<p>@harvardfan, it seems that you know enough about how many Nobelists at different schools. Could you tell me how many active Nobelists at the other HYPS? Thanks.</p>
<p>I believe that Princeton has 3 winners who are still doing some teaching: Daniel Tsui of Engineer school (still active in publication). Wieschaus of Molecular biology Department, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator, and Paul Krugman of Economics (who does some undergraduate teaching while writing columns twice a week for NYT). To my knowledge, Harvard has 1 Nobel (Roy Glauber) who is active (I could be wrong). Sidney Altman is probably the only active Nobel in Yale, and is still publishing his works on Ribozyme. MIT has 8 acitve Nobels. So, at least in this aspect, Stanford is pretty good. Like I said before, the academic strength of Stanford is quite admirable. But, like many eminent institutions, those pockets of excellence are surrounded by a lot of mediocrity.</p>
<p>According to
[MIT</a> Facts 2009: Faculty and Staff](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/facts/faculty.html]MIT”>Faculty & Instructional Staff – MIT Facts)
MIT has 7 current faculty won the Nobel Prizes, compared 16 at Stanford. Do you know how many are active?</p>
<p>If anything that Nobel Prizes can indicate is the measure of research quality at the institution. From 1990 to 2008, the numbers of faculty members won the Nobel Prizes are</p>
<p>Stanford—10
MIT – 9
Princeton – 8
Harvard – 4
Yale-- 0</p>
<p>If we factor this in to measure the quality of faculty members, and hence to be part of elements to measure the overall institution quality, we can use the following formula</p>
<p>M=0.5<em>(yield/admit rate) + 0.5</em> (number of Nobel winners) </p>
<p>Stanford = ½ (9.31+10) = 9.66
Harvard = ½ (10.82+4) = 7.42
Princeton = ½ (6.10 + 8) = 7.05
Yale = ½ (9.16 + 0) = 4.58</p>
<p>What else do we want to add? which school has more letters in its name? :)</p>
<p>Apparently Yale has done a poor job in faculty recruiting in last 2 decades.</p>
<p>You should probably add SAT/ACT ranges. Take the extreme example. A bad school can have a really low acceptance rate and a really high yield. Say it’s the most fun party school in the world. It gets a ton of applicants, selects a few, and gets a high yield. Or take another example. A fantastic academic school is so difficult and boring that it gets very few applicants, thus has a high acceptance rate to fill its class. But, most of these acceptees were also accepted to similar schools in terms of prestige that offer a more well-rounded experience. So, the resulting yield is really low. Which school is academically better? Apparently, by the yield/admit rate formula, the party school. </p>
<p>This is why it is important to factor in some standardized factors. Also, nobel prize winners per school is a good measure of overall research quality. But, you might want to include nobel prize winners (or another, slightly more common award) per student. I would consider other awards because its rumored at some top schools that the “prize” faculty are basically allowed to not teach and just do research.</p>
<p>So, my proposed formula would be:</p>
<p>Quality=0.25<em>(yield/admit rate) + 0.25</em> (number of Nobel winners) + .25* (average SAT composite score/100) + .25*(current NEH award winners/1000 students)</p>
<p>We can do some sample calculations (if anyone wants to do them for me, I’m too lazy) and see if we can change any weights around to fix any obvious error.</p>
<p>I don’t think the yield/admit rate is a very useful indication of anything. This year, it was clearly a case of marketing and increase in applicant pool due to location, number of graduates, etc. For example, Stanford received a huge number of Californian applicants that HYP did not receive (which isn’t a problem by any means). Its yield is also affected by its location, just as HYP’s yield are as well (people not wanting to travel far from home, etc.). HYS advertised much more than P, and received huge numbers of applicants as a result. On the other hand, P’s yield actually rose slightly. However, due to a lack of early admission/decision program, it suffers – but not compared to the RD yield at other peer institutions (save Harvard, it is lower than none). You’re comparing apples to oranges with the yield/admit rate; if you’re going for the strength of the student body, even SAT range is a more useful criterion.</p>
<p>Just my two cents.</p>
<p>I don’t think we need Nobel Prize Winner counts to know which schools are big research schools. It’s kind of a naive way to do it. Stanford’s full of wildly brilliant researchers – enough said. For those who actually want to benefit from these, an estimate like “number of Nobel Prize winners” is hardly useful – rather, they should take more specific looks at the faculty, and check who is actually willing to consider talking to the students.</p>
<p>Depending on the field, Harvard may flatly be better than Stanford, or, for instance in the case of something like computer science, Stanford flatly wins. </p>
<p>I don’t understand why on Earth people would do something like compare schools at the level of Harvard and Stanford based on how many Nobel Prize winners there are. Seriously, the brightest research-type students at both these schools would probably both laugh pretty hard at this. </p>
<p>The one and only way to usefully compare two very reputed schools is by personal preference – what does the given student desire. Not such general means.</p>
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</p>
<p>Another good point. As as for average SAT’s, not useful either. No simplistic factors could possibly useful when comparing giants. Just throwing it out there.</p>
<p>Even though the Stanford website lists 16 current faculty Nobels, only 4 are active and truly Stanford faculty. They are Robert Laughlin (Physics), Douglass Osheroff (Physics), Andrew Fire (Pathology and Genetics, who was actually denied admission to Stanford for undergraduate study, and forced to study in UCB, and recruited to Stanford after the award), Roger Kornberg (Biochemistry). </p>
<p>Many of the Nobel laureates slow down significantly after the award. Working with them is truly a mixed blessing because they always get most of the credits, and are usually too distracted to stay on top of the projects. But Nobel prize is a great for marketing a University and for job reference. Media loves to listen to their opinions. </p>
<p>For an undergraduate, it is a little far fetch to think about working with a Nobel laureate. They are not necessarily more effective teachers than other professors. If you plan to go to graduate school, working in a good lab in the field of interest and publishing a manuscript will get you there (you don’t even have to go to top notch schools to do this).</p>
<p>For MIT, assuming Samual C.C. Ting still working, all its 7 Nobels should be active.</p>
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</p>
<p>Are you sure only these 4 are active? By the way, Andrew Fire had been recruited to Stanford before he won his Nobel prize in 2007.</p>
<p>I don’t think Nobel prize is a great metric for quality. But it does add prestige to a university. I would argue that the membership in US national academies (NAS, NAE, IOM) is a better metric for faculty quality, because about half of the academy members are still active. In that regard, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley are the 4 giants in USA. Each of them has more than 200 academy members, well ahead the other universities. That is why they have the best graduate schools.</p>
<p>Okay, while making that index, I was just trying to get rid of the “fan” from Harvardfan, maybe MITfan now since he is going to MIT now. I think that Samual C.C. Ting of MIT is as active as Myron S. Scholes, William Sharpe, A. Michael Spence of Stanford who can still drive 20 miles, instead of walk 2 miles. </p>
<p>@Baelor, Stanford has been in California for over 100 years. The surge of applications does happen overnight. Check the numbers of class of 2011 and class 2012, they were not far different from Princeton’s. That Princeton chose to have no SECA along with Harvard was Princeton’s choice. Harvard still has about the same yield but not Princeton. What you mentioned were Princeton’s problems. That is why a lot of people at Princeton want to change that. They have a little higher yield compared with last year’s simply could be the reason they put more people on their paylist, like Harvard did. Next time when Princeton tries to use eating contest to judge applicants, do we call Princeton a pear? No hard feelings, Princeton is a great institution. One of friends’ kid will attend Princeton (over MIT). He has 132 @AMC12, and 10 @AIME. But one of the people on Stanford’s board who argued with you or farady before, the person qualified USAMO at the 8th grade. The thing I don’t like Princeton is the limited study area selection. I actually like Columbia better in that sense, for the schools around me. </p>
<p>I was trying to factor in the SAT scores, just did not know how to make it right. Seems that I know now: the absolute scores mean less for the differences among HYPS, you will get the similar results as Y/A. But I think the z-scores might work, give me some time and I will try to find out.</p>
<p>I probably should not open another can of worms, but I did. It is so hard just to collect the data. Okay, so far I have </p>
<p>from College Board for the SAT</p>
<p>Mean CR=502, Math=515, </p>
<p>no Writing data, so I am going to ignore the writing part. Those means were the averages released in 2008. </p>
<p>The Standard deviations CR=112, and Math=114, </p>
<p>from College Board released in 2004.</p>
<p>Averages for HYPS:</p>
<p>School - CR – Math
H: 745 – 740
Y: 750 – 740
P: 740 – 745
S: 705 – 730</p>
<p>Calculated from the released data in 2008 ((25%+75%)/2 ). Anyway, I am going to abuse those data.</p>
<p>Ewho, I am well aware of what many consider to be Princeton’s admission deficiencies. I agree with almost all of your post; that does not change the fact that my previous post was valid.</p>
<p>1). Location has, does, and will play a factor in app numbers and yield. I’m on the west coast, and Stanford received the largest number of apps besides the state u from my school. Why? “it’s Ivy-quality and is in Cali.” I hear it all the time. Even my headmaster has told me that, and was surprised when I picked Princeton. Also, Stanford has been stepping up advertising even in areas where it gets a lot of applicants. This is obviously a good thing. Harvard does this every year. Yale does do this to a lesser degree, and Princeton does not do it at all. The app numbers are therefore totally consistent with what I said earlier. Princeton has already started aggressive marketing for next year’s seniors, so let’s see where that takes us.</p>
<p>2). I still don’t see why yield/admit rate matters at all. It is not a measure of the quality of the student body or anything else except the amount of time/effort put into boosti g h number of apps; this itself is not even better unless the student body becomes stronger. That’s all I’m saying.</p>
<p>yield, admission rate and SAT measure something to certain extent, but Yield*SAT/admitRate should be more meaningful than just talking about them individually. Let me continue on working this…since I started already.</p>
<p>Bear with me since I am going to turn this thread into an 8th grade math homework solution page.</p>
<p>The z scores are Zcr=(x-502)/112, and Zm=(x-515)/114, and the P-values follow them. So </p>
<p>School ---- Zcr ---- Zm — Pcr ------- Pm — p=(Pcr+Pm)/2
H ------- 2.170 – 1.976 — 0.985 ---- 0.975 – 0.980
Y ------- 2.214 – 1.973 — 0.987 ---- 0.976 – 0.982
P ------- 2.125 – 2.018 — 0.983 ---- 0.978 – 0.980
S ------- 1.813 – 1.885 — 0.965 ---- 0.970 – 0.968</p>
<p>The index yield*SAT/admitRate is</p>
<p>H: 0.980<em>10.82 = 10.60
S: 0.968</em>9.31 = 9.01
Y: 0.982<em>9.16 = 9.00
P: 0.980</em>6.10 = 6.00</p>
<p>I am done for the day. Hopefully this will silent some folks regarding SATs. I am dropping the “Nobel” term, as long as we know Stanford won.</p>
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</p>
<p>Forget Nobel Laureates, most Stanford or Harvard faculty are so wildly brilliant and out there that they’d look on most undergraduates as insects. You have to be really good for faculty to care in the slightest. There are a few nice souls, but even they want really really talented students. Else, “working with them” will probably mean doing boring, useless work.</p>
<p>Ewho, none of those data meN anything. you still haven’t expained what any of them mean, or why they are useful at all.</p>
<p>Why not just use admit rate? Or yield? Or simply the SAT scores? Your measure is totally useless. Why not factor in endowment per student as well, or average class size? At least those may have an effect on something. Yield and admit rate have no bearing except on selectivity, which is itself useless in measuring anything ifthe student bodies are of equal magnitude.</p>