<p>PhD productivity in the sciences for LACs is not higher than top private universities. The productivity number for some LACs also masks teh fact that in quite a few cases, the ACTUAL number of PhDs is extremely small. Some years, there are no students pursuing PhDs in some disciplines like math or physics at many LACs. With an average of 2% to 3% PhD students per year, you are talking minuscule numbers on average. </p>
<p>If you seriously want to pursue a PhD in the sciences, outside of the obvious outlier of Harvey Mudd, no LAC really stands out with the possible exceptions of Carleton and Swarthmore. In general, you are better off attending a top research university. </p>
<p>California Institute of Technology 28.24%
Harvey Mudd College 18.42%
MIT 15.40%
Rice University 7.41%
Carleton College 7.25%
Harvard University 6.61%
University of California-Berkeley 6.27%
Princeton University 5.88%
Swarthmore College 5.52%
Cornell University, All Campuses 5.35%
Carnegie Mellon University 5.00%
Williams College 4.44%
Johns Hopkins University 4.39%
Duke University 4.33%
Stanford University 4.30%
Brown University 4.24%
Reed College 4.01%
Columbia University 3.99%
Yale University 3.85%
Oberlin College 3.84%
Georgia Institute of Technology, 3.58%
Dartmouth College 3.39%
University of California-Davis 3.38%
University of California-San Diego 3.33%
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities 2.86%
Pennsylvania State U, Main Campus 2.38%
University of Virginia, Main Campus 2.33%
Smith College 2.31%
University of Pennsylvania 2.31%
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 2.24%</p>
<p>Another major factor, whioch is not accounted for in the PhD productivity statistics is that WHERE you go for grad school is heavily influenced by your undegrad college or university. In that category LACs do not perform particularly well. This is major concern as attendance at a top program is often a prerequiste to a tenure track career. </p>
<p>When ranking schools by the proportion of PhD students going to top PhD programs in the sciences the percentages ranged from 62% at Harvard to around 25% at Amherst. Only Swarthmore competed well in that category. It is somewaht worrisome that only about 25% of Amherst students going for a PhD in the sciences enroll at a top program, compared to twice that at Berkeley, a state institution. </p>
Helicopter parent much? It’s one thing to throw out a school if it has a huge statue of the founder of the KKK or if they won’t let white students and minority students share the same facilities. Why would you throw out a school because the professors conduct research? You wouldn’t let your child go to Dartmouth, Princeton, or Yale because the professors conduct research (and yet somehow those three are ranked very highly in undergraduate education and undergrad focus)? As someone who attends a major research univeristy I can say that the reserach opportunities have been great and really shaped my undergraduate career. By performing research as an undergrad I was able to see if I actually wanted to pursue a course of study through graduate school. I’m also able to be part of teams that discover new knowlege and further my field of study. Also, those research driven profs have been some of the best teachers and adivsers of my academic career.</p>
<p>Hm, I never looked at research as an EC before, but I guess it is. And now that I know that part of prof’s “job” is to research at some u’s on my list, I think I’ll scribble some of them off… = )</p>
<p>"When one of my D’s and I first learned about “research” during a college tour, off the list it went. None of my children are allowed to look into research universities now. I refuse to let them choose an extra extracurricular over personal attention. Academics first. " </p>
<p>^^^this is a classic case of overreaching with limited data. The study simply doesn’t support what you are saying. The study’s own p.i. says “To the extent that elite institutions attract the best students, the drop in their share of Ph.Ds suggests that science has lost some of its attractiveness to the best and brightest, presumably because thes students see better job opportunities in other professions.” That’s on page one of the study.</p>
<p>Second of all, the list of LACs and research universities you cite at the bottom of post #21 is lifted from a table (Table 6) of the study the only purpose of which was to support the conclusion stated above (an overall <em>decline</em> in the percentage of incoming doctoral candidates from selected baccalaureate granting institutions.)</p>
<p>The list of “Top Ph.D Institutions” was not meant to be exhaustive (where were Cornell, JHU, Penn, Columbia, and Stanford?) and were listed for illustrative purposes only. The fact that 25% of Amherst science grads wind up at these six Ph.D granting institutions, is not “worrisome” but, actually rather remarkable.</p>
<p>On the contrary, it’s the fact that 60% of Harvard’s undergraduates never leave Cambridge, and 52% of Yale’s never leave New Haven that ought to be worrisome.</p>
<p>How is that remarkable when 42% of the Swarthmore grads attend the same institutions and 72% of the Harvard grads. 25% of the applicants getting into top 10 programs is remarkable for its weakness not its stength. </p>
<p>The fact that the table only shows only a sampling of LACs and universities takes nothing away from its relevance. The top LACs fare signficantly worse than their top university counterparts in placing their graduates in top science PhD programs.</p>
<p>Um, the survey only listed six of the top ten Ph.D programs (at least, as far as America is concerned.) The fact that more than half of them come from their own undergraduates is not exactly earth-shaking news. In fact, it’s rather sad. Presumably, the more top programs included in the survey, the higher Amherst’s tally would go, since Amherst has no incentive (nor ability) to hoard its own undergraduates for four+ additional years.</p>
<p>You seem to have misread the table. The title is: Proportion from Named Institution Obtaining PhDs at Universities with 10 or More Top Programs. It does not refer to only six PhD granting institutions but to all universities with 10 or more top ten programs.</p>
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<p>No, it won’t. The table includes ALL institutions with more than 10 top PhD programs. </p>
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<p>I don’t know if it sad, due to nepotism or reflects better preparation by undergrads from research universities, more research experience, stronger recommendations or a combination. The top research universities are heavy feeders to each others PhD programs. That was my specific point. The decks are stacked against LACs and believing otherwise is simply naive. A very small number of LACs do well at placing their PhD candidates in top science programs, most don’t. </p>
<p>While the data is very clear in the sciences, I am not sure it is any different in other fields including the social sciences such as economics, anthropology, and political science and even in areas such as linguistics and philosophy. Another thread on CC seems to make that point. </p>
<p>If any general feeder rule could be drawn, it would be that the schools at the top of any particular NRC ranking are at a distinct advantage in placing their own undergrads into another top NRC ranked PhD program.</p>
<p>oops. you’re right. when I read it again, it became clear I was conflating Table 6 with Table 5 which in fact names only four top destination Ph.D programs (Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and Michigan.) It’s unfortunate, but, we may have discovered a road map for identifying which colleges have become the most pre-professional over the last twenty years.</p>
<p>I’m very willing to admit that students with an interest in obtaining a science PhD might be better off at a research university for undergraduate school, but I’m very surprised at the strength of the LAC’s listed in the study you cite. I really don’t think anyone considers Williams, Amherst or Swarthmore to be directly comparable to Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Yale. There may be some crossover, but AWS’s competitors are more likely schools like Brown, Dartmouth, or Penn among the Ivies. I don’t see little Jonnny pondering the big choice: Swarthmore, Haverford, or CalTech?</p>
<p>And science-oriented kids who want to do research will look to the larger schools to begin with, so the fact that a student who chooses a small LAC like AWS with limited research (and resume-building opportunities) for whatever reason, has a competitive chance of attending a top program is great. Such students must be impressive.</p>
<p>You note, of course, that one of the major conclusions of the 2003 article was that the sources of these PhD students have become more dispersed - there is a much greater competition from foreign schools, for example, so the fact that a Williams has held steady for 20 years at the 39% number is even more impressive.</p>
<p>Also, where does the first list you provided come from and what does it mean? I didn’t quite get it.</p>
<p>In other threads I’ve supported the value of research universities when someone got on their LAC high horse, but that goes too far. Just because someone is good at something doesn’t mean they don’t have other or even competing interests. So yeah, I can see a kid sweating a decision between Swarthmore, Carleton, MIT and CalTech.</p>
<p>^ DadOfB&G, you mean the list in post #21, right? If so, I’m not sure I get it, either.</p>
<p>For example, take the first line:</p>
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<p>Does this mean that 28.24% of all CalTech graduates went on to earn a Ph.D. in some science field at a leading university, within some time period after college graduation in a certain year? What’s the source of this information? What does “science” include?</p>
<p>I take it the major difference between the HEDS approach and the one cellardwellar cites is that, in the latter, only Ph.D.s granted by certain universities are tracked (schools with 10 or more NRC top-10s).</p>
<p>^ I think this is due to the origins of the HEDS PhD data, where the purpose was to show that LAC students are not at a competitive disadvantage compared to their big U peers. As a result, LACs have become somewhat self-selecting, with many of those HS students favoring academics choosing LACs because of the future-PhD advantage shown by the data, perpetuating.</p>
<p>I was amusing myself with that comparison. Sorry if it offended. I think there a plenty of high horses around, and they’re not all being climbed by LAC supporters.</p>
<p>tk21769 - that sort of goes back to my original objection to the overall study. The first listing of colleges and universities is certainly consistent with what we’ve all come to accept as the conventional wisdom: that there really is no huge advantage either way when it comes to which type of baccalaureate institution produces the most Ph.Ds.</p>
<p>The problem is with the second set of “rankings” where for the sake of inspection, the authors break out a subset of universities and LACs. My objection was (and, to some extent still is) that 1) the study was not designed to make those determinatons, and, 2) it’s a little unfair to draw conclusions about Amherst without knowing how Dartmouth, Wesleyan, Tufts, Brown, and other schools known for the quality of their undergraduates – but not necessarily for their NRC ranked Ph.D programs did in comparison.</p>
<p>I would hesitate to draw the conclusions cellardwellar draws about LACs from the study he cites (in particular, from the table labeled “Proportion from Named Institution Obtaining PhDs at Universities with 10 or More Top Programs”).</p>
<p>The trouble is, many highly ranked graduate programs are distributed among universities that do not have 10 or more top departments (if by that we mean 10 or more in the NRC-95 top 10). For example, Hopkins has only 8 (including 4 in the Biological Sciences).</p>
<p>On the other hand, Yale has 19 top 10 programs, but none of them are in the Physical Sciences (unless we count Math). Princeton has 16 top 10 programs, but only one of them is in the Biological Sciences (and its other Bio programs have very low ranks, or no rank). The university whose departments have the highest average NRC-95 ranking is Stanford; however, even Stanford’s average NRC department ranking is only #9.</p>
<p>I count only 13 universities that meet the criterion of having 10 or more departments in the NRC top 10. At all but 6 of these, more than half of the NRC-ranked departments are not in the top 10. Now, it’s entirely possible that LAC graduates tend to be as discriminating in their choices of graduate schools as they are in their choice of colleges. They may tend to favor highly ranked programs, but not necessarily ones at universities with 10 or more NRC-95 top 10 departments. </p>
<p>I think the HEDS findings remain operative in this discussion. The schools with the best per capita track records for “Ph.D. production” tend to be LACs. The ones in the top 10 for Ph.D. production that are not LACs are technical schools (MIT, CalTech) and one relatively small, LAC-like university (Chicago). The cited study does not present enough evidence to conclude that LAC graduates gravitate toward second-rate Ph.D. programs.</p>