Help! Wesleyan vs Kenyon

College Search & Selection
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I’m not so sure it’s that cut and dry, but it is certainly a point of view some hold to with great fervor. As a random coincidence, one of the professors in Cornell’s Dep’t. of Natural Resources and the Environment is a relative, and he earned his BA and PhD from Ivy League schools. Your undergraduate school doesn’t determine everything, but saying it doesn’t really count is I think oversimplifying things.

To your question of the OP’s view of Wesleyan vs. Kenyon for graduate school launching, I think this group of rankings would support giving Wes the edge for PhD production. Top Feeders to Ph.D. Programs. And this one would give it the edge in law school admissions: Top Feeders to Law School

Having pointed that out, I wouldn’t choose Wes over Kenyon on this basis. There are many reasons to choose one over the other, but suffice it to say, Kenyon is a top school and will take anyone where they want to go.

The other thing these and other lists (e.g., top feeder of medical schools) show is that, with a few exceptions, the leader board tends to be pretty well represented by selective colleges. It’s not the only way to be sure, but it’s not nothing either.

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Pommes et Pommes de Terre, @cquin85 & @RPeacock - especially the distinction between “professional” and “doctoral”.

For trade grad schools (aka ‘professions’- law, medicine), GPA & LSAT/MCAT are the most important metrics, and even the tippiest of top schools have a very wide range of UG schools represented. BUT the highly selective UG schools are indeed over-represented in the classes at the top trade grad schools. A big part of that is that the LSAT/MCAT test similarly to the SAT/ACT (hardly a surprise), and the students who had the grades and scores to get into top schools the first time around are likely to be able to do it again.

For PhD programs it is way more varied and subject dependent. For example, Philosophy has a particular rep for for drawing from a fairly specific group of UG schools for their PhD students (who knew that Rutgers and Pitt are considered ‘elite’ schools for Philosophy?!). @cquin85’s relative got into their (wildlife biology related) PhD program from an Ivy- but how key was that element in getting accepted to their PhD program at an Ivy? and for that matter, how strong was that Ivy in wildlife biology? In given fields, an Ivy may not be the best choice (as in @RPeacock’s example, in which UMi is apparently better than 7/8 Ivies). Indeed, both of the current gradschoolkids had Ivies on their “Safety” list and both non-Ivies and Ivies on their “Reach” list during application season. Equally, I know grad students who went to fancy UGs be thrilled to get into unis that you wouldn’t think of as particularly selective- because their advisor is the big name / at the cutting edge in their field.

All a long way around saying, I agree that 1) PhD programs typically look at a broader picture of the student’s suitability for a course, and the strength of their UG program > the overall UG university ranking; and 2) that students should look at the specifics of the PhD program, not the overall ranking of the university.

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College Transitions, to its credit, mentioned both of these schools in its brief list of top undergraduate colleges for philosophy: Best Colleges for Philosophy.

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I agree whole heartedly with the links and points made by cquin85 and collegemom3717, and I hope with some reflection, other readers will see that we really are making a common point.

First, I appreciate the support for my statement that grad / professional programs are prioritizing individual records and not your undergrad school. I have long believed that if you took the incoming class of Harvard and enrolled them instead at Battle Creek Community College that it would have little bearing on their future academic and professional success. Unicorns are unicorns.

That said, the case I made to my D is that when comparing the rest of the Top 75 schools in this country that it has little relevance to her chances of getting into her ideal graduate school choice (which just to clarify is Cornell’s biology program not their natural resources/wildlife conservation program which also is top notch).

We actually do have a copy of the Feeders list of Top 50 biology Ph D programs and agree it is a great addition to this conversation. That said, I am confused why anyone walks away from it thinking that Wesleyan “is certainly better than Kenyon“ as a graduate school feeder. Let’s take a look:

Adjusted for size of school rank for all Ph D programs

Wesleyan (#19) over Kenyon (#25). This seems a trivial difference. After all if we applied the logic that was a clear supremacy than we also would have to say the same for #11 St. Mary’s College of Maryland is the better choice than #17 Yale. Same goes for St. Johns College (New Mexico) and Hendrix College (Arkansas) which are top 40 feeders that outranked Middlebury and Columbia as feeders.

As for specifically feeders to Biological Science, which is really the only case I made in my comment. What are the rankings:

Kenyon #46 and Wesleyan #49

But that said, my point to my D was that in the top 20 easily out performing those two colleges are Top 20 ranked Juanita College and New College of Florida. While others ranking above Kenyon/Wesleyan include Ursinus College ¶ and St. Mary’s of Maryland.

Again, I am a big fan of both Kenyon and Wesleyan, but students need to find an ideal match for their personal strengths and interests. My daughter comes from a family of writers and writes fiction for entertainment so she loves that Kenyon has the only literary magazine in their natural sciences school in the country. My lecture on how that affects her graduate school ambitions was to tell her that she should pursue what is best for her individual development because that is what PhD and professional programs are going to focus on.

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Just to preclude any possible confusion over my comments above, I should also add that I am not taking about whether one should go to an ivy league or otherwise prestigious PhD program to get a job at a prestigious university…that is an entirely different question. If you look at where the PhD holders teaching in the top 20 universities in your area of interest, it is most definitely a caste system. I personally got my PhD at a top 20 public research university and that is where I ended up…short of proving myself a unicorn in publishing…I am unlikely to ever get a faculty position at the rung higher.

My comments are instead solely intended for those choosing an undergraduate college on their path to getting to their target PhD program… and I think most will be surprised to see that even the very top programs in their field are not a similar caste system and, in fact, quite democratic on drawing students from the entire top 250 schools in the country.

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I’d throw a vote for Kenyon. Fantastic campus (I prefer it to Wesleyan, though Wesleyan’s is nice as well), and I think any differences in outcomes would be near negligible.

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My intent wasn’t to diminish Kenyon in any way. From all I know, it’s a great and beautiful place to spend 4 years. My intent was to offer some substantiation of the OP’s original statement, or impression about Wesleyan. I reached for an easy ranking. @MWolf has shared another, more comprehensive, source of data that spans 61 years. I don’t recall the time frame for the one I posted earlier in the thread, and am too lazy to do it now. But this list shows in absolute numbers where Wes is relative to Kenyon, and it’s significant IMO. Wes (today) is about 1.7 times larger than Kenyon but over that time period has produced 2.5+ times more PhDs. In another ranking from 2008 to 2017, Wes was #34 in STEM degrees to Kenyon’s #48.

https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/institutional-research/Doct%20Rates%20Top%20100%20Tot%20Sci%20Rankings%20-Summary%20to%202017.pdf

Of course, there are potential gremlins in those stats. For example, are those numbers weighted heavier to events further in the past and thus less relevant? Don’t know. OTOH, has Wes always been that much bigger than Kenyon? I don’t think so, but @circuitrider could tell us.

To your point, none of this matters. Kenyon will do as well as any school as a base for a student whose goal is the PhD. They’re no stranger to producing them. Maybe the OP’s language as “certainly better” was too strong. But there is some basis for his/her impression because Wesleyan has been known as being a PhD producer for a long time.

On your point about being consistent with logic, I agree, we should. It’s annoying when people cherry pick. So sure, if we’re going to cite the list, then we have to live with the list. Maybe St. Johns does outrank Middlebury for this purpose. There’s nothing wrong with that and in some ways not that surprising. Middlebury may be more pre-profession as a rule. Stands to reason anyway.

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80K a year? Holy. Kenyon for sure.

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My own years in academia have only supported this, though some fields are worse, and others have rankings which do not match those of the general public (for example, in CS UIUC PhD > Harvard PhD).

It also depends on how many faculty are needed versus how many are being produced from universities that are of a college’s rank or higher. So a small rural directional comprehensive can often hire English faculty with PhDs from Ivies, while in CS, many colleges are hiring anybody who is available. Liberal arts colleges especially, even more “prestigious” ones have a difficult time finding CS faculty at all, much less faculty with PhDs from programs that are equivalent in “prestige” to that LAC.

PS. I think that English and Philosophy may be the worst.

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Kenyon was a highly ranked college of less than 800 men as late as 1970 by which time Wesleyan had already overtaken it by about 600 students, probably during an expansion that had begun in the 1950s. The admission of women approximately three-quarters into the last century is what brought both formerly all-male colleges to their current enrollments.

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Seems like both schools about doubled at some point along the way, so the size difference is a constant.

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Yes, people have forgotten how small some of the men’s colleges really were. Bowdoin, Hamilton, Haverford, Wabash (remember Wabash College?), Kenyon, Sewanee - were all <900 students as late as 1970.

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Wabash is still around. They play in the same NCAC conference as Denison, where my son is (Kenyon is also in the NCAC), and I was surprised to learn it is still a men’s college, one of only a few remaining. Your comment was very interesting, as I had never really focused on the fact that Bowdoin, Hamilton and Kenyon - all schools we looked at - were all-male so recently.

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Fun fact….Bowdoin went permanently test optional (1969) earlier than they started admitting women as full time degree seeking students (1971).

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Is it safe to assume they were the first TO school and pioneered the thinking on that topic?

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Pretty sure they were the first college to go TO. The admissions people state they don’t need test scores to know if a student can succeed there. They also say that TO students perform as well academically as submitters, with similarly high graduation rates.

I do always wonder though why they have never published any data, like Bates and Ithaca have. I would also like to hear them address why not test blind?

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It will be interesting to see what becomes of the College Board. It was notable when the UCs dropped it. I think it was a watershed event when Chicago went TO. I didn’t expect them to do it.

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Here is a link to the study that the Cal U system did with regards to standardized tests. I only read the first two pages but thought it was interesting that the dropped test scores despite:

“Supplementing HSGPA with SAT/ACT scores increased the explanatory power of pre-admission measures on college success metrics”

Anyway, here is a link to the whole paper: