@Sue22, yep, though I do still note too-heavy East-Coast representation in the WSJ sources. It did look like Stanford didn’t cooperate, when their law, med, and b-schools are all top 5 or so, which surely didn’t help.
@tk21769, true, the environment would be very different, though note that CU is a distance away from Williams in my tiers. Among the publics that are just a tiny step away from the Ivies/equivalents (Cal, UMich, and UVa), high-scorers would be much more prevalent.
PurpleTitan, at schools like Michigan, Cal, UVA and GT, far more than the top quartile are of “Ivy League caliber”. It is actually the bottom quartile or half (depending on the public institution and the Ivy League) that isn’t, but the remaining 2-3 quartiles are roughly Ivy caliber. At Michigan, Cal, UVa etc…the top quartile took almost exclusively AP classes the last 2 years of high school (or come from an IB, British, or French curriculum), maintained a close to 4.0 GPA, graduated in the top 1% of their high school class, stood out in their ECs, and scored over 1500 on the SAT and over 33 on the ACT. Those students would be well above the average at schools like Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn. The 2nd quartile would have similar grades and class ranks, but their test scores would be around the average at those four Ivies listed above (1400-1500 on the SAT and 31-33 on the ACT). As far as I am concerned the top half at those public universities are Ivy League caliber. The third quartile will be roughly equal to the bottom quartile at most Ivies (3.7-3.8 GPA, top 5% of their high school class, 1300-1400 SAT and 29-31 ACT). Only the bottom quartile would fall under Ivy League standards.
@Alexandre, these days, the Ivies/equivalents can fill their student body several times over without an appreciable dropoff in academic quality.
The Ivies/equivalents select for more than stats (note that there are schools chock-full of high-stats kids yet don’t have the same output as the Ivies/equivalents) but sure, feel free to expand the Ivy-caliber definition to half or even a little more than that at those 3 schools. I wouldn’t quibble.
“these days, the Ivies/equivalents can fill their student body several times over without an appreciable dropoff in academic quality.”
PurpleTitan, all that means is that the Ivy League is randomly accepting students. I do not deny that the Ivy League are extremely selective. But talent is talent. There is two ways about it. Claiming that one brilliant student is superior to another simply because he was admitted into a particular university does not make it so. I stand by my statement, 50%-75% of the students at Cal, Michigan, UVa etc…are identical in academic and non-academic ability and accomplishment as Ivy League students. Whether or not they were lucky enough to get into
“The Ivies/equivalents select for more than stats (note that there are schools chock-full of high-stats kids yet don’t have the same output as the Ivies/equivalents)”
PurpleTitan, even the majority of the students in the Ivy League do not live up to those lofty standards set forth in this thread. But if you factor in regional bias, cultural norms etc…, I very much doubt that the outputs of students at Cornell, or Penn, or Dartmouth, or Northwestern etc…exceed those of Cal or UVa or Michigan by a ratio of 4:1.
@Alexandre, admissions isn’t completely random even for high-stats applicants. And the ratio is somewhere between 4:1 and 2:1 if you go by the metrics I look at.
In that Fulbrights link posted earlier in this thread, UMich is in the top 3 with Harvard and Northwestern in total number of Fulbrights (with most of Ivies/equivalents a little below; Cal and UVa are close to Cornell a fair ways below, but still above some Ivies/equivalents).
In admissions to elite professional schools, UMich would be on the high end of the Ivies/equivalents in total numbers; Cal and UVa towards the middle.
In science & engineering PhDs, Cal blows everyone away by total number, followed by Cornell and UMich (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/). If you divide the Cal number by 3-4 and UMich number by 2-3, they’d be around the middle of Ivies/equivalents.
Cal and UMich undergraduate populations are roughly 4 times that of the Ivies/equivalents and UVa’s roughly double (though only a little bigger than Cornell’s).
PurpleTitan, below is a list of the universities that have produced the most Fulbright scholars between 2005-2015.
Michigan 389
Harvard 314
Yale 305
Northwestern 261
Chicago 254
Brown 249
Cal 243
Columbia 243
Stanford 211
Princeton 184
Penn 187
Cornell 178
Duke 166
Johns Hopkins 165
I think Michigan and Cal hold their own well, even when you consider their size. Michigan matches Penn and Cornell proportionately.
As for enrolment in top graduate schools, if you include Michigan graduate programs among the elite, I think Michigan, Cal and UVA would also hold their own nicely.
I think it is fair to say that acceptance rates do not help Ivy Leage/ private elites to select talent beyond the obvious factors. I stand by what I said, there is no way that only the top quarter of the students at Michigan, Cal and UVA are Ivy Leage caliber. There is way too much talent top to bottom at those schools to dismiss the majority of their students. Like I said, roughly half to three quarters of the students are Ivy caliber.
^ Now adjust for number of applicants.
Also, the Fulbright is not a particularly prestigious award. The number of Rhodes scholars is a much better indicator of quality. The same is true of the number of Marshall, Gates, Churchill, Mitchell, Truman and Goldwater scholars.
NerdyChica, I said above, in the case of Michigan, even if you adjust for size, it does as well as Cornell, Duke and Penn. Furthermore, the other scholarships you mentioned are awarded by regional representation and offered to such a small sample size that they can only be regarded as outliers. But consider this, University of Wyoming, University of Nebraska, University of Oklahoma and several other regional universities have each produced more Rhodes scholars than Penn or NU. Furthermore, of all the fellowships, the Fulbright has the largest correlation with the Nobel Prize.
Fullbright research awards – which are different from Fullbright teaching English as a foreign language awards (“half-Brights” as they were called) – are a significant award for undergrads reflecting serious research promise.
Again, what’s more important is the awarding percentage versus applicants as I indicated in my earlier post. If the entire population of northwestern or Georgetown applied, you would correspondingly see the percentage of awardees increase (hopefully). Is that impressive? Not if the success rate is lower versus other podunk schools.
Same can be said for law school and business placement. It’s not the amount but the success of applicants. I can pull pre-law statistics in which some of the elite privates absolutely destroy the elite publics in elite law school acceptance (in which privates show successful applicants require a lower GPA and a lower LSAT across the board). So what matters, the percent enrolled in elite law/bus/med schools or actual percentage accepted from said school?
And a top graduate degree is harder to get into than many of these other programs anyways. They should therefore be awarded equal stature, but that’s a debate for another time.
^ I’m sorry, but that reasoning is silly. If out of a class of 2000, only 100 think they have a shot at elite professional schools or awards and 30 get in or win awards, that’s not more impressive than if 400 apply and 100 get in/win. The first school doesn’t get credit for having 1900 students who either aren’t ambitious enough to try or think that they have no shot.
As we can see from that Fulbright link, ASU (22/75) and IU (19/55) have a higher successful application rate than Harvard (31/139), so by your logic, you would rank ASU and IU higher than Harvard in this category.
“I’m sorry, but that reasoning is silly. If out of a class of 2000, only 100 think they have a shot at elite professional schools or awards and 30 get in or win awards, that’s not more impressive than if 400 apply and 100 get in/win.”
ASU and IU ranking similar to Harvard makes more sense than your ranking methodology.
Again, ASU/IU honors students winning fulbrights might be as impressive or more so than some of the Harvard students. You’re really comparing the best of the best here.
What matters more? 2% of the class entering Harvard law from northwestern with a 1% acceptance rate? Or 1% of the class from arizona state entering harvard law but with a 10% acceptance rate? It’s in the eye of the beholder. Acceptance rate should matter far more.
^but just as important as the acceptance rate are the qualifications of applicants. That would standardize everything. It’s more impressive to me if someone from ASU is getting into Harvard law compared to an applicant at an elite private with similar GPAs and LSATs. That suggests ASU is affording them the same opportunities to get a coveted spot at an elite law school.
You’re conjecturing out loud about why some schools might have a lower fulbright placement percentage without any basis. Rank the top privates then by fulbright winning percentage - there are quite a few contradictions to your list to say the least. Output should be based on input. Compare apples to apples. Rank the top privates by Fulbright acceptance rate since their freshman profiles are similar. This is what you would get( since output should be based on input afte rall):
Fulbright winning percentage:
Your rankings would be valid if you could use the above approach and see applicant success given similar freshman profiles. Unfortunately, you don’t have that data.
Here’s another data point:
Goldwater scholars for 2016: (Maximum of 4 allowed per institution in any given year - no limit to applicants. For the top STEM students in the country):
https://goldwater.scholarsapply.org/sch-2016.php
^It’s not uncommon to see some schools have 3-4 winners in one year and zero the next. Picking one year is not meaningful. How about last 10 years like 2007-2016?
Fair point by @IWannaHelp. I’m already skeptical that looking at only an award where only 4 students from any school in a year may win (when we’re talking about unis with several thousand undergrads) tells us much of anything, much less only one year of that award.
Also, @blah2008, even if you’re going to use baseless hypotheticals, please try to stick to somewhat realistic numbers. 2% of an HLS class is 11. 1% acceptance rate (even if all admitted attend) means 1100 applicants. NU graduates 2000 a year. Over half of NU isn’t applying to HLS each year.
And no, it’s not more impressive just because there is a higher success rate among applicants. If some school goes 3/5 at getting in to HLS, it’s not impressive that almost no one there tried, and you certainly can’t draw the conclusion that their rate would stay as high as a school that went 15/30 if 25 more from the first school applied.
As i indicated above, you need to take into account acceptance rate and student qualifications. If one applicant gets into harvard law out of 1 applying, it is meaningless. but it is just as meaningless if 9 out of 100 get in as it is below harvard law’s overall acceptance rate overall. Grad school Placement and award percentage out of the student body needs context for acceptance rate and qualifications. Useless to assess otherwise.
I can show last 5 to 10 years for goldwater. Norhwestern and brown stiill lead the bottom of the pack