I’m just catching up to this thread and thank you to @AustenNut for starting it. His original post caught my eye since it mentions Hope College and has nice things to say about it. Obviously my current avatar is the Hope logo because my youngest kid is there, and will graduate in May with a BS in Computer Science as well as a double major in Classical Studies. i do think of Hope College as a school that “punches above its weight” and previously used that exact phrase in discussing how well Hope College fared in USNWR rankings of the availability of undergraduate reesearch projects. The Hope College website claims that: “Hope is consistently awarded more National Science Foundation grants for undergraduate research than any other liberal arts college in the country” which presumably helps explain why they fare surprisingly well on the undergrad research ranking (#22) compared to their overall ranking. Undergraduate research opportunities LACs vs National Universities - #29 by Corinthian
My older kid went to Pomona and is currently in a PhD program at Penn. My Hope student has no current interest in grad school. My Hope kid also had no trouble finding internships each summer (including an NSF REU) and before fall semester started he had a full time job lined up for after graduation.
I find it a little bit condescending that some posters suggest that if a lower ranked LAC like Hope is successfully placing PhD students, it must be because of poor advising. The Hope Physics department is particularly strong and has placed students into PhD programs at Stanford, MIT, CMU, CalTech, Purdue, Michigan State, etc. My kid was originally interested in majoring in physics and that was part of what drew him to Hope, which was otherwise an unlikely choice.
What you are seeing here are some posters who believe education at highly rejective institutions is just ‘better’ and all the various behaviors that might come from that perspective…a person is somehow ‘better’ or ‘smarter’ if they attended one of these institutions, an unquiet conceit, humble bragging, etc. It’s an unattractive look to say the least.
What we do know in the US is that most students attend a school based on the limitations of their parents’ wallets, and data repeatedly show that going to a highly rejective college for undergrad does not lead to a better job or higher career earnings (with the exception of limited income students who do end up at one of the highly rejective schools…an incredibly small number of students unfortunately).
At the highly rejective schools, and even at the outliers among those, like MIT and CalTech, there are still profs with their PhDs from schools Rockefeller U (A lowly R2 institution!), UCSF, Wooster, Reed, etc). As data show, across the full set of US colleges, it is not the norm for faculty to be tenured or on the tenure track, although many might have their PhD.
Most posters here have seen the gamut in their lives…high flyer kids/young adults who do go on to do impressive things, average students who have successful and highly lucrative careers, and the flip sides of both of those examples…for example, PhDs/former high flyers from top schools being unable to perform as a strategy consultant (or pick your job/industry), a PhD toiling in a dead end big pharma research job, and an average student in an average job living an average life.
"I find it a little bit condescending that some posters suggest that if a lower ranked LAC like Hope is successfully placing PhD students, it must be because of poor advising. "
Again- not what posters are saying.
There are some on this thread who believe that PhD production (if an undergrad institution can be said to “produce” future PhD’s) means that said undergrad institution has a-- use your own terminology- more elevated? more intellectual? more curious? environment, student body, etc.
That may or may not be true. It is CERTAINLY not what the data shows.
And then posters like me have pushed back with other things that the data does not show- but are plausible explanations as well.
I am a longtime fan of Hope, and did not state that it has poor advising. However, the same leap of faith that allows folks to assume that high PhD production is evidence of more intellectual engagement overall on campus, is the same leap of faith required to assume- well, anything. Because the data shows one thing (comparative PhD production) without any accompanying statistics to explain why.
Do we want to conclude that a person with a PhD in Communication Studies (yes, they exist) who did their undergrad at Southern CT State College ended up with said PhD because of the intellectualism and rigor that exists at Southern? Do we want to assume that every PhD in Educational Leadership with a BA from the College of New Rochelle (sadly, no longer in existence) or Albertus Magnus is motivated to get a doctorate because of the beehive of intellectual engagement they lived in as undergrads?
Some day you and I will have coffee IRL and discuss the “highly rejective colleges” which we agree are overrated/overblown. But until that day comes, I agree with you at a 20,000 foot level that mere “reputation” or branding is insufficient to understand the intellectual climate which actually exists on a particular college campus.
Way too many people are pursuing phds currently. Most of those people will be underemployed, and many apparently express regret/anger/anxiety about their professional lives. This statement should not be controversial and should be well-known in undergraduate education.
Given the above, one can reasonably question whether using phd production is a useful measure of anything.
Presumably at least some phd candidates will go on to successful careers, whether in academia or industry, and will be professionally satisfied. Undergraduate students and hopefully the faculty advising them ideally would have at least a somewhat realistic sense of their prospects, given the field of study, their relative ability, etc. If that we occuring regularly, we would not have the problem in the opening paragraph.
Field of study, relative ability AND an individual’s flexibility. You want to be in Chicago, Boston or LA? What about Toledo, Duluth or Rolla? Significant Other is a pediatrician and can find work anywhere- terrific. SO is an art historian; if s/he can’t find work at a university or museum, the backup is a major auction house. Hmmm… that’s harder. I know a lot of academics whose careers have become derailed over geography.
I don’t think your analysis is fair. Anyone pursuing a phd now has the odds of a professional academic life against him. Those odds can change based on factors like field of study, undergrad facility, etc. Clearly it is possible for anyone to beat the odds from anywhere. It is not elitism to assume that those from CalTech are more likely to beat the odds than those from Hope.
What strikes me as ironic, is that law enforcement- for example. Is there a better example of a societal institution which is in need of meticulous analysis and research, longitudinal data on outcomes, comparison of different philosophies (Finland vs. the US)? This has no doubt been studied by sociologists (a much maligned subject on CC). But somehow labeling it something that sounds pre-professional (nobody asks someone majoring in law enforcement or criminal justice “what are you going to do with that?” or “do you like folding sweaters at Old Navy?” makes it socially acceptable… AND a topic worthy of a doctorate. My guess is the same people who would go into cardiac arrest if their kid was getting a PhD in sociology are bursting with pride at the Law Enforcement PhD!
I do agree with all of that. What I was reacting to (and clearly didn’t articulate my thoughts well) is the glaring elitism and humble bragging that some posters are prone to, which generally don’t add anything to the conversation.
I do think that it’s fair for students who think a PhD may very well be in their future to assess the historical PhD production of the set of schools they have been accepted to. I also fear, like you and others have stated, that advisors, regardless the school they are at, might not have a full appreciation or understanding of the relative strength (or lack thereof) of a PhD outside of academic settings.
I acknowledge that you did not directly accuse Hope of poor advising. However you did offer the “poor advising” comment as a potential explanation for the surprising showing of lower ranked LAC’s in the data on PhD production. I also appreciate your saying you are a longtime fan of Hope. I’m not claiming that Hope’s PhD production is “evidence of more intellectual engagement overall on campus.” I’m just agreeing with the OP’s more modest proposition that certain schools “punch above their weight” and may deserve a second look. I don’t know that much about Calvin except that it is Hope’s friendly arch-rival. But I do know that Hope’s science departments have a history of successfully getting plenty of NSF funding.
But if you’re looking at the success tracks of people who get PhD’s, then isn’t it the elitism of the institution that grants the PhD that matters? So isn’t the (hypothetical) Hope Physics grad who goes to CalTech for her PhD as well positioned as the rest of her PhD cohort at CalTech?
I would assume all CalTech grads who are pursuing doctorates, are doing so in STEM. Surely that is not the case at Hope-some of its grads are pursuing non STEM phd degrees. As to how phds at the same place but from various colleges fare, I leave that to others.
That an institution may foster intellectualism and that it is perhaps a factor in an outsized number of its students going on to pursue PhDs is not the only reason a person from any college may go on to pursue a PhD. It doesn’t have to be in true in every specific instance for it to be true as a generalization.
I can anecdotally tell you my sophomore at a mid-ranked LAC (not on the overall PhD list but listed in certain categories), chose her school specifically for the rigor and intellectualism that would set her up for graduate school. The school absolutely fosters that atmosphere for kids already predisposed to it, and even those not predisposed to it benefit from it. Some of those kids who never would have seen themselves going on to graduate school will 100% go because they were a part of that culture. If they had gone to state U wherever, even a top flagship, they may not have, because, imo (and as a generalization), the small LACs can be better at helping kids recognize the potential that was always there, but that they sometimes didn’t quite see in themselves.
When questioned about some of the characterizations that seem to have been interpreted, people fall back on the idea that the doctorate is in a less than rigorous field. I’ve invited others to look into specific subjects (and @Andygp has included some info on the sciences), but nobody else seems to want to take me up on the offer.
Here are the top 50 schools for doctorate productivity in math & statistics adjusted for the size of the institution (source). I’ve bolded the ones I found surprising (and sometimes the surprise was because I don’t think of a school as particularly math-focused.
Cal Tech
Harvey Mudd
Princeton
MIT
Swarthmore
Pomona
Reed
U. of Chicago
Williams
St. John’s
Haverford
Carleton
New College
Grinnell
Scripps
Transylvania
Cooper Union
St. Olaf
Rice
Stanford
Harvard
Wabash
Bowdoin
Wheaton
Columbia
Rose-Hulman
Carnegie Mellon
Willamette
Bryn Mawr
Bates
Wellesley
Dartmouth
Brown
U. of Dallas
Whitman
Kenyon
Yale
Hamilton
U. of Rochester
Amherst
Bard
Oberlin
Clarkson
Ursinus
Rensselaer Polytechnic
Duke
Lafayette
UC-Berkeley
U. of Minnesota - Morris
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
So do people want to explain to me why someone might not become more interested in Transylvania or the U. of Dallas if they’re interested in math or statistics, if they’re hoping to find a certain mass of people who like to talk about math-related stuff? Of if someone is looking at small colleges in the southern central U.S., that this information might lead someone to look closer at U. of Dallas than Hardin-Simmons or Oklahoma City University, all three of which are similarly-sized, religiously affiliated schools in the same geographic area?
