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Canadian University Puts Tech Whiz Kids in 'Dormcubator'
jades writes "The University of Waterloo (Canada), sometimes billed as the 'MIT of the North' is establishing a residence 'incubator'. Meant to challenge 70 of their very top students in the tech and business fields, students will live together and work on 'the future of mobile communications, the web and digital media'. It's called 'VeloCity', and it launches in Fall 2008 after renovations are completed this summer."
We have a similar thing going at the University I go to. It's nice to be around other people that are as academically minded as yourself.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I have friends who go to The U of Waterloo, and not one has EVER called that school "the MIT of the North"
when asked, "how's your University", most of them just shrug and say "meh, it's alright, its a University."
MIT of the North? who said that? the Marketing department for Waterloo?
-I only code in BASIC.-
That's funny, I never heard of MIT before, I've always heard of it as "The University of Waterloo (Canada) of the South."
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
but known as the "Dorkubator"
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
They wanted an incubator for academically minded people and they called it VeloCity? Seriously? You'd have thought they'd have come up with a decent name rather than trying to combine a word for speed with a word for a large conurbation (which I doubt it is) in some jauntily capitalised construction.
The basic idea is quite good, even if it does just sound like a slightly more segregated version of "Halls of Residence" from the summary.
Waterloo has always fancied itself an industry supplier of productive bodies. My brother the EE went there and benefited from their work-term model. He got lots of practical experience which helped him land a job, although he took longer to get his degree than me.
I did an ME at the U of T. (Funny that the article calls Waterloo "MIT North", because U of T profs liked to call MIT "U of T South". Which is all very embarrassing, like stop with the MIT comparisons for heck's sake.)
The problem I have with this Velocity thing is: who pays and who benefits? Seems to me a chunk of everyone's tuition will go toward it, while only some will be in a position to get in. And those who can get in will be the ones who can deal with the extra work load.
In a perfect world, it would be the more clever who could handle the added work. In reality, it is the ones who have external support, like whose parents live not far away, or who come from richer families, that can focus on the work. The poor slobs who have 2 pair of pants for 4 years and who eat leftover mac & cheese for 5 days in a row wouldn't fit in.
I have no problem with elitism, it's a central component of hereditary capitalism, our beloved system. But not when the winners are being subsidized by the losers, that just strikes me as wrong.
I'm obviously biased, but I like the U of T approach: classical. Give everyone the same education and chuck them all into the market and let life sort them out. I hate the idea of university admins having the power to pick winners.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
If anybody is interested in further reading, the campus newspaper did a story on this a couple of months ago, as well as the engineering newspaper.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
That, or a Pirated copy of Windows. These are students, and therefore dirt poor
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
It realy "grinds my gears" to see bright people waste their valuable time on Web/Social/Communication applications. If one thing in the world is currently going well, it's that field. That field has been developing well, there are plenty of bright minds working on it, no need to direct more geniuses that way.
Let them work on REAL challenges. Like better engines (we've been using the same combustion engine for 100 years now), better flight (which as not progressed much since WW2 jets), new energy sources (we never went beyond nuclear, which was 60 years ago). Why not let them work on wireless power, on indoor agriculture, desalinization technologies ? REAL challenges, not some hyper-popular niche that doesn't suffer from the lack of talented people.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
What is the average air speed VeloCity of an unladen geek?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
I have been trying to get the state of Colorado to offer various X prizes for needs of the state. For example, one of the suggestions was to come up with a means of stopping Pine beetles, which are devastating literally 100 of millions worth of lodge pole and other pines. I figured that ppl, roughly students, would go into the woods and look for lodge pole trees that appeared to survive the beetles. Once they do that, they could then look for what is different. What is amazing is that now a company in Mass (from MIT), has a way to stop them. They found it by following the method that I suggested. It appears that Colorado will spend somewhere between 10-100 millions to save just a fraction of the lodgepole pines. I suspect that other states will spend similar amounts or more.
All in all, Gov. CAN help fund ideas. The Canadian approach will help lead to companies with loads of ideas AND ppl to try and incubate them. My suggestion would only have costs iff an idea was worthy. Hopefully more universities will pick up the idea of integrating ppl, rather than separating them (and perhaps offer incentives).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Waterloo is only ONE degree north of Cambridge, and not too far west. On a global scale, they're in the same place.
These are "top students", not necessarily smart ones. There's usually a difference. There's little in this world in which the only way to succeed is true intelligence; hard work, organization, and time investment can almost always substitute (and are usually more important).
ResidntGeek
I wouldn't really say that. I'm a Canadian, and most of our students aren't dirt poor. If these really are the best students, they probably have a scholarship covering their most of their tuition. Not only that, tution is probably only around $6000 a year. Not bad for the best tech school in the country. Also, being that they are the best students, they probably get the best co-op placements. If you have a reasonable sized scholarship, and get a good co-op placement, you could probably get through without having any loans.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Gotta love the article saying how they got applicants from "As far away as Wilfred Laurier" (a university that is literally a block away from UW) and UofT (90 minutes away by the 401). In any case, seems like UW's looking at ways to turn their new company budding into a formal process of sorts.
Not entirely disagreeing here, but last time I checked, Colombia, Papua, Iraq, Mexico, Birma and Kashmir were all in a state of war...
I think your high opinion of the chinese system is also a bit... silly. Unless you agree with a confucian ethic (nepotism, corruption, yay?), mixed with dictatorial suppression (that is what the chinese model is after all... capitalist economics with political dictatorship). Unless you're talking about the old china, which was just as bad as Russia.
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - 43 28'
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - 42 36'
Most people forget that southern Ontario dips well south into the great-lakes basin.
2 blocks is considered far away?
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
You're conflating the students with the families they come from. Students don't have a lot of spending money just because their parents have decent incomes.
"I went to Waterloo and got through without taking out any loans[/quote]"
Me too.
Did yo notice this in TFA: "The university has received applications from as far away as Wilfrid Laurier University"
WLU is down the street about 4 blocks.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Hi, I'm one of the students selected for this "dormcubator" thing, and I've had the chance to talk to many of the other students, as well as the organizers themselves. The focus of this initiative definitely wasn't to look for brainiacs with high grades - my marks suck. More focus was put on having an existing portfolio and history of pursuing extracurricular projects - building your own roomba on the side, for example. These are guys who have not only the smarts, but also proven their ability to work.
As if CS/Engineering majors needed their college experience to be even more of a sausage-fest.
It's better to study the old exams (your professors will reuse the questions they developed over the years) and develop a rapport with the TAs / professors (they are people and like people who like them.)
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
The school wants you to think of your profitable ideas while they still have some financial claim to them...
I went thorough Computer Engineering at that university. Generally the top students in the first and second year that got by memorizing the textbook didn't do well in the upper years when you had to time manage and think for yourself. It was generally the creative types that could think on their feet that became the top students.
Given that the article says they are upper year students, I'd say that very likely they are also smart.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.