LACs with Strong Biology Departments

SmithieandProud · November 22, 2010, 12:36pm

If you’re going to use NSF funding as a data point, you might look at this story. Smith College has received more NSF funding in the past 10 years than Amherst, Barnard, Bowdoin, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Colby, Colgate, Franklin and Marshall, Grinnell, Hamilton, Haverford, Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Oberlin, Pomona, Reed, Skidmore, Swarthmore, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Williams, and more than a dozen other liberal arts institutions.

I should note that not all of this NSF funding has been for biology, and I do not think that Smith is the leader in funding per student, just in total funding. Just tossing in a plug for ye olde alma mater

[News</a> Office](<a href=“http://www.smith.edu/newsoffice/releases/NewsOffice10-020.html]News”>News Office)

I guess I can understand where intparent is coming from. For many students, one visit really is all that it takes to know that a school is right. For parents, especially looking at this from a few years away, the idea of trusting your teenager’s gut feeling on these things is a little unsettling. Not that intparent WON’T trust his daughter’s gut, but I think it’s perfectly fine if you want to gather info as well. Just remember though that just because the info comes from a college’s marketing doesn’t mean that it’s not true.

mafool · November 22, 2010, 1:08pm

intparent, I’m sorry I don’t have the data at hand. I just know that Hope has unusual undergraduate research opportunities. I would think that, if you are interested, you might do further research, but a quick search did unearth the following (BTW: I have no vested interest in Hope; I just happen to have friends on the faculty there and I was a zoology major once upon a time, so I’m interested.)

Hope has been recognized multiple times nationally as a leader in undergraduate science education and for its emphasis on research-based learning. Most recently, the 2006 edition of the “America’s Best Colleges” guide published by “U.S. News and World Report” included Hope in its listing of colleges and universities that are outstanding in their emphasis on undergraduate research or creative projects. Although the schools on the list have been unranked numerically in recent years, Hope was tied for fourth place in the U.S. when the category debuted in 2002.

One of only 12 biology departments nationally to participate in the National Genomics Research Initiative (NGRI) supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

Biology Nature Preserve
Hope College maintains a 55-acre nature preserve approximately five miles from the main campus. The property includes over 40 species of plants, 14 species of mammals, 40 species of birds and hundreds of species of arthropods. As we explore the property more fully, we continue to add to the list.

The Biology Department is housed in the A. Paul Schaap Science Center at Hope College which includes a rich array of teaching and research laboratories, several specialized rooms for instrumentation, microscopy, computing and computational modeling, scientific collections and photography, as well as an animal research facility, a greenhouse, a biological museum, and environmental chambers for both plant and animal research.

intparent · November 22, 2010, 1:13pm

Oh, very true about the marketing, S&P. I think it usually IS true to a large extent. But I have a degree in marketing, so I know that you have to look for “the rest of the story” :)

Mudder_s_Mudder · November 22, 2010, 1:19pm

Just to add to mafool’s answer: Hope is on the list of LACs found in Publication 96-334 here:
[SRS</a> Publications List: July 1995 through July 1998](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf98321/hrstats.htm]SRS”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf98321/hrstats.htm)

That list is pretty old but apparently is the most current. I would add that it’s no longer entirely accurate as, for example, my S’s alma mater has changed its Carnegie classification since then (from “specialty” to “LAC”). Still, many of the LACs mentioned on this thread are on the list.

Also, Hope is one of only two or three colleges that host NSF REUs in bio, found here:
[US</a> NSF - REU - List Result](<a href=“Search Results for REU Sites | NSF - National Science Foundation”>REU Sites | NSF - National Science Foundation)

I suspect that the best you can expect, in terms of finding a comprehensive ranking of programs, is to gather some metrics from individual colleges that might serve as proxies of quality; e.g., some of the indicators I mentioned in my previous post. That pretty much sums up what we did. If you look for guidance to something like the professional associations of biologists or biological science educators (whatever that, or those, might be; I don’t know), they’ll probably list accredited programs but resist ranking them.

BTW, if your D does end up at a LAC in bio, she might consider applying for an REU at a research university to enrich her UG experience.

interesteddad · November 22, 2010, 2:49pm

The first column is the total number of undergraduates completing an undergrad degree over a ten year period. The second column is the percentage of the total graduates who completed a PhD in biology or life sciences during the following ten year period (offset by by five years).

Note that using the actual # of grads as a denominator tends to favor schools with poor graduation rates. For example, if you ran the numbers using enrolled freshmen over 10 years, Reed would fall dramatically as they have a relatively low graduation rate. So think of this list as answering this question, “if you have graduated from this school, what are the odds that you have also gone on to get a PhD in bio or life sciences?” The schools at the top of the list have pretty big numbers. As many as one out of every twenty graduates has gotten a PhD in bio. That is going to make for a pretty noticeable hard-core bio/science community at the undergrad level just as it would if 1 out of every 20 grads played in the NFL or became a member of a professional orchestra or became an investment banker.

This is a fairly good proxy for the impact of hard-core biology science geeks in the student body and the relative focus on bio on an undergrad campus. Schools with a more science PhD orientation will tend to do better. Schools with a lot of bio majors will tend to do better. Medical school is missing. It would be nice to be able to do a combined bio PhD and med school since those are the two parallel tracks, but the med school data is simply not publically availalble in the way that NSF has tracked all American PhD recepients every year since the 1920s.

**Percent of PhDs per gradutate
Academic field: Bio and Health Sciences

PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database

Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period**


2059  5.39%       California Institute of Technology<br>
2599    4.77%       Reed College<br>
3657    4.40%       Swarthmore College<br>
8270    3.29%       University of Chicago<br>
11348   3.08%       Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
1015    3.05%       University of California-San Francisco<br>
17855   3.04%       Harvard University<br>
2565    3.00%       Kalamazoo College<br>
1335    2.92%       Harvey Mudd College 
2410    2.82%       Earlham College 
9260    2.68%       Johns Hopkins University<br>
11101   2.60%       Princeton University<br>
2773    2.60%       Haverford College<br>
4936    2.57%       Mount Holyoke College<br>
12941   2.50%       Yale University 
6432    2.47%       Rice University 
2598    2.46%       Lawrence University 
4561    2.46%       Carleton College<br>
16662   2.45%       Stanford University 
7067    2.43%       Oberlin College 
33736   2.37%       Cornell University, All Campuses<br>
3229    2.26%       Grinnell College<br>
2041    2.25%       Hendrix College 
2879    2.12%       Bryn Mawr College<br>
3740    2.11%       Bowdoin College 
5840    2.11%       Wellesley College<br>
4179    2.06%       Amherst College 
3578    2.04%       Pomona College<br>
2308    2.04%       Beloit College<br>
14669   2.02%       Brown University<br>
11830   2.00%       University of Rochester 
2047    2.00%       Long Island University Southampton Campus<br>
6751    1.97%       Case Western Reserve University 
15531   1.94%       Duke University 
2361    1.91%       Hampshire College<br>
1535    1.89%       Ripon College<br>
2966    1.85%       SUNY College of Environmental Sci & Forestry<br>
2199    1.82%       Knox College<br>
5082    1.81%       Williams College<br>
3821    1.78%       Occidental College<br>
3989    1.75%       Allegheny College<br>
2911    1.75%       Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science<br>
38488   1.75%       University of California-Davis<br>
2462    1.75%       Juniata College 
6901    1.74%       St Olaf College 
30559   1.74%       University of California-San Diego<br>
4113    1.70%       Bates College<br>
3945    1.70%       Macalester College<br>
56363   1.69%       University of California-Berkeley<br>
12784   1.65%       College of William and Mary 
1363    1.61%       New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology<br>
1971    1.57%       Centre College<br>
1092    1.56%       Rush University 
7081    1.53%       Wesleyan University 
1277    1.49%       Fisk University 
1753    1.48%       Wabash College<br>
2640    1.48%       Hiram College<br>
13887   1.48%       Washington University<br>
2081    1.44%       University of Dallas<br>
21761   1.40%       University of California-Santa Cruz 
7162    1.40%       Smith College

bclintonk · November 22, 2010, 5:48pm

^ Your data are very helpful, interesteddad. So among LACs, Reed, Swarthmore, Kalamazoo, Harvey Mudd, Earlham, Haverford, Mount Holyoke, Lawrence U, Carleton, and Oberlin would be the top 10 producers of biology Ph.D.s. Of these, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, and Carleton stand out in my mind as being the most selective and having the strongest overall academic reputations, though the others in this group are all excellent schools.

I’m not sure production of future Ph.D.s is an ideal measure in a field like biology, though. A lot of research-oriented biology majors go to on medical school and end up on a research track with their medical degrees. But I don’t have an indicator that would capture that.

My D’s LAC, Haverford, says 30-40% of their biology majors go on to medical school, and another 20-30% go on to grad school. That’s a pretty high ratio; my guess is it’s pretty similar at the other top LACs in this group. Haverford has a very strong biology program, heavily focused on cellular and molecular biology; its sister school Bryn Mawr (about a mile away and with fully integrated cross-registration of courses between the tow schools) also has an excellent biology department but theirs is more organism-, ecology-, and evolution-focused. Haverford emphasizes a “research-based curriculum” that includes a required (for bio majors) 2-semester junior year “superlab” sequence designed to provide “an intensive introduction to current research techniques in the context of current biological questions and theory”; a required senior seminar in which students are required to analyze and critique current primary research in the field; and a senior research thesis requirement in which the student must develop and carry out an independent research project under faculty supervision, which in almost all cases involves independent lab research. Not my field, but that strikes me as a really rigorous grounding in research methods and contemporary research questions that would provide an outstanding preparation for graduate work in the field.

[Haverford</a> College: Department of Biology : Welcome](<a href=“http://www.haverford.edu/biology/index.php]Haverford”>http://www.haverford.edu/biology/index.php)

bookworm · November 22, 2010, 6:03pm

Quite unscientific, but I took a look at the background of the bio and NS grad programs at MIT. First year students came from state schools all across the country, including N. Mex. and FL (not UF but the tiny New College). As others have said, students came from Pomona, Swathmore, as well as U of C, Yale, & Bates. Mt Holyoke, Wellesley, and Simmons were represented. I was surprised by the diversity. This was just one class. It seems to me that it is the passion of the student, not the pedigree, that matters.

JHS · November 22, 2010, 6:04pm

In looking at interesteddad’s table, one has to remember that the most recent college class represented is 18 years before the earliest college class to which this year’s juniors will apply, and much of the data will reflect classes in which the parents of this year’s juniors may have graduated. It’s almost a generation old. So, for instance, the data on the University of Rochester do not reflect the near-complete revamping of that institution’s college during the late 1990s, and the data on Wesleyan do not reflect an enormous upgrade to its science facilities and faculty in the first half of this decade. (I’m not shilling specially for Rochester or Wesleyan; I just happen to know about those specific changes.) Things do not change overnight in academia, but things can change quite a bit over a whole generation.

vonlost · November 22, 2010, 6:23pm

“I’m not sure production of future Ph.D.s is an ideal measure in a field like biology, though.”

Perhaps it says little more than “These schools are known to provide quality undergrad preparation for a PhD in biology.”

“the most recent college class represented is 18 years before the earliest college class to which this year’s juniors will apply”

A 12 year delay in the data would seem standard, HS senior plus four years undergrad plus seven years PhD study. It takes a while to collect the data, and we want more than one year’s data for reliable statistics, so maybe 18 years is not so unreasonable. Or did I miss the point?

2boysima · November 22, 2010, 6:31pm

“…but somehow I have trouble seeing D2 at a women’s college. She has so little patience for the kind of drama that goes on in a group of all women.”

If you were to talk with current students and alumnae of women’s colleges, you would likely find that the “drama” associated with groups of women in co-ed high schools and colleges…along with the often outlandish gossip and mean cliques… is nearly absent at the women’s schools.

I know a woman’s college is not for everyone…but…this reason is probably not one of the stronger ones for “not a woman’s college.” Especially one with such historic strength in biological sciences…

JHS · November 22, 2010, 6:37pm

vossron: The point is that knowing that during the decade 28-18 years before you will attend college a particular college produced an average of 4-5 future biology PhDs per year (with no indication whether the rate was constant or not during that decade) doesn’t exactly provide a strong basis for deciding that that college will prepare you well to enter a PhD program in some biology-related field. Obviously, one would like to know what is happening today, or even better yet what will happen tomorrow, but that isn’t possible. So we are using the best/only data we have. And that’s fine . . . but don’t pretend it tells us much to inform a real student’s decision.

emeraldkity4 · November 22, 2010, 6:47pm

has this already been linked?

[nsf.gov</a> - SRS Baccalaureate Origins of S&E Doctorate Recipients - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“404 Page Not Found | NCSES | NSF”>404 Page Not Found | NCSES | NSF)

vonlost · November 22, 2010, 7:21pm

“… doesn’t exactly provide a strong basis …”

Nonetheless, it’s the strongest available basis we have (as you suggested). Such tables are an excellent (IMHO) starting point for those few HS students who believe they want an eventual PhD in their chosen field.

qialah · November 22, 2010, 8:00pm

The common data sets list the number of kids graduating by major. If I knew I wanted to be a bio major, I’d look for a school that graduates a high percentage of bio majors. Departments that manage to attract a lot of students are likely rewarded in terms of getting a larger share of the school’s overall resources.

Just looking at a couple of schools that have been tossed about:

School Percent of Bio majors
Smith 5.9%
Bryn Mawr 7.7%
Swarthmore 9.2%
Haverford 12%
Carleton 12%
Harvey Mudd 11%

johnwesley · November 22, 2010, 8:10pm

It’s odd how different institutions can mine the same data and produce completely different outcomes. Wesleyan says that over a four year period its faculty received over $25 million in “federal grants for science”: <a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/sciencefacts.html[/url]”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/sciences/sciencefacts.html</a>

vonlost · November 22, 2010, 8:49pm

Adding another school:



School Percent of Bio majors</p>

<p>Bryn Mawr    7.7%
Carleton    12  %
Harvey Mudd 11  %
Haverford   12  %
Reed        10  %
Smith        5.9%
Swarthmore   9.2%

emeraldkity4 · November 22, 2010, 9:44pm

for those interested in medical research- a good friend of Ds has been spending summers at fred hutchinson( since she was a rising sophomore on the east coast.
( she also spent about a month in China this past summer as part of this new partnership)
[The</a> Business of Giving | Seattle cancer researchers sign collaboration with China CDC | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2013296530__china_is_rich_in.html]The”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2013296530__china_is_rich_in.html)

interesteddad · November 22, 2010, 10:29pm

BClintock:
I wish the med school data were made public. The data exists, since all US med school applications are handled through a central “clearing house”. The colleges have access to the data. The public doesn’t.

I don’t doubt your percentages from Haverford. Over the most recent 5 year period (graduating classes of 2005 thru 2009), Swarthmore has 229 graduating biology majors:

<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/DegMajors.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/DegMajors.pdf</a>

Over the same five year time frame, Swarthmore had 160 seniors and alumni accepted to medical schools.

<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/MedSchool.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/MedSchool.pdf</a>

That would be 69% of all bio majors, except that we know that not all med school acceptees are bio majors. Some are chem majors, some are engineering majors. Some are linguistics majors.

JHS:

More recent data is available to anyone who wants to take the time to do a custom database query at the IPEDs WebCASPAR site. It’s a major undertaking because the PhD data and the baccaularreate degree data have to be downloaded to separate Excel files, sorted alphabetically, and then manually combined. I did it once and have it all in one big sortable spreadsheet.

Colleges change about as fast as a supertanker: this stuff doesn’t change much. And, I don’t care enough about it anymore to do it again! You have to go back ten years because you get in real trouble if you try to look at a small sample of just one or two years. This stuff has wide year-to-year variation.

If you are interested, Swarthmore got the idea (I can’t imagine where!) to put their intitutional research staff to work doing an updated list each year for the top 25 LACs, although it is not adjusted for per capita. The most recent year they have is for PhDs awarded in 2006 (there’s a multi-year lag in the NSF data):

<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/BaccOrigins06.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/administration/ir/BaccOrigins06.pdf</a>

And, the link to all of the available years:

[Swarthmore</a> College :: Institutional Research :: Fact Book](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/factbook.xml]Swarthmore”>Fact Book :: Institutional Effectiveness, Research & Assessment :: Swarthmore College)

vossron:

Your numbers are low for Swarthmore. For the last 5 years, Swarthmore has averaged 12.5% Bio majors. Consistently Swarthmore’s second most popular major and battling Econ for the top spot several times. Poli Sci is close third. Actually, if you include special majors like BioChem and PscyhoBiology, it might be Swarthmore’s most popular department.

anon94785555 · November 22, 2010, 10:54pm

The percentage of students going on to a PhD is useless. A small LAC may have 10 math (or pick a science) students majoring in math for any given year and if 5 go on to a PhD that’s 50%, with only 4 other like minded students to interact with. A top ranked public flagship may have 80 to 90 math majors, if only 10% go on to the PhD there would be twice as many students to be a fellow math-going-to-grad-school undergrad with. That math student is likely to also take grad level courses while an undergrad as well- courses not available in the limited repetoire of the LAC. Statistics can be used to prove useless points.

The reason to choose “Biology” as a major has to be delved into. It includes plant and animal sciences, some small departments may also lump other majors in the general field. For medical school doing well at the cheaper state flagship can do just as well. A student majoring in a science will find their “school within a school” even at large institutions as, unlike many social science and humanities majors, most students encounter each other in many of the same prerequisite courses taken the freshman year. Often English and History courses do not need to be taken in sequence whereas science ones often do. Calculus is required for the best Chemistry and only limited chemistry courses are available to prepare for that honors biology…

Biology today involves other science disciplines- there can be a Chemistry professor with appointments in both fields, as long as the Chemistry department is large enough to spare someone to do both instead of being needed for pure chemistry courses. A student who is passionate about biology deserves to be exposed to more as many opportunities as possible as an undergrad. Sure, you can probably get an English Lit degree from MIT- but will the opportunities be as great as at a LAC of similar caliber?

The socalled “liberal arts education” is not better than the science education. Adding a few more general humanities courses to satisfy graduation requirements will not make a person passionate about science more well educated. The liberal arts majors would do well to include more science knowledge in their schooling to be truely well educated. An indepth course about a subfield of a science can be as worthwhile as a course in one particular author (or, how about taking a whole semester philosophy course on Nietsche at the big U for a math major?).

vonlost · November 22, 2010, 11:10pm

^ To take your example further, consider only three students graduating in a discipline year after year, but year after year they all eventually earned PhDs. Since they each had only two other students for interaction (never mind the professors!), the fact that the school produces only PhD earners should be irrelevant to those interested in later earning a PhD.

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