Quote:
Originally posted by aeon@Feb 9 2004, 01:21 PM
I know IU has a cyclotron
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Lots of schools do. Can undergrads use it? Yale has two of them. One for grad students and the older one for undergrads. If you are an undergrad physics major you are required to do an experiment on it. That's the point. What are normally graduate level resources are routinely made available to undergrads.
Sure, lots of schools have good resources. It's just that the schools with really high endowments tend to have the better resources. That needs no explanation. A school with an $11 billion endowment that spent half a billion last year is able to provide resources that - with only a few exceptions - other schools can't match.
You can go on and on about name branding and privilege but what's the point? By attending Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and so on you are attending schools with great libraries, paleontology collections, art museums, science equipment, and the list goes on and on. THAT is the point. At most schools you study Kandinsky from a book. At Yale, you stroll on over to the art collection and look on the wall.
This is not to knock any school. Certains schools have more to offer and if you have the ability, the grades, and a little good fortune and are willing to pay and borrow more for to attend those schools so be it. If you don't, that is a choice too.
For the most part you do receive a better education at an "elite" school than a non-elite one. Having attended a pretty good college (Syracuse U) and Yale, I can make a comparison. The schools are a world apart. The ability of the average student is a world apart. The environment is incredibly different. When students are reading their books while walking down the street you know you're in a pretty intense place.