<p>@JHS: With all due respect, Princeton’s admissions statistics for law school are pretty dismal, at least relative to those of Harvard and Yale. Those of us that acknowledge this are not “being silly;” on the contrary, I just wish I had known more about these statistics before enrolling.</p>
<p>[Stats</a> «*Office of Career Services « Princeton University](<a href=“Search Opportunities | Human Resources”>Search Opportunities | Human Resources)</p>
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<p>I’ll have to agree with JHS that this is truly silly and there is no evidence for it whatsoever. What is true is that there are fewer Princeton graduates at the leading law schools than graduates of Harvard and Yale. There is a simple explanation for this as JHS has already pointed out. Until just recently when Princeton increased its class size, Harvard sent 38% more undergraduates out its gates each year than Princeton sent out of its. Even after the recent increase in class sizes at Princeton, Harvard still graduates 26% more students each year than Princeton. Yale and Princeton class sizes are now about the same but up until just recently, each Yale class was about 12% larger than Princeton’s corresponding class. More total graduates obviously means more will appear in the law schools.</p>
<p>Princeton classes also contain a much higher percentage of engineers, a group with a far lower probability of applying to law school.</p>
<p>Those Princeton graduates who do apply to law school do very well indeed. Here are recent numbers for the LSAT averages among graduates from Princeton and some of its peers. The numbers vary from year-to-year given the small total number of applicants.</p>
<p>Average LSAT scores for college graduates</p>
<p>166 Harvard
165 Princeton / Yale
164 Stanford
163 Brown / Columbia / Dartmouth / Duke / MIT / Penn
162 Chicago</p>
<p>There was an article in the Daily Princeton this last year suggesting that Princeton graduates were not doing as well in their applications to the top law schools as the graduates of Yale. The journalistic flaws were obvious. Many of the top schools (including Harvard) do not publish their law school acceptance rates. Princeton and Yale, do publish these numbers (though Yale does not do so consistently) and the writer of the article compared them. The percentage acceptance rates were quite close though Princeton’s were slightly lower (37% at Yale to the top 12 law schools and 32% at Princeton). More important was the fact that the author of the article took the numbers for Yale from 2007 and the numbers for Princeton from 2008. The years 2008 and 2009 saw a larger number of law school applications due to the downturn in the economy with tougher competition for all, especially at the leading law schools, so acceptance rates tended to be lower than in 2007. This was a comparison of apples to oranges.</p>
<p>The second issue here is that the applicant pools represented by both of these sets of numbers include alumni. In fact, the vast majority of the applicants are alumni. In Yale’s case 78% of the applicants in 2007 and I would guess the number for Princeton was something similar in 2008. There is absolutely no way of knowing the academic profile of this random group of alumni applying in any given year. While the profile of the group of current students applying is probably more predictable the profile of the alumni applying could change far more from one year to the next.</p>
<p>So, we’re comparing statistics from one school for 2008 to statistics from another school for 2007. Even if the source data were from the same year, we have the problem that it is a single year comparison only and there is great variability due to the profile of the alumni who make up the majority of the applicant pools. I would have to say that the writer of the Daily Princetonian article could have been more careful in the analysis.</p>
<p>Finally, given the prominence of the engineering school (and the sciences) at Princeton, the following comparison might be of interest as well. Here are the most recent statistics normalized for the size of each school for the production of PhDs in the sciences and engineering.</p>
<p>National Science Foundation Study of the Undergraduate Origins of PhDs</p>
<p>Rank % of undergraduates going on to earn PhDs in Science and Engineering Fields Over Ten Year Period</p>
<p>1 35.2% CalTech
2 24.9% Harvey Mudd
3 16.6% MIT
4 13.8% Reed
5 12.9% Swarthmore
6 11.7% Carleton
7 10.8% U. of Chicago
8 10.5% Grinnell College
9 10.5% Rice
10 10.3% Princeton
11 9.9% Harvard
12 9.7% Bryn Mawr
13 9.5% Haverford College
14 9.1% Pomona College
15 8.7% New Mexico Institute of Mining
16 8.4% Williams
17 8.4% Yale
18 8.2% Oberlin
19 8.1% Stanford
20 7.7% JHU</p>
<p>[nsf.gov</a> - NCSES Baccalaureate Origins of S&E Doctorate Recipients - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/]nsf.gov”>Archive Goodbye | NCSES | NSF)</p>
<p>Are Princeton students more successful than Harvard, Yale and Stanford students in acceptances to PhD programs? Unlikely. What statistics like this show is again biased by the interests of the undergraduates. In this case, there is simply marginally more interest among Princeton graduates in pursuing PhDs in these areas. </p>
<p>Ivan, I look at that list, and I don’t get any negative reaction to it at all, with one exception. I see about 290 total acceptances to Top 10 law schools. I can’t tell how many unique applicants to those schools there are, but I doubt it’s more than 200, and maybe a lot less than that. I can’t imagine being a decent candidate for top law schools and not applying to Harvard or Yale. Now, obviously, some of those 290 acceptances went to the same people, but those numbers are consistent with what PtonGrad2000 reported – about a third of applicants to top law schools get to attend one.</p>
<p>Princeton has about a 1-in-3 success rate at top schools like Michigan, Georgetown, and NYU, and does better than 1-in-4 at Columbia and Chicago, 1-in-5 at Penn and Boalt. At Yale and Stanford, it’s about 1-in-6. Those are amazing numbers at tippy-top schools. How many other universities, besides Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, do you think have that kind of success rate on a base of hundreds of applicants? (I don’t know, either, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have to use lots of fingers to count them.) The number of Princeton students at Yale may be half the number of Yale or Harvard students, but it’s probably more than anybody else’s students.</p>
<p>The numbers that seem a little weird to me are Harvard and Virginia. Those seem low, and out of step with the others. Harvard sends out maybe four times the acceptance letters Yale does, and almost twice as many Princeton students applied there, so I have no idea why hardly any more were accepted. And the same goes for the Virginia numbers. In general, I am also surprised at the low success rate at some of the lesser law schools, but I have no idea what other colleges’ profiles there are. For all I know, the people applying to Duke or American or Northwestern weren’t that strong.</p>
<p>What would you have done differently had you known those numbers in advance? No one gets any guarantees.</p>
<p>With regard to Princeton vs. Yale’s numbers, I do know that Princeton, with a significantly larger corps of engineering, math and physics majors, has been sending a noticeably larger % of its graduating class to Wall Street, hedge funds, private equity funds, etc. now that that world is so quantitatively focused. Obviously, many of these kids would have made excellent law school candidates as well. I think the biggest feeders into the top tier financial firms and boutiques are Penn/Wharton, Harvard, Princeton and Yale in that order.</p>
<p>Conversely, a friend of mine who is a Harvard grad and a well known academic in the medical field, says that he tons of Harvard and Yale grads around the top medical schools, but far fewer Princeton grads. I don’t have any data to support this, except that anecdote. And can’t really explain it if it is true.</p>
<p>less people want to go to med school from princeton.</p>
<p>The tough grading system in Princeton does give Princeton students a hard time to get into top medical schools. No medical school will think that Princeton 3.4=Yale 3.8. Those are actually the averages of GPA from these two schools. But lesser medical school like UMDNJ may not mind to take Princeton’s 3.4.</p>
<p>^I do not believe Yale’s average GPA is 3.8. What is your source? I’ve seen these compared before and though I don’t recall the exact figures, the difference is smaller.</p>
<p>This was posted by a school administrator in the Student Doctor forum , although I don’t know from where:</p>
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<p>I would be surprised if most, if not all, med schools didn’t do the same. I’ve seen people affirm that law schools use the same method to compare undergrads from different schools with the LSAT and gpas.</p>
<p>I’m curious as to where your numbers came from. By my sources, Yale’s 70th percentile GPA in 2009 was 3.77, and Princeton’s 70th percentile GPA was approximately 3.57 (+/- .02) in 2010, inferred from some image manipulation. Of course no one would equate a Yale 3.8 with a Princeton 3.4; they’re definitely not equivalent.</p>
<p>Sources:
[Latin</a> honors generate little commotion | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2009/sep/09/latin-honors-generate-little-commotion/]Latin”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2009/sep/09/latin-honors-generate-little-commotion/)
[FAQ</a> - Office of the Dean of the College](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/odoc/faculty/grading/faq/]FAQ”>Grading at Princeton | Office of the Dean of the College)</p>
<p>Pton2000-</p>
<p>is there a source for your LSAT scores by university? Based on a quick web search, I couldn’t find any list of such data from LSAC or another established data provider.</p>
<p>OP-
There is no question that it is more difficult to get into medical school from Princeton than just about any other ivy or any other school except MIT and Caltech (I don’t know anyone personally who went to Caltech). The average GPA at Princeton is around a 3.3 I think and the average at Yale is a 3.5. Seeing as how you need a 3.75-3.8+ to be competitve for a US News top 25 program and 3.5+ to get into any U.S. allopathic medical school, you can see why alot of pre-meds at Princeton switch tracks during freshman year.</p>
<p>If one is a motivated student, the opportunities at Princeton are world-class. It is a great choice for those seeking PhDs in virtually any field. It is a great choice for people targeting Wall Street if they are varsity athletes or hold leadership positions at eating clubs. However, for those targeting medical and law school, there are defininitely better college choices.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>The source for the LSAT averages is the schools themselves. It’s a bit difficult to find and not all schools publish the information. Furthermore, these averages do change from year-to-year. If you register with LSDAS (Law School Data Assembly Service) this information is compiled and reported back to the individual schools. The LSDAS is also responsible for standardizing GPA information from schools with different systems of grading and curves and, as I understand it, they take grade distributions into account so that applicants from grade-inflated schools do not have an advantage over those from schools that are not so inflated.</p>
<p>Cmburns14, I believe you’re a Columbia College graduate, aren’t you? You could probably find these scores reported by your alma mater’s office of career services even if they aren’t available to the general public.</p>
<p>As for medical school admissions, Cmburns14 is offering truly bad information.</p>
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<p>I continue to be baffled as to the source of such bizarre assertions. There is absolutely no truth to this statement and Princeton graduates do extremely well in medical school admissions. In fact, there has been virtually zero effect from the new grading policy on the GPA’s of Princeton undergraduates applying to medical school. These students, who mostly major in the sciences, have always had tougher curves than the humanities students who were more affected by the new grading policy. Since the beginning of the change in the grading policy the average grade in the natural sciences dropped .02 on a 4.0 scale. </p>
<p>Here is some useful information regarding medical school admissions and Princeton applicants’ success.</p>
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<p>[FAQ</a> -*Office of the Dean of the College](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/odoc/faculty/grading/faq/]FAQ”>http://www.princeton.edu/odoc/faculty/grading/faq/)</p>
<p>It is important to note that only a handful of other schools in the country have Princeton’s record of success in medical school applications.</p>
<p>PtonGrad2000-</p>
<p>If it was unclear in my previous post, I want to reiterate that I have tremendous respect for the students at Princeton- they are easily among the world’s best- especially if you exclude varsity athletes and development cases- who together comprise probably 30-40% of the class. That said, Princeton grading standards are some of the most rigorous in the U.S., especially for the sciences. I believe students who gain acceptance to medical school at Princeton would have been admitted anyway from any other undergraduate institution. There is a significant pool of students who would have been admitted to medical school had they gone to a less competitve LAC or state school. </p>
<p>The stats you’ve quoted suffer from selection bias. If I have a 3.0, I’m not going to apply to medical school in the first place- and one needs a dean’s letter (i.e. school’s approval) on AMCAS anyway. </p>
<p>I am not a Columbia College grad- I did take a computer science class there at night in 2008 while working at Merrill Lynch. I’ve also taken classes at NYU and UCL. I’m an Oxford grad and I did an EECS masters at UC Berkeley in 2010- I am interested in college admissions because I tutored competitve kids who tend to apply to the ivies. I’ve mentioned before that my sister received her undergraduate degree from Yale and is now in medical school. She would have had a better outcome at a higher ranked school if she did not choose to major in MB&B and had attended a less selective university (economists call it peer effects).</p>
<p>Cmburns, I took no offense, but you are providing terribly inaccurate information to prospective students here.</p>
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<p>This is incorrect by orders of magnitude. </p>
<p>The percentage of recruited athletes in each class at Princeton varies from 15% to 20% in any given year, a percentage that is similar to its peers’ numbers. By the way, the concept of the ‘dumb jock’ is completely false at places like Princeton where the varsity athletes must still meet high academic standards and where those athletes often go on to win a significant number of post-graduate awards, including the Rhodes Scholarship. By development cases you are referring to those students who were given a significant advantage because of the potential for large gifts from their families. This is far rarer than some might suppose and never exceeds more than a handful of students in each class constituting significantly under 1% of that class. </p>
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<p>No, they don’t. </p>
<p>You are suggesting that the tougher grading standards at Princeton result in many discouraged students not even applying to medical school since they assume they stand no chance of admission. If this were the case, then, following the institution of the new grading policy, Princeton would have seen a reduction in the total number of students applying to medical school. This has not happened. In fact, the most recent numbers show an increase in applications to medical school.</p>
<p>Misleading or simply incorrect statements do a real disservice to the high school students who spend time on these boards seeking useful information.</p>
<p>On another note, I love the town of Oxford but I’m a bigger fan of the more open and bucolic setting of Cambridge. I’ve spent time at both places but not as a student. Are you a UK national?</p>
<p>Cmburns seems to suffer from the impression that all jocks are dumb and at Princeton they probably do not attend real classes. Unfortunately in this country there are many football factories and universities that have special majors for recruited athletes. It is a disservice to Princeton student athletes that spend 20+ hours a week on their sport to imply that they are not serious students. The students that I knew that had the best study habits were student athletes. Many athletes win Princeton and national academic honors. </p>
<p>Princeton has had 22 student athletes named Rhodes Scholars. As an Oxford grad I assume that you are familiar with this scholarship.</p>
<p>Princeton has had 300 student athletes win Academic All Ivy honors in the last 10 years.</p>
<p>Athletic participation may detract from academic achievement in the same manner as a student that spends 20 hours per week working on the Daily Princetonian or rehearsing for a Triangle show. The diversity of talents and interests makes Princeton a more interesting and vibrant community.</p>
<p>Pton-</p>
<p>By development cases, I meant the children of alumni as well. Typical alums do not have millions of dollars to lavish on gifts to Princeton- nevertheless, through the annual giving process, the tacit message is a quid pro quo- you consistently donate to the university and your child will be held to a lower admissions standard.</p>
<p>I probably don’t have to tell you that “unhooked” applicants to Princeton have to be significantly better academically than the jocks, URMs and legacies.</p>
<p>Jocks win the Rhodes Scholarship because it is geared towards athletic prowess, at least for very good students. Not too many science Nobel prize winners come from the ranks of former Rhodes Scholars. I am not a UK national but spent most of my formative years there.</p>
<p>The stats you refer to also include recent alums, who may have attended or taken pre-med science before grade deflation really took root. These applicants are likely to have fulfilled college physics, calculus, general chemistry and organic chemistry requirements over the summer at an easier school or in a post-bac.</p>
<p>I am certainly not trying to dissuade talented science students from Princeton- the faculty, labs and peers make it an incredible place for someone gifted enough to someday earn a PhD. Where Princeton is less than ideal, in my opinion, is for someone to manage a 3.75-3.8 that is needed for Harvard, Penn, Johns Hopkins, Wash U. and a 3.5, which is the cut off for most U.S. MD programs. It is extremely difficult to get a 3.75+ as a science major at Princeton. Science grading and the level of rigor is and has always been very high at Princeton, at least in the modern era.</p>
<p>I don’t think we are far apart on our views of Princeton at all. Having a sister who went through the unpleasant medical school application process recently, I would advise pre-med students to consider an honors program at a state university, the nurturing environment of an LAC or an accelerated program like Brown, Northwestern or Penn St./JMC.</p>
<p>There are paths of less resistance to becoming a medical doctor than studying nuclear physics at Caltech for example.</p>
<p>Wow. The Natural Science GPA is absolutely terrifying (just a little over 3.1). It means that an average Princeton student majoring natural science will not even be competitive for any medical school. He or she must take a lot of humanity and social science classes to buff up his or her GPA. Alternatively, Princeton may have to screen for pre-med students to achieve over 90% admission. If I understand correctly, the table includes both undergrad students and undergrad alumni. A 3.1 GPA is going nowhere in medical school application, regardless which university you are from.</p>
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<p>cmburns–this is a truly uninformed statement and I’m not sure on what basis you’re making it. Children of alumni generally have higher test scores than other applicants and are usually quite accomplished. While this might be, at least in part, the result of affluent parents who can make sure their children attend good schools, get tutoring when needed and are exposed to a number of activities, sports, cultural offerings etc., there is simply no evidence that legacies are less qualified than other Princeton students. Legacies at Princeton, as at many many other schools, receive a significant boost in the admissions process, and we can debate whether that’s appropriate, but they are generally extremely qualified. Development admits are probably not held to the same standards at any school, but there are very few of them in a given year.</p>
<p>Cmburns, it’s difficult to know where to begin here but I’ll start by echoing a bit of the previous post.</p>
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<p>This is absolutely not true. </p>
<p>Princeton gives some preference to alumni children (as do all similar schools) but there is absolutely no preference given to alumni children whose parents contribute regularly to Annual Giving as opposed to those legacies whose parents do not contribute. Let me repeat that–absolutely none. The only ‘development’ cases (and only some of these are alumni children) are those where the potential donation is in the tens of millions of dollars. Even a million dollar donation to Annual Giving will not put you in this class.</p>
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<p>Cm, you are pulling these beliefs of out of thin air. </p>
<p>The numbers and percentage acceptance rates I cited above for the years 2004 through 2010 are about 50% graduating seniors and 50% recent alumni. Do you have any evidence that the 50% who are recent alumni are “likely” to have done their premed prerequisites somewhere other than Princeton? Do you have comparable statistics from other schools? Here’s a little simple math. If the current medical school acceptance rate for all Princeton applicants is 93%, then the lowest acceptance rate these current undergraduate applicants could have had would have been an 86% acceptance rate and this would have required the other 50% who, according to your theory took their prerequisites at an easier school, to have had a 100% acceptance rate. Now, really, how likely is that? Even assuming that the alumni were more successful than the current undergraduates, it’s nearly impossible that the current undergraduates could have had less than a 90% acceptance rate (with a 96% acceptance rate for the alumni). There are very few schools in the country with a 90% acceptance rate to medical school.</p>
<p>Here’s the bottom line. Since the institution of the new grading policy there has been no drop in the number of Princeton undergraduates applying to medical school or in their rate of acceptance to those schools.</p>
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<p>It is tough but not “extremely difficult”. But this has always been true and it is currently true at Princeton’s peers as well. The highly inflated GPAs at other schools come from those majoring in the humanities rather than in the sciences. Also, as I noted above, since the institution of the new grading policy, there has been virtually no change in the GPAs of students majoring in the sciences.</p>
<p>These numbers, drawn from a public website compiling the statistics for thousands of medical school applicants may shed some light on this.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/9601150-post9.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/9601150-post9.html</a>
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<p>My, you two (Underachiever and cmburns14) certainly invite a great many ‘corrections’!</p>
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<p>Okay, you have me confused. Where in the world did you get that GPA number in reference to medical school applicants from Princeton?</p>
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<p>I’m afraid that all evidence is to the contrary. Princeton graduates are among the most competitive in the nation for medical school. </p>
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<p>Princeton does no screening whatsoever. Anyone wishing to do so can apply to medical school from Princeton and will be given the support of the institution.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, the accepted GPA average is 3.4 and all applicant 3.3 (based on information two years ago from the office of career development). 3.4 is still not a good GPA for medical schools. Perhaps Princeton 3.4=Michigan State 3.8 in some of the second tier medical schools?</p>
<p>“Princeton does no screening whatsoever. Anyone wishing to do so can apply to medical school from Princeton and will be given the support of the institution.”</p>
<p>There are only 50-60 undergraduate students and equal number of alumni applying for medical school annually. This looks pretty suspicious of screening already occurring. It is well known fact that gap year classes and medical related activity help medical school applications. Medical training is a long process, and younger entrance will make one’s life easier. It appears that large number of Princeton students are not ready to apply for medical school in senior year, and are forced to take gap year to fulfill the requirement. Is low GPA a factor in this? I don’t think that Princeton’s strategy of saying that “our Bs are better than your As” will work for most of the applications.</p>