Re: [MLUG] what happened to Igor?

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 8/9/05, Igor Izyumin <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> Mark Rages wrote:
> 
> >Now Igor is (we think) at UMR, where students and professors are more
> >motivated and interested in learning.  At least the engineering
> >students.
> >
> I would tend to agree.  Everyone I've met at UMR has been very
> motivated; I've seen people pull all-nighters just to finish a Linear
> Systems homework.  I'd say the main difference is that more prestigious
> schools have more well-known professors and a bigger research budget,
> but I don't really see how it matters for undergraduate study.

On the whole, the students are better and more motivated at the
private school, but, sure, you can get that at a sufficiently
prestigious public school.  What is much tougher to get is smaller
class sizes.  That doesn't make a big difference some of the time, but
it can help, and it's a major factor other times.  The dearth of
writing assignments at MU is caused in large part by class size
issues.

> Of  course, graduate school is a different story, and I will probably go
> somewhere else.

For grad school, you tend to go to the top program that is willing to
pay you to go to school.  And your chief determinant of success is how
well your interests and abilities fit in with somebody's currently
productive research program.  Ironically enough, those are strikingly
*un*correlated with the overall prestige of the school.  I can think
of situations where the very best place to go to study X is almost
anything.

jking

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