Timed out, here’s what an old CC poster from Brown had to say:
"I still am not convinced that PhD production determines a strong department. None of my friends who wanted to go to chemistry graduate school had a hard time at all. Many of them are choosing between places like Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and various other chemistry powerhouses. Had I chosen to go that route, it would have been something I’m clearly prepared for. However, because I chose to switch my interests and earn a masters in urban education policy at Brown (I think I may end up going for a PhD but probably after a few years of work), now my chemistry department looks weaker? Because about 1/3 of our chemistry students are premed our chemistry program is worse?
There may be some correlation there, but to say department A produced more PhDs so it’s better than department B is not something I’d say. I’m not even sure it’s an indicator of that at all. "
I don’t know which is better for you, but I wanted to say they are really different. (Emphasis on the word really. )
Since you do not have a bonafide offer of admission from both yet, (or did I miss it?) it will be best to consider all your actual possibilities when you know for certain what they are.
These are both very good places to study, BTW. Goof luck.
Per capita PhD production is what counts. Requiring a masters-level thesis of ALL undergrads shows grad schools that you already know how to do research, hence high grad school and PhD admission rates.
Have the best of both worlds, Reed for undergrad, Cal for grad school.
@tk21769 thanks for posting that NSF study; I keep on looking for those statistics to show my college-bound children but can’t locate it. Table 4 certainly is illuminating. For the OP, I think the academics at both in the environmental field are going to be quite similar, and the educational environments are so dissimilar, you have to focus on what kind of educational and social environment is right for you; i.e. academics take a back seat in your particular case. Berkeley is going to be large, exciting and have a surfeit of opportunities but very little personal attention from professors. Reed is going to be more small, cerebral, and intense. My sense is that Berkeley students are a little more competitive, especially in the sciences, because so many students are vying for so little professorial attention. At Reed, you might wish that you got a little less attention from your professors.
If you think a “terminal degrees” metric is a better indicator of … something … then please help us all out by finding and presenting that data. I know where to find PhD production data (https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/).
It covers many arts & science fields. I don’t know a similar data source for all terminal degrees.
I believe arts & science PhD production rates roughly indicate how well a college motivates and prepares its arts & science students for advanced work in arts & science fields. For example, I expect an excellent anthropology department, at a college with a rich intellectual atmosphere and good financial assistance, to motivate and prepare a relatively high percentage of anthropology students to complete PhDs in anthropology. However, in the USA we do not have undergraduate law and medicine majors. Many top colleges don’t have business majors. So I’d be more reluctant to attribute a college’s high rate of law or medical degree production to academic excellence in any particular department.
I think monydad is right to suggest that if a college produces a high absolute number of PhD alumni, that is evidence that a student can find what s/he needs at that college to prepare for graduate school. If that college has a much lower net COA than another college with a higher PhD production rate, I’d be inclined to recommend the much less expensive college to someone who might be interested in pursuing a graduate degree (assuming other factors are acceptable, and cost matters). However, if the COA at both schools is similar, then a student may want to consider what kind of atmosphere is most appealing. Many schools with high PhD production rates seem to have a certain relatively rich intellectual atmosphere that may be appealing to geeky students interested in pursuing PhDs. I believe you’d discover that that atmosphere is thicker at Reed (or Carleton, or Grinnell … or Caltech) than it is at some schools with high absolute numbers of alumni PhDs. Whether you LIKE that atmosphere or would thrive in it is another question. But you might (even if you don’t plan to pursue a PhD).
I’m not persuaded that state university rates are relatively low only because they are diluted by high numbers of pre-professional students (although this may be a significant factor). I’ve run comparisons for PhD production adjusted for the number of majors. By this metric, too, LACs seem to compare very well agains large research universities. See table 5 in the following paper: http://as.vanderbilt.edu/econ/wparchive/workpaper/vu06-w11.pdf
Reed ranks #5 by this metric. Berkeley does not make the top 30 (although some other, less prestigious universities do).
One difficulty with this measurement (even more than with normalizing by institution size) is that it can exaggerate the performance of schools with a very small number of majors in a field, when in any given time frame even a few alumni go on to earn doctorates. So it’s liable to generate many false positives from sparse data. If you shifted the time window, or applied it to fields other than economics, I’d expect Reed, Carleton, and Swarthmore to show up repeatedly. Frostburg State? Maybe not (although I don’t really know for sure … and these numbers are fairly tedious to generate.)
In my opinion, the PhD production rate can be a useful discovery tool for some students. It may be somewhat helpful as a decision-making tool in some cases … although you’d definitely want to look at other factors, too.
Yep, and that is all I meant when I brought it up in my comment. I don’t think that PhD production (per capita or absolute) is a good indication of the quality of a department because there are so many factors relevant more to the student body than the department’s performance that can affect that. It was more in reference to the OP’s desire for research opportunities - my point being that s/he can find them at both Reed and Berkeley.
I don’t think it’s only that, either, although I think it plays a role. In fact, in my opinion, I think the thing that influences it the most is probably the small class sizes and tight-knit community of an LAC. My theory is that simple proximity and more time spent developing a relationship with professors means that students come to want their jobs more - either because they genuinely begin to understand what the life of a scholar is like and they want that, OR because they come to greatly admire their professors and want to emulate them. Or both.
Anyway, I think the bottom line is that you can study environmental studies and get research opportunities and other cool stuff at both Reed and Berkeley, so the decision should be more based upon whether you want to be at a small quirky liberal arts college in Portland or a very large state university in Berkeley, CA.
Reed is by large a prep school for intellectuals who are planning on pursuing academic graduate study. It takes a special kind of person to like Reed and those who do are often those who derive intense pleasure from academic pursuits. These are the people who want to be scholars and develop intimate connections with the material they are studying. That, more than anything, is probably what accounts for Reed’s unusually high PhD productivity per capita. It may or may not be necessarily the high quality of individual programs.
Berkeley is not at all a bad choice either if you want to earn a PhD. The environment would be notably different from Reed. To be honest, once you reach this upper echelon of schools, graduate schools will not care all that much where you got your undergrad degree. Berkeley and Reed are among many great institutions of terrific academic quality that excellently prepare you for graduate school.
They exist, but most environmental studies majors who pursue further education either get a professional master’s degree (i.e. environmental management, public policy, forestry, etc.) or a law degree.
If you were primarily interested in environmental science, I would absolutely recommend Berkeley. Reed lacks an earth science program – rather disappointing for a school purportedly strong in the sciences – and its biology program is heavily focused on biochemistry and molecular bio. Berkeley’s science programs, particularly the superb IB program, are much more well-rounded.
Since you are interested in environmental studies, however, the differences between the two are not quite so clear.
[ul][]Environmental studies is inherently interdisciplinary, and Reed offers enough courses in various departments for a student to cobble together a satisfactory background (judging by its offerings this year).
[]With top-notch offerings in econ, history, anthro, public policy, and all of the sciences, Berkeley is a great option for environmental studies. Berkeley (along with its southern counterpart UCLA) has arguably the best geography program in the country, moreover – the opportunity to take courses in GIS, spatial modeling and planning, economic geography, biogeography, etc. is pretty unique and exciting. (It’s really rather sad that most private colleges have disbanded their geography departments – it’s an extraordinarily versatile degree.)[/ul]
It really comes down to how much you value the small size of a LAC relative to the immense breadth and depth of Berkeley’s academic offerings. Course sizes are only one small part of the equation – the social scenes, clubs, diversity of students, and more are all impacted by the size of the colleges.
What other colleges did you apply to? I think there are several others that would make a good middle ground between Reed and Berkeley – the Claremonts, Colorado College, or Whitman, for example.
@warblersrule interesting that you mentioned the Claremont colleges - I applied to Claremont McKenna ED2 but was rejected last Friday. I also applied to Pomona College and that has supplanted CMC as my absolute first choice, but seeing as how they are such an elite school and I was rejected from CMC I don’t see my chances of getting in to Pomona as very high.
The only schools so far not mentioned that I have applied to are UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara. I’m still somewhat stuck between the offerings at Cal and Reed, and I’m sure I won’t be able to make a firm decision until I potentially have acceptance letters to both schools.
To speak more personally about myself, I have lived in various parts of California my whole life. I have an uncle and brother in San Francisco and a brother in Marin County, so the family connection the area is a motivating factor. However, I visited Portland last October and loved the town, and Reed College was beautiful in particular. I’ve been interested in both Reed and Berkeley for a very long time, Reed for its academic focus and Berkeley for its breadth and quality of offerings.
In support of Reed’s case, I have always had a desire to expand my mind academically, and I derive a great amount of pleasure from learning. I love the architecture and the natural beauty on campus, and I love Portland’s rainy weather. Against Reed, I am dismayed by the reported lack of interest in intramural/club sports, as I am an avid soccer player who would like to continue playing college. Also, I cannot seem to find any concrete information on the social scene besides the prevalence of drugs, which, while something I’m willing to deal with, is not the most encouraging thing about the college.
TBH, it is futile to try to make this decision until you actually have offers from schools you want to go to in hand.
Also, the schools dramatically differ in size, and trying to nitpick between the differences in academic quality is only going to bury the main question you should be asking yourself: where would you fit in better?
Also there are active soccer and rugby teams that travel every once in a while to play and stuff.
The OP’s reply #29 indicates that the OP is considering both academic and social criteria in trying to decide which fits better. A visit might help determine some criteria, but is not the be-all end-all in determining fit.
Yeah, especially since this year Reed had a massive increase in applications this year. It may be much more competitive this year even for very high-stats applicants.
I agree with you all that waiting will bring me closer to an answer.
To reply to @ucbalumnus I have visited both schools and enjoy the atmosphere at both schools. Only time will tell, but patience is always rewarded, right? I couldn’t go seriously wrong with either school
Reed has always been competitive, regardless of stats. My DD1 had similar stats to the OP and was waitlisted 6 years ago. From another Reed parent (vonlost?) it seems stats only count for 25% in Reed admissions.
To all who may find this informative in any way: Yes, I was accepted to both schools and ended up with nearly equivalent net costs at each. I chose Berkeley. Here is why.
Though I love Reed's academic atmosphere, I am not sure I will be pursuing a PhD in my chosen field, and I would like to enter the workforce as soon as I graduate. As seen in this thread, Reed is an incubator for future PhD candidates, and while Berkeley may produce them as well, I would like to be educated in a more practical, work-oriented manner during undergraduate studies. As stated earlier, Reed does not have an environmental department, merely an environmental studies major that cobbles together professors from various departments. At Berkeley, I will be majoring in Environmental Economics and Policy, which has its own department and courses specific to the major. I will get more specific instruction in the particular field I want to go to, which is a priority for me.
If I desire to switch my major, I will have many more options at Berkeley than at Reed. Though it may be more difficult to switch majors at Cal, there are vastly more departments and resources available, and considering many undergraduates change their majors once or twice, this is a real concern.
A major factor I considered while deciding between the schools was the level of personal attention I would receive at each. Reed is a small LAC that loves its students, with small class sizes and ample time devoted to the interests of every student. As everyone knows, Cal is an enormous public, where students are ID numbers and class sizes roll up into the hundreds. In the interest of bettering myself, I picked Cal's impersonal crowds over Reed's cared-for students. I figure that the process of fighting to stand out from thousands of other undergrads competing for grades and internships will fuel my personal growth in a way that Reed's personal attention will not. Sure, Reed students will be conducting research with professors and getting to know the academic upper crust in a way that will not be possible at Cal, but I value the competitive skills I will gain at Berkeley more. And it's not like research opportunities are unknown at Berkeley either, of course. I think I made the right choice here.
Lastly, the social aspect. Berkeley is a much more lively school (in terms of wild parties and Greek life) than Reed, though Reed has the wonderful city of Portland at its disposal. I am not planning on partying 24/7, or even 5/5, yet the energetic atmosphere at Cal is what I believe will make me a happier person.
So there are my reasons! Feel free to discount any errors I may have made in my judgments of either school. I spent a great deal of time deliberating over my decision, and I firmly believe I made the best choice for myself.
Just a couple of things to add, for whatever they might be worth. Reed has some of the smartest folks I have ever meet, many PhDs. It is also a rather odd place for many seeking a traditional college experience–no sports, no rah rah…and a rather pronounced alternative vibe. While many thrive and operate at an upper margin, others, not unlike a segment of students at all universities, struggle with the atmosphere and the closed academic community.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like Reed, but it is also not for everyone.
