Prestigious Undergrad?

Graduate School
20

<p>
[quote]
I would be interested in seeing really comprehensive data on this topic, although I doubt it's readily available.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I'll try to do the best I can.</p>

<p><a href="http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/...ceremonies.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/...ceremonies.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Since 2000, the number of newly minted Caltech doctorates who did their undergrads at MIT, for the years from 2000-20005, is 6+4+3+2+3+4 = 22</p>

<p>In that same time, the number who came from Williams College was
1+0+0+0+1+1=3</p>

<p>Amherst
1+0+1+2+0+2=6</p>

<p>So MIT is represented about 2.5 times more than Williams and Amherst. MIT has about 4000 undergrads, whereas Williams and Amherst combined have about 3500. On the other hand, almost all MIT graduates are graduates of technical subjects, whereas only a fraction of Williams and Amherst graduates come from technical subjects, and these schools don't produce any engineering students for the obvious reason that they don't even offer engineering. </p>

<p>Or consider the statement made by Harvey Mudd about how 40% of Mudd alumni hold doctorates. You might contend that maybe they are all just going to scrub doctoral programs. I think the following statement belies that assertion.</p>

<p>"Graduate schools most often attended by recent graduates: Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, the University of Texas at Austin, and Yale"</p>

<p><a href="http://www.hmc.edu/highlights/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hmc.edu/highlights/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Not a scrub in the bunch. </p>

<p>Now look. I'm not trying to say that the LAC's are better than MIT or any other research university or vice versa. I think it's far more fair to say that LAC's are better for certain people. Research universities and LAC's have different strengths and weaknesses and therefore cater to different people. </p>

<p>However, I will definitely assert that I think people need to have more respect for the LAC's. Furthermore, the LAC's prove that you can deliver a fine education without having famous researchers as profs or without having large-scale research infrastructures. I believe that LAC's are getting a quite respectable percentage of their students into top-notch doctoral programs despite not being able to offer major-league research facilities to them.</p>