I think drop outs are there of course and that is OK. Live life on your own terms and don’t blame the parents for being an xxxx-up when you are 50 years old 
For me all my closest high school friends have done PhDs from USA from premier R1 schools and most have come back to India. No one dares to claim they worked “hard” while doing a PhD
My son has friends that are at various T5 places in their fields and with the exception of one place they say that they are overwhelmed. Things are moving fast. At the end of 4 years it is you that needs to have a certain number of high quality publications to land a tenure track position at a top 10 place that you thought was your target when you started. No one forces you into these things. There are a wide spectrum of possible outcomes based on what effort the kid puts into the process. Especially as the academic market has become toxic in terms of what demographics can place into a tenure track job and what demographics find it hard.
And I have friends on hiring committees at top 10 places in some of these STEM fields who tell me that they get 100-150 resumes for each open position, and there are a myriad of considerations as to what DEI mandates they need to satisfy etc.
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I feel tenure track position in T10 is really coveted position. You should either be a super genius or extremely hard working in most cases both. It is like securing admission to undergrad in T10. Well it is tough and it should be.
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Not much objectionable here. Life sciences PhDs from 2010-2018 with origins restricted to small private colleges. Many of the top names are there too in addition to some of the “surprises”. What would be amazing would be to know not only the source but also the destination. I am sure NSF has that data but probably can’t publish due to privacy reasons. May be someone can do an aggregate level flow analysis from origin schools to destination schools. That will make the picture very clear.
Another one for Chemistry PhDs. Here Kalamazoo is quite high and it goes higher per capita. It totally makes sense considering the investments that they are making in Chemistry area.
I haven’t read the full thread, so I may be repeating. The table below lists the percentage of undergrads earning PhDs, which I find a more easy to interpret format. This is total number of bachelor’s degree recipients receiving PhDs in 2010-20 / total number of bachelor’s degree recipients in 2001-2011, as listed at NCSES.
Some college groups that are overrepresented include selective colleges, tech colleges, and LACs. If “punching above their weight class” means higher PhD rate than expected based on selectivity, Reed stands out to me. Reed had a 44% admit rate in 2021 and was among the top 2 non-tech colleges in rate of PhDs. With 42% of students earning PhDs, Caltech also “punches above their class” of highly selective colleges. Caltech is in a class by itself.
Colleges With Highest Rate of Undergrads Earning PhDs (2010-2020 PhD Recipients)
1 . Caltech – 42%
2. Harvey Mudd – 30%
3. Swarthmore – 23%
4. Reed – 20%
5. MIT – 19%
6. Carleton – 19%
7. Grinell – 16.5%
8. Chicago – 16%
9. Haverford – 15.5%
10. Pomona – 15%
If you are interested in outcomes for a specific college, most list some kind of outcomes information, although it may be limited to plans soon after college. It may not include persons who pursue PhDs later and may include persons who do not complete their PhD. For example, Brown shows the following at 10 years out:
Percentage of Brown Alumni with Grad Degrees at 10 Years Out
Any Grad Degree – 54%
Master’s – ~21% (Most common field is education)
MD – 10%
JD – 10%
PhD – 8% (Most common field is biology)
MBA – 7%
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What does this tell us?
That student bodies at Reed (ACT 30–34) and MIT (35-36) are more similar than they appear, and that if PhD is your goal, Reed may even eek out an advantage?
Or that this list is simply comparing apples and oranges?
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Reed would have an advantage if all other factors were similar.
For example if PhD is your eventual goal Caltech may be much better than MIT, that is most certainly clear from the list. Compare two LACs similarly if one is producing more PhD that may be more suitable within LAC space. For example Harvey Mudd is clearly better than Pomona.
Being part of one list doesn’t make any colleges peers. This is true in any narrow criteria based ranking system.
It is quite interesting that people hate ranking based on PhD productivity so much
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Another example. USN does ranking based on capstone project. Within that College of Wooster is #2 and Princeton is #1 ranked. Some years it is flipped That doesn’t mean these two are peers by any means. Just means Wooster probably has an excellent undergraduate thesis/project program and that can be considered as a positive factor for people who are interested in doing that.
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If PhD is your eventual goal, and either MIT or Caltech are your choices for an undergrad, you will do a PhD in either case. What is happening here though, more likely, the institution is affecting your preferences on whether you even want to go and do a PhD. This particular analysis that is being conducted in this thread is conflating correlation with causation. There could also be some self-selection of science oriented kids leaning Caltech on the margin (vs engg oriented kids). MIT is also on the east coast, as an example some of the class goes into Finance in some shape or form – it is simply a question of exposure. Likewise Caltech kids probably lean tech on the margin.
It is not a question of Caltech providing better training for a PhD bound kid that MIT cannot.
We should at least not be talking about Reed, MIT and Caltech in the same sentence. This particular sentence exempted of course.
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This is precisely what happened in our older’s case. Had admissions to both, went to MIT with an intention to go PhD route, graduated in 5 semesters with three published papers (including one solving an open problem in TCS published in a world’s top venue), and took advantage of an opportunity that wasn’t even on his radar when he was writing those college applications that provides both intellectual environment and quality of life second to none.
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Haha exactly. Correlation vs causation is impossible to differentiate unless you have large data or add your personal bias on top of it.
Make multiple lists based on multiple factors and then combine them with your personal bias, abilities and chances to the best you can.
Why is it so upsetting to see Reed somewhere close to MIT on some one single parameter?
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It is not upsetting. It is just funny that an attempt is being made to put them on the same list close together.
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I think the main reason why Caltech had a greater proportion of its students pursuing PhD than MIT historically was because a greater percentage of Caltech students majored in the sciences historically than that of MIT (the opposite was true in engineering). Once upon a time, nearly 50% of Caltech students majored in physics, for example. Students majoring in the sciences are far more likely to pursue PhDs. This is changing, however, because of the popularity of computer science. At both MIT and Caltech, CS is now by far the most popular major (up to 40%), and many students who would have majored in the sciences are now choosing CS. The vast majority of CS students at both schools don’t go on to enroll in PhD programs.
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That is because for that parameter they are close together. Reasons of why they are close together may be any and many. Data doesn’t lie unless calculation mistake is done. Interpretation, reasoning and usage of the outcome of the analysis can be different.
As I said USN ranks the capstone projects and Wooster and Princeton are next to each other in that ranking.
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Yes future will most certainly be different considering the craze for CS.
Incidentally, this supports the theory that a choice whether or not to pursue a PhD is a function of not only intellectual curiosity (inasmuch as it’s even something that can be measured across a single scale), but also of opportunities available after completing the undergrad.
Career options with a bachelors in physics or biology make for a very different calculus in assessing future education plans vs someone in CS or engineering, even if both sets of kids start college with a grad school in mind.
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