Many students from our school have gone to Clarkson over the years. I can’t think of one that hasn’t been very successful or was unhappy with the school.
It seems like they have indirectly discovered that choosing a good major matters more than choosing a school. A lot of school here have engineering and business.
I suspect that if you choose one of these schools and major in art history, you will still find the job market to be challenging.
The problem is that this article looks at the “average” student. The people who go to Harvard and want to make a lot of money will likely make way more than the student who wants to make a lot of money at say, Georgia Tech (a school that Brookings ranks higher on ROI). The starting compensation of Harvard investment bankers will be greater than the midcareer of the majority of Georgia Tech students! The students that go to Harvard and have priorities other than making a lot of $$- well then evaluating the college on the students’ salaries is a poor measure of the “value added”.
Look at the % of graduates in STEM fields, that’s usually very telling about the focus and rigor of the school.
Colorado School of Mines: 100%
Rose-Hulman IT: 99%
Caltech: 97%
Harvey Mudd: 87%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: 86%
Georgia Tech: 79%
Cooper Union: 74%
MIT: 72%
CMU: 67%
Purdue: 54%
UC Berkeley: 44%
UW(Seattle): 44%
UCLA: 40%
UVA:34%
Most flagships are in the 40s
Stanford: 57%
Rice: 51%
Johns Hopkins:47%
Duke: 44%
Tufts: 42%
Northwestern: 36%
Chicago:25%
Georgetown: 23%
Carlton: 50%
Bowdoin: 45%
Clarke Univ: 45%
Wellesley: 41%
Williams: 38%
Colgate: 35%
Reed: 34%
Amherst: 34%
BU: 34%
Denison: 32%
Wesleyan: 27%
Smith: 27%
Cornell: 59%
Princeton: 54%
Penn: 47%
Brown: 44%
Dartmouth: 41%
Columbia: 40%
Yale: 34%
Harvard: 28%
I’d love to see the percentages majoring in Leisure Studies, Sports Management, Phys Ed, and Real Estate Management.
btw, some of these comparisons are absurd if you are going to equate rigor with the percentage. MIT is less rigorous than Rose Hulman? that’s hilarious.
I think it’s safe to assume the schools in the top group are all very rigorous, some even more so than others just because of the caliber of the students admitted - more curve busters.
Some schools are a bit of a surprise to me such as Carlton and Wellesley. Also Chicago is known for its rigor even if it’s just 25% STEM. But it also explains why Harvard is known for the most grade inflation among the elite schools. Grade inflation doesn’t occur as often in STEM. You don’t want to graduate engineers that build bridges that collapse or doctors that harm their patients.
So you assert that the 28% figure shows what a sham Harvard is, but the 25% figure you provide is meaningless? Well done.
@blossom “btw, some of these comparisons are absurd if you are going to equate rigor with the percentage. MIT is less rigorous than Rose Hulman? that’s hilarious.”
I don’t think anyone is saying that it should be the sole criteria used to rank order schools, but rather that there is a significant positive correlation between rigor and STEM percentage. Rose-Hulman is not a better school than MIT by most measures. However, I would bet that Rose-Hulman is a lot more rigorous than one might suspect for a small school that 99.9% of America has never heard of in Terra Haute, Indiana.
I’m merely questioning the logic here: “Other schools” would not be willing to graduate engineers that build bridges that collapse or doctors that harm their patients; however, Harvard would be happy to do that.
Can you hear yourself?
FACT: There is one thing above everything else that every elite college craves: That craving is for graduates who will stun the world with excellence – achievements that the world will later associate with that college because the college will be able to brag about that on its home page. If you seriously believe that Harvard or any other Ivy shrugs off engineering or medical incompetence, you are fooling only yourself.
Much2Learn- my point is that a kid who graduates from MIT with a degree in urban planning or econ or political science, has taken the core and the general institute requirements- like every STEM student at MIT. The required courses are just that- required. Majoring in music- you take the core. Majoring in mechanical engineering- you take the core. There was even a literature major in my son’s fraternity- brilliant kid- and he took the core. And so the notion that the percentage of STEM grads is a proxy for rigor is really absurd.
Rose-Hulman is a fine school and doesn’t need some bogus analysis to prove that.
@epiphany You are inferring me. I did not say Harvard is happy to graduate engineers that build bridges that collapse. What I meant was, since their % of STEM majors is so low, the grade inflation for the large number of non-STEM majors easily skew the average grade of the school to an A-, which is a fact that’s been brought up many times about Harvard.
Reply #30 does not wash. Just one more myth about how “easy” it is to be a non-STEM major – at Harvard or possibly anywhere. FALSE. I happen to know some recent Harvard graduates well. They were not STEM majors and the grading was tough. Same with other Ivies, overall. There are always students at every university, every year, who “shop” for classes with “easier” grading. Who cares? Doesn’t “prove” anything about any non-STEM course in any Elite U.
As to this,
You implied exactly that when you CONTRASTED Harvard with “other schools” who “would not be happy” to graduate students who made bridges collapse and harm patients. Ridiculous.
Oh brother. I tried my best to clarify my point, but if you still want to accuse me of whatever it is you think I implied just to justify your sanctimonious sermon, go ahead. I really don’t care.
Who thinks it’s easy to be a non-STEM major? Half the STEM majors on CC are so literal and Sheldon-Cooper-like with their dogged focus that they’d completely suck if asked to do any high level literature or historical analysis, much less exhibit creativity and conceptual thinking. It’s far easier to pretend that these fields are “easy” than to admit that things you can’t do require skills you don’t have.
@Pizzagirl “Who thinks it’s easy to be a non-STEM major?”
I don’t think many people think non-STEM majors are “easy” and some are incredibly difficult. It is true that on average there is still a net flow out of STEM majors into non-stem majors at most schools, which suggests that the average student in the US finds STEM majors more challenging. It is also true that more quantitative majors tend to have lower gpas, which also suggests that the average student finds them more difficult. That is a long way from saying the non-stem majors are “easy” though.
@epiphany I was a humanities major at Harvard. While my classes were quite challenging, the grading was nowhere near as hard as in the sciences. This is not exactly earth-shaking news, I think.
When was that? Last year? Even some time in the last 10 years? Again, the recent experiences of my students have not reflected a disparity between sciences and humanities grading standards. And “humanities” covers a wide swath.
THIS, just this:
@epiphany actually, a strong math/science kid can perform well in engineering even if K12 never exposed him/her to the discipline.
@NavalTradition exactly, that is why engineers tend to return for MBAs and then go into management.
also, a Harvard economics major likely earns more than an MIT biology major.
Last ten years. Have taught humanities at JHU more recently. Same thing there. Won’t say the exact subject, but it’s one of the more rigorous ones.
Saying the humanities have merit and rigor is fine. Saying that grading is exactly as hard as engineering is peculiar.