Better rates of grad school attendance from small LACs than an Ivy?

Parents Forum
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The average Harvard, MIT or Swarthmore student is a higher performance student today than a decade ago.

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<p>I doubt that very much. The rationale for that argument is mostly increasing SAT scores, but that fails to account for the recentering of scores and a bit of SAT inflation with more intensive test prep and multiple test dates becoming more common.</p>

<p>Swarthmore publishes a chart of their historic SAT scores, including both pre-recenter and post-recenter of the 1995 scores for comparison purposes. Overall, the SAT scores are largely unchanged from 1970.</p>

<p>The falling acceptance rates don't necessarily imply better students enrolling. It could just be that the same students are beating out larger numbers of students who wouldn't have been accepted last year or last decade either. Same wheat, more chaff thanks on on-line one-click applications.</p>

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<p>The spread of SAT scores has narrowed, not necessarily the mean.<br>
You just need to look at the 25th percentile at most elite colleges. </p>

<p>For Swarthmore, as late as 1999-2000 according to their CDS 40% of entering freshmen had a CR SAT score of less than 700 and 44% a math SAT score of less than 700.</p>

<p>In 2007-2008, less than 29% scored less than 700 on the CR SAT and less than 36% scored less than 700 on the math SAT. </p>

<p>*In 8 short years, well after the 1995 SAT recentering, there were 27% fewer below 700 CR SAT scorers and 18% fewer below 700 math SAT scores. Hard to argue the spread has not narrowed! *</p>

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<p>Really? Most? I find this a little improbable, first because there certainly were a significant number of women's colleges with women on their faculties going all the way back to the 1800s, as well as a number of enlightened coeducational institutions (like Swarthmore) going back just about as far. And certainly since the 1970s, a lot of women have successfully landed themselves in academic positions, although it's certainly been an uphill struggle. Granted, pre-1970s there would have been fewer opportunities. But hey, 1970 is a long time ago now. Are you telling me most female Swarthmore alums with Ph.D.s got them pre-1970? That would suggest extraordinary longevity among female Swarthmore alums; perhaps an unexpected reason to try to steer my D in Swarthmore's direction?</p>

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<p>Again, there is still no evidence that undergraduate degree, by itself, had any relationship at all to "post-Ph.D" career. All that can be shown is that more students at some schools, self-selected, are more likely to apply to and hence be accepted in Ph.D. programs. </p>

<p>"The study showed a drop from 62% to 56% of students at the most selective colleges earning a PhD from the top institutions a 9.6% decline. At the same time the proportion of students in the next category of highly selective colleges dropped from 44% to 37%, a 15% decline."</p>

<p>The increase? It's kind of obvious. Top graduates of Podunk.</p>

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<p>The average years to completion of a PhD is now 10 years. So, we are only looking at graguates through the class of 1998 on average. Figure that Class of 1940 is still alive. So, you are probably right...the majority of living Swat female PhDs are now of an age where women were starting to teach college in significant numbers -- say the class of 1975 on. Of course, the numbers are still dwarfed by male professors.</p>

<p>The first female PhD in the United States, Helen McGill White was a member of Swarthmore's first graduating class in 1873.</p>

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The increase? It's kind of obvious. Top graduates of Podunk.

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<p>Actually, no. The slack has been more than taken up by international students. In 1970, they earned less than 25% of PhDs in science and engineering while now they ean more than 50% of PhDs. At many departments at top institutions they earn even a greater share. The increase in students with foreign baccalaureate degrees is much greater than the drop from students with baccalaureate degrees from the more selective colleges. </p>

<p>So, in fact the graduates of top colleges have increased their share of degrees from top PhD institututions **among US graduates* while the Podunk U grads are being squeezed out by the Chinese, Indians and Koreans.*</p>

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<p>I have not read this whole thread or analyzed the statistics, but I want to respond to this comment:

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But if you really want to earn a PhD from Harvard, nothing beats going to Harvard as an undergrad!

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.</p>

<p>NO, NO, NO!!! It used to be in the 1960s and 1970s, that this would be true. As a result, one would find Harvard profs who had been Harvard undergraduates and Harvard Ph.D.s. Nowadays, however, Harvard undergraduates had little or no advantage in the graduate admission sweepstakes in GSAS (Law School and Med School may be quite different). In fact, in certain departments, students are positively pushed away and told to get exposure to other profs with different perspectives, specializations, etc...
What is true is that undergrads from a small group of top universities seemto be admitted in inordinately high proportion to the Ph.D. programs at OTHER universities within the same limited group. These would include in no particular order, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA, Brown, and in certain fields MIT and Caltech. It certainly does not mean that a Princeton undergrad has a better chance of admission into a Princeton Ph.D. program. But s/he would have an excellent chance of admission into any of the schools listed above, with, of course, the appropriate record. The same would apply to Swarthmore and a few other LACs. These are LACs whose excellence is known to profs at research universities.</p>

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<p>Marite:</p>

<p>I know what you are saying but the data says otherwise.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/conf/chericonf2003/chericonf2003_03.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/conf/chericonf2003/chericonf2003_03.pdf&lt;/a> page 18.</p>

<p>At least in the sciences and as of the late 90s, more students at Harvard earned their PhDs with baccalaureate degrees from Harvard than Princeton, MIT and Michigan combined and at over 3 times the number of any school. The same pattern was found at MIT, Berkeley and Michigan. It may be different for the humanities but at least in the sciences the pattern is clear. The latest data for 2000-2005 PhDs has recently been released and I doubt it will show much difference. </p>

<p>The explanation for the difference could simply be that the admission rate between for instance MIT and Harvard undergrads for a Harvard PhD program is the same but that many more Harvard undergrads apply.</p>

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<p>Well, my S and his friends (in math/sciences) have all been told loud and clear that they should be applying to OTHER schools. And I have heard that Princeton students have been told the same. Those who are allowed to stay on are considering outstanding. I have some specific cases in mind.
In the humanities, there is no favoring of Harvard students over others from the schools which I have mentioned before. The Harvard faculty has become more diverse and thus far more knowledgeable about training at other schools.</p>

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<p>Math (and possibly physics) may be slightly different. I know that at MIT for instance, many science and engineering undergrads are involved in sponsored research with key professors who often run large labs on campus. Most of these professors are actually quite eager to retain the undergrads they worked with for continued graduate work. They know them well, the students are already trained and are generally very strong students. That built-in advantage is hard to overcome. Each department is completely autonomous in its admission decisions and a strong recommendation by a tenured professor is often all that is needed. MIT grad school is actually by far the single largest destination of MIT undergrads. Not all go for PhDs, but many do. </p>

<p>It would be interesting to get Mollie's breakdown of the baccalaureate origins of the students in the Harvard biology department.</p>

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<p>Here, from the Harvard Math Department:

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The Harvard Math Department encourages its own undergraduates to go elsewhere for graduate study because it is a good idea for a student to get to know other mathematicians, to be exposed to alternative tastes and styles of doing mathematics.

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Harvard</a> Mathematics Department : Graduate Schools and Fellowships in Mathematics (2008-2009)</p>

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<p>Here's an informal survey, based on Harvard's list of current graduate students in one field in the humanities: music history:
4 Oxbridge (UK)
2 Stanford
1 Princeton
1 Penn
1 Wesleyan
1 Oberlin
1 Colorado College
1 Wm and Mary/U Maryland
1 U Michigan
1 U Wisconsin
1 U Washington
1 Queens College, NY
1 Indiana
1 Holy Cross
0 Harvard
0 Yale
0 UC Berkeley
1 Bologna/Smith</p>

<p>In Ethnomusicology, the results are similar -- 0 Harvard and as many from Oberlin and Amherst (and Bowling Green and Agnes Smith) as from Yale, Columbia, or UC Berkeley -- i.e., one from each.</p>

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<p>These things are cyclical. At times, fresh blood is desired, ant others there is a real attempt to keep one's own talent. It depends on the faculty consensus. Quality at the grad level has more to do with who one studies with and what the program is rather than the name of the school. For example, it's hard to beat UC San Francisco in the neurosciences. </p>

<p>Relationships with other recommending professors has a great deal to do with who is admitted where. More folks know and respect more folks from more places, as marite implied. Though faculty tend know one another from the same institution, top students from anywhere have a good chance of being admitted to top programs if their profs are known and respected by peers. As the number of faculty jobs are not increasing all that fast (until the boomers retire at least) many graduates of top programs are teaching in 3rd tier schools and are recommending students. As I have mentioned before, a friend has never failed to place his 3rd or perhaps 4th tier students in top Ph.D. programs often ahead of others from elite undergrad schools.</p>

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<p>To follow up on idad:</p>

<p>It may be quite different in engineering and in those fields where participation in lab work is important. But for other fields, it is important to get exposure to different perspectives and methods. Whom one's advisor knows is quite important, as idad says. While members of the same department know their own colleagues and thus the value of a colleague's recommendation, they also expect that a student who expressed interest in that colleague's area of expertise would already have taken more than one course with that colleague (and they would also know the student as an undergraduate). Sure, taking undergraduate courses with a prof is not the same as writing a Ph.D. dissertation under the guidance of same prof. But, in general, it is expected that studying with others will be beneficial.</p>

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<p>^ This is not such a new phenomenon. When I was an undergrad in philosophy at Michigan in the 1970s my professors all urged me to apply to other top grad schools in the field; they made it pretty clear they'd probably accept me if I applied at Michigan but that it would be better for my intellectual development if I went elsewhere. For essentially the same reasons, most top schools don't like to hire their own Ph.D.s; fear of inbreeding. And cellardweller: I don't think the fact that 10% of Harvard grad students in sciences & engineering were Harvard undergrads proves that it's statistically more likely that you'll be admitted to Harvard for grad school if you were a Harvard undergrad. I think you'd have to look at the size of the applicant pool, and the percentage of that pool who are Harvard grads. It could be that 10% (or more) of the applicants were Harvard undergrads. You can't assume all the top graduating seniors apply to all the top schools. Probably more Harvard grads apply to Harvard than to Michigan and vice versa, possibly by a wide margin; same with all the other top schools.</p>

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<p>^ Oh, and the other thing that could affect this is differences in yield rates. It could be that applicants from Harvard and Stanford are accepted into Harvard graduate programs at similar rates (relative to the number of applicants from each school), but a higher percentage of the admitted Harvard undergrads elect to stay at Harvard.</p>

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<p>LACs do proportionately send more graduates to graduate school. This is because LAC graduates are more likely to want to go to graduate school. It's not because HPYS are being rejected from grad schools. Students at places like HPYS are more likely to choose go to professional school or into the workforce. The top two career paths for my Harvard class were becoming doctors or lawyers. #3 probably was going into corporate life.</p>

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<p>^ I agree with you on the career preferences of HYPS grads. And I don't think anyone was suggesting HYPS grads were failing to make the grade with graduate programs. </p>

<p>But I also think you can't generalize about LAC grads. At some schools they're strongly inclined toward academia: there's a huge difference between Harvey Mudd's 24.7% or Swarthmore 21.1% on the high end, and Sarah Lawrence's 5.3%. And even 5.3% is enough to put Sarah Lawrence in the top 100 for all schools. Some top LACs are missing from this list entirely, including Claremont-McKenna (ranked #11 LAC by US News), Washington & Lee (#15), Scripps (#28), Holy Cross (#33), and Trinity college (CT) (#34)./</p>

<p>Also missing from this list are some very prominent research universities, including Emory (#17 research university per US News), Vanderbilt (#19),
Notre Dame (#19), Georgetown (#23), UCLA (#25), USC (#27), UNC Chapel Hill (#28), Lehigh #31, NYU (#34), and Boston College (#35).</p>

<p>Now I know I'm dabbling in my own stereotypes here, but somehow this list doesn't surprise me. These all strike me as heavily pre-professional in their orientation, and less purely "academic" than places like HYPS, the other Ivies, MIT, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Swat, Reed, Carleton, Bryn Mawr, etc., extending to some of the top publics (UC Berkeley, Michigan, William & Mary).
Also, not to take shots at them and more by way of explanation, these are some of the schools whose supporters on CC complain most vigorously about their comparative low US News PA rankings: 4.0 for Emory, Vandy, Georgetown, USC, 3.9 for Notre Dame, 3.8 for NYU, 3.6 for Boston College. Maybe one reason for it that they're not major producers of college and university faculty: comparatively few of their graduates go on to get Ph.D.s, and their own graduate programs are not the top profducers of top Ph.D.s who go on to get the best academic jobs. Consequently, they're more lightly regarded in academic circles, because they're just not seen as strongly "academic" in their orientation.</p>

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<p>The "list" in that article didn't purport to be anything other than illustrative. Not a random sample, of course, but a few selections of different types of colleges that might stand in for others. Heck, it was missing Cal Tech and Chicago, two pretty fertile sources of future math/science PhDs.</p>

<p>And the article supports both sides of the Harvard debate: Although Harvard ABs are still clearly overrepresented in Harvard PhD programs, there was a large decline in their proportionate share of the grad school cohort vs. a generation earlier, with similar trends at other top universities.
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Taking all PhD-granting institutions we find that the percentage of PhDs granted
to persons with a baccalaureate from the same school fell from 14% to 10%, on average.

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It would be interesting to get Mollie's breakdown of the baccalaureate origins of the students in the Harvard biology department.

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I have, lamentably, somehow lost the spreadsheet I have with the data. </p>

<p>I do know from memory that 10 of the 70 students in my cohort graduated from MIT, and about another 10 are from HYPS. We have two Harvard college alums -- more were admitted but chose to go elsewhere (in the same vein, at least four of the 10 from MIT were admitted to MIT but chose to move over to Harvard!). LACs are not very well represented in our cohort, and we have one student each from seven or eight large state schools. We have a large number of international students, though many of them did their undergraduate work in the US as well.</p>