A Trend of Sorts I Noticed

Parents Forum
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<p>Hello! I'm not a parent, but I felt like this was an ok place to post this observation of mine:</p>

<p>The professors at a lot of schools seem to have gone to more "higher" Grad Schools than Undergrad Schools. For example:</p>

<p>Harvard's Steven Pinker: Undergrad - McGill; Grad - Harvard</p>

<p>Berkeley's Kevin Padian: Undergrad - Colgate; Grad - Yale</p>

<p>Stanford's Philip Zimbardo (he's Emeritus but still): Undergrad - Brooklyn College; Grad -
Yale</p>

<p>Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould (Deceased): Undergrad - Antioch; Grad - Columbia </p>

<p>University of Chicago's Neil Shubin: Undergrad - Columbia; Grad - Harvard</p>

<p>Harvard's BF Skinner (Deceased): Undergrad - Hamilton; Grad - Harvard </p>

<p>ASU's Lawrence Krauss: Undergrad - Carleton; Grad - MIT</p>

<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>

<p>The converse also exists: </p>

<p>CUNY's Michio Kaku: Undergrad - Harvard; Grad - UC Berkeley </p>

<p>Neil deGrasse Tyson (he's not a professor, I should mention, but he is very influential in his field): Undergrad - Harvard; Grad - Columbia </p>

<p>Harvard Med School's Nancy Etcoff: Undergrad - Brown; Grad - Boston University </p>

<p>*I only know of a limited # of these people, as you can see. Please forgive me in advance if my observations seem-lopsided. If I knew of every single professor in the world, they would be different. </p>

<p>So, what do you make of this? And also, would you rather go to the University of Nowhere for Undergrad and then to Yale for Grad or Yale for Undergrad and the University of Nowhere for Grad? Which makes the most sense?</p>

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<p>UC Berkeley is a simply /wonderful/ grad school. But yeah I agree it seems much easier to gain graduate admission than undergraduate. Perhaps that is due to competition.</p>

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<p>

I wondered the same, and not necessarily for profs. I came to know three students - one at MIT and two at CMU/Comp Sci, none of whom I felt had the credentials to get in at the BS level. I guessed most of their HS classmates who did their BS in the more selective schools bailed out into industry, and other than the top kids on the academic PhD track, the field might have been thinner, but I don’t know if this is accurate.</p>

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<p>@Dad<em>of</em>3: So basically, it’s better to go to a more selective school if you plan on stopping after 4 years. If you want to go and get a higher degree, it doesn’t necessarily matter as much. Right?</p>

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<p>I think your observations are oversimplistic because you’re only going by the average American layperson’s knowledge of those university/LAC institutions. </p>

<p>For instance, McGill is regarded in Canada as about on par with HYP in the US from what I’ve heard from Canadian friends. Many of the LACs(Carleton, Hamilton) are comparable in academic quality to the elite universities you’ve cited. </p>

<p>Moreover, what is considered a top grad school in a given field may not correspond with a layperson’s perception of top 10 universities. For instance, the top 3 Philosophy departments in the US/World are NYU, Rutgers, and UPitt…not HYP. </p>

<p>UC Berkeley at the grad level is regarded on par with the top Ivies…and in some fields even exceeds them(i.e. Computer Science, some areas of East Asian Studies, etc). </p>

<p>From the sample you provided…it seems like there’s only one Prof who went from a lower ranking institution to a noticeably higher one(Antioch) and even that’s debatable depending on the department concerned and one who actually went from a higher ranked institution to a lower ranked one(BU grad school)…though the grad program may have been tops in her field/sub-field. </p>

<p>Moreover, some historical context is missing in some cases. The emeritus Prof who attended Brooklyn College probably attended during the period(Until 1969) when the CUNY system was regarded as the “Working-class Ivy League” with academics comparable to the Ivies. In his day…there was little difference in the eyes of most people…whether academics or laypeople…especially those in the NY area. </p>

<p>In short, people choose their grad schools based on the quality of the given school’s department and faculty specialization…not layperson’s prestige. For instance, few CS/some East Asian Studies applicants would turn down UC Berkeley for HYP assuming all things are equal in the financial fellowship/faculty support for a given student’s academic interests at the MA/PhD level.</p>

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<p>@cobrat - Excellent points. I didn’t consider those. And yes, Zimbardo went to BC in 1954.</p>

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<p>Something to remember, the prestige of the institution as perceived by many, is dependent on the work that is done at the graduate level- since liberal arts colleges rarely have ANY graduate programs, ( & are much smaller than universities), they do not have the name recognition of the larger universities to the lay public.</p>

<p>However if you look at the numbers of those who recieve Ph.ds ( not just the numbers who attempt graduate school, because they don’t know what else to do :wink: ), you will find a very healthy percentage of those individuals to have gotten their undergrad education in a liberal arts college or smaller university.</p>

<p>[Undergraduate</a> Origins of Ph.ds- Percentage Ranking of Ph.ds, listed by Academic Field, Conferred upon Graduates of Listed Institutions](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]Undergraduate”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>

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<p>In medicine, graduate study, and post-grad, ie, residency is much more important than undergrad or med school imo. When I counsel students interested in medicine I advise an instate undergrad, their state med school and then the best residency they can match to. Their debt load will be less this way, too.</p>

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<p>By definition, there aren’t any LACs amomg graduate schools. And a significantly smaller number of institutions offer Ph.D.s in certain fields. So it is not at all surprising to see a higher percentage of Ph.D.s from highly ranked institutions.</p>

<p>In my d’s department at Princeton, there’s only one prof with an Ivy League undergrad degree (harvard). In five years, despite dozens of applicants, they haven’t accepted a single applicant from an Ivy. But of course they’ll all graduate with Princeton Ph.D.s. In her specific field, the four very top people have undergrad degrees from Vassar, Brandeis, UGeorgia, and Berkeley.</p>

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<p>Since when the hell is a Columbia grad/undergrad degree “low?”</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>I don’t think you can say anything of this sort. At best, you can say that graduate admissions is different from undergraduate admissions.</p>

<p>One trend I have noticed however, is a decrease in prestige from the school someone attends for their PhD, and the school the eventually end up as a faculty member. I mostly know about computer science and math though, so this may different for other fields. And of course, by prestige, I mean prestige within the specific field.</p>

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<p>We have to keep in mind that basic name recognition doesn’t matter much for many graduate programs, particularly for doctoral programs. For example, one professor at my school went to Harvard for undergrad, then NYU for his PhD in sociology. NYU has less name recognition, but it has a very prestigious (if that’s the word to use) doctoral program in sociology.</p>

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<p>@Marlon: If this was directed at me, I never said that Columbia was “low.”</p>

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<p>Perhaps it is because these folks are all white males - most likely non recruited athletes (see other thread) who were rejected as undergraduate applicants at the Ivies. This demographic has a very difficult time in admissions because most of the slots allowed for white males are filled by athletes and there is little room left for the more intellectually inclined. </p>

<p>However, as many on CC have noted, it doesn’t really matter which undergraduate school one attends - grad school is more important, and a smart, hard working, accomplished person will be successful no matter where they go to school.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>I’d check the names again. Doesn’t seem all those listed folks in OP’s post are all White or all male.</p>

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<p>^^^I’d check the year too, since one of them was 1954! I seriously doubt anybody gave a pigs foot about saving slots for white male athletes at CUNY in 1954.</p>

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<p>^ ^</p>

<p>Moreover, from what I’ve heard from teachers, Profs, and older friends who attended the CUNYs during the 40’s-mid-'60s…admission was mostly determined by your high school GPA. </p>

<p>According to them, at CCNY…one needed a MINIMUM of an 86 to even be eligible to be considered…tough back in the day when high school teachers didn’t hesitate to give Cs, Ds, or Fs like candy and getting even a B is as tough/tougher than getting an A in most US high schools in the last 20 years. If you fell below that or there were too many kids with higher GPAs than you, then too bad.</p>

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<p>Tis true. In my day (mid 60s), for NYC public school students, NYU was only for CCNY rejects who could afford it, and people from Missouri.</p>

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<p>"So, what do you make of this? And also, would you rather go to the University of Nowhere for Undergrad and then to Yale for Grad or Yale for Undergrad and the University of Nowhere for Grad? Which makes the most sense? "</p>

<p>For someone who aspires to a career in academia, the general rule is the degree from the last college on your CV is the one that “counts” the most. The harder it is to get in to that college or program for your terminal degree- the more the “name” of that college matters.</p>

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<p>“Perhaps it is because these folks are all white males - most likely non recruited athletes (see other thread) who were rejected as undergraduate applicants at the Ivies. This demographic has a very difficult time in admissions because most of the slots allowed for white males are filled by athletes and there is little room left for the more intellectually inclined.” </p>

<p>HUH?? what glue have you been sniffing? you have just come up with your own extrapolated theory based on suppositions that you have also made, which have no basis in reality whatsoever.</p>