<p>Oberlin looks awesome, but I'm just curious as to the success rate of its grads in finding placement in grad/prof school. What sort of law or grad schools do former Oberlin kids attend?</p>
<p>It is the oft quoted statistic that Oberlin produces the most PhD's of any LAC.</p>
<p>Oberlin has an impressively high rate of students going on to graduate school and law school -- top schools included, such as Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>a chart of PhD production rates is here: <a href="http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/assessment/phd.html%5B/url%5D">http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/assessment/phd.html</a></p>
<p>I wonder why Harvey Mudd College was left out of this chart? It is a liberal arts college. They are very high PhD producers in the sciences and engineering. When adjusted for size (which this chart wasn't) HMC is at the top in many fields.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd got classified by somebody as a "liberal arts college", along the way, according to some criteria, but isn't it actually an engineering specialty school, like Cooper Union or Rose-Hulman or Olin? How many English majors graduate each year from Harvey Mudd? Political Science majors? ( spoken) Language majors? HIstory? Sociology? Art History? What exactly is "liberal arts" about it anyway? I await education.</p>
<p>To me, the PhD production rate of an engineering school is not that relevant, when comparing "real" liberal arts colleges, with comparable majors, to each other.</p>
<p>Only a handful of "real" liberal arts colleges even offer an engineering major at all, and even when they do its never a preponderance of students involved.</p>
<p>It seems to me these are not even vaguely comparable institutions, though I may be educated otherwise. Why is it categorized any differently than Cooper Union or Rose Hulman? Or are they "liberal arts colleges" too? but then what proportion of people considering Oberlin or Kenyon, and not Carnegie Mellon, etc, would care about future careeer pospects of Harvey Mudd engineers? Or Cooper Union engineers?</p>
<p>Next they'll start calling The Culinary Institute a "liberal arts college", and lets compare their PhD rates, in their mostly or totally incomparable majors, with Grinnell & Macalester.</p>
<p>Mudd is not an engineering specialty school. US News categorizes Mudd as a liberal arts college (as does Mudd itself). Mudd graduates must take a third of their credits in non math/science/engineering subjects. As part of the Claremont consortium students can, and often do, minor in a wide array of non-math/science/engineering areas, and are required to choose an area of specilization in the liberal arts. About half or the graduates are majors in engineering, but the rest are in math, sciences, and a few in humanities or social science areas. Students can have a major at any of the consortium colleges if they choose. </p>
<p>I think comparisons of PhD production in math and the sciences ARE appropriate among liberal arts colleges that claim high PhD production in those fields. </p>
<p>Off the top of my head I can think of a a couple that have stong engineering programs--Swarthmore and Lafayette, for example. </p>
<p>BTW, Reed College publishes an abbreviated weighted bacchalaureate origins chart--it includes universities as well. See:
REED</a> COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY</p>
<p>I prefer a weighted listing because it adjusts for the size of the school. Even better would be a link to the full, current database from which Oberlin derived their table.</p>
<p>Does it really make sense to distinguish top LAC's and PhD and JD producers (to the extent that is an alluring thing for a student or parent -- it is to me, but I went to graduate and law school...) and parse among them to see which produces the greatest percentage vs. number? Oberlin produces one of the highest numbers and percentages of PhD's of any LAC in a wide array of fields, and has done so consistently since they tracked this stuff. For music, it is so far ahead of any other LAC that it is off the charts; perhaps that is true of Mudd for math...after all, that is their specialty, just as music, including academic music, is one of Oberlin's greatest strengths.
There are big differences in culture among these schools, which is of far greater interest to prospective students. I don't know if Mudd and Oberlin are similar; it seems that Reed and Oberlin have much in common, but reputationally, Reed and Oberlin are different enough that a visit to both would be warranted. In music, there would be no comparison.</p>
<p>Again, for students with PhD ambitions in particular fields, these percentages can reveal where the strongest departments, and best research opportunities as well as mentoring reside. On the weighting for size question, some LAC's school's populations are twice the size of others, so yes, it helps to adjust for this. For a future PhD in math/science/engineering who wants an undergrad LAC experience, Mudd's as strong an option as any LAC, because of the consortium arrangement. </p>
<p>No argument about Oberlin's strengths or differences from Reed and Mudd; it just seemed a bit disingenuous of Oberlin to leave HMC out of their LAC PhD production table. </p>
<p>I liked the larger comparison (including universities), because I debated where the best undergrad education would happen in the sciences--in a large research university or in a more nurturing LAC environment? My own background was in large research settings, so I knew the good and the bad. It was a revelation to see statistics showing that LACs did a better job for their undergrads. Maybe this is common knowledge in law, the OP's interest. </p>
<p>Do you know how to access the Higher Education Consortium's current report, from which Oberlin derived the chart? I am guessing you are on staff there or an alum?</p>
<p>I am neither staff nor alum - I'm a parent. If you want more precise information about sources for Oberlin's chart, you could contact the institutional research people at Oberlin. I see nothing disingenuous about the information; on the contrary, it says what it says...make of it what you will. Statistics get you only so far in any case. Oberlin has some very strong departments; one could study, let's say, Classics at Reed or Oberlin or Harvard or Berkeley. The quality of the teaching, the level of student interest, and other factors that are difficult to calculate with precision can be more important than just how many students go to graduate school in the subject or how many faculty members there are. Thus, at Oberlin, there are 4-5 professors in the department, but it is one of the most popular majors, with more undergraduates finishing each year than Harvard, with four times the faculty and more students in the graduating class. It is safe to say that going to Oberlin can be a great choice for students who are academically engaged and imagine going on in their fields.</p>
<p>One reason that Mudd doesn't feel like an LAC is apparent from the fields in which it is in the top 10 of future PhD production:</p>
<p>Chemistry, physical sciences, math & computer sciences, sciences & engineering, physics, biological sciences.</p>
<p>Likewise, Oberlin feels more like a traditional LAC:</p>
<p>History, humanities, political science, social sciences, English literature.</p>
<p>And why do Mudders want to be lumped together with the other LACs? Mudd is a fabulous school with its own unique identity!</p>
<p>Disclosure: Two of our best friends (brothers) each attended one of these schools, and both later earned PhDs.</p>
<p>"One reason that Mudd doesn't feel like an LAC is apparent from the fields in which it is in the top 10 of future PhD production:</p>
<p>Chemistry, physical sciences, math & computer sciences, sciences & engineering, physics, biological sciences."</p>
<p>I'd be surprised if that looked much different than Cal Tech or MIT !!</p>
<p>FWIW, other colleges of engineering besides Harvey Mudd, eg Cornell, Columbia, also require or facilitate substantial coursework in liberal arts areas. Though I am too lazy to look up percentages. Though evidently they are also similar in that they do not have any or significant # of majors in these areas of liberal arts. Of course, in like fashion, courses in these subject areas are available to the students in the engineering college through the affiliated colleges at their universities.</p>