Is Yale on the decline?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
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<p>In the world of competitive high school mathematics, a world in which I spent far too much time in high school, I encountered nary a soul who ultimately chose Yale, myself excluded. I wasn't a science kid, but my anecdotal information supports GuitarMan's observations. This doesn't discredit Yale's strength in the sciences and in mathematics - it's just something I noticed.</p>

<p>Almost every competitively high USAMO scorer I can think of that has graduated in the past couple of years has ended up at Harvard or MIT. I'm trying to think where the IMO kids have gone, and as far as I can recall, it's the same. Then again, knowing a lot of these people contributed greatly to my desire NOT to attend the aforementioned schools...</p>

<p>I would be interested to know where this year's graduating Intel finalists are going - just for curiosity's sake. I wouldn't use the results to necessarily make a judgment about the strength of a university's academic programs.</p>

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<p>"Regarding Intel STS winners, according to Science Service, which runs the competition (you can call the company directly if you don't believe me), since 1996 the majority of winners have chosen either Harvard or Yale. MIT is a close third, with Stanford trailing fourth, Princeton fifth and Cornell, Caltech about tied for sixth."</p>

<p>Regarding the color of the sky, according to Snell, who discovered the law of refraction (you can call him if you don't believe me), it is dark green. Some days it is yellow or red, occasionally it is blue.</p>

<p>Sorry, couldn't resist -- don't mean to say anything negative about Yale ... and was in fact impressed by several of the posts from Yale students on this thread (other than posterX).</p>

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<p>SimiGenu - Then again, knowing a lot of these people contributed greatly to my desire NOT to attend the aforementioned schools.</p>

<p>That's interesting. Why not? I'm just curious.</p>

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<p>Well, it looks like these bios were written before the college decisions were final, but it looks like a lot of them were hoping and/or planning to go to Harvard, MIT, and Caltech with a smattering of Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Cornell:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sciserv.org/Sts/65sts/winners.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sciserv.org/Sts/65sts/winners.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>posterX, I really don't feel like digging through your post history, can you please just link me to the ISI thing? :p</p>

<p>coureur, that's not quite the best way to gauge...that's just based on a student's interest in November that they put as the answer to one question ("Where do you want to go to college?"). For example, I put Harvard and Caltech, and ended up turning Caltech down for Yale. Stanford, meanwhile, got 8 finalists, much more than put it down in their top two, because it ended up accepting so many of this year's finalists and heavily wooing them.</p>

<p>The exact breakdown this year was Harvard 11, Stanford 8, MIT 6, Yale 3, Caltech 2, Brown 2, and one to each of Princeton, Utah State, Williams, UGA, UF, Wesleyan, and UChicago.</p>

<p>haha now to boost Yale a bit, in terms of the top 10 winners at this year's STS, 2 are going to Yale, while just one more (3 in total) is headed to Harvard, Caltech is getting 2, and then there's 1 to each of Stanford, Utah State, and MIT. So Yale totally kicked butt there ;)</p>

<p>To be honest, from what I know it seems very surprising to me that Yale would rank 2nd in STS finalists since 1996, but that's nice to know if it's true!</p>

<p>Apologies if I've posted those stats here recently! I feel like I have but I don't know where or when :p</p>

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<p>Maybe this was true 50 years ago, but it certainly isn't now. Mr. Chips himself wouldn't get tenure at Swarthmore without publications -- good ones, and a lot of them.</p>

<p>From Swat's own web site:</p>

<p>"We search out scholars and artists who are active participants in the creation of new knowledge and who venture beyond the limits of received wisdom. In this respect, we compete with major universities, relying on a generous sabbatical policy and annual research and travel stipends to help faculty stay productive."</p>

<p>In my experience, they are great teachers TOO...but any newly minted PhD who thinks that the key to hiring and promotion at the schools you mentioned is "almost entirely" teaching skill is going to have a very disappointing career. Research matters at EVERY good college, of any size.</p>

<p>(For what it's worth, like Transfer 101, I found wonderful professors who cared deeply about teaching at both my LAC and my post-transfer Ivy.)</p>

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<p>Well, I did say that they do a little research on the side. The "research" at Swarthmore is not the same kind of "research" that goes on at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or MIT, however. The Swarthmore professors do not compete for million dollar NIH or NSF grants with their Harvard counterparts but instead apply for smaller grants that allow for more lesiurely pursuit of topics in less competitive areas. </p>

<p>Go to your science library, look up top journals such as Science, Nature, Cell, or Physical Review Letters, and try to find any article coming from Swarthmore. You will have to look pretty hard. For curiosity, I just did a search on PubMed for research papers published in Nature. The results were:</p>

<p>Harvard: 696 papers
Yale: 215
Princeton: 132
Stanford: 319
Swarthmore: 0
Bowdoin: 0
Wellesley: 0
Amherst: 17 (but they were all from University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus, not Amherst College)</p>

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<p>^^ I've always wondered about this paradox. LAC partisans here on CC and elsewhere always rave about all the great scientific research going on there and all the research opportunitites that it provides to students. I'm not saying I don't believe them, but I do wonder where if anywhere all this LAC research gets published.</p>

<p>I work in the Biotech R&D and read the biomedical literature regularly, and, in line with the numbers above, it is VERY rare to see a paper from and LAC get published in a major or even second-tier journal. It nearly all comes from research universities and medical research institutes. So where is all this LAC research getting published? Acta Artifacta? </p>

<p>Sorry to highjack the thread....</p>

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<p>I might add that Harvard appears to publish more papers in Nature than Yale, Princeton, and Stanford COMBINED!</p>

<p>Sorry, just couldn't resist.</p>

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<p>Most of thos articles are from HMS and due to Harvard's promiscuous affiliation scheme with MGH, BWH and BID trifecta (smartly if I might add). They pretty much attach their name to anything that moves. </p>

<p>Here' a quick pubmed search over the past year for Science and Nature</p>

<p>Harvard: 124
Berkeley: 64
Stanford: 46
MIT: 40
Yale: 34
Princeton: 25</p>

<p>Now I dare someone to standardize these to faculty members in the sciences for each institution. </p>

<p>btw Ske, it appears as though most of those med students who live in houses are MD-PhD students who are in their graduate school years (i.e. years 3-12). A good resource nonetheless.</p>

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<p>Yeah, Harvard's promiscuity extends to astronomy, as well, as it has a loose affiliation with the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (right down the road on Garden St., the building houses both the CfA and the Harvard Dept. of Astro), the largest astronomy institute in the world with over 300 scientists with Ph.Ds and something like double that including grad students, etc. The looseness of that affiliation, of course, does not extend to the name used in publications and almost any Nature paper in the field is bound to have an author from the "Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics". Very few of those 300 actually teach or have anything to do with undergrads, although for grad school Harvard's options are, necessarily, enough to make any student drool in anticipation; plus, the savvy undergraduate might be able to convince someone from the CfA to give them a summer position (though CfA scientists are notoriously unfriendly, from what I hear).</p>

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<p>If you look at research expenditure per undergraduate that actually takes place on the central campus (i.e., within one mile or less of the undergraduate dormitories), Yale absolutely blows Harvard away. In fact, Caltech, Yale and MIT lead in this regard. </p>

<p>This curious figure is precisely why these three schools are the best for undergraduate sciences - not because they necessarily have the most science, but because they make it the most accessible to their undergraduate students.</p>

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<p>"If you look at research expenditure per undergraduate that actually takes place on the central campus...Yale absolutely blows Harvard away. In fact, Caltech, Yale and MIT lead in this regard."
Data, PosterX? Care to look at the data, and then show us? </p>

<p>And also, one mile away is an arbitrary figure. Just because Stanford's bio and med programs are farther away from the East Campus dorms, and because Yale and MIT are more concentrated shouldn't penalize Stanford for being a more spread-out campus.</p>

<p>"This curious figure is precisely why these three schools are the best for undergraduate sciences - not because they necessarily have the most science, but because they make it the most accessible to their undergraduate students."
How do they do that? Care to share?</p>