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You would have to assume an unrealistically extreme simultaneous distaste for business, law and medical school at LACs to explain some of the Wall Street Journal findings
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<p>Not so much extreme distaste, more like an aversion.</p>
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Self-selection into the LACs does not include outright avoidance of professional schools,
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<p>I believe it does and is then reinforced by the campus culture.</p>
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I believe it does
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Belief won't help us here, we need the data to know what's happening. Who knows where to find it? Perhaps each individual school must be researched.</p>
<p>I posted the WSJ article because I thought it showed something, I did not post it because I thought it proved anything. I think the article shows that LAC’s produce educated young people prepared for the rigors of graduate school at a rate higher that do universities. I do not think the article proves it; there is just not enough information in the article to prove anything. </p>
<p>Further it is my opinion and just my opinion that anyone who thinks average student coming out of Duke is better prepared for graduate school than the average student coming out of Swarthmore is not fully acquainted with the two schools.</p>
<p>I think Swarthore's PhD rates prove little - it doesn't demonstrate that they are going to top grad/doctorial programs</p>
<p>I think WSJ professional ranking proves more about quality than quantity- it shows that Duke and similar schools send more students to TOP professional programs while Swarthmore sends less (even though Swarthmore is in the Northeast)</p>
<p>Have any of you even looked at the WSJ methodology?</p>
<p>They looked at 5100 grad students from a very small selection of grad schools.</p>
<p>Their sample is heavily MBA weighted (53%) followed by law (33%) and just a handful of medical students (13%). To the extent that looking at one year of data is even valid at all, the survey is effectively a business school survey because of the sample bias.</p>
<p>To give you an idea of the magnitude of the small sample problems, over the last five years, Duke's alumni enrollments in the first year class at Harvard Medical School have ranged from 2 to 9. Do you understand how wildly the list would change with year to year variations like that?</p>
<p>I kind of thought people would look at the WSJ numbers and figure out that schools like Swarthmore send all of those students on to get PhDs (see the numbers above) and still they come in 10th on sending people to top business, law, and med schools. </p>
<p>Stop trying to count the number of graduates who can dance on the head of a needle, and look at all the numbers and other information and say to yourself; does all of this tell me anything I can use in the real world.</p>
<p>Uh, it tells you that Duke sends a higher number of its kids to elite professional schools (the quality of which are top 10 in the nation), and Harvard students beat every other school at this as well. And that more Swarthmore kids are interested in getting masters or doctorates (the quality of the programs they attend are unverified).</p>
<p>The OP refers to the NYT article which "discusses how Harvard is dissatisfied with the way it is educating undergraduates, and is now looking to liberal arts colleges as it develops a new model for teaching." After all the postings here, do the big U defenders think Harvard is wrong, that the big U's are doing just fine? In spite of my being an LAC fan, I like the diversity of schools we have, and think it's fine that, at the undergraduate level, LAC's specialize in producing top researchers and academics, and big U's specialize in the other professional schools, to whatever extent it is. Maybe the big U's will discover the LAC's secret, with the big U's then becoming best at everything. :eek:</p>
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Uh, it tells you that Duke sends a higher number of its kids to elite professional schools (the quality of which are top 10 in the nation)
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<p>No, it doesn't tell you that, either...because it only looks at five schools for each category, not the top 10 in each category. Plus, the use of a single year sample is statistically invalid.</p>
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and Harvard students beat every other school at this as well.
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<p>Well, duh! We don't need a Wall Street Journal survey to know that Havard has some of the best students in the country. Not to menion that Harvard professional schools make up 20% of the limited sample in each of the three categories.</p>
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And that more Swarthmore kids are interested in getting masters or doctorates (the quality of the programs they attend are unverified).
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<p>Actually, the WSJ survey doesn't tell us anything of the sort. It only tells us that 7.44% of Swarthmore grads were in the freshman class, in a single year, at one of:</p>
<p>Columbia Medical
Harvard Medical
Johns Hopkins Medical
UC-SF Medical
Yale Medical</p>
<p>Chicago Law
Columbia Law
Harvard Law
Michigan Law
Yale Law</p>
<p>Chicago Business
Dartmouth Business
Harvard Business
MIT Business
Penn Business</p>
<p>It doesn't tell us anything else about what other graduates were doing. The other 92% could have become garbage men, for all the WSJ tells us.</p>
<p>Actually, the WSJ had a good idea. If they had used a bigger sample of grad schools -- for example, more than one out of fifteen schools west of the Mississippi or even one south of the Mason-Dixon line or more than one public university. If they had used aggregate data for a five or ten year period so they aren't falling into the trap of yearly variations. And, if they had not constructed their sample so that MBA programs dominate their data (53% of all the admissions they looked at). </p>
<p>For example, Duke has very high med school placement rates, which is masked by this methodology (looking at only 680 med school students in the entire US). Not to mention the yearly variation problem. One year, 0.7% of Dukes med school applicants started at Harvard Med. The very next year, 3% started at Harvard Med -- four and half times higher. Neither of those one year samples statistically reflects Duke's placements at Harvard Med. You absolutely must look at larger samples or your statistical margin of error makes your survey results meaningless.</p>
<p>Yeah, I wish WSJ released something like this annually (in the same way US News releases rankings annually).</p>
<p>You don't need to release it annually. You simply need to design the methodology to be statistically valid -- a larger sample of grad schools, a longer time frame, and disassociate med, law, and biz. Colleges and universities are like ocean freighters; they don't turn very quickly. The only reason USNEWS has any variability in their rankings is because they change the methodology to produce varied results and sell magazines. In other words, a big-time PhD producer school is likely to continue producing a lot of PhDs. Likewise, a big time MBA producer school is likely to continue on that path. Certainly over a very short period of time (like a decade).</p>
<p>Actually, the med school application clearing house has the data to track med school completions just like the National Science Foundation has tracked PhD completions in the United States since 1920. They simply don't make the data public.</p>
<p>Law school completions wouldn't be that difficult to handle in exactly the same way. </p>
<p>MBAs are more problematic because so many of them are later-life and continuing education degrees.</p>
<p>vossron,</p>
<p>I don't think the LACs have any secret to their advantage in certain areas. It's an open secret already as to what makes them appealing. If Harvard wants to become both the best LAC in addition to the best research university ever, it's going to have to spend a lot of money to create the atmosphere of the LACs, what with small class sizes, personal professor teaching. Although that sounds pretty appealing coz' then there will be the range of courses combined with personal attention, I don't think that's exactly the best thing to do. Harvard fulfills a role, and the LACs fulfill another. But the fact that Harvard is trying to improve is great, because it sets a precedent for other national universities to follow. </p>
<p>In Harvard, ppl like Dr Greg Mankiw are already teaching introductory economics courses, which is pretty cool. Maybe we just need more professors to do the same. This lets them teach more without taxing their time set aside for research.</p>
<p>"Law school completions wouldn't be that difficult to handle in exactly the same way."</p>
<p>Law school is pretty easy to track even with current public data. There are a bunch of reasons for this. (1) There's something close to consensus about what the best law schools are, unlike PhD programs, (2) enrollment is virtually the same as completion, because the graduation rates at top law schools are sky-high, and (3) several of the top 10 law schools release and regularly update their undergraduate enrollment data.</p>
<p>"do the big U defenders think Harvard is wrong, that the big U's are doing just fine?"</p>
<p>There is always room for improvement. Harvard is building a giant new campus. That doesn't mean the current campus sucks -- most people would agree the facilities are terrific. But Harvard thinks it can and should make things better going forward. </p>
<p>I think that's essentially what's going on with undergrad teaching. Harvard is asking, is this number one in the world? More importantly, is this the very best we can do? Since the answer is no, they're going to spend energy and money on getting better. That doesn't mean there's a terrible crisis going on right now.</p>
<p>I think you have to bear in mind Harvard's student population, too. Harvard deliberately tries to select independent, assertive, self-reliant kids. It's a different set of personalities than you'll find at most LACs. If you replaced Harvard's freshman class with Williams and Amherst freshmen, they would indeed be less well served by the academic system than by their own, and it doesn't have anything to do with their smarts. It's because Harvard's system works best with Harvard kids. Conversely, if you put the Harvard kids at an LAC (as I was), they'd be a lot more frustrated by a perceived lack of choices and independence than the kids who really wanted an LAC.</p>
<p>Would you help me understand why you think that Harvard's freshmen are more "independent, assertive and self-reliant" than those who attend highly selective LACs?</p>
<p>Perhaps because students who can get into any school who choose Harvard and who have seen the highly selective LACs go there. Many are students who have no problem asking questions in a class of 500, going to all the office hours that a professor has and aggressively seek opportunities that only a large research university can provide.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Would you help me understand why you think that Harvard's freshmen are more "independent, assertive and self-reliant" than those who attend highly selective LACs?<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>I think Hanna may among the very few people on CC personally qualified to directly answer that question, since she attended both a top LAC and Harvard for her undergrad education.</p>
<p>My own answer would be to look at what they are selling: Harvard sells itself as a place providing nearly unlimited opportunities and resources for the student willing to go out and make it happen. A negative spin on that same feature would be that the student is going to have to make it happen themselves; nobody is going to hand it to you. That sort of environment is going to appeal to a certain type of student. </p>
<p>LACs sell themselves on the basis of small class sizes and a lot of time, support, and personal attention from the professors. A negative spin on that same feature is that what that really amounts to is a less-independent experience with a lot of hand-holding. That sort of environment is also going to appeal to a certain type of student. </p>
<p>However, I am also sure that there are many kids at both top LACs and at Harvard who are smart and flexible enough that they could excel in either environment.</p>
<p>The act of choosing Harvard over LACs doesn't necessarily mean that a student is more independent or assertive and self-reliant. One could argue just the opposite in fact: those who get into both and choose the LAC are more independent and assertive and self-reliant because they "chose the road less traveled by"...and, to end the Frost poem, "that has made all the difference." The mere fact that a student would normally have to contend with more bureaucracy at a university than a LAC doesn't equate with independence--unless you are choosing to employ an extremely narrow definition of "independent."</p>
<p>Has anyone tabulated the undergrad origins of Harvard professors (raw and adjusted for the percentages of students at LAC's and RU's)? The result could be interesting fodder for this discussion.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>The mere fact that a student would normally have to contend with more bureaucracy at a university than a LAC doesn't equate with independence--unless you are choosing to employ an extremely narrow definition of "independent."<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>If you want to see the sort of independent students that Harvard chooses and who in turn chose Harvard, scan the Harvard-bound kids on this list:</p>
<p>It's the sort of independence based not on bureaucracy but rather leadership. Notice the dearth of LAC-bound kids among these academic all-stars. Not everyone prefers the warm and fuzzy school where the dean bakes you cookies and your advisor tucks you in at night.</p>
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Not everyone prefers the warm and fuzzy school where the dean bakes you cookies and your advisor tucks you in at night.
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<p>That's a gross mis-representation of the top LAC students. If anything, many students choose the LACs specificially because they know that they will be able to tailor their own independent course of study.</p>
<p>Family connections allow us to see a reasonable sample of Harvard students and Swarthmore students each year They are very similar in that some kind of individual self-starter extra-curricular initiative or passionate academic interest is almost a prerequisite for admission to either school. "Hand-holding" students or those looking for "warm and fuzzy" do not get accepted to either school.</p>
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Notice the dearth of LAC-bound kids among these academic all-stars.
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<p>Notice that quite a few of them probably had $30,000 a year college counselors building resumes and "selling" them from the time they were in grammar school. Their parents didn't spend that money to have them turn down Harvard!</p>