What's the Educational Edge in Top Computer Science Universities?

[markus_zhang]

Hi friends,

I know that top colleges have great connections and maybe better hardware, but regarding the educational part, since many of their lectures, note and labs are online already, what else edge do they have?

I can think of a few, for example:

- Sharper students - Can discuss with professors easily

[icsa]

Top research universities get their students closer to the state of the art than do teaching universities.

For example, in recent years, freshmen students at Carnegie Mellon have learned more state of the art computer science knowledge than master's students at many teaching universities.

In addition, the capabilities of the freshmen computer science students at Carnegie Mellon are easily in the 95th percentile of all university students - enabling them to learn such state of the art knowledge.

[uyt → icsa]

Do you have some examples of those state of the art?

I feel like other than some of the recent ml breakthroughs, cs theory and systems haven't changed much in forever.

[markus_zhang → icsa]

This sounds interesting. Can I obtain the relevant information by just looking at their open courses?

100% agreed about the 95% percentile as well, smarter and work harder too I believe. I'm so far away from it haha.

[dswilkerson]

From someone who went to a community college and then a famous world-class computer science research school, the biggest difference is that the world-class place has the following important properties:

(1) enthusiasm of your fellow students: students are very enthusiastic and you learn a lot from working with them in your class; this makes a huge difference; so you really want a school that has a community where people live near each other and hang out together after class; this is huge; you do not want to go to a commuter school where everyone drives somewhere else after class; that is, the fewer parking lots, the better, that way people have to live nearby and you can work together on projects;

(2) implicit belief that amazing new things can be done and that you can do them: if you say you are going to do something that has never been done before, most places say "no you are not", but at a world-class place they say "when?"; it's an amazing feeling the first time someone else believes in you more than you do, believes that you can change the world, when no one else has ever spoken to you like that before in your life;

(3) irreverence for the status quo: the students and faculty are always looking at most of what has been said/written about a field, the conventional wisdom, and saying "really it's all just this <simple statement> and the conventional wisdom is all junk"; no respect for "argument by authority" at all; they are willing to just throw everything out and start again in a field from scratch;

It is mostly how people see themselves and what can be done in life. Is life something that happens to you, or is life something you are creating?

The good news is that you really could create that for yourself if you put enough effort into it. Further, if you work hard enough and you are respectful enough, the people at the world-class places will collaborate with you. Just read what they are doing, ask competent questions, and offer them something, even if it is that you do the reading they ask you to. If you are a strong enough coder and you keep showing up and doing the work, a grad student at a world-class place somewhere would likely be willing to collaborate with you.

You can even go to classes at famous places even if you are not a registered student and the faculty will help you learn. What they care about is that you are putting in the effort, which is what you would have to do if you were a student there anyway. It is really up to you.

If you behave like you are world-class, others will start to respond to you as if you are. One day, someone will call you up and say they have some research apprenticeship or some opportunity you never even thought to apply for. I've had people invent jobs and research initiatives just so I could apply for them. The world moves according to how you act every day. You are creating your world.

If you are afraid, just ask yourself this question: "how long am I going to be dead?" Goethe: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

[markus_zhang → dswilkerson]

Thanks man this is really valuable knowledge and inspiring words! Good thing is that many of the courses/labs are put online, even with videos of classes and tutorials (I'm really amazed that some even put up tutorials and appreciate the effort they put into bringing the educational exp to everyone else) so we just need to discipline outselves enough to work hard to keep pace with them.