<p>Probably the most frequently asked question on CC about LACs is whether any of them have strong science programs. Although many threads have discussed which LACs have good science programs, few have discussed which LACs have large percentages of scientists. With the help of some free time and IPEDS, I compiled a list this afternoon. </p>
<p>I included only the top 60 LACs as ranked by USNWR and excluded USMA, USNA, USAFA, and Bard.</p>
<p>Due to the small size and clustering of many LACs, these numbers are only a snapshot from a single year (Class of 2010) and may change a bit from year to year. </p>
<p>Natural Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Physics)
1. Pomona 28.3%
2. Harvey Mudd 26.2%
3. Colby 25.4%
4. Carleton 25.4%
5. St. Olaf 24.2%
6. Colorado College 23.9%
7. Scripps 23.8%
8. Gettysburg 22.8%
9. Mount Holyoke 22.4%
10. Rhodes 21.9%
11. Oberlin 20.8%
12. Middlebury 20.6%
13. Occidental 20.4%
14. Williams 20.4%
15. Union 20.4%
16. Franklin & Marshall 20.3%
17. Whitman 20.3%
18. Lawrence 20.3%
19. Bowdoin 20.0%
20. Macalester 19.9%
21. Wellesley 19.6%
22. Dickinson 19.0%
23. DePauw 18.7%
24. Denison 18.7%
25. Hamilton 18.1%
26. Haverford 17.9%
27. Grinnell 17.7%
28. St. Lawrence 17.5%
29. Reed 17.3%
30. Beloit 16.2%
31. Bryn Mawr 16.0%
32. Smith 15.5%
33. Amherst 15.2%
34. Swarthmore 16.8%
35. Willamette 16.7%
36. Bates 16.0%
37. Lafayette 15.9%
38. Sewanee 15.8%
39. Wabash 15.7%
40. Colgate 15.5%
41. Vassar 15.4%
42. Bucknell 14.7%
43. Centre 14.7%
44. Wesleyan 13.6%
45. Furman 13.6%
46. Skidmore 13.1%
47. Barnard 13.0%
48. Davidson 12.9%
49. Washington & Lee 12.7%
50. Connecticut College 12.4%
51. Pitzer 12.3%
52. Trinity College 10.9%
53. Holy Cross 10.9%
54. Kenyon 9.95%
55. Claremont McKenna 9.46%
56. Wheaton (IL) 9.01%
57. University of Richmond 8.64%</p>
<p>All STEM Fields
1. Harvey Mudd 93.0%
2. Lafayette 41.7%
3. Pomona 36.0%
4. Bucknell 35.3%
5. Carleton 34.8%
6. St. Olaf 33.0%
7. Union 31.4%
8. Colby 31.0%
9. Scripps 28.6%
10. Williams 27.6%
11. Swarthmore 27.1%
12. Colorado College 26.7%
13. Grinnell 25.9%
14. Lawrence 25.8%
15. Mount Holyoke 25.6%
16. Gettysburg 25.2%
17. Oberlin 25.0%
17. Wabash 25.0%
19. St. Lawrence 25.0%
20. Macalester 24.4%
21. Bryn Mawr 24.1%
22. Bowdoin 23.9%
23. Hamilton 23.7%
24. Whitman 23.7%
25. Middlebury 23.4%
26. Wellesley 22.9%
27. Franklin & Marshall 22.7%
28. Rhodes 22.6%
29. Reed 22.6%
30. DePauw 22.4%
31. Haverford 22.0%
32. Smith 21.5%
33. Occidental 21.3%
34. Centre 20.8%
35. Willamette 20.5%
36. Dickinson 20.4%
37. Amherst 20.3%
38. Denison 20.2%
39. Beloit 20.1%
40. Colgate 18.4%
41. Vassar 18.1%
42. Washington & Lee 18.0%
43. Bates 17.8%
44. Sewanee 17.6%
45. Wesleyan 17.3%
46. Trinity College 16.8%
47. Furman 16.3%
48. Davidson 16.1%
49. Skidmore 15.5%
50. Connecticut College 15.3%
51. Barnard 14.7%
52. Holy Cross 14.5%
53. Claremont McKenna 13.9%
54. Wheaton (IL) 13.3%
55. Pitzer 13.1%
56. Kenyon 11.8%
57. University of Richmond 11.4%</p>
<p>I was gonna say Grinnell was looking awful low, but the number looks better when you include all STEM fields. I thought it was over 26% but I suppose that varies from year to year.</p>
Lack of information. Annoyingly, Bard listed all of its students on IPEDS simply as “liberal arts” majors instead of being more specific. </p>
<p>Even more annoying is Bard’s reluctance to post its CDS. It clearly keeps track of majors, since College Board and US News (which draw from the CDS) reveal that 5% of Bard students major in biology, but the full CDS does not seem to be available anywhere. </p>
<p>
I don’t think any figure around 25% is low. There are four broad fields of study for most liberal arts colleges (humanities, social sciences, sciences, arts), so a well-balanced college would have about 25% of its students studying each. (In theory and for diversity, at least. Whether it would be practical for career purposes is another question.)</p>
<p>
Yes, it’s simply a percentage of students majoring in the sciences. I did NOT factor in graduate degrees – for PhD data, posters can do a search for the many posts by interesteddad. </p>
<p>I didn’t include professional school placement data either. Partly because that was not the intent of this investigation, partly because I didn’t have that data easily available, and partly because that would muddy the water since many pre-med applicants are not science majors (~33% according to AAMC).</p>
<p>Very interesting.
warblersrule, what majors did you (or IPEDS) include in STEM? </p>
<p>The Common Data Set “degrees conferred” categories (Section J) include (among others):
computer science
engineering
biological/life sciences
mathematics & statistics
physical sciences</p>
<p>(Geology and chemistry are not broken out; I assume they are included in “physical sciences”. ) </p>
<p>According to the 2011-12 CDS files, the majors in just the above 5 areas add up to ~14% of Middlebury majors and ~33% of Carleton majors. This is a much wider spread than you get for your 4 “natural sciences” majors (20.6% for Midd v. 25.4% for Carleton). </p>
<p>I don’t know which is the right set of “science” majors to compare … but clearly it makes a difference how you aggregate them. I suppose the appropriate set depends on your purposes. Some people might prefer to zero in on specific majors.</p>
STEM included any field related to the sciences – biology, computer science, engineering, math, and the physical sciences (astronomy, chemistry, geology, physics) were the main ones, with some colleges also having environmental science/studies. A few colleges also had interdisciplinary majors that I counted (e.g. joint math and computer science). </p>
<p>As for the discrepancies, I suspect it is because the CDS counts double majors, whereas my list above is for a student’s primary major only. For most students, a second major is far more likely to be in the humanities or social sciences than in the sciences. It’s not quite fair to have one student majoring in biology and another majoring in English and African-American studies and deduce that 33% of students are majoring in biology, as the CDS would suggest. Unfortunately, this works both ways (i.e. the English major could have a second major in biology), so neither method is terribly ideal.</p>
Not necessarily, though the primary major is often the major declared first. Most colleges require a student to designate a primary major. At my alma mater, for example, one of your majors was considered the dominant one. Your advisor who approved you for registration was in that department, that department determined your academic dean, diplomas were distributed at graduation in that department, etc. Which major was selected as the primary one depended on the student’s interests - a double major in philosophy and econ would likely pick econ if Wall Street was his goal and philosophy if PhD programs in philosophy was his goal. I suspect, though of course have no way of proving, that students are much more likely to designate STEM fields as their primary major, since students rarely major in the sciences for “fun,” given the extensive pre-reqs and potential damage to GPAs. (This was certainly the case for me and all of the other science and humanities double majors I’ve known.)</p>
<p>Usually the only automatic determination of primary/secondary major occurs when a student wants to major outside his college within an institution. An engineering major in a college of engineering wanting to pick up a major in econ in the college of A&S, for example. The other exception is a major that can only be taken as a secondary major (e.g. South Asian Studies at Yale, Canadian Studies at Duke, Policy Studies at Rice, etc.).</p>
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