Hello everyone. Recently I have read several posts on CC where people say that Vanderbilt’s alumni accomplishments are not as good as the other lower Top 20 schools, such as Rice and WUSTL. I don’t think so, and I would like to compare the alumni accomplishments among the four schools by listing some relevant statistics. I posted this thread in the Vanderbilt forum as well.
Number of Rhode Scholars
Washington University 27
Vanderbilt 26
Emory 17
Rice 11
Number of Churchill Scholars
Vanderbilt 10
Rice 5
Washington University & Emory 2
Number of Goldwater Scholars during the past three cycles (2015-2017)
Washington University 8
Rice 7
Vanderbilt 6
Emory 2
Fullbright Scholar Acceptance Rate 2017
Rice 34.8% (8 out of 23 accepted)
Vanderbilt 31.7% (13 out of 41 accepted)
Emory 21.1% (11 out of 52 accepted)
Washington University 15.3%(4 out of 26 accepted)
Number of Nobel Prize Winners (Bachelor’s degrees only)
Rice 2
Vanderbilt & Washington University 1
Emory 0
Number of undergraduate alumni who became U.S. President/VP
Vanderbilt 1 (John Nance Garner, drop out)
Rice, Emory & Washington University 0
The above statistics show that Vanderbilt is every bit as good as WashU/Rice/Emory, if not better.
They are all excellent schools. I’m sure people can come up with all kinds of different statistics to show one is “superior” to the other, but what’s the point? Great schools can and should be able to comfortably co-exist.
Hi. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, the point of this post is to clear up some misunderstanding. I believe they are all peer schools.
First off, I think comparing universities based on metrics like these is almost worthless. Most of these stats aim to represent universities by focusing on 30 or fewer alumni over the course of almost a century or more. Plus, what about the hundreds of thousands of other students that went to those schools during that time frame? Do they deserve to be ignored? Simply put, I think that it’s far too difficult to make conclusions on what university is best using such small sample sizes.
Additionally, it’s difficult to compare multiple universities historical data when they all have varying histories. You have to take into account when they were founded and in what capacity they acted during their earlier years. For example, Rice is over 39 years younger than Vanderbilt, which itself is younger than WashU (by 20 years) and Emory (by 37 years). But then again, Emory wasn’t even the Emory it is today until 1915 when it moved from its Oxford campus. Comparing universities is difficult to do on an even playing field, and doing so regarding historical measures is even more so.
Size is another factor that should be accounted for, but does that mean you should multiply some of the Rice stats by two just because their class sizes is roughly half of WashU’s, Emory’s, and Vanderbilt’s? I honestly don’t know. Crafting an even playing field is difficult once again. The best way I can think to compare these stats evenly is to express it in terms of percents of all undergraduates to have attended during the time-frame measured, but then you are left with obscenely small numbers.
I’m not sure where you have seen people harp on a supposed lack of alumni accomplishments on Vanderbilt’s parts, but I think it’s understandable you would want to defend any perceived disparagement. However, that also presents a bias as you may choose to focus on metrics that cast Vanderbilt in a more favorable light. Yet again, I don’t know.
I think pretty much everybody here agrees that all four of these schools are great universities, and especially when it comes down to comparing those in the top 20, it’s simply splitting hairs. Thanks for the info though, it was interesting to see.
Thank you for your response. I agree with you. Again, the point is not to show which school is superior but rather Vanderbilt is as good as the other three schools.
Did someone say Vanderbilt was not as good as the other three? I thought they were generally regarded as peer schools.
I do believe that Vanderbilt is just as good as the other three schools. However, I think the point is that the statistics you posted don’t necessarily demonstrate that. For example, one could say, as someone alluded to, that Vanderbilt has four times as many undergraduate students as Rice and is more than 25 years older but only has twice the number of Churchill Scholars, only a little over twice the number of Rhodes Scholars, and fewer Goldwater scholars. Another argument is that some universities just concentrate more on prepping their students for prestigious national scholarships. At my small LAC, Fulbright and a few other national scholarships/fellowships were a big focus, and almost every senior was encouraged to prepare one. At other places the focus may be less.
There are other things that you could use to provide evidence that Vanderbilt is on an even playing field with Emory, WUSTL and Rice. For example, showing that the student profiles of incoming students are pretty comparable - students tend to be in the top 10% of their high school classes with similar average SAT scores and extracurricular profiles. Or you could look at employment outcomes, although those are harder to parse. Maybe even faculty profiles like what % of the faculty have terminal degrees or come from the top doctoral programs in their field.
@juillet Hello, thank you for your response. Actually, Vanderbilt’s undergraduate student population is roughly 1.7 times Rice’s, not four times. Also, as is the case for Goldwater Scholarships, each school can only nominate up to four students, regardless of that school’s undergrad population. I simply wanted to present some relevant statistics。 I didn’t want to get all technical about it.
Undergraduate enrollment
Washington University 7376
Emory 6867
Vanderbilt 6817
Rice 3910
Yes, Rice is a little over half the size of the other 3.
By per capita alumni achievements, Rice is ahead with the other 3 roughly comparable.
@Otemachi - Whoops, you’re right, I was looking at total enrollment at Vanderbilt and not undergraduate only.
The point still stands, though. If your goal is to present equivalence between the schools - which is what you said in your original post - these statistics don’t necessarily do what you want to do. I’m not intentionally trying to be pedantic or anything; I’m bringing it up because I often see students and alumni on CC trying to compare the selectivity or quality of different universities based on statistics that aren’t good measures of what they’re trying to measure, and this may lead to some decision-making that’s not really reflective of what they want.
It’s honestly not even just you - lots of universities use these fellowships and scholarships as evidence of the quality of their schools’ education. And I think that they can be a useful data point in some cases; a student who really wants to win a Rhodes Scholarship, for example, would probably be better off attending Rice or Vanderbilt than attending say UT-Knoxville or Texas Tech.
But I think we can agree that these four schools offer roughly equal qualities of education and have very competitive student bodies.
@PurpleTitan Hi, thank you for your response. I stand by what I’ve said, though.
@juillet Thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
@Otemachi
For One, these schools are peers, but it seems you are a little insecure about Vandy’s standing (I maybe have one or two ideas of why) as a fan of two of the schools mentioned,I feel as though they are “ivy equivalents”.I will say that Emory is the newest of the bunch and didn’t became a fully recognized research University (AAU) until 1995(I do think Emory has more potential than the others due to its current standing, age, and outside factors).
However, when comparing Outputs one shouldn’t aim so high as 99.5% of all college graduates or graduates of these institutions will not each such heights. It just becomes a comparison based on out outliers. How about Med school acceptance after 5 years, or Law school acceptance after 5 years, or Wall Street/Silicon Valley employment percentages?
You forgot Alben W. Barkley, Emory Undergraduate (that actually graduated lol) to go on and become Vice President.
Al Gore went to Vandy but for Graduate school (Theology).
@VANDEMORY1342 Hello, thank you for your response. No, I am not insecure and please stop baseless assertions. because you don’t know me. John Nance Garner went to Vandy undergrad and was a U.S. Vice President, although he dropped out. Also, regarding medical school acceptance rate, Vanderbilt’s acceptance rate of 67% is higher than Emory’s 54%.
And honestly, I personally believe that the Ivies (including Cornell) are better than the four schools in terms of alumni accomplishments.
@Otemachi, That may be but the Ivy’s are certainly older ( much older in some instances).
If you want to be scrupulous (or, perhaps, excessively scrupulous) in comparing alumni achievements on a per capita basis, then you should note that Rice’s current undergraduate enrollment of approximately 3,900 represents a recent expansion of the student body. Historically, Rice’s enrollment hovered at between 2,900 and 3,000, making it not much bigger than some of the larger liberal arts colleges. Hence the enrollment differential between Rice and the other three schools under consideration has typically been greater than it is at present.
All in all, however, this entire exercise in comparison relies upon a fairly arbitrary criterion for measuring the rather nebulous concept of “achievement.” Instead, I would suggest asking this: How effective are these schools at consistently turning out graduates who have received broad exposure to the world of ideas, who have substantially improved their native skills in thinking critically and communicating effectively, who are eminently employable, and who have learned something significant about who they are as individuals and what they aspire to accomplish with their lives? Such “achievements” are difficult to quantify, and they do not show up at all in any comparison which relies on the winning of prestigious prizes as its chief metric.
This much seems clear: All four schools discussed in this thread are capable of providing a student with a superb education . . . but, by the same token, all have the potential to graduate students who have coasted by on natural smarts and have thus gotten little more out of their “education” than a piece of expensive parchment. The same could be said of most other colleges and universities in the US.
The Fulbright, Churchill and Goldwater scholarships were founded in 1946, 1958 and 1986 respectively, so the founding date of the school should not have much of an impact on the total tally.
@MrSamford2014 Thank you for your insight. Just like Rice, Vanderbilt has also expanded in enrollment. Vanderbilt’s undergraduate enrollment was consistently below 5800 before the year of 2000.