<p>Here are the top-50 undergrad schools in per capita PhD and Doctoral production from 1994-2003. Rank, followed by name, followed by number of PhDs per 1000 undergrads. This covers all PhDs and doctoral degrees included in the NSF data base. </p>
<p>Per Capita Undergrad Production of PhDs and Doctoral Degrees </p>
<p>Academic field: Foreign Language and Linguistics </p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: 1994 to 2003 from NSF database </p>
<p>Enrollment from 2004 USNews </p>
<p>Formula: PhDs divided by undergrad enrollment times 1000 </p>
<p>1 Bryn Mawr College 17
2 Amherst College 17
3 Grinnell College 16
4 Swarthmore College 15
5 Reed College 15
6 St John's College (Annapolis, MD) 15
7 Kalamazoo College 14
8 Harvard University 13
9 Pomona College 13
10 Yale University 13
11 Wellesley College 12
12 Williams College 12
13 Oberlin College 11
14 Dartmouth College 11
15 Carleton College 11
16 Barnard College 11
17 Haverford College 10
18 Mount Holyoke College 10
19 Smith College 10
20 University of Chicago 10
21 Middlebury College 9
22 Lawrence University 9
23 St Olaf College 8
24 Connecticut College 8
25 Georgetown University 8
26 University of the South 8
27 Knox College 8
28 Macalester College 8
29 Bennington College 8
30 Whitman College 8
31 Wesleyan University 7
32 Princeton University 7
33 Colorado College 7
34 Davidson College 7
35 Wabash College 7
36 Hamilton College 7
37 Columbia University in the City of New York 6
38 San Francisco Conservatory of Music 6
39 Hollins College 6
40 Occidental College 6
41 Brown University 6
42 Stanford University 6
43 University of Pennsylvania 6
44 Sweet Briar College 6
45 College of William and Mary 6
46 Randolph-Macon Woman's College 5
47 University of California-Berkeley 5
48 University of PR Rio Piedras Campus 5
49 Rhodes College 5
50 Earlham College 5
51 Lewis and Clark College 5
52 Washington University 5
53 Northwestern Univ 5
54 Kenyon College 5
55 Duke University 5
56 Dickinson College 5
57 Central College (Pella, IA) 5
58 Bates College 5
59 Goucher College 5
60 Colby College 5
61 Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) 5
62 Vassar College 5</p>
<p>Note 1: Some have complained that these lists don't provide useful data. Proposed Solution: ignore the lists. </p>
<p>Note 2: Some have complained that these lists don't include Law, MBA, MD, or Masters degrees. Proposed Solution: find the data and make your own list. </p>
<p>Note 3: Some have complained that I should go school by school and selectively remove engineering from one school or music from another, but leave them for still others. Proposed Solution: Be my guest.</p>
<p>What's surprising to me here is not seeing Middlebury among the top handful of colleges in this area, given its (in my opinion well deserved) reputation for languages. Of course they do come out fairly high nationally, but still I would have expected top 5.</p>
<p>I think you've stumbled on the value of these lists. To me, there are two main reasons:</p>
<p>a) to get an overall sense of the campus culture, especially whether or not there is a critical mass of hard-core academic types. Forget individual departments -- the same schools show up on these lists across the board. That tells me that these schools (not always super-high SAT schools) have a fairly serious academic culture. My assumption is that other schools (even some super-high SAT schools) are probably oriented in other directions, such as pre-professional or business. That's a valuable piece of information. I've not spent a lot of time at Middlebury, but its longstanding reputation is more in the direction of preppie/pre-prof. It is now known as a school for intellectual geeks.</p>
<p>b) In looking at a specific school, you can learn a lot and correct some misperceptions by seeing where they appear high on the lists and not. For example, I certainly would not have guessed, based on common-sense, that Swarthmore was a strong engineering school.</p>
<p>As to Middlebury and languages. Middlebury has grown 15% since 1994 and may have grown a bit in the years immediately preceding that. So, its number may be somewhat deflated. On the other hand, Middlebury (famous for its languages) had 35 language majors last year. Swat (not famous for languages) had 25 when you include linguistics. Considering that Middlebury is 50% larger, that's essentially a wash on a per capita basis. So, for whatever reason, the resources invested in languages in terms of department size, faculty, and course options aren't translating into majors at an exceptionally high rate.</p>
<p>This is sensible.</p>
<p>As for engineering, I have long known of Swarthmore and Harvey Mudd as the two leading "engineering" small colleges. (Of course, in reality Caltech is a small college at the undergrad level -- fewer students than Swarthmore, I recall [my brother went there].)</p>
<p>Yeah. But, Harvey Mudd and CalTech (to the nth degree) are pure tech schools, every bit the same as MIT. I actually wouldn't put either in the category of liberal arts colleges. I don't think people make that mistake with Caltech, but they do with Harvey Mudd. Actually, I see Caltech not so much as a college at all, but rather an muli-year internship at an incredible research lab. With under 900 undergrads, that is the ultimate "boutique" education in hard-core academic science research. For the right kid, it has to be an incredible place.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is really small, too -- under 800 students. But, the whole Claremont consortium is pretty unique. In many ways, it's like the School of Engineering (Harvey Mudd), the School of Pre-Law/MBA (Claremont-McKenna), and the School of Arts and Sciences (Pomona) at a mid-size university. </p>
<p>BTW, Caltech's President, David Boston, was the keynote speaker at the dedication of Swat's new Science Center on Friday. He was a Swartmore '62 chem major.</p>
<p>You'll notice I didn't refer to Harvey Mudd as a LAC, either, though it's in the LAC list here at CC.</p>
<p>Caltech is certainly an incubator of scientists and engineers, from the git-go. My brother did his BS and PhD there (physics). I've got an uncle who recently retired from the faculty there (geology), and he, too, did Caltech as both undergrad and PhD.</p>
<p>USNews lists Harvey Mudd as an LAC, too. I think it's a bit misleading. In reality, USNEWS should probably use the term "undergraduate" or "baccalaureate" college.</p>
<p>Right, Harvey Mudd is as much an LAC as is Juilliard or the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). The latter two fall into the category of "specialty" colleges in the arts.</p>