Answer the questions. Use such expressions as
I think / suppose / consider / believe / guess…
In my opinion…
As (far as) I remember / know / understand…
The matter / trouble / problem is…
Frankly speaking…
To tell the truth…
I'm inclined to think…
1. How many colleges were there in the USA in 1825? How many educational institutions are there in the US now?
2. How many young people graduate from high school each year? And how many of them go on for higher education?
3. Do students pay for their education?
4. Do they prefer "public" or "private" educational institutions?
5. Does the system of education differ from state to state?
6. What are the most prestigious universities of the USA?
7. What universities are included in the Ivy League?
8. What are the main categories of institutions in the USA?
9. What may the university contain?
10. Why is the diversity of American higher education so baffling?
TEXT 5
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Read and translate the text.
Background
MIT is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research.
Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, the institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. MIT's early emphasis on applied technology at the undergraduate and graduate levels led to close cooperation with industry but curricular reforms under Karl Compton and Vannevar Bush in the 1930s re-emphasized basic scientific research.
MIT was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934 and researchers were involved in efforts to develop computers, radar, and inertial guidance in connection with defense research during World War II and the Cold War. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian.
MIT enrolled 4,232 undergraduates and 6,152 graduate students for 2017–2018. It employs about 1,009 faculty members. 76 Nobel Laureates, 50 National Medal of Science recipients, and 35 MacArthur Fellows are currently or have previously been affiliated with the university. MIT has a strong entrepreneurial culture and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would be the seventeenth largest economy in the world.
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Research
MIT was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934 and remains a research university with a very high level of research activity.
In electronics, magnetic core memory, radar, single electron transistors, and inertial guidance controls were invented or substantially developed by MIT researchers. In the domain of computer science, MIT faculty and researchers made fundamental contributions to cybernetics, artificial intelligence, computer languages, machine learning, robotics, and cryptography.
Current and previous physics faculty have won eight Nobel Prizes, four Dirac Medals, and three Wolf Prizes predominantly for their contributions to subatomic and quantum theory. In the domain of humanities, arts, and social sciences, MIT economists have been awarded five Nobel Prizes and nine John Bates Clark Medals Linguists Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle authored seminal texts on generative grammar and phonology.
The MIT Media Lab, founded in 1985 within the School of Architecture and Planning and known for its unconventional research has been home to influential researchers such as constructivist educator and Logo creator Seymour Papert.
Activities
MIT has over 380 recognized student activity groups, including a campus radio station, The Tech student newspaper, an annual entrepreneurship competition, and weekly screenings of popular films by the Lecture Series Committee. Less traditional activities include the "world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction" in English, a model railroad club, and a vibrant folk dance scene. Students, faculty, and staff are involved in over 50 educational outreach and public service programmes through the MIT Museum, Edgerton Center, and MIT Public Service Center. The Independent Activities Period is a four-week long "term" offering hundreds of optional classes, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the month of January between the Fall and Spring semesters. Students also have the opportunity of pursuing externships at companies in the U.S. and abroad.
Many MIT students also engage in "hacking", which encompasses both the physical exploration of areas that are generally off-limits (such as rooftops and steam tunnels), as well as elaborate practical jokes. Recent hacks have included the theft of Caltech's cannon, reconstructing a Wright Flyer atop the Great Dome, and adorning the John Harvard statue with the Master Chief's Spartan Helmet. It is a popular misconception and myth though that MIT students have the hobby of creatively editing Wikipedia articles.
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Answer the questions.
1. Is MIT a public or private university?
2. Where is it located?
3. When was MIT founded?
4. What did MIT's early emphasis on applied technology at the undergraduate and graduate levels lead to?
5. What was invented or developed in electronics, computer science by MIT researchers?
6. What kind of activity do MIT students take part?
TEXT 6
Read and translate the text.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. Born in Ulm, Germany in 1879, his family soon moved to Munich, where he lived until he was 15. He attended the Luitpold Gymnasium and in 1894, wrote his first scientific work, The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields.
Einstein's family moved to Italy in the same year, but he stayed behind to finish school. However, one year later, he left school without telling his parents and went to Italy to be with them. Shortly afterwards, he applied for admission to the Swiss Polytechnic Institute but was not accepted; he had not done well in the non-science part of the test. He later attended the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich, from which he received a degree and so was qualified to teach Physics and Mathematics. Unfortunately, however, he was not able to get a teaching position but with the help of his old classmate and friend, Marcel Grossman, was able to get a job in the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. In 1903, Einstein married his former classmate, Mileva Marie. They had three children – a daughter and two sons.
While Einstein was working at the Patent Office, he began to examine different problems in physics and came up with some remarkable discoveries. In 1905 he published three papers, one of which was about his Special Theory of Relativity, a concept which completely overturned Isaac Newton's long-standing Law of Universal Gravitation.
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In the following years, Einstein and his family moved from one European capital to another. In each city he held teaching positions at local universities or in scientific institutions. He continued researching a number of different questions and published papers which had a great impact on the field of physics, including his work on the concept of relativity, which led to his Theory of General Relativity in 1915. He paid his price for creativity, however, and due to the great stress he was under, he became seriously ill in 1917.
When Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was proved to be true by British researchers in 1919, he became world famous. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics in recognition of his work (in 1905) on the photoelectric effect (when electrons are produced if matter is exposed to electromagnetic radiation, for example, in X-rays), which had been thoroughly tested and widely accepted.
Einstein was very active in politics. He moved to the US from Europe just before the start of World War II, and advised the American President Franklin Roosevelt to start building an atomic bomb before the Nazis produced one. However, he later said that had he realised the Nazis would not produce an atomic bomb, he would never have advised Roosevelt in this way. He never personally worked on the bomb. In fact, he was against war and weapons of mass destruction. All his life Einstein had been a pacifist, only recognising the need to fight against the Nazis when it became apparent that they had to be stopped. After the war, he dedicated himself to working for nuclear disarmament.
Einstein believed that we should never stop questioning things and keep searching for answers about the natural world. On 18th April, 1955 he died of heart failure.
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