<p>I can definitely see that. Catholic colleges that actually uphold some Jesuit tradition.</p>
<p>I’m completely shocked nobody has mentioned the military academies.</p>
<p>^ Not to mention, military service.</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Oxford
Stanford</p>
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<p>I’ve always associated Wilson with Princeton. In fact, he’s famous for being one of only two Princeton graduates to have become POTUS (the other one being James Madison of course). Could you clarify Wilson’s connection to Hopkins ? </p>
<p>Anyway, there are unsurprisingly several Congressmen, senators, governors, mayors and other elected or appointed officials who have graduated from their local state university. A few elite schools stand out though for having an unusually high number of graduates in key government positions.</p>
<p>Oxford University in the UK is a typical example. I believe something like 26 out of the last 52 British prime ministers were Oxford graduates, including several recent PMs like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. If the Conservatives manage to win the next British general election (as is widely expected), then another Oxonian, David Cameron, is likely to become PM. </p>
<p>By comparison, in the US, Harvard and Yale are known to have produced a few Presidents, but neither one can claim to have the kind of relative political influence that Oxford has in the UK.</p>
<p>The seven (well five…) sisters produce a lot of politicians.</p>
<p>Philip Henry College.</p>
<p>An undergrad at the local/state college (or major university if one happens to be close by) in the district the person is running in is beneficial because it shows ties to the community.
For appointed positions, the ivies do reign supreme in that sense. The cabinet positions (and their assistants) have a lot of ivy league on their resumes. If not ivy league, they tend to have top law school or PhD credentials.
Military experience is not quite a must have, except for DoD, Pentagon or CIA/NSA type positions.
A few years working the house and/or senate floor is also a huge stepping stone for appointed positions. Connections are what make the beltway go 'round.</p>
<p>Brown is well represented in Rhode Island. Quite often of the two senators, one representative, governor, and mayor of Providence, three or more of the five are Brown grads.</p>
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<p>I looked up Wilson’s bio on the Wikipedia. He got his PhD (in History and Political Science) from Hopkins, after getting his bachelor’s degree from Princeton.</p>
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<p>Wilson had two college degrees: he received a BA from Princeton in 1879 and a PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1886. Wilson remains the only POTUS to earn a PhD. Hopkins, like Princeton, is proud of the connection. </p>
<p>Johns Hopkins claims to have been the first research university in the US, and it was commonly perceived as the top US school for doctoral study in the late 19th Century (Princeton, for comparison, did not even establish its Graduate School until 1900). After leaving Hopkins, Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and ultimately Princeton, where he became College President.</p>
<p>As President of Princeton, Wilson lost a major battle regarding the Graduate College. Wilson wanted to put it in the center of the Princeton campus, but he was overruled, and the GC was located at the periphery instead (where it still is today). It seems likely that Wilson’s position was influenced by his experiences at Hopkins, which (unlike Princeton) was envisioned from the start as a school with strong graduate-level research programs. </p>
<p>Wilson also attended Davidson as an undergraduate before transferring to Princeton, and he attended law school at the University of Virginia between Princeton and Hopkins, but he did not receive degrees from either of these schools.</p>
<p>Hopkins was the first university founded on the principal that the main goal of a university is to produce new information through research. The American model at that time still focused on teaching as the goal of universities.</p>
<p>While other schools did take from the more German model that Hopkins was founded on, others have kept a vibrant and healthy balance between the two functions (or never took on the research powerhouse as a function at all).</p>
<p>It’s not a knock to Hopkins or Princeton that they chose different paths/models. I just find it hilarious that people on here purport the undergraduate quality of institutions where undergraduate education, since its very inception, was an afterthought. Sometimes the undergraduate college is, indeed, spectacular. But quite often it’s not, and quite often people point to metrics that really only speak to the production of knowledge side of the university and not the education side and assume the two must, always go hand-in-hand, and that balance between the two has no bearing on how much of the research side leaches into the undergraduate side.</p>
<p>Ha! Brooklyn college claims two senators… never even heard of Brooklyn College.</p>
<p>Next we’ll have senators from ITT Technical Institute. :)</p>
<p>You fail to mention that Hopkins was also the FIRST medical school to emphasize having an UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE prior to entrance into Medical School? Yes, after Hopkins’ success, OTHER schools began looking at undergraduate degrees as a NECCESITY for graduate schools like medicine, law, etc.</p>
<p>And I’m very sure that the research side goes well with the Hopkins undergraduate side. I don’t think you’ll find a single other college out there with a larger proportion of undergraduates doing real research in its various forms.</p>
<p>Undergraduate education has always been one of the focal points in a Hopkins Experience. The ENTIRE Homewood campus is mostly devoted to the 4400+ undergrads that attend there. There are only 600-1000 graduate students in total at the Hopkins campus. How much more undergraduate focused do you need to get? </p>
<p>It’s just because Hopkins emphasizes RESEARCH as a critical component to Undergraduate education and believes that education in all forms should include learning and sharing with those who are at the forefront of human knowledge. </p>
<p>And with the election of the new Johns Hopkins President, I am sure undergraduate education will continue to improve at Hopkins.</p>
<p>Seriously, Modestmelody, just try taking a course in anything at Hopkins for undergrad. I’m sure your perceptions will be changed, even if you have gone/are going to Brown. The rigor of classes, at the expectations of professors is probably most similar to Uchicago, and easily more rigorous than Brown, Dartmouth, WashU, Duke, etc.</p>
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Undergraduates certainly outnumber grad students at Homewood, but those numbers aren’t quite correct. According to JHU [itself](<a href=“Home | Johns Hopkins University”>Home | Johns Hopkins University):</a>
This figure does not include part-time graduate students in Whiting’s EPP (continuing education) division</p>
<p>^^ ahh ok. I didn’t look specifically at the numbers, but it doesn’t feel like there’s many grad students…lol</p>
<h2>to the poster who said “Harvard’s is insane!”</h2>
<p>Actually Harvard is the alma mater (undergraduate degree conferrer) of (5) current senators, the same number as claimed by Stanford.</p>
<p>Yale wins with (6).</p>
<p>Harvard & Stanford (5) each</p>
<p>Columbia (2) </p>
<p>Princeton, Penn and Dartmouth claim (1) </p>
<p>Cornell, Brown and MIT all (0).</p>
<p>Moving on to LACs, Williams (1), Amherst (0), Swarthmore (1), Bowdoin (0) and Pomona (0)</p>
<p>(40) Attended a State University, about half the Flagship, about half another.</p>
<p>So, HYPSM claims 17 our of 100 Senators. I guess it’s OK to go to your State Flagship…</p>
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<p>One of my best friends is at JHU at graduating this year. I knew a **** load more after a year of orgo than he did and I barely got a B in the first year of orgo. One year of research is required to get an Sc.B. at Brown for credit. Your blanket statements are meaningless in your defense of JHU.</p>
<p>I’m not attacking the institution as a whole, but the truth is its focus straight from its founding has been on faculty producing research and graduate education.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that they don’t have a great undergraduate education, and I’m not saying that research as a part of undergraduate education is not critical, what I am saying is that having premiere research on campus does not directly translate to being a better undergraduate institution and also that there is not an unlimited amount of benefited gleaned from even greater and greater volumes of research occurring on campus for undergraduates.</p>
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I applied to the Classics program at Hopkins for grad school and examined the course offerings pretty carefully. On average, undergrads were expected to translate only about 1/2-2/3 (~200 lines) of what we had to at my university each week! :p</p>
<p>Holy Cross-1 Senator, 4 Congressmen, 1 U.S. Supreme Court Justice.</p>