<p>which would give me the best undergraduate education</p>
<p>Do you prefer peas, or carrots?</p>
<p>Wow, what different environments. Grinnell is an excellent school, but I know a student who left there after freshman year because she couldn’t stand the isolation. Tufts has a more quasi-urban / suburban setting, but can almost be all things to all people - small but not tiny, techy or liberal artsy, diverse, bohemian but not excessively so. And the Boston-area college scene i unique in the U.S. To me, Tufts is a no-brainer of a choice.</p>
<p>Tufts for sure!</p>
<p>“which would give me the best undergraduate education”</p>
<p>It’s impossible to say without knowing something about you.</p>
<p>let me rephrase my question…which will most likely get me into the best graduate school</p>
<p>Are you are talking about placements into top professional schools (for law, medicine, and business)? The only study I’ve seen that attempts to compare schools on this basis (done a few years ago by the Wall Street Journal) ranked Grinnell #44 and Tufts #45. That difference is insignificant, and the study’s methodology has been strongly criticized. </p>
<p>Or, are you talking about placements into graduate schools of arts and science? Grinnell does appear to be one of the top 10 (or so) schools in the country for the number of graduates, per capita, who proceed to complete a PhD in various arts and science fields. What is not clear is whether this is because Grinnell prepares students better for those programs than some other schools, or if Grinnell graduates for some reason choose to pursue those degree programs at unusually high rates. </p>
<p>Grinnell may have a better track record in several of the social and physical sciences. Tufts is noted for its International Relations programs. So there may be significant quality differences in a few fields, but your personal effort is likely to make a much bigger difference to your success.</p>
<p>
Which means nothing, except that (as you note) more Grinnell students want to go to graduate school. </p>
<p>PhD production is only useful in the context of more detailed information. It is more impressive for a department to get 2 history students into Harvard than 4 at Ole Miss.</p>
<p>It is always a risky business equating PhD production to quality of education. COA ranks in the top 5 for anthropology PhD production, for example, but it only has a single anthropologist on staff.</p>
<p>I’m not talking about graduate school (arts and science) placement rates. I’m talking about PhD completions. And I do think a high baccalaureate-to-PhD rate speaks well of a college. It suggests that the school is doing a good job of motivating and preparing students to do academic work at a very high level. Earning a PhD is a significant accomplishment, whether it is from Harvard or not.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’d agree, it’s hard to draw conclusions about Grinnell v. Tufts from this kind of comparison. We don’t know what Tufts alumni might have set out to do in completely different pursuits. Maybe the Tufts alumni who aren’t pursuing PhDs are off making millions or saving the world. So, we’re back to what’s important to the OP, and whether any good data is available to measure it.</p>
<p>The COA measurement is particularly unreliable simply because the data is so sparse for that school. It has, what, 300 undergraduates? But if a larger college is performing well in one field after another, and that measurement is consistent with other quality indicators (as it seems to be in the case of Grinnell), then it becomes a little more meaningful. Not that I’d ever want to base a college choice on that statistic alone.</p>
<p>“Which means nothing” except that we know these schools do an excellent job of undergrad prep for grad school. Other schools do, too.</p>
<p>Apples, oranges, both tasty fruits. I think (assuming there is not a significant financial difference) that it really comes down to whether you prefer a small rural environment or being near a big city.</p>