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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Sorry that would be Harvard.

Different folks, different strokes.

I think everyone should realise going into this that the entire premise of the article is ridiculous. I think very few people in academia would disagree with this. MIT may be the most important university in the world for technology or entrepreneurship.

But if you're a arts student is MIT 'the most important university in the world'? No, probably not. It is extremely easy to myopically focus on the fields that are relevant to your own interests, and prioritise accordingly.

Of course, it's a magazine article, not a paper. People shouldn't take it too seriously - I went to Harvard, I also cross-registered at MIT. I enjoyed my time at both places. I now interview and help recruit international students in the UK. If your primary readon for choosing a university is a magazine article, or a ranking, or anything other than your own personal feeling you're doing something wrong.

I agree the premise of the article is ridiculous. I was taking a tongue-in-cheek jab at the self-importance exhibited in the article... Harvard absolutely dominates MIT in finance, business, politics, law, medicine, and all the fields of the humanities. I wouldn't be surprised if a higher proportion of Harvard graduates started their own companies, considering Harvard's massive MBA program.

Harvard absolutely dominates MIT in finance, business, politics, law, medicine, and all the fields of the humanities. I wouldn't be surprised if a higher proportion of Harvard graduates started their own companies, considering Harvard's massive MBA program.

You're very confused. Related: MIT does not have a law school or medical school.

What relevance does that have?

Would you consider a university the greatest in the world if it didn't have any engineering or science programs?

I'm already regretting replying to you, but in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

What relevance does that have?

Should be obvious. You've claimed that Harvard "absolutely dominates" MIT in law, but MIT doesn't have a law school.

Would you consider a university the greatest in the world if it didn't have any engineering or science programs?

Not sure the relevance here, as MIT has a full complement of humanities programs.

I wouldn't be surprised if a higher proportion of Harvard graduates started their own companies, considering Harvard's massive MBA program.

Doubt it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Sloan_School_of_Management

Harvard absolutely dominates MIT in finance [and] business

No. http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...

... [and] all the fields of the humanities.

No. http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...

If you actually do want to see domination, though, feel free to check this out. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articl...

You've claimed that Harvard "absolutely dominates" MIT in law, but MIT doesn't have a law school.

If the other team doesn't even show up, the team that does gets the W.

While I don't mean to discount the importance of a law school, from a research perspective I think there is a massive order of magnitude difference between lacking an engineering or med school vs lacking a law school.

In short, I don't think a law school matters enough from a research perspective to factor here. The med school thing does, though.

The only university with top research programs in essentially everything is Stanford. If you allow UCSF to stand in for Berkeley's med school (which you can't really), then UCB/UCSF would be the other one.

While Harvard is an exceptional research institution, I think it falls just a little too far short of Stanford and Berkeley in engineering and applied science to qualify as the top research institution.

While I don't mean to discount the importance of a law school, from a research perspective I think there is a massive order of magnitude difference between lacking an engineering or med school vs lacking a law school.

MIT and Harvard solve this by partnering together for HST.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard%E2%80%93MIT_Division_of...

... all of which would be hard-pressed to try to claim that they deserve that title more than MIT.

MIT doesn't have a med school either. And while it has a good business school, Harvard's churns out far more CEO's, investors, etc. And while MIT has programs in the humanities, government, etc, Harvard's are far superior.

Did you glance at the article before commenting? The whole thing is a comparison with Harvard, and explains why MIT is ahead of Harvard.

So you'll have to give far more detail for your comment to mean anything.

Could you at least qualify that?

The guys at MIT makes things that the guys at Harvard make money off of. If you compare the two universities by who is running the executive functions and owns the capital of the tech companies where MIT folks do the grunt work, I think you'd see Harvard comes out way ahead. This is not to say that MIT grads don't also go into these roles (there area lot of MIT-funded companies, like BBN, etc), but rather that Harvard grads are more likely to do so.

Arguing that "importance" of a university can be quantified by "how much money the graduates make" is even more pathetic than bickering over which university is more important.

I sincerely hope this is tongue-in-cheek.

Partly. It's what I imagine would be the wildly self-important reply of Harvard graduates to the wildly self-important tone of the article.

But at the same time, "how much money graduates make" has a special relevance in a country where we determine how worthy you are of health care based on how much money you make.

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