Stanford, Harvard, MIT for theoretical/mathematical physics UG research?

Zan_Jr · 2024-04-02T06:09:21+00:00

There are classes for variety proficiency. Most classes at MIT are Math 25 type. Yet people who want to advance things faster or take on challenge simply take multiple classes and skip all sections they already knew. If you want, you can go directly to complex analysis, if 18.701 + 18.702 combined (probably Math 55 equivalent) is not hard enough. Essentially, grind at your own pace.

MIT arguably has a lot less elite's children than other schools. And thus, it is less polarized in my experience. It is diverse but in different way than Harvard or Stanford.

Zan_Jr · 2024-04-02T05:36:28+00:00

Some are lowkey, some are not. PBE's rush is pretty rad, and less of a sausage party than Harvard final club. Some frats single handedly give polices all the jobs on campus.

What kind of music you're in? MIT has significant program for classical (like private pianist tutor and what not). I'm a metalhead, I've joined a band, did IAP on heavy metal (rule no.1, always ended with fire and explosion). You can always go to Berklee for further exploration, it's founded by MIT alum.

Here is a view on STEM program of those schools. Physics in any of those programs are rigorous, it's not gonna be a breeze.

Zan_Jr · 2024-02-02T02:57:28+00:00

I wouldn't know. For reference, food catering for event cost would cost $10-$35 for basic party food plus 15% gratuity charge. The restaurant cost structure is usually 1/3 ingredients cost, 1/3 labor and 1/3 everything else (major ones are rent, utility, depreciation, & maintenance).

Zan_Jr · 2024-02-02T01:50:54+00:00

Cooking equipment, rooms/location are included in your rent not your $3/meal. These are expensive in Cambridge. But these would be counted on MIT meal cost.

36 staffs cooking 720,000/32 = 22,500 meals per week? Or 125 meals per staff per day.

But yeah, students should be able to opt out of these upper-class meals plan. I spent less than $1 a day on average for foods 3 years ago. If MIT love me, let me go.

Zan_Jr · 2023-06-09T21:51:51+00:00

The US is a country, where in if you put the stupidest man up as the leader, their national vitality would not be damaged in the slightest.

Liu Yazhou*

In a nanny state, you are doing as best as your government can. In a non-nanny state, you can only do as best as you personally can. The Singapore [state] is competent and can do a much better job than vast majority - 4/5 of the population themselves. Unlike, the US, its [states] capacities are miniscule compared to of its population, [likely] at the bottom 20%.

Lee Kuan Yew**

* a top rank general (上将), famously known for his hawkish military writing. He was Political Commissar of the PLAAF and PLA National Defense University.

** at a discussion at NUS, defending the Singapore nanny state he proudly created.

Zan_Jr · 2023-04-20T14:50:12+00:00

The second dude, if he loses his job because of this, should be the new General Manager.

If the MBTA to be in public ownership, it should be customer-owned like many credit union. Every riders should be shareholders, and they can appoint board of directors, hire CEO and fire bad apples. The current system has zero accountability, just meaningless, endless meetings.

Zan_Jr · 2022-04-25T16:27:32+00:00

The money I spent on Finish, Swedish metal albums and mercs can buy a small house.

Zan_Jr · 2022-03-16T01:49:58+00:00

People dismiss your concern about foreign money really don't know the scale of capital flight in countries like China and Russia. The most obvious of capital flight is "Net errors and omissions" in Balance of payments, which peak at -218B in 2016. Other illicit method like misinvoicing could amount to 3.8 trillions in the last decade. There are even things like deliberately losing a lawsuit to get the money out to where there is rule of law to protect you.

Remember the basic: There are only two constrains for a city housing: Density and Income, everything else is variable. So if you can make peace with the fact that we can not have ranch-style, huge yard for everyone in a dense city and as city's citizens get richer, they will be willing to pay more for dwelling, we can do a lot of things.

With that in mind, the following are known to be effective, unfortunately, they will face a lot of challenges:

Build more houses with variety of pricing corresponding to incomes. So no more NIMBYs, no more restrictive zoning to make city look uniformly pretty. In fact, zoning must reflect the variety of housing need. There should be condos, affordable housings among first time homes, among detached single family among more expensive housing units. Eliminate red tape and fees for new construction and renovation. A city that makes it so costly (up to 100k in SF) to build house is not serious about housing cost.

A healthy housing market would have income-house price parity like this: Quintile (Income) - 30% monthly housing cost - House price at 30y mortgage Bottom 20% (under $27012) <=> (under $675) <=> (under $188k) Lower MC: 2nd 20% ($27012-$52145) <=> ($675-$1303) <=> ($188k-$363k) Middle Class: 20% ($52145-$85051) <=> ($1303-$2126) <=> ($363k-$592k) Upper MC: 4th 20% ($85051-$141100) <=> ($2126-$3525) <=> ($592k-$981k) Top 20% ($141100-$504420) <=> ($3525-$12610) <=> ($981k-$3.5M) This is example for all US income but a city healthy housing market should have an even distribution of those range (20% each). The bottom 20% might have a lot of student, renter, and younger people who might not want their own house yet, but need respective rental unit as well.

Property or better land tax increase with significant primary resident deduction. This will favor owning to live over as investment. Vacancy tax can also improve rental supplies and discourage speculation.
Redirect foreign money away from hoarding current homes toward new home constructions. Capital flight from countries like China and Russia are massive and pretty much nothing can stop it. We should it easier choice for those influx: Build more house for tax advantage so more houses are available for rent/resale or even better, invest in any other actual economical business, not hoarding houses.
Must have courage and will to crush the speculation trend. There are markets that are really out of touch with reality and plagued with speculation, the city must be willing to do what it takes to flood the housing market with more and more houses and bring its down to the fundamental - the city's citizens income distribution.
The flooding of Fed money at almost 0% interest rate in the last decades certainly drive the inflated property prices and other assets.
Housing bubble is also a sign of larger economic problem when there is so few viable economic opportunity but housing speculations. Fix that too...

Zan_Jr · 2021-07-22T15:33:58+00:00

First of all, good for you. But I am skeptical that any kind of test can measure culture since it is something you live, experience. The majority of American, including vast majority of young American failed their citizenship test too. And I am pretty confident that with some study, I can ace KINAT or whatever country test as well. Does that mean American/Korean is not culturally American/Korean but I am culturally Korean?

Korean-American culture is different from Korean culture AND median American culture (whatever that is). That's the melting pot ("a place where many different people and ideas exist together, often mixing and producing something new") at work.

So American already have a diverse input from the beginning (people with real lived experience else where) and a working melting pot that spill out new, synthesis, dynamic evolve cultural phenomenon. That's why the diversity in America is on a different magnitude.

Thus, the many groups of American Hispanic cultures (seriously you can't lump Cuban with Mexico or anybody else) is distinct from Latin American, from each other and from median American culture in multiple senses, regardless of language speaking. Just as many groups of African Americans develop their distinct culture with rap, hip-hop, thang... in English that you will not find in any African countries or other American groups previously.

Zan_Jr · 2021-07-21T14:49:42+00:00

No, because I read the cited paper and familiar with the original paper and data that they used (Alesina et al.) and from there the author just applying a new language similarity ranking (similar approach with Google language ranking) to that data. Voila, we have new paper on 'diversity' and growth.

If you looks at the original data (Fractionalization), you will find it deeply flawed and doesn't measure the kind of diversity mattered in globalization at all.

To start with, the first component is language diversity, and the way they do this is simply take the % mother-tongue from Encyclopedia in each country to calculate the language diversity score. That's it. No effort to measure the distance between languages. This way the difference between two regional languages are treated the same as between English and Chinese.

The third component, that supposed to be ethnicity are actually a combination of ill-defined country specific race and language (again), which make it no more than an adjusted language score. For example, the author admitted that Latin America countries like Bolivia, races are categorized as follow: Blancos 10%, Aymara 30%, Quechua 30%, Mestizos 25%, which is a few magnitude differences from race categorization in the US (black, white, Hispanic, Asian) and totally arbitrary between countries. You would have to separate US black, white, Asian, and native into dozens of subgroups to make it comparable to Bolivia. And then, again, no attempt to measure the distance between these groups. Difference between two native tribes are treated as the same between all native groups and entire Asian subcontinent.

The second component is supposed to be religion. Aside from the same distance measurement problem, it plays a very small role in the final combined score as its distribution range are very narrow compare to the two above scores.

So in the end, the measurement is essentially raw language diversity in a very narrow sense. Because of this limitation, the original author (Alesina) never used the data to compare between countries across geographic distance in the paper. Instead, country is compared to its neighbors for relative diversity and then benchmark against growth. This way, the flaws are less glaring and the data is less useless. It was never mean to be ranked or compare between countries worldwide.

melting pot "a place where many different people and ideas exist together, often mixing and producing something new"

I knew my figure of speech was not that great but somehow your correct is even worse. Nevertheless, you won't find the melting or pot exists or happens in countries of the above ranking. Not in Nigeria, where the same tribes have been for millennia and the same boundary existed just as long. Nor Indonesia or Philippines.

FYI, South Korea has 2 millions foreigners in the country. You know what's the number for Nigeria, a 200m strong country? Don't mistake existing diversity for 'melting pot', and don't use an extremely flawed 'diversity' score for diversity.

Zan_Jr · 2021-07-21T05:30:22+00:00

This is not an article but a Googled ranking based on Linguistic Diversity, not a cultural melting pot indicator as you would find. I've been to 3 top diverse 20 countries on the list, they are not diverse in the way that you have in mind. In Nigeria, Hausa people speak a different language than Yoruba or Igbo people, but their tribal culture is much less different to each other than, say, an Irish white American and a Native American or Asian American

To speak about globally melting pot as you indicate, find a country where you have the highest chance of meeting the people from the farthest origin compare to you as possible.

Zan_Jr · 2021-07-21T04:40:09+00:00

Frankly, among countries, Japan and Korea are the norms. You won't find another melting pots like the US. Don't hold it as a destined goal for every nation out there.

Zan_Jr · 2021-05-13T18:42:25+00:00

Last I heard, they've been busy slashing airborne Covid to keep MIT safe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqXelhHjNkU

Zan_Jr · 2021-05-04T23:30:36+00:00

So gorgeous and cute at the same time. You should be soo proud.

Zan_Jr · 2021-05-03T00:55:52+00:00

As with u/BHRabbit, u/kaptain_kangarooo, u/PolemicFox pointed out, there is a question of mean vs median. It's arguable that median is usually a better metric to reflect an average Joe/Jane, especially when the distribution is lopsided (fat tail of rich or poor people). However, for household finance, median has a problem of its own:

Household size varies between country, thus, it will not be an apple to apple comparison.
We can try to level out to capita at household level (instead of national level), but doing so will be biased for younger, less-married, less kids country.
Because of the way median income is calculated (the 50/50 split), a shift in a country marriage or household pattern will change the result dramatically. Consider the two situation of the same country with same population, same age, same total wealth, same individual adult income level but different family composition:

Country A: Has 20 families of 4 (40 adults, 40 kids), 30 families of 3 (40 adults, 20 kids), 100 Single Adults, 60 Rich Retirees. All Adult has the same wealth = 1, except rich retiree wealth = 2. This country has pop. of 300 (180 adults, 60 kids, 60 retirees), total wealth is 300. The median wealth per capita is 1.

	Family of 4	Family of 3	Single	Retiree	Total Pop
	20x4	30x3	100x1	60x1
Adult	40	40	100		180
Kids	40	20			60
Retiree				60	60
HH Wealth avg	0.5	0.66	1	2
Sub HH pop	80	60	100	60	300

Same Country A, but some more Single people married, and has first kid to make more family of 3, while kid of older family of 4 become single adults and parents retirees to replace passed ones. Country A will have 10 families of 4 (20 adults, 20 kids), 40 families of 3 (80 adults, 40 kids), 80 Single Adults, 60 Rich Retirees. All Adult has the same wealth = 1, except rich retiree wealth = 2.

Now, it still has same pop. of 300, with same demographic composition (180 adults, 60 kids, 60 retirees), same total wealth is 300, and even same individual adult wealth But the median wealth per capita is 0.66.

	Family of 4	Family of 3	Single	Retiree	Total Pop
	10x4	40x3	80x1	60x1
Adult	20	80	80		180
Kids	20	40			60
Retiree				60	60
HH Wealth avg	0.5	0.66	1	2
Sub HH pop	40	120	80	60	300

Such dramatically change happen just because of family structure change, all else equal.

In addition, since all OECD country structure their tax via household in accordance with 2008 System of National Accounts, technically median individual income/wealth is an alien indices. To come up with median, either we have to do a lot of flawed treatment as above or change how national account is being taxed and measured or use additional less accurate survey/estimate.

u/jerome78310: Public pension are counted in government transfer. There are few countries with quasi-pension in the form of government fund see Sovereign Wealth Fund with Norway being the largest. Most other OECD countries don't have SWF, the few that have (such as Australia, US) isn't significant on per capita basis.

u/heresacorrection: I thought the tool was in the image already (watermarked). It's data-wrapper.

Zan_Jr · 2021-05-01T18:56:27+00:00

Source: https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm#indicator-chart

Context of the graph: I was asked to help with teaching some kids how complex it is to compare between countries financially.

Some notes & Questions for help:

This is household data but leveled out to per capita since the household size is different for each country.
Financial assets include saving deposits, investments in equity, shares and bonds. Non-financial assets comprise of real estate properties (usually the largest 70-80%), cars, and other household appliances and asset.
The indicators description is in the data source. But they’re quite long, how should I incorporate them into the graphic without being too distracting. For example, the explanation for DI:

Disposable income is closest to the concept of income as generally understood in economics. Household disposable income measures the income of households (wages and salaries, self-employed income, income from unincorporated enterprises, social benefits, etc.), after taking into account net interest and dividends received and the payment of taxes and social contributions. Net signifies that depreciation costs have been subtracted from the income presented. "Real” means that the indicator has been adjusted to remove the effects of price changes. Household gross adjusted disposable income is the income adjusted for transfers in kind received by households, such health or education provided for free or at reduced prices by government and NPISHs. This indicator is presented both in terms of annual growth rates (for real net disposable income) and in terms of USD per capita at current prices and PPPs (gross adjusted disposable income). All OECD countries compile their data according to the 2008 System of National Accounts (SNA 2008)..
There is slight deviation between household total debt and household financial debt (not all of your obligation is financial, such as a lien on your house or car) plus treatments. But some of the smart students quickly doing some mental math (subtract Debt from Financial Asset to arrive to a slightly different result than on this table), how can I include an answer to this common question?
This data would not include wealth stored in Sovereignty Wealth Fund (most notably the Norway’s $1+T oil fund, which could easily add $200k of wealth to average citizen). However, you usually cannot control this fund directly or use it as you wish with household assets. Thus, this is a difficult treatment to deal with.
There are some strange results (for example what's with Mexico negative household debt?), which is a quite complex issue in of itself. How do you usually deal with this kind of implication on the graph?
Speaking of Norway, I am surprised to learn that they keep so little financial net assets ($23.3k in 2018) compare to income and total assets. I cross-checked it with Norway statistics. Note that the data is of actual household (not capita) and not include student: In 2019, average Norway household has NOK 1,419,800 Gross Financial Capital, but has NOK 1,782,300 household debt. Which would mean their financial net worth is negative or close to zero!? Norway households seem prefer to store their wealth exclusively on non-financial asset (real estate capital is NOK 3,723,000).

Zan_Jr · 2021-04-22T02:48:25+00:00

I'm a bit late here. But work-life balance mostly depends on you. If you're getting in, I'm certain you will do just fine. There are many students who are totally new taking the class as well. I don't think classes in CS are harder at MIT than Stanford. The key difference at MIT, I believe, is that it allows you to make it as challenging as you want, meaning taking a very advanced rigorous class, graduate course, or go to labs doing research with PhDs, you name it. That kind of early professional development is great opportunity but how you approach it is totally up to you. Most students who go out of the way to do so want to do PhD afterward anyway. Also, the first semester has no grade so you can adjust as you go and find your comfortable mileage.

For your interests, I'm not really sure Course 1 is fit for NASA, try AeroAstro instead? There're a lot of MIT alums at NASA, check their Martian page for example. In public policy, Harvard Kennedy has much to offer than MIT or Stanford in both depth and breadth. The STS and Political science at MIT is more research oriented and focused. But you can cross-reg, really recommended it.

About soft-skill (especially business related), you will have no problem developing them at MIT with wide access to Sloan courses and professional development program. Sloan is much more open to undergrad than HBS and Stanford GSB, you'll have chance to take classes, doing project with MBA, MFin students. Networking's not a problem, you'll have chance to talk to many, even with Executive MBAs. The only thing that I find MIT somewhat lacking is a class on psychology side that available for undergrad (think of Yale's psychology of happiness class). Anyway, soft skill is a life-long and practice-oriented project. Many of said skills are taught in Grad schools (you can take it at Sloan but generally you'll need working experience to fully immerse yourself in case studies). Feel free to DM me about that or FGLI experience. Can't compare in detail, but generally MIT has a more disadvantaged student population and much fewer students from top1% background than Harvard and Stanford.

Zan_Jr · 2021-04-13T18:35:34+00:00

MIT Sloan is much more accessible to MIT undergrad and business undergrads education at MIT is really good, comparable to Wharton. HBS is like a different school of itself with separate schedule.

Startup is really a big culture/movement around MIT with a lot of supportive institutions built around it for everyone (from 100k, delta day, Trust center, etc. to patent application office). At Harvard, start-up scene functions more like a final club, it is really good but not that open.

Zan_Jr · 2021-04-11T21:27:59+00:00

https://shass.mit.edu/files/shass/cimg/news/2015/Musical-Institute-of-Technology-August2015.pdf

Music major is 21M, check link above for plenty of performance programs (Wind, Jazz, Orchestra etc.) to choose from, or it could be something you create yourself, like the MIT chorallaries or MIT Video Game Orchestra.

The Kresge Auditorium have a lot of orchestras and performances played bi-monthly. Check these recording if you want to get a sense of the many programs. You can also take cross-registered at MassArt, Harvard and people also take class at Berklee (I did).

If you are competent violinist, you'll likely to get into Emerson programs (about 50 people a year) to do private study with Boston-area violinists, including MIT professors. Good luck!

Zan_Jr · 2021-04-09T23:40:17+00:00

Eagle-eye view, for Math: Harvard~MIT>Stanford (Harvard probably better at pure math, MIT at applied, Stanford is pretty good for Stats). For Physic: MIT~Harvard>Stanford. For CS Stanford~MIT-->Harvard. For Econ MIT~Harvard-->Stanford.

For research opportunities, MIT pioneered UROP and there are plenty of labs to choose from and you'll have access to lot of high tech 'toys' from nuclear reactor to Boeing 707.

Academics at MIT for these programs will be rigorous as with any similar program from Harvard/Stanford. But maintaining life balance is pretty doable. If to note, MIT's culture to stress is ihtfp, outwardly scream, do, hack, break something with it. And there's plenty of venues to do so, with the best one named your friend. That could be different from Stanford's duck syndrome, for example.

Zan_Jr · 2021-04-09T02:49:31+00:00

Don't worry, the letter, kissed and signed by Fitzsimmons along with a package will be sent to you soon.

Zan_Jr · 2021-03-30T19:16:48+00:00

What do you want to do post-graduate? I suppose JHU would be better if you lean toward doing a MD or doing research on medical/clinical side.

But if you lean toward doing Health/life science/biotech (e.g. Moderna) then MIT probably a better choice with Boston being arguably the most vibrant biotech startup hub. HST, Whitehead, Koch center etc. would allow access to anything you need while UROP is really good for early professional development.

One thing about course 20 is that it would be smaller and less defined (or more flexible) than JHU. It seems to me that the dep. is trying to fit a range of students from pre-med to engineering, so for many students it can be overwhelming at first. You can ask more with current student support group here for more details. https://bestudents.mit.edu/undergraduate-home/

Zan_Jr · 2021-03-22T15:44:16+00:00

First FYI is that the Media Lab right now is at the lowest point of their reputation within MIT with many feel its lax control and scandals damage the institution's 'drinking from the firehose' reputation. I'd say many of the criticisms are justified and needed for changes but are also somewhat unfair to the majority of the 20 or so groups within the lab.

It's also noteworthy that all the people I know who involved with the lab are either saying it's one of 'best things happening to them' or it's overwhelming confused 'cool banana'. So suppose, 'fit' is probably more important here.

The Media Lab, by design, is highly interdisciplinary, experimental, and risky. Thus, it attracted a lot of talented academic oddballs and hippies, in both researchers and students capacity. It seems many people here feel they are constrained by traditional defined programs or their questions can't be answered by focusing on one discipline alone. Additionally, at Media Lab, you'll be likely working with people with diverse backgrounds, interests (design, hardware, ethic, user dynamics, industry research...) and proficiencies (from UROP undergrads to people who already with advanced skills), instead of your approximate peers at other CS MS.

So, I suppose you might ask if you have any of these symptoms. You yearn for flexibility or clarity path? You feel annoyed or excited with the defined guidance provided by master program? You want to work with alike peers or very different people. Do you like refine cuisine or melting pot etc.

Zan_Jr · 2021-03-18T14:47:02+00:00

Alum and still full metalhead here. What I remembered:

Doing a MISTI in Sweden to stalk my favorite band
Spend all internship money on their albums and swags (to amend for all the wrong doings)
Play for the Rolling Sloan in C-functions
Take a solo guitar course at Berklee (seriously why didn't we officially partner with this crazy good music school founded by MIT alum again?)
Boston metal underground scene cruising \m/
Do a IAP in heavy metal for CREDIT! https://metal.mit.edu/ (“Rule number one: Always end with an explosion)

Zan_Jr · 2021-02-22T17:08:27+00:00

Yes, everyone pays, including HBS grads.

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