any LACs strong in math & science?

sakky · November 27, 2006, 4:31am

[quote]
In regards to the difference in the quality of undergraduate education between Caltech and Harvey Mudd I am only familar with Caltech for which I have a lot of respect, so I can't really answer that question. I would guess the cross-admit rate strongly favors Caltech which only addresses the issue of perceived quality.

[/quote]

Well, no, actually I think that has to do with the power of the brand name. Caltech has a better brand name than Harvey Mudd does, and so students will naturally prefer Caltech just because of the better brand name, but not because they themselves believe that Caltech is truly better.

To give you a counterexample, I know plenty of Harvard students and alumni who never thought that Harvard was really the best choice for them in terms of the education. They chose Harvard for the brand name, because they knew that that name would open doors. Left to their own devices, a lot of these people would have gone to another school, i.e. one of the LAC's. In fact, one of them agonized between Harvard and Wellesley, and eventually chose Harvard even though she was convinced that Wellesley would have provided a better fit and a better undergraduate experience. She chose Harvard because she wanted to access the brand name later in her life. It was a pure career move for her, nothing more, nothing less.

To give you another analogy, I know plenty of people who prefer buying German luxury cars even though studies have shown that they really aren't that well engineered. For example, Mercedes has gotten low marks for reliability from both JDEdwards and Consumer Reports in the last few years. People buy German luxury cars because of the prestigious brand name - basically, they want to show off to all their friends, even though from a reliability and engineering standpoint, the Toyota Camry is a better-built car. You don't impress your friends by tooling around in a Camry.

sakky · November 27, 2006, 5:01am

[quote]
1. Not suprisingly, access to UG research strongly correlated with overall research budgets. At places like Johns Hopkins, MIT, Harvard, Yale, UCLA, opportunities were virtually limitless. Most facilities were well organized to assist UGs with their research options with full time staff, web sites etc... If the project of interest was in a separate department, independent lab or professional school such as the med school, it could require some coordination if the research was to be for credit as opposed to paid research. It was nearly always one or the other.

[/quote]

Uh, actually, I think it is more fair to say that the correlation would be that access to UG research correlates with research budget * per capita *, where the 'capita' is the number of undergrads at the school. I can tell you that at Berkeley, while plenty of research goes on, the main problem is that there are also plenty of undergrads who want to get in. So many, in fact, such that UG lab spots are a scarce commodity. Furthermore, frankly, I have never seen any serious coordination on the part of Berkeley to provide staffing for undergraduate research.

Personally, I think your judgment is framed by your evidently positive experience at MIT. I would argue that MIT is clearly highly atypical of your average research university, for a number of reasons. First of all, MIT has few undergrads (only 4k). It's relatively easy to provide lots of undergrad opportunities when you have so few undergrads to take care of. In contrast, many of the research universities, particularly the behemoth public schools, have well over 20 or 30k students.

Secondly, MIT has always had a culture of attempting to involve their undergrads in research, and in fact, MIT touts its UROP program as a major differentiating competitive advantage with respect to other schools. Why would MIT tout this as an advantage if everybody did this? It would be like a car company boasting that their cars have 4 wheels and an engine. You tout things that you have that others don't have - in other words, what differentiates you from others. Toyota and Honda tout their reliability rankings precisely because other car companies are NOT as reliable.

There are plenty of research univeristies that don't have a culture of supporting undergrad research. Again, I would, sadly, point to Berkeley as a school that doesn't do that good of a job, relative to the scale of resources that exists there. Does a lot of undergrad research go on at Berkeley? Yes. But are there are a lot of undergrads at Berkeley who want to do research that are unable? Again, unfortunately, yes.

But again, none of you have addressed my point which is that - what is undergraduate research at the top research universities good for? LAC students apparently are able to get into top PhD programs anyway. So even if it's true that LAC students don't get the opportunity to do cutting-edge research, I don't see how that hurts them. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If LAC students do not have good research skills, then why are the top PhD programs admitting so many of them? Are they being stupid?

johnwesley · November 27, 2006, 8:23am

Sixty Wesleyan Students Co-Authored Peer-Reviewed Science And Math Articles Over A Three Year Period:

Johan C. Varekamp, Andrew P. Ouimette, Scott W. Herman, Adriana Bermudez, and Daniel Delpino, ?Hydrothermal element fluxes from Copahue, Argentina: A ?beehive? volcano in turmoil,? Geology, 2001, 29, 1059?1062.

<ol>
<li>Garrick-Bethell and R. Blumel, ?Unexpected instabilities in the dynamic Kingdon trap,? Physical Review A, 2003, 68, 031404/1?031404/4.</li>
</ol>

G.N. Rockwell, V.F. Hoffman, Th. Clausen and R. Blumel, ?Realistic three-dimensional computations of microwave-ionization curves of hydrogen Rydberg atoms,? Physical Review A, 2002, 65, 025401/1-025401/4.

Joseph W. Bruno and Xiu Jun Li, ?Use of Niobium (III) and Niobium (V) Compounds in Catalytic Imine Metathesis under Mild Conditions,? Organometallics 2000, 19, 4672?4674.

Ryan M. Fryer, Jeffrey Randall, Takumi Yoshida, Li-Li Hsiao, Joshua Blumenstock, Katharine E. Jensen, Tudor Dimofte, Roderick V. Jensen and Steven R. Gullans, ?Global Analysis of Gene Expression: Methods, Interpretation, and Pitfalls,? Experimental Nephrology, 2002, 10, 64?74.

Christopher Wade, Kathleen A. Shea, Roderick V. Jensen and Michael A. McAlear, ?EBP2 Is a Member of the Yeast RRB Regulon, a Transcriptionally Coregulatred Set of Genes That Are Required for Ribosome and rRNA Biosynthesis,? Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2001, 21, 8638?8650.

Gavin J. Gordon, Roderick V. Jensen, Li-Li Hsiao, Steven R. Gullans, Joshua E. Blumenstock, William G. Richards, Michael T. Jaklitsch, David J. Sugarbaker and Raphael Bueno, ?Using Gene Expression Ratios to Predict Outcome Among Patients With Mesothelioma,? Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2003, 95, 598?605.

L.-L. Hsiao, R.V. Jensen, T. Yoshida, K.E. Clark, J.E. Blumenstock and S.R. Gullans, ?Correcting for Signal Saturation Errors in the Analysis of Microarray Data,? Biotechniques, 2002, 32, 330?336.

Hemal H. Patel, Ryan M. Fryer, Eric R. Gross, Richard A. Bundey, Anna K. Hsu, Marilyn Isbell, Leonard O.V. Eusebi, Roderick V. Jensen, Steven R. Gullans, Paul A. Insel, Kasem Nithipatikom and Garrett J. Gross, ?12-Lipoxygenase in Opioid-Induced Delayed Cardioprotection: Gene Array, Mass Spectrometric, and Pharmacological Analyses,? Circulation Research, 2003, 92, 676?682.

Gavin J. Gordon, Roderick V. Jensen, Li-Li Hsiao, Steven R. Gullans, Joshua E. Blumenstock, Sridhar Ramaswamy, William G. Richards, David J. Sugarbaker and Raphael Bueno, ?Translation of Microarray Data into Clinically Relevant Cancer Diagnostic Tests Using Gene Expression Ratios in Lung Cancer and Mesothelioma,? Cancer Research, 2002, 62, 4963?4967.

F.M. Ellis and Seungwook Ma, ?Third sound interaction with pinned vortices in 4He superfluid films,? Physica B, 2000, **, 129?130.

John J. Salzer, Jessica L. Rosenberg, Eric W. Weisstein, Joseph M. Mazzarella and Gregory D. Bothun, ?An H I survey of actively star-forming dwarf galaxies,? The Astronomical Journal, 2002, 124, 191?212

Janis C. Lee, John J. Salzer, Daniel A. Law and Jessica L. Rosenberg, ?Emission-line galaxy surveys as probes of the spatial distribution of dwarf galaxies. I. The University of Michigan Survey,? The Astrophysical Journal, 2000, 536, 606?622.

Karen L. Gilliams-Francis, Aurora A. Quaye and Janice R. Naegele, ?PARP cleavage, DNA fragmentation, and pyknosis during excitotoxin-induced neuronal death,? Experimental Neurology, 2003, 184, 359?372.

Roger E. Cohen William Herbst and Eric C. Williams, ?An Unusual Eclipse of a Pre-Main-Sequence Star in IC 348,? The Astrophysical Journal, 2003, 596, L243?L246.

Peter Maye, Sandy Becker, Henrike Siemen, Jeffrey Thorne, Noah Byrd, Joseph Carpentino and Laura Grabel, ?Hedgehog signaling is required for the differentiation of ES cells into neurectoderm,? Developmental Biology, 2003, 265, 276?290.

Peter Maye, Sandy Becker, Elizabeth Kasameyer, Noah Byrd and Laura Grabel, ?Indian hedgehog signaling in extraembryonic endoderm and ectoderm differentiation in ES embryoid bodies,? Mechanisms of Development, 2000, 94, 117?132

James P. Mulrooney, Jessica Allen, Eric Bicklehaupt and Laura B. Grabel, ?CD9-1 Interactions in Migratory Paietal Endoderm Cells,? Cell Communication and Adhesion, 2002, 9, 249?258.

James Mulrooney, Kate Foley, Sabrina Vineberg, Mark Barreuther and Laura Grabel, ?Phosphorylation of the 1 Integrin Cytoplasmic Domain: Toward an Understanding of Function and Mechanism,? Experimental Cell Research, 2000, 258, 332?341.

Martha S. Gilmore, Eleyne L. Phillips, ?Role of aquicludes in formation of Martian gullies,? Geology, 2002, 30, 1107?1110.

John G. Seamon, Chun R. Luo, Sarah E. Schlegel, Sara E. Greene and Audrey B. Goldenberg, ?False Memory for Categorized Pictures and Words: The Category Associates Procedure for Studying Memory Errors in Children and Adults,? Journal of Memory and Language, 2000, 42, 120?146

John G. Seamon, Chun R. Luo, Michael A. Schwartz, Kaya A. Jones, Duncan M. Lee and Serena J. Jones, ?Repetition Can Have Similar or Different Effects on Accurate and False Recognition,? Journal of Memory and Language, 2002, 46, 323?340.

John G. Seamon, Ihno A. Lee, Sarah K. Toner, Rachel H. Wheeler, Madeleine S. Goodkind and Antoine D. Birch, ?Thinking of Critical Words during Study Is Unnecessary for False Memory in the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott Prodecure,? Psychological Science, 2002, 13, 526?531.

John G. Seamon, Chun R. Luo, Elizabeth P. Shulman, Sarah K. Toner and Selin Caglar, ?False memories are hard to inhibit: Differential effects of directed forgetting on accurate and false recall in the DRM procedure,? Memory, 2002, 10, 225?237.

John G. Seamon, Madeleine S. Goodkind, Adam D. Dumey, Ester Dick, Marla S. Aufseeser, Sarah E. Strickland, Jeffrey R. Woulfin and Nicholas S. Fung, ??If I didn?t write it, why would I remember it?? Effects of encoding, attention, and practice on accurate and false memory,? Memory and Cognition, 2003, 31, 445?457.

John G. Seamon, Chun R. Luo, Jonathan J. Kopecky, Catherine A. Price, Leeatt Rothschild, Nicholas S. Fung, and Michael A. Schwartz, ?Are false memories more difficult to forget than accurate memories? The effect of retention interval on recall and recognition,? Memory and Cognition, 2002, 30, 1054?1064.

Lu Kang, Alison R. Keimowitz, Michaeleen R. Munrow and Stewart E. Novick, ?Roational Spectra of Argon Acetone: A Two-Top Internally Rotating Complex,? Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, 2002, 213, 122-129.

Peter D. Kim, Trevor Banack, Daniel M. Lerman, Jeremiah C. Tracy, Johanna Eltz Camara, Elliot Crooke, Don Oliver and William Firshein, ?Identification of a Novel Membrane-Associated Gene Product That Suppresses Toxicity of a TrfA Peptide from Plasmid RK2 and Its Relationship to the DnaA Host Initiation Protein,? Journal of Bacteriology, 2003, 185, 1817?1824/td>

Trevor Banack, Peter D. Kim and William Firshein, ?TrfA-Dependent Inner Membrane-Associated Plasmid RK2 DNA Synthesis and Association of the TrfA with Membranes of Different Gram-Negative Hosts,? Journal of Bacteriology, 2000, 182, 4380?4383.

Mark A. Briscoe and Albert J. Fry, ?Dual reaction pathways in the magnesium-mediated synthesis of aziridines from benzal halides and imines,? Tetrahedron Letters, 2001, 42, 2759?2762.

Summer M. Halas, Kwame Okyne and Albert J. Fry, ?Anodic oxidation of stilbenes bearing electron-withdrawing ring substituents,? Elecetrochimica Acta, 2003, 48, 1837?1844.

Jovan Y. Alston and Albert J. Fry, ?Substituent effects on the reduction potentials of benzalacetophenones (chalcones): Improved substituent constants for such correlations,? Electrochimica Acta, 2004, 49, 455?459.

Christos Kaimakliotis and Albert J. Fry, ?Anodic Oxidation of a Methyl-Dimethylsilyldihydrocinnamate. A Novel Silicon-Aryl Effect,? Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2003, 68, 9893?9898.

Albert J. Fry, Myron Allukian and Allison D. Williams, ?Reduction of diaryl alkenes by hypophosphorous acid-iodine in acetic acid,? Tetrahedron Letters, 2002, 58, 4411?4415.

Michael J. Morrison, Naixin Li and R.F. Pratt, ?Inverse Acyl Phosph(on)ates: Substrates or Inhibitors of b-Lactam-Recognizing Enzymes?? Bioorganic Chemistry, 2001, 29, 271?281.

Kamaljit Kaur, S.A. Adediran, Martin J.K. Lan and R.F. Pratt, ?Inhibition of b-Lactamases by Monocyclic Acyl Phosph(on)ates,? Biochemistry, 2003, 42, 1529?1536.

Kamaljit Kumar, Martin J.K. Lan and R.F. Pratt, ?Mechanism of Inhibition of the Class b-Lactamase of Enterobacter cloacae P99 by Cyclic Acyl Phosph(on)ates: Rescue by Return,? Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2001, 123, 10436?10443.

Martha E. Butkus, Lucia B. Prundeanu and Donald B. Oliver, ?Translocon ?Pulling? of Nascent SecM Controls the Duration of Its Translational Pause and Secretion-Responsive secA Regulation,? Journal of Bacteriology, 2003, 185, 6719?6722.

Christos Kaimakliotis and Albert J. Fry, ?Novel desilylation of alpha-dimethylsilyl esters by electrochemically generated superoxide ion,? Tetrahedron Letters, 2003, 44, 5859?5861.

Latorya D. Hicks, Ja Kyung Han and Albert J. Fry, ?Hypophosphorous acid-iodine: a novel reducing system. Part 1: Reduction of diaryl ketones to diaryl methylene derivatives,? Tetrahedron Letters, 2000, 41, 7817?7820.

Kimry Taylor, Kyoko Miura, Fadikemi Akinfaderin and Albert J. Fry, ?Reaction Cascade in the Anodic Oxidation of Denzyl Silanes in Methanol,? Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 2003, 150, D85?D86

Christos Kaimakliotis, Haribabu Arthanari and Albert J. Fry, ?Synthesis, NMR spectroscopy, and conformational analysis of a-dimethylsilyl esters,? Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, 2003, 671, 126?130.

Anya A. Grant, Myron Allukian and Albert J. Fry, ?Pinacol reduction-cum-rearrangement. A re-examination of the reduction of aryl alkyl ketones by zinc-aluminum chloride,? Tetrahedron Letters, 2002, 43, 4391?4393.

For Complete List Go To:
<a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/list1.htt%5B/url%5D">http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/list1.htt</a>

monydad · November 27, 2006, 9:04am

" You ask what would a student do as a junior who has completed all requirements? My answer - he could just graduate."

That is one possibility - given the full year of AP credits my kid was granted by her LAC.

But it's not like they would have to do that. There are still plenty of courses to take- both in her major and elsewhere in the college. These schools appeal in part to students who prefer a broad education in a wide number of fields over extensive specialization in one field at the undergrad level, so taking more courses out of major would not be perceived as a huge sacrifice to many of them. Plus, it's not like she's going to run out of courses in the major any time soon either- there's still plenty to learn. the offerings at her college, in her major, are by no means paltry. There are also undergraduate research opportunities (Honors program) available, which involve original research.

A student at a larger university that was in the same situation would have a larger course selection, which IMO can make a difference in the later years as one's specific interests evolve. And, in some cases, access to graduate-level courses. So it is better, IMO, in those respects for someone who comes in with a lot of APs. But the LAC situation- at least a large LAC-is by no means a disaster or unmanagable for such a student.

To me, the issue in the sciences is not so much access to research opportunities- which, depending on the school, may actually be MORE available at some LACs than at some universities. It's the nature and variety of those research opportunities. If there are only 6 Physics professors, then hopefully you will be interested in something that one of those 6 people is interested in. Because otherwise you are SOL. In a larger department, with more professors, it is more likely that you will find someone interested in the same thing that you wind up being interested in. [Assuming such people are interested in having undergrads, though; otherwise it makes no difference]. Then also, given research opportunities, all things being equal it probably IS better going big-time than small-time, IMO. But that assumes comparable access to research opportunites in the first place, which once again I think probably varies considerably and should be individually investigated.

cellardweller · November 27, 2006, 9:15am

Sakky:

I do agree that revealed preferences are not an indication of intrinsic quality and brand name recognition certainly plays a role. On the other hand, a solid brand name is often successful because it does connote quality. Brand names that no longer signify quality rapidly fade. Take Cadillac, which hardly has a positive image in the market except possibly in the 75+ age group.

A good brand name may have many positive indications. Size of endowment, number of alumni, international name recognition. When I first came to the US for grad school from Europe, I had only heard of Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech and MIT. Twenty years later, Berkeley may no longer carry the same name recognition and the brand has certainly faded.

It may be fully understandable that students may pick Caltech over Harvey Mudd for no other reason that Caltech connotes rocket science and Harvey Mudd connotes ... I am not sure what. Name recognition of your institution may be important for your first job, for peer recognition, to get your kid in a top college etc...

monydad · November 27, 2006, 9:37am

Somehow I previously misssed post #17 (just refer to # rather than restate the whole prior post). This was EXACTLY the situation with my Nobel laureate .

There were two courses - both upper level, but there were still so many students in them that they were lecture format. The guy lectured, but I maybe spoke to him twice in each semester. All my actual interaction was with TAs who ran all the labs, all the discussion sections, graded everything, etc. All the guy did was lecture and leave. He might have recognized me if we passed on the street, but he didn't even know my name.

cellardweller · November 27, 2006, 10:06am

Sakky:

I take your point that Berkeley may have fallen on hard times and frankly I have not been at the school for a number of years. On the other hand, I did not find the situation you described to be the same at UCLA. At least from the departments we visited such as neuroscience and the life sciences more generally, there were plenty of UG research opportunities. Maybe they have been more successful than their NC counterparts in raising reserach funding.

As far as UG research, I don't believe anybody has claimed that it was necessary to qualify for top PhD programs. In some fields such as mathematics, it may have very little utility. In other more applied fields such as the life sciences, I can hardly fathom having a good understanding of the area without it. Take neurobiology, cancer biology, even molecular biology or biophysics. Does the subject even make sense without research.

If the only purpose of UG education was to assimilate fundamental concepts that would be applied later in professional or graduate training, I would argue that online training may be a better substitute to college. Most textbooks have online editions with examples and test materials. Take a free online course at MIT's OpenCourseware. It appears to me that much of the undergraduate college education in science is nothing more than an extension of AP classes from high school. Read 2-3 chapters per week, take a few multiple choice exams and voila, you know organic chem. If you are a pre-med you probably know enough for the MCATs, but do you really have any clue about what the area is about?

Granted the bright student who goes on for his PhD in Chemistry will eventually learn what all this is about, but what about the medical student? He certainly will not take any more chemistry classes in med school and he still won't know anything substantial about the field. It is sad to say but most physicians are just as scientifically illiterate as the rest of the population. The fact that music majors do just as well in med school as biology majors is more a reflection of biology education than of some special capacity of musicians.

So, is the absence of research in the UG setting some barrier to career or educational success? Apparently not. PhD candidates will eventually see the light in grad school after having wasted much of their time in lecture halls as UGs. MDs will go on being trained with only the barest of scientific understanding.

Does it severely limit the understanding of complex scientific issues of the vast majority of the college educated population? I believe, it does. Scientific illiteracy is not only acceptable at many top educational institutions it is even the norm.

drb · November 27, 2006, 10:09am

The discussion has clearly taken a uni v. LAC as preparation for grad school turn. This is somewhat pointless as the empirical data (cf. the Caltech PhD list noted above) reveals that both are well-represented in grad schools. One might argue that LACs are represented more highly on a per capita UG basis but I think this is a bit misleading, because the LACs represented are generally the more selective ones. Thus comparing the academic success of an entire uni UG population (which includes all the stoners, snowboarders (oops same thing), and others just killing time until graduation) to that of a selective LAC is not useful; rather, one should compare the success of the population of students at the uni that are academically equivalent which is really quite difficult to do.

I can say from the other side of the PhD applicant evaluation process that both types of students bring different strengths to the table. The high-performing LAC student has proven him/herself as capable of mastering a challenging academic curriculum, and not necessarily just in the chosen science. (This is a consideration as being broadly trained and literate is usually an asset). However, what may be untested is how they will enjoy and perform in a highly focused, technically demanding, and frequently tedious graduate experience. (Some students will find that they resent giving up their Contra dance classes for nights and weekends in the lab.) High-performing students from State U. will be given less credit for academic success (not because the course work is presumed to be any easier, but rather because they may have had a less capable peer group). However, demonstrated success in the lab, and especially success in cutting-edge research, will go far with respect to reassuring evaluators that this individual understands what they are getting into and will continue to be productive. (Note that productivity is the measure by which scientific academic endeavors including graduate training programs are evaluated.) Believe me, the student from UCLA with multiple publications will be given equal consideration as the unpublished student from Mudd.

So where does that leave us? For the prospective science-oriented student, monydad is correct: it does behoove one to investigate exactly what the opportunities are for research wherever they might apply. However, my query regarding how science students at LACs feel about their experience remains unanswered..

xiggi · November 27, 2006, 10:36am

[quote]
It may be fully understandable that students may pick Caltech over Harvey Mudd for no other reason that Caltech connotes rocket science and Harvey Mudd connotes ... I am not sure what. Name recognition of your institution may be important for your first job, for peer recognition, to get your kid in a top college etc...

[/quote]

For reference, the original question was about the LAC that are "good" for math and sciences. The focus on prestige and name brand recognition is distinct from a discussion about the quality of EDUCATION. The same can be said about the difference between the importance of researching and teaching. A Nobel prize winning researcher does NOT do a bit of good to undergraduates who never see him in a class or lecture setting. The large research universities are housing many famous names who consider teaching a nuisance and haven't taught a class in years.

Undergraduate should be about LEARNING, not name brand shopping. That part can always start in graduate school! Well, it is also about playing pranks to the schools one competes with for ... bragging rights:

<a href="http://people.bu.edu/fmri/somers/cannon.html%5B/url%5D">http://people.bu.edu/fmri/somers/cannon.html</a>

Another Mudd prank involved slight modifications to a freeway sign. By placing parentheses around "Pasadena City College", an institution much less prestigious than Caltech, Mudd students changed the sign to read:

California Institute of Technology
(Pasadena City College)

Next Exit

johnwesley · November 27, 2006, 11:54am

drb:

No one is suggesting that public unis should be compared to private LACs; there's a yawning gap between their respective missions. But, there's not a private research uni on that Caltech doctoral list that shouldn't be considered fair game for comparison. Why should LACs be penalized for having smarter kids on a per capita basis than NYU, JHU, Case-Western and Carnegie Mellon?

drb · November 27, 2006, 12:06pm

Sorry - what I meant is that if you compare per capita representation in grad school, LACs fare much better than public unis that are 10-20X larger, and thus appear to be much better at "prepping" students for post-grad education. I'd argue this is misleading, as most of the students in that 10-20X are not academically equivalent to the LAC population. That is, I'd suggest the large publics provide equivalent preparation for their subset of students that are academically high-performing. This subset has been effectively pre-selected for at the top-tier LACs.

With respect to the private research unis that are highly selective, you raise an interesting point. It would be useful to have the numbers, but I suspect you are correct in that small LACs may have the per-capita advantage.

Which brings up the following - I sometimes wonder if LAC students are "over-represented" in grad school at least in part because they have NOT been exposed to the "dark side" of graduate education - i.e., the tedium, the competition for funding, the pressure to publish, and the frustration (most experiments don't actually work). Whereas students who have been immersed in the process as undergrads conclude they do not need to work so hard in order to be paid so little.

monydad · November 27, 2006, 12:38pm

"A Nobel prize winning researcher does NOT do a bit of good to undergraduates who never see him in a class or lecture setting."

Or, in my case, undergraduates who did see him in a lecture setting.

xiggi: some might counter that a full-sized research university would provide a more suitable framework for engaging in bigger and better pranks, of higher profile and repute. Examples escape me now, but I think they exist.

"With respect to the private research unis that are highly selective, you raise an interesting point. It would be useful to have the numbers, but I suspect you are correct in that small LACs may have the per-capita advantage."

These statistics are easy to find; they've been plastered all over CC. For better or worse. I do agree, though, that many students at elite private universities aspire to careeers for which a PhD is not needed, and in some cases have easier entry to some of these careers than students at some other schools that produce proportionally more future PhDs.

rocketDA · November 27, 2006, 1:45pm

"It may be fully understandable that students may pick Caltech over Harvey Mudd for no other reason that Caltech connotes rocket science and Harvey Mudd connotes ... I am not sure what. Name recognition of your institution may be important for your first job, for peer recognition, to get your kid in a top college etc..."

I'm going to be ridiculously picky about what you say here... If Caltech = rocket science, then why do two of the three most capable "rocket scientists" (in Southern California) go to Mudd? Wait, wait... yes, chemical propulsion expert, yours truly, and gasodynamicist B.K. . It actually turns out the third guy, D.R. goes to USC (sophomore) and has been revamping much of the aerospace stuff over there. Interestingly, I went to elementary school with him...

I'm so tired about arguing about Caltech/Mudd. I mean, if Caltech thought Mudd was crap why would they keep accepting Mudd students for grad school? Why would they keep hiring me in their hypervelocity aero labs (such as tomorrow...when I have to take off school to install my sensors in the flight tube) ? Obviously, both schools are great in their own regard. Mudd gives the attention to undergrads (since that is all they have) while Caltech spends the big bucks for research. Sounds like a good duo to me. I have several professors who did Mudd/Caltech and they are very amazing professors. For undergrad, however, I believe it is merely a matter of what you are looking for.

cellardweller · November 27, 2006, 4:20pm

rocketDA:

My comment was not to imply in any way that Harvey Mudd was crap. I am fully aware that it is an excellent college and obviously the grad schools know it as well since they admit large numbers of Mudd students in their programs. My point was simply that some schools have stronger name recognition than others and that it has an influence on student preferences. Here, nobody has heard of the Ecole Polytechnique in France, where I studied as an undergrad, even though it is one of the top scientific institutions in Europe. It did not prevent me from getting into MIT as a grad student. You obviously made an informed choice, so I don't see why you should be concerned.

johnwesley · November 27, 2006, 4:21pm

monydad:

In other words, another IBanking thread for which there really are no statistics and about which nearly everyone who has ever spent time in a summer internship seems to have an opinion or anecdotal evidence. ;)

cghen · November 27, 2006, 4:35pm

No one thinks Mudd is crap; you just read what you want to out of posts to feel victimized.

What many (including myself) do argue, however, is that in many fields, high-quality undergraduate research is incredibly important to the 'quality' of undergraduate education and thus, all else being equal, a school with a graduate program has the potential to better prepare students.

Now sakky (and company?) love to proclaim that not having a graduate program is not a hinderance because Caltech accepts as many Mudd graduates as from all of UCLA, but that comparison does not directly test the affect of a graduate program alone on a science education (i.e. there are also vast differences in size, average quality of student body, etc.).

I've said it before, but a much better comparison would be to investigate how Caltech B.S. grads perform against Mudd grads as Caltech and Mudd are largely similar besides Caltech having graduate students. I've posted NSF fellowship numbers showing Caltech has a decisive statistical advantage for the past ~10 years (per student or otherwise). Another good comparison would be on the number of grads from each school at top graduate programs. For example, see how many MIT PhD's Caltech alums receive versus HMC alums. I don't have the data to do such a thing (and honestly don't care that much), but it would be interesting to see.

In essence, rocketDA, I would be much more convinced of your claimed school equality by statistical evidence rather than you telling me how awesome you are.

tiyusufaly · November 27, 2006, 7:35pm

Hey cghen, I'm sorry about rocketDA being a bit over sensitive to Caltech students bashing HMC, therefore seeming victimized. I mean, it happens, but I don't think it happens very often. It is just that the few times it has happened stick in one's mind, and that might be agressing rocketDA a bit.

monydad · November 27, 2006, 7:43pm

-And that might have relevance for comparing Cal Tech vs. Mudd-

My understanding is that Cal Tech, like MIT, is particularly known for undergraduate research opportunities. So IMO extrapolating these findings beyond Cal Tech, or MIT, would be very risky for the masses of humanity for whom entrance to these two lofty institutions is not likely. Once again, I believe institutions probably vary greatly in the degree to which this potential you mentioned is actualized. Cal Tech and MIT are likely extremas, not the norm.

tiyusufaly: don't worry, cghen is probably just upset about that whole cannon thing.

JohnWesley : Don't sweat, my Ibank recruited at Wesleyan. Not at some other quality LACs that produce lots of PhDs, though. It's a lot tougher to get in there if they won't interview you.

cghen · November 27, 2006, 8:24pm

Yeah, I understand. I'm not proud of everything that Caltech people have said about HMC, but I believe rocketDA really thinks our sole purpose is to bash them. In reality, most people don't care about HMC, as I'm sure most Mudder's don't care about Caltech. I, personally, find the dichotomy interesting because I really do think Mudd provides an amazing education, so it has always been a school that has caught my attention. As I said, it is also very similar to Caltech in many ways, and so I find analyzing the differences fascinating and insightful. I honestly think it is one of the best schools out there, and I don't like being (implicitly) portrayed as someone who thinks it's "crap". In any case, I appreciate your ever-present rationality - maybe I just relate better to a fellow physicist.

Fair enough. I would only argue further that this means people should avoid blaming graduate schools a priori for making undergrad research inaccessible. For example, maybe research is hard to come by at large state research universities not because of perceived competition with graduate students but rather because of a lack of capable, committed undergrads (or more likely, an overabundance of students of the opposite variety).

Any school that pranks Fleming Hovse just brings a smile to my face.

rocketDA · November 27, 2006, 8:25pm

"Hey cghen, I'm sorry about rocketDA being a bit over sensitive to Caltech students bashing HMC, therefore seeming victimized. I mean, it happens, but I don't think it happens very often. It is just that the few times it has happened stick in one's mind, and that might be agressing rocketDA a bit."

I don't feel victimized, contrary to what you think.

My point was to state that they are both amazing places, in their own regard. Though Caltech and HMC are similar in many ways (such as technical approach), they are very different in other ways (such as style/feel) and therefore one is not necessarily better than the other.

"In essence, rocketDA, I would be much more convinced of your claimed school equality by statistical evidence rather than you telling me how awesome you are."

I used myself as an example to show that many students, like myself, hold to a technical rigor that is very common at Caltech. I think this rigor is very common at HMC as well... and because of this, the only discrepancies that can be left are style (as stated above) and perceived quality/rigor.

While style can (and should) not change with this discussion board, perceived quality/rigor can. The second reason I included myself is to start to shape the perceived quality/rigor of HMC. Whether you find that wrong or not... I'll leave up to you...but because of Mudd's lack of any real PR, what is perceived comes largely from the words of people like me.

How many Mudd alums exist in the world? 4000? HMC has only been in existence for 50 years and because of its size, has a infant PR department. There are very few studies looking at what HMC students have done...but of the few (like USNR, PhD Prod., etc), we don't have many facts about our own school besides some basic grad percents, some notable alumni and such. While the numbers are pretty impressive (of what we do have), a lot of times HMC will be just behind Caltech... and sometimes just ahead.

Caltech people often rip that "Mudd should not even be in the same sentence as Caltech." Well, it is. Like comparing Harvard and Princeton, they are both great at what they do but are just different enough to have their own, unique identities.

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