I think some posters just have a very hard time ever accepting anything even potentially positive about schools that aren’t highly selective/elite.
Of course no one wrote anything remotely close than this. For that reason, it is perhaps pretty telling regarding the pushback.
Or seeing anything positive in an outcome that doesn’t involve making 6 figures straight out of undergrad.
Or we could just doubt that Bryn Mawr is so much more intellectual than Columbia…
See the list above, Number 7 vs 15. Or 14 vs 43. Isnt that exactly what you think the purpose of such a list is? We all know that doing well at almost any college will give one a chance at grad school if one wishes. One can get to grad school from anywhere. So does it matter if CalTech or MIT sends more for phds? Why? How about med school? Law school? Hedge funds? Why would this one datapoint be the mark of intellectualism anywhere?
Whatever the purpose, I don’t think the list was presented as an absolute ranking of which schools were “more intellectual.”
My understanding and experience is somewhat limited to STEM field. Within tha I do feel:
Majority of the PhDs are done full time and not while doing some other job.
Decision to do a PhD is probably not a commercially inspired although may lead side benefits like promotions or O1 eligibility.
Most of them would not be done just because you are not getting paying job.
In general guidance on “whether to do a PhD or not” should not be required at junior or senior year. However, support post decision can certainly make taking the selected path easier/feasible.
In research it is necessary to tolerate a lot of crap in the hope that some gem may get unearthed at some point.
Why is informed guidance not a good thing? Indeed if the faculty has the student’s well being in mind, they should at least share the facts of life, whatever those are that are pertinent to a student’s situation.
Perhaps viewing this as a “ranking” is where part of the misunderstanding arises. I was only mentioning the surprising schools and their ranks because when there’s 100 schools on a list and I’m trying to show that it’s not ranked #99 and just trying to squeak in, as if their inclusion is not as valid. Including their ranks was more of an attempt to indicate that they’re in the thick of things, as it were. Is it saying that #3 is better than #7 which is better than #11 which is tons better than #34? No. Many posters think that kind of delineation between schools in rankings like USNWR are pretty pointless, and I don’t think they’d be wrong to think the same way here. The point, however, is making the list is an achievement/honor in and of itself. The data are saying that these schools are producing similar results in the area of doctoral recipients. It’s kind of like the Oscars…it’s an honor to be nominated. Except here, the nominations are based on the data of how many of their alums earned a doctorate.
No campus, whether Princeton or Portland State, is filled entirely with one type of student. Some are more pre-professional (which does not exclude the possibility of them being intellectually curious as well) others are party-hardy, some dream of living in the ivory tower the rest of their lives, etc. However, a school’s inclusion on this list indicates that there is probably a sizable enough pool of people on a campus who are intellectually curious.
Isn’t it very clear already based on online data and discussions on social media platforms? Yes one could always add value from personal experiences to this data. But if you do phd from a mediocre school you will probably not get a tenured track position unless it is with an advisor of phenomenal influence should be clear to every student in junior/senior year?
Surely you are not saying that every PhD is more intellectually curious than every non-PhD?
But it does sound like you are saying that percent of eventual PhDs is still some sort of a high quality proxy for intellectual curiosity of the undergraduate student body.
I would agree that might be the case all other things being equal. But they are rarely ever equal.
If it were that clear, so many people wouldn’t be going into a PhD, and subsequently doing 2-3 post docs etc.
I feel being part of top phd producers just means exactly that. The environment is conducive to doing PhD after bachelors. Whether that is a positive or negative depends on the person to person.
By no means I feel this should be used as sole criterion for deciding the school, it would be worse than using any of the rankings as the sole factor. They are at least aggregate of multiple factors. This one is just one of the factors which could positive or negative depending on the person.
However, if you are thinking of doing a PhD then considering this as a positive factor is legitimate. Dissing that this happens only because of negative factors like people are misguided or people are not finding jobs is not a right view to take IMHO.
Why not? Many people like that relaxed environment where they can be intellectuals as well as party around.
Also at least in Berkeley post docs paid really well in engineering. This is @20 years back. @80% of salaries in corporate at that time. Plus you could start your own companies while doing work which you intensely enjoyed.
No, I am not saying that.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a high quality proxy, but it is an indication in its favor/likelihood. Going back to one of the original links in my first post (this one), here is info on schools in Illinois that produced doctoral recipients between 2010-2018.
The first three schools on the list (UIUC, U. of Chicago, and Northwestern) probably aren’t a big surprise to anyone. But then we see that Southern Illinois - Carbondale is the fifth school out of 28 on the page with 510 doctoral recipients. We find out that its undergrad population is 8,147. Using the same proportion idea I used earlier, I get a .062 proportion. If I compare it to Southern Illinois - Edwardsville (undergrad pop. 9,967) with its 194 doctoral recipients, I get a 0.19 proportion. Knowing virtually nothing about either of these schools except that I’m pretty sure neither charges out-of-state students a different tuition rate than in-state students, I would guess that there’s probably a bigger pool of intellectually curious people at the Carbondale campus based on this one data point. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. But I’d think the odds are in my favor.
If I look at the list and see Loyola Chicago (11,819 undergrads, 399 doctoral recipients, .033 proportion) and DePaul (14,294 undergrads, 328 doctoral recipients, .022 proportion), two schools that I have a better sense of that are all roughly in the same size category, then that gives me a sense that perhaps there might be at least a similar proportion of intellectually curious students at Carbondale as at those two, and perhaps even more. Again, maybe I’m right and maybe I’m wrong, but it’s a way of making educated guesses when you’re unable to make visits or don’t know as much about a college as it hasn’t been mentioned 20k times on the forum.
As Illinois’ Wheaton is 6th on the list with 421 doctoral recipients and 2,341 undergrads (.179 proportion), I think there’s a pretty good chance that this is the Wheaton that made Dataverse’s list of schools producing PhDs while accounting for the school’s size.
Looking at this same Illinois list, it would appear that Illinois Wesleyan and Augustana might have a more intellectually curious environment than Olivet Nazarene and Elmhurst, even though they’re all relatively small schools. For a student who’s looking for a small, less expensive option in the midwest, this could be an easy filter to determine where one should start researching. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s probably generally good guidance.
So if we see schools of the same type (baccalaureate, master’s, doctoral, etc) that have a similar or higher proportion of doctoral recipients, then we might be able to make a comparison with schools that we are familiar with. Thus, it’s a way to find some “hidden gems.” According to the College Board, there are 2,152 4-year colleges in the U.S… I’m not naive enough to believe that they all provide a high-quality education to their students. But I do think that there’s more than the 100 or so of the “known” schools that are high quality, and that this is a data point that could help to identify more of those schools. Thus, the inclusion of some of the “surprising” schools I’ve mentioned in previous posts would be indications of other schools that are likely to be hidden gems, too (at least hidden to most CCers).
There are a large number of fields that are not called engineering or don’t have some other industry applicability where this is not true. And postdocs are not getting paid 80% of industry these days.
this is what confuses me-few high school students have the experience or perspective to understand what pursuing a phd involves or whether they are a good fit for it (apparently many still lack that self-awareness at age 22 as well). Even if the lists could be used as suggested, it is unlikely that high school kids would make informed decisions of where to attend based upon their premature decision to pursue a phd at some later point.
Yes I am sure they are not but I am sure say 80-90k even in North Bay area is enough live OK life. And again even if it is not, I feel it is not true to say that someone is doing a postdoc only because they don’t find jobs outside. I personally know a few folks in AI who for many years shunned football player level salaries and did POST DOCS in Berkeley/Stanford etc.
That may be the case for other STEM fields also. For NON-STEM I do not know many PhDs so I will not comment on their situation intellectually or materialistically.
But that is not the only factor that one should use. However, if the current desire is to pursue PhD (which may change in future) then what is the harm in using this as one of the factors on the positive side in your decision making?
This brought a smile to my face.
It reminded me of my own reason to do a PhD many decades ago. I thought academic life had 3 month summer vacations. I was spectacularly wrong.
My son tells me that grad school is 80 hours/wk in his chosen STEM field (he is not doing it). I cannot believe the subsequent post doc in a competitive lab or with a well known prof will be surfing in the afternoon, and wine and cheese in the evening :-).
You’ve been through the grind, and I don’t need to tell you, but we certainly need to have the kids read some of this stuff before they make these decisions: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/06/new-research-graduate-student-mental-well-being-says-departments-have-important
Anecdotally my son tells me that 50% of the people that he knows that have gone into grad school for either Math or TCS have dropped out within 2 years. He finds the number shockingly high, and suspect it is not fully representative of the broader population. Still … Competent kids that have gone to good places.
One doesn’t need a desire to get a PhD (at 17 or 22) to know that they would like an environment where there’s a mass of folks who have that as an interest. From my core group of college friends, there are two MDs, one JD, an M. Div minister, an M.M. musician, and me (started on the PhD path but dropped out and only have an M. Ed and 30 hours in the other field). So, none of us have PhDs. But all of us knew in high school that we were intellectually curious folks and there are some “peripheral” friends who did get their doctorates and some who never went past their Bachelor’s. It’s not thinking that you want the degree…it’s thinking that you’re likely to enjoy a similar intellectual environment as people who end up getting PhDs.
Hehe this I would say is one off case. 95% of the PhDs from my department would not dare to claim they had to work this hard. That only happens for some weeks or if you get a really horrible advisor.
Of course some people work 16 hour days but usually that is out of choice and if you don’t want to usually no one forces you.
