<p>Sakky, 99.99% of students do not apply to a college because they want to win a Rhodes scholarship! So why should some obscure criteria to the vast majority of students who will Ever attend that college used be as factor in assessing that college? The odds of winning a Rhodes Scholarship make the chances of getting into Harvard look like a cakewalk in comparison!</p>
<p>Knowing that certain colleges have produced a large number of Fulbright scholars (particularly if that information is taken as a per capita measure) could certainly tell you something about the school. Fulbrights are specifically international in their focus, so if you are a student looking for a college experience that will have an international focus, knowing that many past Fulbright scholars have come from that school is valuable information, whether you intend to apply for one yourself or not. The same could be said of the other scholarships (with the exceptions of the Rhodes and Marshall)...they all have a specific focus and seeing many such awards being given to attendees of the school you are looking at helps. I don't think it should be that huge a factor in evaluating a school, but it does at least tell you something.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sakky, 99.99% of students do not apply to a college because they want to win a Rhodes scholarship!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Of course! 99.999% of all students around the world won't even apply to an elite college at all. Heck, there are plenty of countries in which simply graduating from college (*any * college) is a major achievement. Even in the US, only 27% of all Americans age 25+ even have a bachelor's degree. </p>
<p>But the fact that the vast majority of people out there can never even dream of winning a Rhodes is not the point. The point is, of those handful of students who actually do think they have a shot at winning the Rhodes, what college should they go to? What is undeniable is, like what Alexandre said, there is a small coterie of schools that is unusually successful in having its students win the Rhodes. In the US, there probably only several hundred high school seniors who can seriously think about becoming future Rhodes winners (given that there are 32 US Rhodes winners every year). But for these several hundred, where should they go, if they have the chance.</p>
<p>I'll put it to you this way. Think about football. Only a small percentage of high school seniors can seriously contemplate making it to the NFL. But if you happen to belong to that small percentage, and playing pro ball is your dream, then you have to very seriously consider choosing a major football powerhouse school. </p>
<p>
[quote]
So why should some obscure criteria to the vast majority of students who will Ever attend that college used be as factor in assessing that college? The odds of winning a Rhodes Scholarship make the chances of getting into Harvard look like a cakewalk in comparison!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Again, I never said that it should count for the vast majority of students. The vast majority of students won't even graduate from college at all. Heck, a significant percentage won't ever even step foot in college, much less actually graduate. </p>
<p>What we're talking about is criteria that actually counts for the very top students. Let's face it. College rankings generally only matter for the very best students. The average student doesn't care about who's #1, or even who's #100, because he'll never go to such a school. After all, there are more than 2000 4-year colleges and universities in the US, and thousands more community colleges. Plenty of people never even go to college at all. Heck, a significant percentage of Americans don't even graduate from * high school *. These people obviously couldn't care less about what the top-ranked college is.</p>
<p>But the best students do care, and they should. Just like the overwhelming majority of people couldn't care less who is going to care about who will become the next Parade Magazine High School Football Player of the Year. But the top football prospects care. And the top college football programs certainly care.</p>
<p>Uh, plus in general having more Fulbright/Rhodes/Truman/Marshall scholars generally correlates with having a more high-achieving student body overall...I think people going to top colleges seek that.</p>
<p>You want me to prove that its "better to be around students" who are high-achieving?</p>
<p>I mean, thats what one of my goals was when I applied to colleges, and thats what most kids who go to top schools wanted too - to be around intelligent succesful people.</p>
<p>"Are you saying there are no "high-achieving" students at Berkeley? I think there many more high-achievers at Berkeley than there are more at Dartmouth!"</p>
<p>Actually, I never said that at all. I don't know what you are talking about. And you probably don't either.</p>
<p>What I said was: Fullbright and other scholarships tend to correlate with having strong students, and being around strong students is something many students seek.</p>
<p>Did I mention anything about Berkeley not having good students? No, not at all.</p>
<p>"I don't know what you are talking about. And you probably don't either."</p>
<ul>
<li>I'm sorry but that's just funny....</li>
</ul>
<p>dude joshua, I just don't know what you are talking about. </p>
<p>I was talking about why more Fullbright scholars is good for a school. </p>
<p>Somehow you thought that meant Berkeley doesn't have any talented students. Please explain yourself further.</p>
<p>One comment on my original post - the Yale number was not accurate - it appears the Fulbright.org site left off the last page of scholars including the second half of the Yale recipients. The correct number is 16 undergraduate scholars, 31 total including graduate scholars, as PosterX has previously noted. </p>
<p>Thought I'd look at two other measures - Fulbright scholar acceptance rate, ie number of scholars per application, and # of scholars per capita (using undergraduate student size).
<a href="http://us.fulbrightonline.org/documents/research.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://us.fulbrightonline.org/documents/research.pdf</a>
<a href="http://us.fulbrightonline.org/documents/ba_level.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://us.fulbrightonline.org/documents/ba_level.pdf</a>
<a href="https://us.fulbrightonline.org/documents/instit.pdf%5B/url%5D">https://us.fulbrightonline.org/documents/instit.pdf</a></p>
<p>Schools that did not separate out undergraduate from graduate awards are marked with an asterisk and are therefore over-ranked. Schools that separated awards still clumped total applicants and are marked with ?. I included schools with at least 5 recipients and award rate of at least 1.0/1,000 students (got too tired to complete the list).</p>
<p>Top recipients of Undergraduate Fulbright Awards 2006<a href="Total%20#%20of%20undergraduate%20awards/#%20of%20applicants,%20percent%20acceptance%20rate,%20undergraduate%20size,%20awards%20per%201000%20students">/b</a> ranked by awards per 1000 students**</p>
<p>Pitzer 15/49 30% 963 15.6/1000
Pomona 11/32 34% 1533 7.0/1000 (2007: 21 awards, 13.7/1,000)
Swarthmore 10/29 34% 1479 6.8/1000
Smith 16/38 42% 2642 6.0/1000
Kenyon 9/15 60% 1661 5.4/1000
Bowdoin 9/22 40% 1666 5.4/1000
Grinnell 7/17 41% 1577 4.4/1000
Williams 8/12 67% 2017 4.0/1000
Amherst 6/22 27% 1623 3.7/1000
Brown 22/? 39% 6176 3.6/1000
Middlebury 8/16 50% 2455 3.3/1000
Wellesley 7/24 29% 2331 3.0/1000
Yale 16/? 33% 5409 3.0/1000
Princeton 8/? 24% 4906 2.6/1000
Duke 14<em>/43 33% 6534 2.1/1000
Hopkins 11/? 24% 5678 1.9/1000
Penn 18</em>/105 17% 9841 1.8/1000
Wesleyan 5/23 21% 2764 1.8/1000
Northwestern 14<em>/60 23% 1.7/1000
Dartmouth 7/26 27% 4110 1.7/1000
UChicago 7/? 27% 4671 1.5/1000
Stanford 10</em>/61 16% 6576 1.5/1000
Columbia 10/? 30% 7319 1.4/1000
Vanderbilt 9<em>/24 38% 1.4/1000
Harvard 9/? 26% 6,649 1.4/1000
Cornell 15</em>/54 28% 13515 1.1/1000
WUStL 8*/21 38% 7466 1.0/1000</p>
<p>Added these two... large student body dropped their per capita rate.</p>
<p>UMich 21<em>/76 28% 23467 0.8/1000
UCBerkeley 21</em>/68 31% 23482 0.9/1000</p>
<p>Agree with many posters that this data is only a small piece of the pie, but food for thought...</p>
<p>This is an excellent list, do you happen to have a full list or did you just crunch the numbers for those schools listed above?</p>
<p>Just me, the raw data, and a #2 pencil... got school size data from USNWR. I take full credit for any errant calculations.</p>
<p>Do you happen to have the numbers for the other schools? </p>
<p>i.e. how far does the list go down?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Top recipients of Undergraduate Fulbright Awards 2006 (Total # of undergraduate awards/# of applicants, percent acceptance rate, undergraduate size, awards per 1000 students) ranked by awards per 1000 students</p>
<p>Pitzer 15/49 30% 963 15.6/1000
Pomona 11/32 34% 1533 7.0/1000 (2007: 21 awards, 13.7/1,000)
Swarthmore 10/29 34% 1479 6.8/1000
Smith 16/38 42% 2642 6.0/1000
Kenyon 9/15 60% 1661 5.4/1000
Bowdoin 9/22 40% 1666 5.4/1000
Grinnell 7/17 41% 1577 4.4/1000
Williams 8/12 67% 2017 4.0/1000
Amherst 6/22 27% 1623 3.7/1000
Brown 22/? 39% 6176 3.6/1000
Middlebury 8/16 50% 2455 3.3/1000
Wellesley 7/24 29% 2331 3.0/1000
Yale 16/? 33% 5409 3.0/1000
Princeton 8/? 24% 4906 2.6/1000
Duke 14<em>/43 33% 6534 2.1/1000
Hopkins 11/? 24% 5678 1.9/1000
Penn 18</em>/105 17% 9841 1.8/1000
Wesleyan 5/23 21% 2764 1.8/1000
Northwestern 14<em>/60 23% 1.7/1000
Dartmouth 7/26 27% 4110 1.7/1000
UChicago 7/? 27% 4671 1.5/1000
Stanford 10</em>/61 16% 6576 1.5/1000
Columbia 10/? 30% 7319 1.4/1000
Vanderbilt 9<em>/24 38% 1.4/1000
Harvard 9/? 26% 6,649 1.4/1000
Cornell 15</em>/54 28% 13515 1.1/1000
WUStL 8*/21 38% 7466 1.0/1000
[/quote]
</p>
<p>When it comes to the Fulbright, there are some dangers in focusing on a single year. For example, this is a similar table for the prior two years combined: </p>
<p>
Pitzer ..... 13 51 25% 963 6.75
CMC.............15 36 42% 1139 6.58
Yale ...... 48 175 27% 5409 4.44
Smith...... 23 59 39% 2642 4.35
Wellesley. 19 66 29% 2331 4.08
Pomona .. 12 70 17% 1533 3.91
Columbia. 54 182 30% 7319 3.69
Harvard U. 45 197 23% 6649 3.38
Swarthmore 10 47 21% 1479 3.38
Princeton 32 133 24% 4906 3.26
Grinnell ... 10 24 42% 1577 3.17
Northwestern 14 47 30% 2300 3.04
Stanford. 37 138 27% 6576 2.81
Brown ----------34 98 35% 6176 2.75
Bowdoin. 9 30 30% 1666 2.70
Duke..... . 33 117 28% 6534 2.53
Johns Hopkins 28 100 28% 5678 2.47
Chicago... 16 73 22% 4671 1.71
Kenyon ... 9 20 45% 2642 1.70
Penn....... 33 154 21% 9841 1.68
Wesleyan 9 31 29% 2764 1.63
WUSTL -------- 21 63 33% 7466 1.41
Dartmouth 11 38 29% 4110 1.34
Middlebury 5 12 42% 2455 1.02
Amherst College 3 15 20% 1623 0.92
Cornell --- 21 120 18% 13515 0.78
Williams... 3 13 23% 2017 0.74
</p>