They tell me almost nothing. A good starting point, but I want to hear more.
With such an open question, I doubt you’re going to, for the reasons I wrote above. People are going to either know about zero European technical schools or about one of them, in either case, they can’t contribute much of a comparative analysis. If you want to know about studying to be a transportation engineer in Germany, why not find a German train enthusiast forum or something and see if you can ask there?
Also, I don’t see why those tell “almost nothing”. In the US, going to MIT seems to be a pretty good recipe for training to be a hardcore engineer, both due to the strict curriculum and the fact that you’re going to be surrounded by the sort of people who can get in and successfully study at MIT. From the list, ETH Zürich seems like a quite similar school in German-speaking Europe. You’re likely to be surrounded with and socialize with very capable and driven people and get taught a lot of engineering for your degree.
Schools are not as drastically different in prestige in Europe as they are in the USA, except maybe in France. Even then, you get surprises. My current school is one of the most powerful and dynamic in the country, and even the world, and generates patents out the wazoo, yet our building is crap, and our students and professors don’t seem to give a crap about the learning and teaching; it works more like a research laboratory than a teaching institution. Numbers and rankings couldn’t have told me that, and I curse the day I set foot here. I’m trying to get out into some place where my fellow students won’t call me a nerd for actually taking an interest.
Numbers and rankings couldn’t have told me that, and I curse the day I set foot here. I’m trying to get out into some place where my fellow students won’t call me a nerd for actually taking an interest.
They don’t sound like people who worked very hard to get in the school. What was the acceptance rate for incoming students?
I don’t actually know if there even are STEM schools that don’t have sucky lectures and apathetic students, though. Learning the stuff involves building models in your head that are too complex to do while listening to a guy talk to a hall full of people, so you have to do most of the work by yourself with pen, paper and textbook anyway. The teaching organization is there to give you exams to give you feedback on how well you’ve learned things.
My current idea for the best way to deal with post-secondary education is to basically think of yourself as an autodidact and do your basic degree as fast as you can with minimal interaction with lectures and other stupid distractions for the magical piece of paper that will show the industry workplaces that you are good for serious business.
It’s a bit messed up situation overall. The standard conventions for teaching undergrads are bad enough that you could just as well have the students watch lecture videos off YouTube. There are methods that work, but they are much more costly on the expensive professor labor, like one-on-one tutoring, so I guess only the students who demonstrate that they are good enough to master the undergrad stuff effortlessly without proper instruction are considered promising enough to get that. I remember reading about mathematics education in Oxford or somewhere, which was basically trying to educate people with a good chance of doing novel mathematical research, which involved lots of tutoring with a single tutor working with just one or two students and working on whatever stuff they needed to be doing.
It’s very easy to get accepted, it’s very hard to survuve the five official years the degree takes, which become eight on average. The dropout rate is fifty percent in the first two years, and thirty percent of what’s left after that.
so you have to do most of the work by yourself with pen, paper and textbook anyway.
What’s the point of making us go to a building, then?
you could just as well have the students watch lecture videos off YouTube.
And if the videos were well done, it would be a net improvement.
lots of tutoring with a single tutor working with just one or two students and working on whatever stuff they needed to be doing.
What’s the point of making us go to a building, then?
As far as my experience went, there isn’t much of a one. Thankfully the Finnish university I went to was also very flexible on letting you do most of the courses by just showing up for an exam and doing well on that, no need to attend classes if you don’t like them.
That’s only for postgrads, though, right?
Found it. It’s Cambridge (and he mentions that Oxford has a similar system), and it does seem to be specifically for undergraduates.
A lot of places will start letting you talk with a competent human once you go postgrad, but undergrad students going from high school math to university math are the ones who would probably most need that.
Yes, both Oxford and Cambridge use the tutorial system. Undergraduates get lectures, classes and tutorials (or supervisions in Cambridge), where the latter would be one lecturer/professor to one to three students.
With such an open question, I doubt you’re going to, for the reasons I wrote above. People are going to either know about zero European technical schools or about one of them, in either case, they can’t contribute much of a comparative analysis. If you want to know about studying to be a transportation engineer in Germany, why not find a German train enthusiast forum or something and see if you can ask there?
Also, I don’t see why those tell “almost nothing”. In the US, going to MIT seems to be a pretty good recipe for training to be a hardcore engineer, both due to the strict curriculum and the fact that you’re going to be surrounded by the sort of people who can get in and successfully study at MIT. From the list, ETH Zürich seems like a quite similar school in German-speaking Europe. You’re likely to be surrounded with and socialize with very capable and driven people and get taught a lot of engineering for your degree.
Schools are not as drastically different in prestige in Europe as they are in the USA, except maybe in France. Even then, you get surprises. My current school is one of the most powerful and dynamic in the country, and even the world, and generates patents out the wazoo, yet our building is crap, and our students and professors don’t seem to give a crap about the learning and teaching; it works more like a research laboratory than a teaching institution. Numbers and rankings couldn’t have told me that, and I curse the day I set foot here. I’m trying to get out into some place where my fellow students won’t call me a nerd for actually taking an interest.
They don’t sound like people who worked very hard to get in the school. What was the acceptance rate for incoming students?
I don’t actually know if there even are STEM schools that don’t have sucky lectures and apathetic students, though. Learning the stuff involves building models in your head that are too complex to do while listening to a guy talk to a hall full of people, so you have to do most of the work by yourself with pen, paper and textbook anyway. The teaching organization is there to give you exams to give you feedback on how well you’ve learned things.
My current idea for the best way to deal with post-secondary education is to basically think of yourself as an autodidact and do your basic degree as fast as you can with minimal interaction with lectures and other stupid distractions for the magical piece of paper that will show the industry workplaces that you are good for serious business.
It’s a bit messed up situation overall. The standard conventions for teaching undergrads are bad enough that you could just as well have the students watch lecture videos off YouTube. There are methods that work, but they are much more costly on the expensive professor labor, like one-on-one tutoring, so I guess only the students who demonstrate that they are good enough to master the undergrad stuff effortlessly without proper instruction are considered promising enough to get that. I remember reading about mathematics education in Oxford or somewhere, which was basically trying to educate people with a good chance of doing novel mathematical research, which involved lots of tutoring with a single tutor working with just one or two students and working on whatever stuff they needed to be doing.
It’s very easy to get accepted, it’s very hard to survuve the five official years the degree takes, which become eight on average. The dropout rate is fifty percent in the first two years, and thirty percent of what’s left after that.
What’s the point of making us go to a building, then?
And if the videos were well done, it would be a net improvement.
That’s only for postgrads, though, right?
It’s for undergrads across all subjects. See tutorial system.
Oh. We have those too. In name only. They usually ignore you, or make it clear to you that they are not interested in helping.
As far as my experience went, there isn’t much of a one. Thankfully the Finnish university I went to was also very flexible on letting you do most of the courses by just showing up for an exam and doing well on that, no need to attend classes if you don’t like them.
Found it. It’s Cambridge (and he mentions that Oxford has a similar system), and it does seem to be specifically for undergraduates.
A lot of places will start letting you talk with a competent human once you go postgrad, but undergrad students going from high school math to university math are the ones who would probably most need that.
Yes, both Oxford and Cambridge use the tutorial system. Undergraduates get lectures, classes and tutorials (or supervisions in Cambridge), where the latter would be one lecturer/professor to one to three students.