A crude way to get at department strengths is by alumni-earned doctorates per capita.
Here are a few colleges that have relatively high PhD production in a few fields:
Anthropology … Bryn Mawr
Arts & Music … Oberlin
CS … Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd
Earth Sciences … Carleton, Colorado College
English … Amherst, Oberlin
Math … St. Olaf, Williams, Harvey Mudd
Oceanography … Eckerd
Physics … Reed, Harvey Mudd
Political Science… Pomona
Psychology … Smith, Vassar, Wellesley
Religion,Theology … Wheaton College
The PhD numbers seem to corroborate my own limited knowledge (based on personal observation or anecdotal reports) about which departments are relatively strong at which colleges. However, like nearly any other metric, this one is liable to distortion by confounding factors. So I think these measures are better for distinguishing the good from the average than for distinguishing the very good from the good.
@mastadon, @intparent, FWIW, here’s this year’s rankings on Princeton Review’s “Students Study the Most” list, as determined by student surveys:
Harvey Mudd
Olin
Caltech
.
.
.
MIT
I don’t take it as gospel or anything, but it’s a data point. Suffice it to say that students work their butts off at all the schools on this list. “Greater support” at HM and Olin just might mean that they are a fair bit less miserable while they’re doing it.
Interesting point about PhD numbers. Is it safe to assume that people choose LAC over universities when they plan to take PhD route vs. going into industry after graduation?
That is true but there are many reasons. College professors send their kids to LACs at a much higher rate than the general public, so a career in academia is just something these kids have always wanted or grew up knowing.
Harvey Mudd is not the typical LAC, however. It is one of the very few STEM only schools that are known as LACs.
@Ballerina016 - Yes, they are. (Though you lose some of the benefit because now you have to pay for summer housing.) My S is a freshman and he is staying for the summer to do computer science research. Part of that will also be attending a conference with his professor who is presenting.
I agree with @csdad2 - Academically you can’t go wrong with any of these choices. At this point, it’s a matter of fit and what one is looking for in size of school, location, “culture” etc. (Of course, I’m biased towards Mudd, myself. )
@OnTheBubble -My comment is more a reflection of me and how wimpy I am about the cold. I can relate to anyone who wouldn’t want to live where it’s cold.
The extent to which PhD production reflects selection effects v. treatment effects is, I think, an open question for social science research. Keep in mind though that the numbers indicate PhD completions, not just graduate school applications or enrollments. Just because a Christian College attracts many students interested in religion doesn’t necessarily mean that most of their students who want PhDs in religion/theology actually will get them.
People can (and do) use those numbers as well. It depends on what we’re trying to track.
However, I suspect that the quality of an anthropology department has a bigger impact on PhD completions in anthropology than the academic quality of any department has on “students working in financial services”.
I may be wrong. It may be the case that businesses in the financial services sector do have a very keen understanding of which academic departments at which schools provide the best training for their needs, and therefor do more recruiting/hiring from those schools.Nevertheless, most liberal arts colleges (almost by definition) don’t consider it their mission to provide job training for the financial services sector.
I don’t think it’s safe to assume that. Some schools with high PhD production numbers are not LACs (examples: Harvard, UChicago, MIT). Not all LACs have very high PhD production numbers. Claremont McKenna for example is a very selective, highly-ranked LAC that does not have especially high numbers of alumni-earned PhDs per capita.
This thread is reaching a yet higher level of hair splitting, discussing the relative quality of 3 of the best STEM undergraduate programs in the world. Please don’t try to split the hair over and over again. Pick the one you feel most at home at:)
I realized that we are trying to pick from 3 of the best STEM programs, but they are not equal. MIT is the strongest of them all, but it is on the opposite coast. Caltech is in our back yard, but not the best for CS. Harvey Mudd as much as I like the school, does not have the same name recognition as MIT and Caltech. I hope we will get more clarity after attending admitted students weekend at Caltech and Harvey Mudd and results of her interview for Harvey Mudd scholarship.
HMC has plenty of name recognition on the west coast. I have met a lot of new people in Seattle lately, and when we talk about our kids and I mention Mudd, at least half the people know about it and comment on it being a good (or difficult) school. It is equal to the others in tech employment in Silicon Valley and other tech hotbeds in the west. Also well known by grad schools if she wants to take that route. I agree that at this point you are splitting hairs – have her visit all 3 and go where she is comfortable.
“Mudd appears to be less intense academically (they don’t have a beaver as a mascot)”
This is nonsense. Harvey Mudd might be the most difficult college in the USA. It is the only school where students are expected to complete a full curriculum in their science/engineering studies, yet also complete a common core in the liberal arts.
Your uncle Jerry might not have heard of Mudd, but rest assured that every tech employer and grad school will jump at the chance to grab a Mudd graduate. There are not very many of them, and they are in incredible demand.
@Ballerina016: I feel like the comments you posted in #29 miss the mark and are not helpful in deciding between these schools. They are factors that aren’t really significant in this situation. Yes, in many CS rankings, MIT is at/near the top – but that doesn’t mean it’s always the best choice. Caltech might not be quite as renowned in CS, but overall it is still one of the top STEM schools in the country. The kind of name recognition differences involved here are probably not relevant either – that may depend on what your daughter plans on doing, career-wise, but if she’s looking at these three schools, likely any of them can help her get where she wants to go.
Rather than worrying that Caltech isn’t as good as MIT in CS, think about things like: Is your daughter absolutely set on CS? Might she change majors? What other fields/majors is she interested in? How are these schools in those fields? Is she interested in particular areas of CS? Do these schools have people working in those areas? Does she have feelings about the different environments at the schools? Size, location, M/F ratio, research, campus culture, climate, distance – there are a lot of factors that can go into that, I’m sure I’m not remembering some important ones. Yes, these schools aren’t equal, there may well be significant factors that point one way or another, but rankings and name recognition aren’t those factors.
I also hope that your daughter is actively involved in the process to choose between these schools – it’s what’s the best fit for her that is probably the most important thing here.
I can only concur with all the other posters that making a decision between these schools based on “name recognition” is quite misguided. A kid who applies themselves at any of these schools is going to have bountiful opportunities. Other factors like fit should absolutely carry the day here. There is not a tech company or grad school in the country worth its salt that hasn’t heard of (and thinks highly of) all these schools.
@ballerina016 - You are right. These schools are different. Beware of parents that claim to be experts in Engineering/CS after reading Fiske’s guide. I will try to find time later to provide more info. Computer Science/Computer Engineering is a very broad field, do you know which areas interest you most?
Presumably, if the OP’s D had areas of specific interest, that would factor into the decision.
In agreement with many of the posts, these are the highest quality STEM schools. All three will be a very intense education. Name recognition within the technology community should not be a problem. In the general community:
“my child goes to Harvey Mudd”
“HARVARD MED!???!”
If you don’t know the person, you can leave it at that. If you need to, you can engage in further, more detailed conversation to educate the person about how great Harvey Mudd is.
It’s amazing how Caltech – home of the Jet Propulsion Lab, highest average SAT of any school in the US, and some of the very most cutting-edge engineering and theoretical physics in the world – is mistaken, by some, for a community college/DeVry type of school.
Who is in charge of their PR/Marketing? Maybe they need to achieve some better brand placement in movies and undertake a big promo campaign.
hehe
Seriously, even if Caltech’s CS rating is relatively low, it’s Caltech: it’s still going to be very good.
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