BF2S Forums College discussion thread

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

Cybargs wrote:

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i see. i don't know the geography or costings involved all that well, but i don't really find living in NYC itself all that cool, either. it's so complicated trying to apply to american colleges from abroad, because there's no centralized service (like we have here). every college is like its own smorgasbord of funding and bursary application. and every college charges.

You should see if Common App does post-grad stuff. But American uni's seem to have a hard on for personal statements and extracurricular activity. Good luck getting into a top uni without having at least 150 hours sunk into community service.

uh i can pretty much go to whatever school i want. it's PhD. you need to be a top-class researcher. they don't really care if you've helped the homeless when you're applying for a doctoral research placement. it's a professional degree for the academic career ladder. why  would you think they need extra-curriculars? that's kind of silly. maybe for an undergraduate placement, or a competitive taught masters. but research is 100% about your proposal and your academic references/recommendations. what matters about the institution you choose is: a) there is a specific member of staff (or several) who cater to your specific area of research; and b) that you can demonstrate why that institution's facilities, benefits, and help etc. are particularly relevant to you. that's it.

i've heard stories about people being turned down for PhD applications just because they had a real job for a few years, because the time spent in another work environment, with different professional standards/practices, supposedly makes academics 'rusty' and they're afraid it'll take them too long to readjust to to individual-style of study and formal writing. i dunno why they'd ask you to have spent a few hundred hours doing community service...

The other shit I was talking about was more undergraduate level, sorry for the confusion.

Aussie education is similar in terms of fee structure, but we have courses that are cheaper due to "national priority" EG science and mathematics subjects. Most expensive courses are Engineering, Business, Law and Medicine.

Dilbert_X wrote:

UTL wrote:

i've heard stories about people being turned down for PhD applications just because they had a real job for a few years, because the time spent in another work environment, with different professional standards/practices, supposedly makes academics 'rusty' and they're afraid it'll take them too long to readjust to to individual-style of study and formal writing.

Thats a telling point by itself.

no it's not. get a grip with your stupid bias. academia is a PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINE, not a hobby. being able to write serious scholarly work is not something you can do in the "sundays of your life", as you continually portray. it is rigorous and held to very high standards. someone who works in a different professional environment for the better part of a decade, acclimatizes themselves to new practices and standards, perhaps even a whole different professional diction and writing style, CAN (can) [can] be 'rusty' upon returning. it's no more "telling" than the fact someone would have shortgivings if a professional NBA player wanted to return to the league in his 30's, after a few years playing golf. the mind is a muscle, and certain faculties and ways of thinking need 'exercise' just as a person's aerobic fitness does. perhaps the mental-physical analogy is too much: in which case it's easy to just substitute it with the ordinary misgivings ANY recruiter would have if someone wanted a 'change of career' and was 'out of the game'. what's "telling" is that you basically conceive of academia as an idle hobby, something people can take up if it 'piques their interest' sufficiently enough. that is SO out of step with reality. academia is extremely tough and held to very high standards nowadays-- a simple consequence of so many people being PhD'd and saying "yeah, i fancy that".

now, i know plenty of people who waited til their late 20's and early 30's to start a PhD. but, what was decisive for them was the fact that in their 'time away' they continued doing writerly/intellectual/scholarly pursuits. they kept 'exercised'. they kept abreast of latest publications and academic research, kept on top of latest trends and debates. so they hadn't really 'left' as such, per se. one of my professors i had literally left academia after his MA to work in banking for 10 years, and he went from oxbridge (oxford ba, cantab ma) to queen mary for his PhD. queen mary is a great university, but i'm led to believe the rreason his alma mater wouldn't cover his PhD topic is because he had 'left' the vocation for so long. it's not "telling" of anything. you make it out like it's a snooty club, or some cult-ish thing. it's the same as any competitive, professional job, and you know it. try explaining to a recruiter in engineering why you spent 10 years doing something that has no relevancy to the engineering job you are applying for. people have to justify their time-spent on CV's. every little counts. it's a tough job-market when it comes to high-salaried roles.

Macbeth wrote:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/comment-page-3/#comments
Long and interesting article on Asian Americans being underrepresented in Ivy League schools relative to their merit. In California they voted to outlaw affirmative action. Affirmative action is keeping the Asian man out of the Ivy League and cutting off much of their access to American political institutional power. Can't wait for the policy to be struck down by SCOTUS later this year.

Also

For one thing, a Census category such as “Asian” is hardly homogenous or monolithic, with South Asians and East Asians such as Chinese and Koreans generally having much higher performance compared to other groups such as Filipinos, Vietnamese, or Cambodians, just as the various types of “Hispanics” such as Cubans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans differ widely in their socio-economic and academic profiles.

See I wasn't lying about Filipino girls being easy.

A lot has to do with extra curricular activity. My ex's brother got rejected by all Ivy Leagues and got into UC berkely, graduated with a 4.0 in Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering. 2380 SAT's and 7's on ALL IB subjects. No extra curricular because asian parents think anything outside of studying is a waste of time, especially sports.

UTL wrote:

one of my professors i had literally left academia after his MA to work in banking for 10 years, and he went from oxbridge (oxford ba, cantab ma) to queen mary for his PhD. queen mary is a great university, but i'm led to believe the rreason his alma mater wouldn't cover his PhD topic is because he had 'left' the vocation for so long. it's not "telling" of anything. you make it out like it's a snooty club, or some cult-ish thing.

That does sound cultish - if you leave you will be banished forever. It would explain your maniacal fervour.
Non-humanities departments value greatly real-world experience and learning, many won't let someone teach if they don't have it, never mind someone's writing style might have changed a bit, why is humanities so closeted?

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2013-04-22 02:59:10)

Dilbert_X wrote:

UTL wrote:

one of my professors i had literally left academia after his MA to work in banking for 10 years, and he went from oxbridge (oxford ba, cantab ma) to queen mary for his PhD. queen mary is a great university, but i'm led to believe the rreason his alma mater wouldn't cover his PhD topic is because he had 'left' the vocation for so long. it's not "telling" of anything. you make it out like it's a snooty club, or some cult-ish thing.

That does sound cultish - if you leave you will be banished forever. It would explain your maniacal fervour.
Non-humanities departments value greatly real-world experience and learning, many won't let someone teach if they don't have it, never mind someone's writing style might have changed a bit, why is humanities so closeted?

closeted? his alma mater didn't feel comfortable throwing £75,000 at someone who hadn't demonstrated any aptitude or interest in the subject for 7-8 years. it's a huge investment, and cambridge gets enough absolute top-star, firing-on-all-cylinders, rabidly-enthusiastic candidates to give the £75k to someone else. 'closeted'? you'd make a terrible admissions tutor.

i don't really know many astrophysics departments that would value 10 years spent in sales or the banking sector, but okay, keep talking out of your ass about a profession you know nothing about. to get a job in academia you need the publications, you need the conferences, you need a whole long resume of activity that 'puts you ahead'. sinking 10 years into another endeavour normally means, quite simply, that you are 10 years behind someone who didn't. i've already spoken many times of how insanely competitive the salaried post-doc world is. but keep believing sciences are open-minded and hand out jobs to long-leavers, and humanities are 'cultish'. lol. i don't know how you take yourself seriously.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-22 04:37:28)

economics isn't, no. it tries to make a bunch of semi-positivistic theories into a hard science. economics has always been derided in academia as something that tries to back-up a bunch of (ideologically motivated) theories with a few graphs and statistical surveys. there is very little rigor in economics. economics is an 'institutional' subject now, i agree, but it occupies a problematic space. even people like jay have criticized economics before. so take it up with him. the hard science bunch will have no problem filling you in-- they're the ones who take so much pride over their beloved 'method'.

rewriting what? "a phd in science a career doth not make" and "a phd in science doesn't make a career in academia" are the exact same statement. stop trolling.

Dilbert_X wrote:

UTL wrote:

progress in one is meaningless without contemplation in the other

LOL You're grasping at relevance there.

and no, i'm not. since antiquity philosophy has been considered the aegis that branches over the hard sciences and technologies, providing a normative value and ethics system. the rationality of enlightenment science seldom accounts for proper ethical positions, or considers any sort of metaphysical implication. philosophy and humanities contemplate things like history, tradition, ethics etc. in order to fill out the qualitative experience of modernity, as the sciences truck forward with material gain and invention to fill out the quantitative side of the coin. this has roundly been understood to be the twin-mission of the academy since plato's symposium. "grasping at relevance" only in the minds of a bigot like yourself. evidently every single prestigious college in the world hasn't caught up to your views yet.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i don't really know many astrophysics departments that would value 10 years spent in sales or the banking sector, but okay, keep talking out of your ass about a profession you know nothing about. to get a job in academia you need the publications, you need the conferences, you need a whole long resume of activity that 'puts you ahead'. sinking 10 years into another endeavour normally means, quite simply, that you are 10 years behind someone who didn't. i've already spoken many times of how insanely competitive the salaried post-doc world is. but keep believing sciences are open-minded and hand out jobs to long-leavers, and humanities are 'cultish'. lol. i don't know how you take yourself seriously.

I'm sure a University would be delighted to have an astrophycisit who'd spent time working at CERN blowing up real particles, on real fusion reactors, on ion drives at NASA etc, compared with someone who'd spent the same time scratching away in a garrett.

More so in engineering, and most other subjects actually.

If academia wants to separate itself into some esoteric, hyper-competitive and irrelevant backwater it won't be good for it in the long run.

uuuh CERN is considered academia. not 'private sector work'. almost everyone working at CERN is associated with a university department. they are 'researchers', i.e. academics. rofl. you really do not know what you are talking about. i am referring to a man that went to work in banking (or possibly even advertising, i can't recall exactly) for almost a decade. that is a radically different world and professional practice to academia. i.e. there are clear problems with 'relevant experience', as comes up in EVERY job interview. so don't make this an "academia is closeted" thing. you are fucking inane.

CERN and NASA are very scientific applications of very specialist scientific knowledge. i am talking 'private sector' as in, corporate-work, ordinary office work. the 'real world'. NASA isn't really a standard example of the sort of job someone with a science degree would take up for a decade, before changing their mind and going into academia. i'm willing to bet most people working at NASA ALREADY HAVE PHD'S. you absolute gomp.

UTL wrote:

and no, i'm not. since antiquity philosophy has been considered the aegis that branches over the hard sciences and technologies, providing a normative value and ethics system. the rationality of enlightenment science seldom accounts for proper ethical positions, or considers any sort of metaphysical implication. philosophy and humanities contemplate things like history, tradition, ethics etc. in order to fill out the qualitative experience of modernity, as the sciences truck forward with material gain and invention to fill out the quantitative side of the coin. this has roundly been understood to be the twin-mission of the academy since plato's symposium. "grasping at relevance" only in the minds of a bigot like yourself. evidently every single prestigious college in the world hasn't caught up to your views yet

Except the sciences have done a good job of separating themselves from and ignoring philosophy for quite a while now.
The arts crowd might think they're relevant, they aren't.

Dilbert_X wrote:

UTL wrote:

and no, i'm not. since antiquity philosophy has been considered the aegis that branches over the hard sciences and technologies, providing a normative value and ethics system. the rationality of enlightenment science seldom accounts for proper ethical positions, or considers any sort of metaphysical implication. philosophy and humanities contemplate things like history, tradition, ethics etc. in order to fill out the qualitative experience of modernity, as the sciences truck forward with material gain and invention to fill out the quantitative side of the coin. this has roundly been understood to be the twin-mission of the academy since plato's symposium. "grasping at relevance" only in the minds of a bigot like yourself. evidently every single prestigious college in the world hasn't caught up to your views yet

Except the sciences have done a good job of separating themselves from and ignoring philosophy for quite a while now.
The arts crowd might think they're relevant, they aren't.

nope, they haven't. you clearly don't know anything about science academia. your comments about CERN have already shown that - painfully so. you are arguing in the dark with nothing but blind seething prejudice. you come across as rather sad. science research and journals overlap with philosophy and ethics more often than you'd think. they are big questions. philosophy provides a framework to answer them.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

a PhD doesn't make a career in any subject. i said science in the first instance because we were talking about your specific life. in the AU chats thread i detailed that a large proportion of PhD science candidates leave academia (more than humanities, which makes the sciences an even better demonstration of my point). you were making out being offered a PhD proposal made you 'a success' in academia. it's just the start of a career. of a slim-chance at a career, going by the numbers. we went over this in D&ST, at torturous length, about a motnh ago. come on, you know, memory and stuff.

More people study PhDs in science than in humanities, that is all, it doesn't mean a science PhD is less academically valid, its simply there are more people studying for them compared with the number of academic places.

uuuh, where are you getting this from? there are more funded PhD's for sciences, sure, but academic departments across the spread of top institutions tend to be equally sized. what happens with PhD candidates in science is that they find lucrative offers for work in private research/pharm/chemical industry etc. and they go for that. less competitive and with private-sector benefits over public sector benefits. it's a personal thing. there aren't "far more science PhD candidates". my comment was precisely based on the fact that someone who gets a PhD in science does not have an academic career made for them. and they don't. there are many other paths.



as you can see, the days of the comfy 'tenure track' academic are long-dead. less than 10% of post-docs get a stable career in academia.

and i've never made myself out to be the "only successful academic" here. i talk on equal terms with people like spark all the time. i encouraged people like pochsy to go into academia, too. i have nothing but enthusiasm for anyone else who is interested. i was merely taunting you about your own weird, blind rantings because it is, frankly, a little weird and irrational.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-22 05:02:09)

Blind rantings? I'm as qualified as you are. I did one of the most respected courses, at one of the most respected colleges, in the world.

Most people have never heard of your college, much less be able to peg it on a map, and a degree in Literature is a source of mirth for most people.

there aren't "far more science PhD candidates".

And yet you say "90% of people who do a humanities/social sciences PhD will stay in academia. roughly half of science/tech/engineering type PhD's will stay in academia"

I'm doubtfull there are twice as many academic posts available in the humanities, not least since the departments are generally much smaller.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2013-04-22 05:09:43)

Dilbert_X wrote:

Blind rantings? I'm as qualified as you are. I did one of the most respected courses, at one of the most respected colleges, in the world.

Most people have never heard of your college, much less be able to peg it on a map, and a degree in Literature is a source of mirth for most people.

you are ranting. many people, even science background posters, have rolled their eyes at the shit you say about academia. you are totally and categorically wrong about the career path. you don't only reserve your ire for english academics, either, you rant at the whole profession. i know you went to imperial, which is good for you, but it only makes your anger and negativity all the more confusing. you'd think someone with your credentials would view academia favourably, or at least have a clue how the profession actually is. instead you are just full of bizarre-o statements. and you know so little. considering CERN 'private sector' work, as opposed to "the academic garret". lol wtf.

oh and i doubt most people will have heard of most of the worldtop100 unis with <7,500 people at them. there are a lot of universities in the world. many of the top colleges are necessarily small; it's part of their elitism. it doesn't really bother me if someone on the street has heard of my tiny alma mater. what matters for the interests of my career is the reputation it has within the profession. which is world-leading. and more than good enough to get me happily approved for oxford. so, yet again, your comments are more inane ranting.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-22 05:30:21)