any LACs strong in math & science?

College Search & Selection
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<p>Cellardweller - Considering that there are only about 200 historically viable LACs left in the country (as opposed to nearly 5,000 four year institutions overall) it shouldn't be surprising that a majority or even a preponderance of the top spots would go to RUs. That 3.5% of all the LACs in the country landed in the top thirty of all four-year degree granting institutions is the more interesting result, IMHO.</p>

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<p>Cellardweller :</p>

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<p>Forgive me, I'm just a mere social scientist. But, aren't you prejudging the results - again? For example, how would you even control for people who switch majors? I why would you want to? Maybe, just maybe LACs do a better job of steering people into research careers. I'll cop to that.</p>

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<p>John:</p>

<p>I don't disagree that the top LACs stand out well among all 4 year degree institutions in general. At least circumstancial evidence seems to show they do not stand up as well in the sciences and engineering against top RUs.</p>

<p>As far as switching majors, it is much more difficult to switch from non-science to science as opposed to the reverse. It would affect LACs probably more than RUs (most RUs with engineering departments do not allow switching over to liberal arts) and possibly inflate the LAC numbers. </p>

<p>-Very poor preference ranking of top "technical LACs" such as Reed or Harvey Mudd. Reed is known to have a very high dropout rate which probably explains the poor ranking. Why HMC is not ranked at all is a mystery.
-Only Swarthmore among LAC institutions with high PhD productivity has a top 20 ranking.</p>

<p>Other studies on these boards seem to correlate size of science department with PhD productivity. With many LACs quite small, they may not be able to gather enough critical mass of students to develop a strong interest in pursuing the field.</p>

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<p>Are we talking about all of those tables gathered by Interesteddad? Cite please.</p>

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<p>More prejudging. I know of nothing that would suggest that students at research <em>A&S</em> unis switch majors to any lesser degree than students at LACs. And what does it say about a school's program that they have to chain their majors to the laboratory chair in order to hold on to them?</p>

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<p>This is the PhD productivity list I've seen:
<a href="http://web.centre.edu/ir/student/OverallBaccOrigins.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.centre.edu/ir/student/OverallBaccOrigins.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I don't think LACs account for themselves poorly on this list. YMMV.</p>

<p>As for comparisons, IMO frankly no institution compares favorably, overall, to HYPSMCal Tech.</p>

<p>Among the institutions that do not compare favorably are: i) all LAcs; and ii) all research institutions outside of HYPSM Cal Tech. These 6 schools do better, in many respects than all other schools in the US. So let's stop saying 'research universities are better because MIT is better". Or "research universities are better because Harvard is better". Because they are not only better than LACs, on many measures, but they are equally better than all other research universities. Just keep these 6 out of it. These 6 ARE better by many objective measures. Point conceded. People pick them disproportionally, if only due to brand name/prestige as Sakky mentioned, whether they are actually better or not. So if one of these six are your choice, evidence is you will disproportionally go to one of them. The real question is more what the situation is with the rest of the US college scene.</p>

<p>In my opinion.</p>

<p>Also in my opinion that RP study is crap, since it produced a number of results that are obviously flawed or, in some cases, laughable. Go BYU. I don't care to spend my time finding the problems with the study, but that there are some issues should be evident to anyone looking at the results.</p>

<p>Once again, I think the upperclass course selection can be an issue with LACs, particularly in the sciences. If my kid was interested in a career as a scientist I'd suggest he/she make a careful examination of the breadth and depth of upperclass course offerings. As well as research opportunitities. All things being equal I might indeed favor a [small] university to an LAC for the hard sciences. But of course all things are not necessarily equal. Sometimes I think the best strategy for some kids might be to start at an LAC and transfer once you figure out what you want more precisely, to someplace that is good at what you specifically want in the upperclass years. Possibly a research U.</p>

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<p>


Yes, this makes perfect sense.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
While I accept the principle of a market driven educational system I question some of the results of the current system.</p>

<p>-A largely scientifically illiterate college population as the competition in all fields of knowledge from other countries is increasing.
-A college graduate population with a basic education mismatched with the demands of the marketplace.
-A college system obligated to remedy a subpar high school education before any real higher education can occur.

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<p>I think this reveals a bit of anti-Americanism The major difference between the US educational system and that of most other systems in the world is that the US attempts to educate almost everybody on a college prep tracks. Contrast that with countries like Germany where students are stratified into tracks at a young age and are hence, pegged for either university or trade school. Those headed to trade school are generally not provided a regular academic education in the sense that Americans know it and, more importantly, are not counted in the statistics that measure student skills. </p>

<p>Now, one might say that perhaps the US would be better off with a German-style trade school system. Perhaps. But that is an entirely different criticism from saying that the US educational system produces bad graduates. </p>

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I don't believe that other countries, particularly in Europe look with particular admiration at the US undergraduate system with very exceptions such as MIT and Harvard for an Oxbridge student on an exchange program.

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<p>But ask yourself - why Harvard? As I have said before, the Harvard undergraduate curricula is rather unremarkable. You do indeed end up dealing with lots of TF's. Lots of Harvard profs don't really care about undergrads, preferring to spend their time on research. Harvard undergrads have complained incessantly about the lack of undergraduate focus of the school, as documented by numerous Harvard Crimson articles.</p>

<p>But I agree that Europeans and Asians still want to study at Harvard for undergrad. And the answer to me seems to be obvious - branding and networking. You go to Harvard for undergrad just to be able to SAY that you went to Harvard. Also, so you can meet top people who might later help you in your career. </p>

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[quote]
A better test may to compare the productivity of an Amherst versus a Caltech undergrad as a PhD in terms of publications or other similar metric. With over a third of the class going for a PhD at Caltech as opposed to less than one in eight at Amherst, students at Caltech are immersed in a culture that promotes research from the very beginning. Students at Amherst can only dream of such access and will have wait another four years to experience it firsthand.

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<p>No, I would say that this is NOT a fair test. You continue to point to schools like Caltech as if they were typical of the average research university. Yet I think you know full well that Caltech is far from unusual, even for a research university. A better test would be to compare Amherst vs. Harvard, and then make an adjustment on Harvard's higher selectivity. Harvard's PhD productivity does not approach that of Caltech's.</p>

<p>Don't you see that that is an implicit contradiction? You point to Caltech's high PhD productivity rate as a reason for people to prefer HYPSM and other RU's. There's something wrong with that picture, don't you agree? Caltech's productivity rate is a reason to prefer * Caltech *, but not necessarily HYPSM and certainly not other RU's. </p>

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Forgive me Sakky, I must laugh at your comments here. Do you really think that elementary statistical model used by <em>cough</em> social scientists <em>cough</em> is the best thing since sliced bread? Oh, no it must be prestigious because bunch of professors co-authored and must be treated as the “holy Spear” (as opposed to the holy gral) - “Where is Kundry ?”.

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<p>Well, as others here have asked, what else is there? What do you got? This is THE comprehensive study using the RP methodology that is out there, and to this day, has not been debunked. </p>

<p>If you disagree with it, please, by all means, point to a problem in the methodology. </p>

<p>
[quote]
) BYU wins cross-admit battle over NW and UChicago and JHU ? – Too many Mormons are included among 3240 hi-achieving students sampled, I suppose? –major flaw :skewed data –garbage in garbage out
2) Notre Dame wins over Duke?? – LOL, Now I’ve seen everything!! –again garbage in garbage out
3) Total rubbish – It’s shame for anyone to reference it!!!
4) the paper should go directly to shredder for recycling or bathroom magazine rack for “emergency use”

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<p>How is it garbage in, garbage out? What you are saying is that the data coming in is garbage. How so? Do you see a problem in the initial data collection? If so, please point to it. </p>

<p>You can't look at the final results and conclude that the initial data "must" be garbage. To do so is to simply engage in circular logic - that the model must be wrong if it doesn't produce results that you like. If that's the case, then why even bother doing any modeling at all? After all, if you already "know" what the results are supposed to be, then why should anybody ever bother to do any studies? </p>

<p>To answer your particular points, the study never says that BYU wins cross-admit battles over JHU, Duke, or Chicago. It says that BYU is revealed to be preferred. Which means that a lot of students (yeah, probably Mormons) * do not even apply * to JHU, Duke, or Chicago, and ony apply to BYU. But the behavior is modeled such that even if these students did apply to those 3 schools, they * still * would have preferred to BYU. </p>

<p>Why is this necessarily a surprising result? Do you understand how appealing BYU is to Mormons? I know a lot of Mormons. For many of them, BYU was the * only * school they applied to. Others applied to other schools, but only as backups. If I was Mormon, I'd probably strongly prefer BYU too.</p>

<p>The same thing is true of Notre Dame vs. Duke. You say that is ridiculous. But why? Notre Dame is arguably THE predominant Catholic school in the country. There are a lot of Catholics in this country. If you are a devout Catholic, you may prefer a Catholic school. Is that really so hard to believe? </p>

<p>As further proof, let's look at the yield rates of these schools, as compiled by the NCES, where yield is defined as the % of admitted students who matriculate:</p>

<p>Notre Dame - 55%
BYU - 77%</p>

<p>Duke - 43%
Chicago - 33%
JHU - 29%</p>

<p><a href="http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cool/screen.aspx?screenId=10%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cool/screen.aspx?screenId=10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I think your major problem is that you are attempting to equate preference to academic quality. The Hoxby study doesn't talk about WHY certain schools are preferred. It just says that certain schools are preferred. There are many reason why a certain school would be preferred over others, and academic quality is just one of those reasons. The other major factor is cultural fit. Again, if you're a devout Mormon, you are probably going to be uncomfortable at any other school except BYU, what with all of the drinking and partying and carousing that happens at those other schools. For cultural reasons, I can see why devout Catholics would prefer Notre Dame. Is that really so hard to believe? Not everybody goes to school solely for the academics. There are a lot of social and cultural factors at play.</p>

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<p>
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I was familar with it but did not pull out the data to validate my post. It does largely confirm my point. 9 out top 10 are RUs and 16/20 are RUs.

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<p>Actually, I don't think it does. Like I said, many RU's are basically LAC's. Look at the prominent positions of Brown and Dartmouth. Come on, Brown and Dartmouth are misclassified LAC's. Both of them beat Cornell and Penn. </p>

<p>The same could be said for schools like Rice, Georgetown, Notre Dame - these are very LAC-ish schools. </p>

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John, with all due respect, please download the paper and see for yourself. Their so-called mathematical models, let alone their so-called equations, are so elementary as to be laughable (for example look at their equation (1) LOL) – had to go grab couple of Rolaids myself!! But then again, what do you expect from <em>cough</em> social scientists who write a <em>paper</em> about college admission?

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<p>What - so you only believe an equation if it is complex? Why is a simple equation and model necessarily wrong? </p>

<p>If you don't like the model or equation, then by all means, please present an alternative. Remember what modeling is, whether we are talking about social science or natural science. It is a mere approximation of reality. No scientific model captures the entire truth. The issue is whether the model captures the important trends. For example, Newtonian mechanics is an "incorrect" model. And I am sure in the future that we will show that relativity and quantum mechanics are 'incorrect' too. But all of them are good enough representations of reality that we stick with those models.</p>

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Also in my opinion that RP study is crap, since it produced a number of results that are obviously flawed or, in some cases, laughable. Go BYU. I don't care to spend my time finding the problems with the study, but that there are some issues should be evident to anyone looking at the results

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<p>Again, I hardly see why that is a necessarily anomalous result. Like I said, the study never talks about WHY certain schools are preferred. It just says that certain schools are preferred. There are a lot of Mormons in the country, and ESPECIALLY among the highly educated. If I was a Mormon, I would probably want to go to BYU just for cultural reasons. </p>

<p>Look, monydad, you have complained about the RP study before without saying WHY you don't like it, and specifically, what your problem is with the methodology. Again, if you can't identify a problem in the methodology, then that only leaves you to question the entire premise of revealed preferences. Yet RP's are a mainstream technique in modern social science.</p>

<p>Look, nobody, not I, not even the authors of the study claim that the study is perfect. No study ever is. I am sure later on others will run parallel studies and come up with slightly different results. But I would argue that the RP ranking is * at least as good * as, say, USNews or any of the other rankings out there, and arguably better. </p>

<p>But for those of who keep complaining about the RP study, then I ask you - what's better? What's the alternative? The truth is, there are not that many great alternatives out there.</p>

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<p>I have to agree with Sakky. There is nothing in the Hoxby results that strike me as counterintuitive if you apply a little common knowledge. Hoxby himself, even addresses the BYU phenomenon in one of his first paragraphs. Just because the results are interesting doesn't make them garbage. In fact, I'd be suspicious of results that didn't have their share of anomalies.</p>

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<p>I believe the sample is not representative of the underlying population, which includes non-applicants. All the people who like BYU applied there, and they would and did prefer it . Their preferences were revealed. The underlying population include a far higher proportion of people who would not apply to BYU, and would not attend it if they were admitted vs. anyplace else. The preference of these non-applicants was not adequately revealed, in my opinion, judging from the results. Because the sample of applicants does not perfectly reflect the behavior of non-applicants. Whatever these equations say, this nuance was not captured appropriately in the results, which imply a preference for BYU in the underlying population of college applicants that is miles ahead where, IMO, BYU is really preferred by the mass population of applicants at large.</p>

<p>IF you think everything's just peachy then you think BYU really has this status in the population at large. I don't.</p>

<p>There may be other applications in the social sciences where the sample can be deemed reasonably representative of the underlying population, in which case this methodology might be expected to yield more reasonable results. This is not the case here; non-applicants have themselves expressed a preference by not applying.</p>

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<p>"Hoxby himself"</p>

<p>Hoxby herself (assuming "Caroline" is feminine)</p>

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<p>Monydad - you're not asking for a sample, you're asking for a perfect set that theoretically would involve every applicant in the United States applying to every four-year year baccalaureate granting institution in the United States and then assessing all the permutations. That just isn't feasible. You are putting a gloss on the results that Hoxby <em>herself</em> would not. I think most of us are perfectly capable of identifying potential outliers in terms of single issue constituencies like BYU and Notre Dame and one-trick ponies like Caltech and MIT.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Remember what modeling is, whether we are talking about social science or natural science. It is a mere approximation of reality. No scientific model captures the entire truth. The issue is whether the model captures the important trends. For example, Newtonian mechanics is an "incorrect" model. And I am sure in the future that we will show that relativity and quantum mechanics are 'incorrect' too.

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<p>Sakky, don’t be pedantic. I’ve known more about modeling than you can possible imagine. Not sure? Do you want to compare our CV?</p>

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There may be other applications in the social sciences where the sample can be deemed reasonably representative of the underlying population, in which case this methodology might be expected to yield more reasonable results. This is not the case here; non-applicants have themselves expressed a preference by not applying.

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<p>What a thought-provoking analysis it is! I can safely assume that monydad has a technical background :) (no, Social science is not considered "technical" here).</p>

<p>Indeed, there may be a refined math model that is more directly applicable to this. A more robust model 1) that can account for corrupted, imperfect data set, and 2) that can account for un-modeled phenomenon. This robust math model may yield a much better result even in the presence of imperfect data set. Alas, the simple model (in the paper) is not it!!!</p>

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<p>Yes, A.B. Physics from a research U, no undergrad research opportunities whatsoever.</p>

<p>(Among some other stuff, not immediately relevant).</p>

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<p>And regarding post #90:</p>

<p>thank goodness, it appeared that I was going through an entire 7 page+ thread in repeated substantial agreement with Sakky. I was starting to worry.</p>

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<p>So, are any LACs strong in math & science? Did we get an answer?</p>

<p>I, for one, much prefer multiple outcome measurements; what do BA/BS graduates of the various schools attain? Various exit test scores, admission rates to various kinds of grad schools, terminal degree rates, dollar earnings, whatever. </p>

<p>In terms of a preference poll, isn't it better asking graduating seniors how they in hindsight feel about their decsions? Why does anyone think it's objectively valuable to ask incoming freshmen? They know hardly anything about their schools, compared to when they graduate.</p>

<p>It seems like the future-PhD-rates show roughly a tie between LACs and RUs, in terms of being good at math and science.</p>

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isn't it better asking graduating seniors how they in hindsight feel about their decsions?

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kinda what I was trying to find out myself....</p>

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<p>That's a fair question and again like the poor consumers that we are (and to paraphrase a former Defense Dept Secretary) we only have the surveys that we have , not the ones we wish we had.</p>

<p>That being said, there are some other indicators, like the fact nearly all of the top LACs (as well as the top unis) have remarkably high retention rates. And, as between top RUs and LACs, the latter regularly outpoll the former in terms of alumni satisfaction as measured by percent who donate after graduation. That data is readily available in the yearly USNews surveys.</p>