How did Yale end up so weak in science?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
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<p>Yale actually dominated American science throughout much of the 19th century but in the 20th century has seen its reputation fall significantly behind it major competitors (Harvard, Princeton and Stanford). It barely registers in engineering.</p>

<p>With its long history, serious academic reputation, and the world's second largest endowment, how did it come to lag even Princeton, a significantly smaller school that for the longest time had only a semi-serious academic reputation and more of rich kids' country club reputation?</p>

<p>Well, you can say it "decided" to focus on humanities, in which it excels, but its competitors rival it and sometimes exceed it in the humanities, too. Princeton and Harvard are not as far "behind" Yale in English and History as Yale is behind them in Math and Physics. Even in a basic humanities discipline such as Philosophy, Princeton is ranked #1, and the last ranking I saw for Yale was something like #40 in the country.</p>

<p>How did this happen?</p>

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<p>Yale is by no means weak in the sciences.</p>

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<p>Yale is NOT weak in sciences. Indeed, its med school admissions rate is on par or exceeds that of HPS et al.</p>

<p>What you are doing is overestimating the utility of a ranking. Essentially every departmental ranking is a graduate ranking, not an undergraduate. So Yale, which makes the highest commitment to undergrad education and doesn’t care about grad school as much, will not do as well. But what you are mostly exaggerating is the distance in the first place. When you say, “Princeton and Harvard are not as far “behind” Yale in English and History as Yale is behind them in Math and Physics” the differences are relatively minor. Although I don’t want to place more emphasis on a ranking than it deserves, Yale is still 7th in Math (tied w/ Caltech) and 11th in Physics (tied w/ Columbia, above Michigan, Hopkins, etc). Point being, these are all top tier programs. I think you are overestimating the difference b/w the #1 and #15 departments – as an undergrad, those differences are not as significant and probably won’t affect your life outcome. Rather, the culture and undergraduate resources of the college as a whole makes more difference, and that’s where Yale truly begins to shine.</p>

4

<p>Asking why Yale is weak in the sciences is like asking why Penn State is weak in football. It hasn’t won a national championship lately, but it’s a fearsomely good football program, and excellent preparation for a professional football career, with many successful graduates. I don’t think that any college football player thinks he would suffer because of Penn State’s football “weakness” if he decided to go there.</p>

<p>Penn State also has the dominant women’s volleyball team in the country. But that doesn’t mean that Penn State decided to concentrate on women’s volleyball to the exclusion of football.</p>

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<p>Just thought the emphasis was necessary.</p>

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<p>Au contraire, Natsherman. If I may quote from some Yale sites:</p>

<p>Yale Engineering graduates are working at the forefront of technology and science and have made outstanding contributions to society in the form of innovative technologies and significant research discoveries.
Our Engineering program builds on a strong and broad foundation of related sciences and has been successfully developing emerging technologies. Yale is among the top ten of 100 federally-funded U.S. universities with the highest citation impact of their published research papers from 1997-2001 in 21 major fields of science and the social sciences, says Science Watch, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, 2002, Vol. 13, No. 5 and No. 6). In Engineering, Yale ranks first in average-citations-per paper, on a percentage basis, against the world impact average in the field.
Yale’s Engineering Graduate Program is interdisciplinary and flexible. Graduate students develop their own course of study and research in consultation with faculty. Two of our Program’s recent developments are particularly noteworthy.
First, a new engineering building dedicated to research, the Daniel L. Malone Center, was opened in the fall of 2005. The building was made possible by a $24 million gift from Dr. John Malone '63 B.E.
The second is the establishment of the Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (CRISP), a National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. The Center involves faculty and students from four of the engineering departments in multidisciplinary research on the composition, structure, properties and potential applications of solid–solid and solid–gas interfaces.
Let me wish you all the best in your studies and feel free to contact my office with your questions.</p>

<p>Plus:</p>

<p>Science Watch ranks University’s researchers
as the most-cited by their peers</p>

<p>Yale received the top ranking in engineering, chemistry and law in Science Watch, a publication that measures the citation impact of published research in major fields of science and the social sciences among the top 100 federally funded universities in the country.</p>

<p>In addition, Yale was ranked in the top 10 in citation impact in five other areas of research – immunology, molecular biology and genetics, neurosciences, biology and biochemistry, and psychology and psychiatry.</p>

<p>“This is one of the objective measures of research quality as judged by our peers in the field,” says Paul Fleury, dean of the Faculty of Engineering, which received the highest proportional score in the Science Watch rankings. “This is considered significant because it shows the work is influencing the research of others in the field, is building on the work of others and is helping to make an advance.”</p>

<p>Andrew Hamilton, chair of the Department of Chemistry, says the department’s ranking in Science Watch "is a marvelous affirmation of the strength of chemistry at Yale.</p>

<p>“This is a ranking based on citations per research paper, so it is a direct reflection of the quality and the impact of the research being carried out at Yale,” he notes. “It was particularly pleasing to see hard evidence to something we have known for some time, which is that chemistry at Yale is back in the very top group of departments in the USA.”</p>

<p>Out of 21 fields listed in the Science Watch rankings, Yale emerged in the top 10 in eight fields. The Science Watch ranking is considered noteworthy because it not only considers the number of citations, but also the quality of journals in which the articles were published.</p>

<p>The scoring system is devised by the Institute of Science Information (ISI), which publishes Science Watch. It is a five year cumulative score, in this case covering the years 1997 through 2001.</p>

<p>The Science Watch rankings draw upon publication and citation data in ISI’s University Science Indicators database. In 21 fields, each defined by a set of ISI-indexed journals, Science Watch calculates the citations per paper score for each university. The resulting figure is compared to a world baseline figure representing the impact for the field during the same period. This produces a relative impact score, expressed as a percentage.</p>

<p>“It’s really one of the best and most objective measures of the impact of an institution’s research on the field overall,” Fleury says. “Although it’s only one dimension of excellence, it is one that is widely accepted as being valid and important, and it’s one we’re very proud to have done so well in.”</p>

<p>The margin by which Yale engineering was ranked first was the largest of any of the 21 fields. Yale engineering also was ranked first in its field in Science Watch for the period covering 1996 to 2000.</p>

<p>In chemistry, notes Hamilton, the rankings were evidence that the department has overcome faculty losses and retirements in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “In the last few years, the hard work of faculty, staff, graduate students and postdocs has led to this resurgence in research activity and accomplishment,” he says. “And this success is in no small measure due to the commitment of the administration to the department in recent faculty hirings and also to improving the infrastructure, including the construction of a new building that will begin this summer.”</p>

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<p>■■■■■. Slams P and C. Says he’s a H soph. Ignore him.</p>

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<p>Here is the new ranking of engineering productivity for the world universities. Yale ranks 145 in the world and 52 in the US (<a href=“http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2009%20by%20Fields/Domain/ENG[/url]”>http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2009%20by%20Fields/Domain/ENG&lt;/a&gt;). If you only look at the average citation per paper, MD Anderson Medical Center is the best. So, indulging on average citation per paper is meaningless because you can a faculty co-authoring in one or two high impact paper but do nothing else and will get the great results. Overall, Yale is not bad in life science, but a little weak in natural science and engineering. The extramural funding for Yale engineering is also quite small in comparison with other big engineering schools. I don’t think that the engineering program is something Yale is proud of.</p>