I'd like to see Gates U. really be "Informal U." Experts in various areas organize little seminars of variable lengths and talk about whatever they want to talk about. Students find people who know what they want to learn, and ask them to teach it.
Each professor publicizes the list of reading you need to really understand before you can work with them - and informally organize a discussion group for the students they know are working through it. So you're forced to plan in advance, you spend time reading the fundamentals of a field, discuss it with people, and perhaps write something to show you know what you're doing, before the prof. lets you in on his project.
You plan your sequence of projects in order to get a) recommendations from interesting people and b) an interesting sequence of reading and work that fits together well. All the project work is either a) commissioned by industry or b) destined for direct publication. Ideally, most students do a bit of both.
This is College by UROP - you work with a few professors every year on projects, and you need their recommendation to progress into the following year. In your final year, you do a serious piece of independent work, perhaps with others. The referees you've had form a committee who judge your work. Quite simply, it needs to be published in a quality journal, or sold to industry, in order for you to graduate (i.e. you actually have to do something useful for somebody)
(edit: I just noticed this is basically just graduate school. Sooo, yeah ... Gates U. should be grad school for undergrads.)
Each professor publicizes the list of reading you need to really understand before you can work with them - and informally organize a discussion group for the students they know are working through it. So you're forced to plan in advance, you spend time reading the fundamentals of a field, discuss it with people, and perhaps write something to show you know what you're doing, before the prof. lets you in on his project.
You plan your sequence of projects in order to get a) recommendations from interesting people and b) an interesting sequence of reading and work that fits together well. All the project work is either a) commissioned by industry or b) destined for direct publication. Ideally, most students do a bit of both.
This is College by UROP - you work with a few professors every year on projects, and you need their recommendation to progress into the following year. In your final year, you do a serious piece of independent work, perhaps with others. The referees you've had form a committee who judge your work. Quite simply, it needs to be published in a quality journal, or sold to industry, in order for you to graduate (i.e. you actually have to do something useful for somebody)
(edit: I just noticed this is basically just graduate school. Sooo, yeah ... Gates U. should be grad school for undergrads.)