Thinking about dropping out of college

[momopi]

The traditional "elitist" schools are the big 8 Ivy League:

Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Harvard University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Yale University

While schools like MIT and Cal-Tech give the image of nerd magnets majoring in EE, it should be noted that MIT actually offers over 40 undergrad degrees including arts, business, econ, etc.

http://web.mit.edu/catalog/front.degre.html

[Moretorque]

The big Schools like MIT are just going after the $'s the wealthy families have to offer for them and in return they will set their children up with the kosher jobs in a nonproducing herd like cattle America of today, but these people graduating from these schools will be the managerial class doing the herding for the Elite as we are managed on a spread sheet.

You've confused MIT for Harvard. Very few children of the elite want to attend MIT because it's a challenging curricula. MIT is the govt/defense sector money sponge and at the same time, they have their students (mainly graduate/postdoc) do a lot of the base case R&D work for the Depts of Def and Energy which are handled by the principal investigators at the university. MIT, on the whole, selects students from the middle class with the high science/math abilities. I'd worked with numerous MIT grads, these guys were clearly not born rich.

With the above said, what happens is that since McKinsey Co & Goldman Sach actively recruit at Harvard, just down the street from MIT, those management consulting and financial outfits have expanded their dragnet to include MITers, as they make for diligent worker bees for the Harvard MBA graduates. But it's widely known that while MITers are alleged math & science geniuses, the joke goes that in the end, they end up working under Harvard men. Thus, people who have the capacity for 'making things' end up becoming corporate men for the money changers.

You are talking about the MIT of the past, I just finished reading a small tidbit on this the other day and they were talking about how schools like MIT have resorted to targeting wealthy families and watering down the science and graduating lesser quality scientist just so they can pay the bills and service their debt.

It was very interesting, they were claiming our top of the line schools used to turn out the best and the brightest but now even schools like MIT who used to look for talent when recruiting are now just debt serfs and are aggressively going after money as the main objective and turning out idiots for the most part compared to what we used to turn out in this country.

I forget where I read it but it specifically used MIT as a prime example, my stepfather taught at Yale and worked his way down to UF in the field of Astrophysics and he said when he retired the rigors of the education in the sciences in his feild were a remnant of what they were when he started in the early 60's.

[ladislav]

If you want to teach in the Middle East ,which means good money and long vacations and seeing the world/living like a jet-setter, you should get a US college degree. Particularly an English/ESL, etc; then CELTA/DELTA and MATESL.

Middle Eastern ( and other well paying)countries won't give you teaching visas if you don't have at least a BA. So, a US degree is a way out of the US, too.

One ESL job in Afghanistan pays $225K, jobs wit DynCorp paid $139K a year.

Those are top end. But most jobs in Saudi will allow you to save $20-30K a year regardless.

I am a person of average intelligence and I am glad I have my BA and MA. Without them, none of my life out of the US would have been possible.

ESL is the quickest way to Int'l life but you need a degree for that.

Saudi is dying for teachers-- they are hurting bad and want Americans to come and train their youth.. Cushy jobs with great living conditions. Other ME countries also want us there.

[AnonymousAmerican]

If you want to teach in the Middle East ,which means good money and long vacations and seeing the world/living like a jet-setter, you should get a US college degree. Particularly an English/ESL, etc; then CELTA/DELTA and MATESL.

Middle Eastern ( and other well paying)countries won't give you teaching visas if you don't have at least a BA. So, a US degree is a way out of the US, too.

One ESL job in Afghanistan pays $225K, jobs wit DynCorp paid $139K a year.

Those are top end. But most jobs in Saudi will allow you to save $20-30K a year regardless.

I am a person of average intelligence and I am glad I have my BA and MA. Without them, none of my life out of the US would have been possible.

ESL is the quickest way to Int'l life but you need a degree for that.

Saudi is dying for teachers-- they are hurting bad and want Americans to come and train their youth.. Cushy jobs with great living conditions. Other ME countries also want us there.

I apologize for this but can you explain what ESL, CELTA/DELTA and MATSL are?

[Cornfed]

I apologize for this but can you explain what ESL, CELTA/DELTA and MATSL are?

ESL = (teaching) English as a Second Language
CELTA = Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults
DELTA = Diploma in Teaching English Language to Adults
MA TESL = Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language

[Moretorque]

No offense but as soon as the world disposes of England and takes English with it this will be a much better place to live for all humanity.

[AnonymousAmerican]

No offense but as soon as the world disposes of England and takes English with it this will be a much better place to live for all humanity.

no, it's the whole anglo-world that needs to be disposed. everywhere the british landed and settled in mass numbers (USA, Canada, Aus, NZ, UK) are known to have extremely bad dating scenes and social dynamics.

[momopi]

If anyone is interested, Soka University in Alisa Viejo (South Orange County, California) has a mandatory requirement of 2 years study in foreign language + study abroad for undergrad students. The grad school program offers Masters in Foreign Language Education, concentrating on Teaching English as a second language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soka_University_of_America
http://www.soka.edu/

[S_Parc]

No offense but as soon as the world disposes of England and takes English with it this will be a much better place to live for all humanity.

Long before the Anglo-American culture diminishes [ I estimate ~2120 ], we'll be b*inking robots and thus, the final chapter of male/female relationships will be written.

Here's the latest NVIDIA results on neural nets ...

http://www.slashgear.com/nvidia-gpu-neu ... b-18286783

It's only 2013, 1.5 years since IBM Watson's Jeopardy win, and that type of supercomputing cluster is 16 servers, as oppose to a full room of high cost P7 servers. I think we're looking at a cost reduction from close to $1M+ to less than $50K. I think the age of robot b*inking is coming, once we have supercomputing on a desktop.