course he taught.

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