Best Placement HERE to Top MBA/MD/JD Programs

College Search & Selection
21

<p>I took four lists (my study by #, my study by %, WSJ study by #, and WSJ by %) and developed a point system. 20 pts for #1, 19 pts for #2, 18 pts for #3, 1 pt for #20, etc.</p>

<p>I compiled the top point getters and added a bonus point per list each school made (i.e. 4 bonus pts for making 4 lists and 1 bonus pt for making only 1 list)...</p>

<p>The results created a clear top 20:</p>

<ol>
<li> Harvard (84)</li>
<li> Yale (78)</li>
<li> Stanford (76)</li>
<li> Princeton (69)</li>
<li> Duke (63)</li>
<li> U Pennsylvania (54)</li>
<li> Dartmouth (48)</li>
<li> Columbia (45)</li>
<li> Brown (36)</li>
<li>Williams (33)</li>
<li>Georgetown (32)</li>
<li>Amherst (30)</li>
<li>UC Berkeley (30)</li>
<li>Cornell (30)</li>
<li>MIT (30)</li>
<li>U Michigan (29)</li>
<li>Swarthmore (22)</li>
<li>UCLA (18)</li>
<li>U Virginia (15)</li>
<li>Northwestern (15)</li>
</ol>

<p>The runner ups? </p>

<ol>
<li>Rice U (13)</li>
<li>Wellesley (12)</li>
<li>U Chicago (12)</li>
<li>Pomona College (9)</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins (9)</li>
</ol>

22

<p>davida1, do you have the numbers for Villanova by any chance?</p>

23

<p>Villanova U</p>

<p>By number: 6
By percentage: 0.3%</p>

24

<p>To the dissenters Villanova is a perfect example. The percentage figure for Johns Hopkins is 16 times higher than Villanova. Is the student body at Johns Hopkins really 16 times stronger than Villanova? Is it all do to the fact that in terms of stats/accomplishments Johns Hopkins students are 16 times stronger than Villanova students? I think the answer is obvious. And if you say well people at Villanova are less interested in these career choices (law/business/medicine) you'd have to provide evidence that it is in fact self-selection and not perceived or actual weaker performance or placement on the part of alumni. And if it is self-selection, if you are interested in pursuing these career routes why would you choose to not be surrounded by peers that do not want to pursue these routes or an institution that does not do what it can to get students into these places?</p>

25

<p>If you use the point method for my study or the WSJ study individually (i.e. consider the data totally separately but the same method) the top 16 are the same for both (admittedly U Chicago and Swarthmore are tied with Georgetown for the WSJ study):</p>

<p>My Study:</p>

<ol>
<li> Harvard (42)</li>
<li> Stanford (39)</li>
<li> Yale (38)</li>
<li> Princeton (32)</li>
<li> Duke (32)</li>
<li> U Pennsylvania (32)</li>
<li> Dartmouth (23)</li>
<li> Georgetown (20)</li>
<li> Columbia (20)</li>
<li>Cornell (18)</li>
<li>Amherst (17)</li>
<li>MIT (17)</li>
<li>UC Berkeley (17)</li>
<li>Brown (15)</li>
<li>Williams (14)</li>
<li>U Michigan (12)</li>
</ol>

<p>WSJ Study:</p>

<ol>
<li> Harvard (42)</li>
<li> Yale (40)</li>
<li> Stanford (37)</li>
<li> Princeton (37)</li>
<li> Duke (31)</li>
<li> Columbia (25)</li>
<li> Dartmouth (25)</li>
<li> MIT (23)</li>
<li> U Pennsylvania (22)</li>
<li>Brown (21)</li>
<li>Williams (19)</li>
<li>U Michigan (17)</li>
<li>Amherst (13)</li>
<li>UC Berkeley (13)</li>
<li>Cornell (12)</li>
<li>Georgetown (12)</li>
</ol>

<p>(Swarthmore and U Chicago tied with Georgetown with 12 points for the WSJ data, but otherwise the top 16 stay the same)</p>

26

<p>Unless you are primarily interested in how large the colleges are, you have to adjust for percentages. A small enough college could send every single graduate to a top 15 professional school and still come in behind Harvard, on size difference alone.</p>

<p>How reliable is the facebook survey? What proportion of the students at each prof school were listed? Is there are risk that some schools had higher facebook participation, and thus the stats would favor those colleges that sent a large number of students to those prof schools? </p>

<p>Lots of engineers go to business school, and plenty more go to med school. I share the assumption that not as many to law school, but hardly reasonable to assume that none do so. When comparing different colleges it is pointless to try to subtract those enrolled in engineering, business or nursing programs, unless you also subtract for the other colleges that are not organized into separate schools those students who are majoring in engineering, business, or nursing. Almost all the top colleges on these lists have engineering majors, so one must either look at the college as a whole, or look up the number of, for example, engineering majors at each college, make some guess as to how many of them want to go to professional school, and adjust the denominator accordingly.</p>

<p>As a rough pass at correcting for input, why not regress on the median SAT for each college, and look at the residuals? This would start to answer the question of whether the top colleges are at the top because of something that happens there, or just because of who they enrolled. Would have to use the percents, rather than absolute numbers, here or your results would be hopelessly confounded by the size effect.</p>

27

<p>Both Johns Hopkins and Yale provide statistics from LSAC about average GPA and LSAT of students admitted to various law schools. Here is a data comparison:</p>

<p>Law School Admissions Data: Yale vs. Johns Hopkins Admits</p>

<p>Harvard </p>

<p>3.91 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.78 GPA, 172 LSAT – Yale</p>

<p>U Chicago</p>

<p>3.74 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.69 GPA, 170 LSAT – Yale</p>

<p>Stanford</p>

<p>3.77 GPA, 170 LSAT – Yale (38 admitted)
Johns Hopkins (only 3 admitted; data only available for 5+)</p>

<p>NYU</p>

<p>3.83 GPA, 171 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.74 GPA, 171 LSAT – Yale</p>

<p>Columbia</p>

<p>3.81 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.71 GPA, 171 LSAT – Yale </p>

<p>The data is consistent throughout; sure it’s not a huge difference but it is statistically significant because of how consistently Yale students have an easier time getting in to top law schools stats wise. I'm sure you'd see the same phenomenon in business (in particular because OCR opportunities are much better at certain schools over others) and medicine (because they are less numbers based than law school admissions). </p>

<p>I've seen data for Penn and Georgetown as well. There is a clear, consistent pattern of students getting into top graduate programs with lesser stats/accomplishments from colleges that do better in my study, the WSJ study, and the point tallies study. It's just reality.</p>

<p>Also, the reason why you shouldn't consider the nursing school for example isn't because no one from nursing (or architecture or communication or kineseology or theater for that matter) can get an MD/JD/MBA, but because they are less likely to pursue that path than a CAS graduate. Again, if you look at just CAS programs the differences in size between national universities tends to not be that significant. Again, schools that are very large are such because they tend to have a number of different schools filled with students that less frequently pursue pre-law, pre-mba, or pre-med routes because of the nature of the field they are studying.</p>

<p>Most of the top LAC's that placed well in the data did not offer Engineering FYI and neither do some schools like Georgetown or U Chicago.</p>

28

<p>Again, my position is that total number is NOT irrelevant for the reasons stated. I think you should consider both percentage and number, which is why I showed the results of the point system combining my data and the WSJ data.</p>

29

<p>Wow, those Law School admission numbers are pretty indicative. Do you have data for other schools? Where did you find it?</p>

<p>Do you have such data for Med/Business school?</p>

30

<p>Maybe we can all pitch in. I will add Michigan stats:</p>

<p>Law School Admissions Data: Yale vs. Johns Hopkins vs. Michigan Admits</p>

<p>Harvard Law School</p>

<p>3.91 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.78 GPA, 172 LSAT – Yale
3.91 GPA, 173 LSAT - Michigan (17 admits)</p>

<p>U Chicago</p>

<p>3.74 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.69 GPA, 170 LSAT – Yale
3.85 GPA, 173 LSAT - Michigan (16 admits)</p>

<p>Stanford</p>

<p>3.77 GPA, 170 LSAT – Yale (38 admitted)
Johns Hopkins (only 3 admitted; data only available for 5+)
4.0 GPA, 174 LSAT - Michigan (6 admits)</p>

<p>NYU</p>

<p>3.83 GPA, 171 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.74 GPA, 171 LSAT – Yale
3.76 GPA, 172 LSAT - Michigan (25 admits)</p>

<p>Columbia</p>

<p>3.81 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.71 GPA, 171 LSAT – Yale
3.80 GPA, 172 LSAT - Michigan (22 admits)</p>

31

<p>Law School Admissions Data: Yale vs. Johns Hopkins vs. Michigan vs. Berkeley Admits</p>

<p>Harvard Law School</p>

<p>3.91 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.78 GPA, 172 LSAT – Yale
3.91 GPA, 173 LSAT - Michigan (17 admits)
3.87 GPA, 172 LSAT - Berkeley (7 admits)</p>

<p>U Chicago</p>

<p>3.74 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.69 GPA, 170 LSAT – Yale
3.85 GPA, 173 LSAT - Michigan (16 admits)
3.79 GPA, 173 LSAT - Berkeley (4 admits)</p>

<p>Stanford</p>

<p>3.77 GPA, 170 LSAT – Yale (38 admitted)
Johns Hopkins (only 3 admitted; data only available for 5+)
4.0 GPA, 174 LSAT - Michigan (6 admits)
Berkeley (only 1 admitted, no data available)</p>

<p>NYU</p>

<p>3.83 GPA, 171 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.74 GPA, 171 LSAT – Yale
3.76 GPA, 172 LSAT - Michigan (25 admits)
3.86 GPA, 171 LSAT - Berkeley (10 admits)</p>

<p>Columbia</p>

<p>3.81 GPA, 172 LSAT – Johns Hopkins
3.71 GPA, 171 LSAT – Yale
3.80 GPA, 172 LSAT - Michigan (22 admits)
3.86 GPA, 170 LSAT - Berkeley (7 admits)</p>

<p>Interesting that the GPA and LSAT averages are quite the same - no matter what the undergraduate school.</p>

32

<p>You say "The percentage figure for Johns Hopkins is 16 times higher than Villanova. Is the student body at Johns Hopkins really 16 times stronger than Villanova?" That's not the conclusion that should follow from the data that you're looking at. Because the percentages reflect the % of the student body matriculating at these top pre-professional schools, the comparison that you cite demonstrates that <i>the average </i> JHU student is 16 times more likely to <i>attend</i> a top pre-professional school than <i>the average</i> Villanova student. That is a very very different claim than the one that you are trying to draw from these numbers. Regardless of this, you're playing with such small and inexact (from facebook) numbers as it is, that it would be a mistake to make any claims from this data other than extremely broad generalizations.</p>

<p>Now, the reason why percentages are very important whereas total numbers are fairly meaningless, is because of the relative size differences between the schools. To highlight the point, I'm going to use an exaggerated example. Imagine School A has 100,000 students and School B has 100 students. Every year 200 students from school A (2% of the student body) matriculate at top pre-professional schools. Every year 100 students from School B (100% of the student body) matriculate at pre-professional schools. Twice as many students from school A matriculate at top schools, but you're <i>50</i> times more likely to matriculate at a top school if you attend School B! It's obvious that if this is the only factor in your admission, you'd be a fool not to attend School B. Furthermore, it is also obvious that the absolute number comparisons between these schools yield virtually no valuable data. The fact that twice as many School A students are in pre-professional schools as School B students may matter for networking reasons (although if they are sufficiently spread out among these schools the difference will become non-meaningful) but they do not matter as a measure of these schools' relative outputs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought that the primary interest in these rankings and studies was to examine the output of these schools: to examine your chance of attending a top Law/Med/Business school from a given undergraduate. </p>

<p>Absolute number comparisons are only useful to demonstrate whether the sample size of a given school is too small to yield statistically meaningful results (incidentally, I believe the sample size of Villanova is exactly this: too small to draw comparisons from).</p>

33

<p>Can I just break away momentarily to comment: only one admitted to Stanford from Berkeley? Do most Berkeley pre-law undergrads go to Berkeley law? Where are you finding these numbers?</p>

34

<p>^
Career</a> Center - Profile of Law School Admissions - UC Berkeley</p>

<p>Keep in mind that these are stats from students who agreed to release their data...could be omissions.
Quite a lot go to Berkeley, Hastings, UCLA and USC.</p>

35

<p>Actually the Michigan numbers are consistently higher than the Yale numbers, which is significant. </p>

<p>Again, the fact that the study is flawed does not render the data meaningless. I think you are having trouble with that concept. What is most interesting about my study and the WSJ study is that the findings are very similar - in other words, the top schools are extremely unlikely to be different if you received full non-Facebook data. </p>

<p>The same schools year after year send the greatest number or percentage of their class to top professional schools, and the data above from Michigan, Berkeley, Yale, and Hopkins actually confirms the fact that admissions chances are not merely numbers based and that some schools get a bump (albeit a relatively small one; but, the admissions percentages are telling as well though I did not post them; there is only data here for accepted students but looking at the data for rejected students is as informative).</p>

36

<p>abl you need to have some sort of evidence that indicates that using Facebook data benefits certain schools over others in obvious ways (not across the board) and in addition to that that the Facebook bias if eliminated would render very different results in terms of how the schools would rank (obviously the percentages and raw numbers would change significantly with full class data). I don't see either being the case.</p>

37

<p>Davida, why do you single out Michigan? Johns Hopkins and Cal have similar figures as Michigan. Yale admittedly seems to get a bit of a bump, albeit a small one.</p>

38

<p>davida1--the problem is quite simply that we just don't know. There is very clearly a selection bias working here (because students have not only selected to be listed on facebook, but have selected to join their grad school's group) and there's no way for us to know if that selection bias is constant among undergraduate or graduate schools. If it appeared that the facebook groups included the majority of all students at these schools, we could possibly discount this bias, but unfortunately that is far from the case. Because of the increased number of grad schools you include, we would expect close to a 100% increase in students included in your version of the WCJ's study. However, most colleges actually send fewer students to grad schools according to your study--30% fewer in the case of Yale. </p>

<p>There is not only a facebook effect but a very large facebook effect. I suggest controlling for this effect because if it is not even among the schools, then it easily significant enough that it would completely invalidate the results. </p>

<p>Looking at your data we see results mostly consistent with the WSJ's results...however, we do not know if the deviations from this consistency are due to the facebook bias or due to differences in the undergraduate placement when more pre-professional schools are taken into account. For that matter, we don't know if the consistency of the results reflects the fact that the top 20 schools are consistent feeders, or a facebook bias leading us to this false conclusion. Perhaps Villanova would be 10th on your expanded list except that Villanova students are reticent to join grad school facebook groups. I would not be surprised if there were significant enough campus culture differences to lead to this skewing even between schools as similar as Swarthmore and Harvard.</p>

39

<p>I don't see any evidence that suggests that students at some schools are more reticent to join grad school facebook groups (I tried to see if this were the case throughout the data gathering process). I do think there are marginal differences, however, in the popularity of facebook on different college campuses, but I HIGHLY DOUBT that the conclusion or rankings of the schools will differ significantly when that is taken into account. That is really the key issue. Will the bias involved in this study (or the WSJ study, which by the way, relied on various sources -- some of which may have been 100% accurate and some of which may not have been) actually redeem certain schools or significantly change the rankings? No. </p>

<p>The fact that my study and the WSJ study ended up having similar results fits the narrative that the same schools year after year (when you remove regional biases and arbitrary selection of top professional schools that favors certain schools over others) tend to have the strongest placement records.</p>

<p>What was good about my study is that it had no overlap in data with the WSJ study as well and I actually have data for large private schools that did not reach the top 50 in the WSJ study (or the separately published rankings of public universities).</p>

40

<p>Looks like it is largely a measure of the student bodies who enroll at these colleges. </p>

<p>The correlation coefficient between the estimated percent of student body that enrolls in a top 15 professional school and the estimated median SAT (from collegeresults.org) is 0.78, R2 is 0.6.</p>

<p>So the simple median SAT explains 60% of the variance in % professional school attendance. I suspect this figure would go up if one added things like high school grades and accomplishments-the sort of things that make two colleges with roughly equal SATs differ in admission selectivity.</p>

<p>Note that there are 35 colleges with median SATs at or above the level of Grinnell, so 15 of them are not in this top list. ALL of the colleges in this list of high prof school placement are also in the top 35 for median SAT.</p>

<p>These places also vary in the proportion of students who get PhD's. Since relatively few people both go to graduate and professional school, there is a reciprocal relationship. At some colleges a higher proportion of top students go to prof school. At other colleges, a larger proportion of them go to grad school. Since this lists only prof school attendance, it misses the grad school group. </p>

<p>For the law school data, I am struck by how little range there is in the LSAT values, one or two points max. So it seems law school admission at these schools is largely driven by LSAT score, with what college you attend making little difference, at least among this group of elite colleges.</p>

<p>If I get the energy I'll post the residuals.</p>