Too much emphasis on 'well-rounded'?

Parent Cafe
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You might argue that colleges which produce large numbers of PhD's is a college with lots of kids who have families happy to support them financially for another 5-7 years or so

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<p>You might argue that, but it wouldn't explain the high production of PhDs at places like Earlham that dwarf any of the "elite" northeast schools in terms of percentage of students qualifying for financial aid.</p>

<p>If anything, I would argue just the opposite. Law and Med School generally require family resources, while PhD programs usually provide a subsistance-level pay in exchange for teaching undergrads.</p>

<p>You are rejecting one measure because it is not precise. That's fine, but then you have to reject all empiric measures because none of them are precise. For example, median SAT scores are hardly a precise measure of anything except perhaps family income.</p>

<p>Why does UChicago produce PhDs at a higher rate than Northwestern or Duke? Why does Haverford produce PhDs at a higher rate than Davidson? There are differences in these schools and, by and large, the PhD production rates appear to correlate quite closely with readily apparent characteristics. For example, you see very few "party schools" near the top of the list. And, while many (if not all) schools that produce a lot of PhDs also produce a lot of med, law, and biz professional careers, it would be hard to mistake most of them as having a decidedly pre-professional bent.</p>

<p>BTW, I don't like the term "intellectual". I think a better term is "academically-focused" to indicate a student body that leans towards academic-type careers: teaching, research, think-tank research, public policy, etc. That is certainly the case at Harvard, where even their graduate schools are known to produce large percentages of research or academically oriented MDs, law school professors, etc.</p>

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It's an interesting question since one criticism that has been leveled at HYPSM is that they are far more pre-professional than LACs.

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<p>I don't think the data supports that criticism. To be sure, HYPSM (like all expensive elite schools catering to the rich and famous) have a very large pre-law, pre-med, pre-biz cohort. But, of the universe of schools catering to the well-heeled crowd, I don't see HYPSM as being notably pre-professsional. In addition to their Future Ivestment Bankers of America students, all of these schools have large contingents of geeks who ultimately pursue nerdy careers as college professors, researchers, or public policy wonks.</p>

<p>When a staggering 14 out of every 100 graduates gets a PhD. (as is it the case at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard) it is difficult to argue that these schools are more pre-professional than other schools.</p>

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<p>"You might argue that colleges which produce large numbers of PhD's is a college with lots of kids who have families happy to support them financially for another 5-7 years or so-- Mini-- bet you have the data on family income and PhD production! However, we agree to disagree.</p>

<p>You also need to look at the raw numbers of kids who get scooped up by banks and the like, and not the percentage."</p>

<p>The skew is there, but the data more closely associated (at top colleges and universities) is race and first-in-family college attendence. The number of African-Americans (and Hispanics) who go on to Ph.D.'s is so small as to be an oxymoron. Some of this is attributable to mentoring not being as strong at predominantly white colleges (my alma mater is currently struggling with this, with AA students - who are also much less likely to be involved in sports -- also much less likely to sign up for tutorials, or to do thesis.) More of it, however, has to do that with the fact that a Williams or Swarthmore or Mount Holyoke or Harvard minority grad (regardless of income class) is more likely to go med school or law school, or gravitate toward a higher paying occupation like banking. The skew will be greater among those who are poor, and are less likely (often for the sake of their families) to put off income-earning occupations for 5-7 years. This is even stronger for first-generation families where, besides the above, they are more likely to gravitate toward teaching and social work. I'd be willing to bet that, even among the top 25 LACs and uni's, you'll find an association between lower Ph.D. productivity and first generation college status, and hence little or nothing to do with "intellectualism" (except in a white, middle-class, college-educated family kind of way.)</p>

<p>The comparative Ph.D. numbers don't really tell you much except that among some good students at better private colleges, a Ph.D. might be considered desirable. (But this could be true for better students at public colleges as well.) For many, including many very top students, though, it isn't particularly desirable, which is why it isn't a particularly good measure to begin with</p>

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<p>Maybe the recruiters are HYPSM grads....</p>

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<p>Not, apparently, Blossom's old boss. But the point of a liberal arts education, at Harvard or elsewhere, is to produce graduates who are flexible, can read critically and write cogently. Some companies value those traits. And if they do, they are likely to recruit among the top colleges.</p>

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<p>Mini:</p>

<p>I don't know about first generation. But, there appears to be a correlation between the highest per capita PhD producers and the schools with the highest percentages of non-white, non-US students. Schools with large percentages of white US students tend to produce fewer PhDs than comparable schools with lower percentages of white US students.</p>

<p>For example, MIT has the highest percentage of non-white, non-US students of all east coast schools, with Harvard second. These two schools produce a LOT of PhDs - 18 of every 100 grads for MIT and 14 of every 100 grads for Harvard.</p>

<p>The same correlation shows up when comparing schools a little further down the food chain. For example, Haverford and Davidson are identical by virtually any measure (USNEWS rank, SAT scores, etc.). Haverford (72% US white) produces 14 PhDs per 100 graduates. Davidson (86% US white) produces 7 PhDs per 100 graduates.</p>

<p>I don't think that it is that simplistic. But, if you look at the list of top three dozen PhD per capita producers in the country, you see schools that have very clear reputations for being academically oriented, seriously "braniac" schools relative to many other comparable schools (with similar SATs, etc.). There isn't a single "fluke" or aberration among this group as far as I can tell.</p>

<p>It's quite striking from top to bottom and would be even more striking if you corrected for incoming SATs (which would move Earlham, Beloit, Smith, Holyoke even higher up the list). I can't find a single school on this list that I wouldn't charcterize as a school with rigorous, intellectually-challenging academics and a lot of serious students (as opposed to Joe College types). In fact, these 36 schools would make a fantastic starting point for a college list for any student planning to take college academics seriously.</p>

<hr>

<p>Number of PhDs per 1000 graduates </p>

<p>Academic field: ALL </p>

<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database<br>
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database<br>
Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000 </p>

<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period<br>
Note: Includes all NSF doctoral degrees inc. PhD, Divinity, etc., but not M.D. or Law. </p>

<p>1 California Institute of Technology 358
2 Harvey Mudd College 247
3 Swarthmore College 211
4 Reed College 199
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 183
6 Carleton College 168
7 Bryn Mawr College 158
8 Oberlin College 157
9 University of Chicago 153
10 Yale University 145
11 Princeton University 143
12 Harvard University 143
13 Grinnell College 141
14 Haverford College 138
15 Pomona College 138
16 Rice University 131
17 Williams College 127
18 Amherst College 124
19 Stanford University 114
20 Kalamazoo College 113
21 Wesleyan University 110
22 St John's College (both campus) 106
23 Brown University 106
24 Wellesley College 104
25 Earlham College 100
26 Beloit College 96
27 Lawrence University 95
28 Macalester College 93
29 Cornell University, All Campuses 90
30 Bowdoin College 90
31 Mount Holyoke College 89
32 Smith College 89
33 Vassar College 88
34 Case Western Reserve University 87
35 Johns Hopkins University 87
36 St Olaf College 87</p>

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<p>Wait. I thought MIT was the intellectual academic spark school and CalTech was the preprofessional high stat grade grubbers. These numbers leave me confused.;) JK. (But does anyone have an 'splaination?)</p>

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<p>I must say that I have been quite surprised by the fervor and magnitude of the response to my post. I think a few commenters, achat comes to mind, got at what I was trying to say quite eloquently (and probably did a better job than even I could).</p>

<p>I agree that to surmise that there is an ‘elect’, some genius that deserves to be admitted to these schools, that is somehow intellectually superior, is patently FALSE. But that’s not what I claimed.</p>

<p>Based on these friends’ experiences (and their backgrounds, which from my previous experience with CC would suggest that they would be crapshoots), I had to conclude that something other than a relatively arbitrary, or even variable, process was at work. They got into these schools with surprising regularity. I confirmed this when I went to several of these schoools’ admit weekends and saw that many other students had been just as heavily cross-admitted. Many were not athletes, URMs, legacies etc…</p>

<p>I postulated a hypothesis as to what might explain this phenomenon. It seemed that thhe big differentiator was what I perceived as a very intangible quality, ‘intellectuality’, as I called it “a thirst for knowledge, a jocular quality, playfulness, questioning.”</p>

<p>I made a number of important disclaimiers:
“the college application serves as an (admittedly imperfect) tool to decipher [this]”
“plenty of people who do possess this quality don't necessarily get accepted to Harvard or Stanford. It is no binary whose presence is always openly and readily discerned” (as an aside, perhaps one of my most intellectual peers is a student at Georgetown. Do I feel differently about him because he isn’t at Yale? NO!)
“This is not the only quality top schools look for”
I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that this is a tentative explanation that would suggest why some candidates do better than others at getting into HYPS. It’s not an end-all, be-all theory.</p>

<p>A number of posters made quite legit critiques, including DoneMom, yulsie, NorthStarMom.</p>

<p>Now, there were some SERIOUS problems with what I wrote. Someguyordude’s mockery of my text was HILARIOUS, and correct. I have a somewhat pompous style, but give me a break – I’m not even in college! Besides, perhaps I employ latin phrases or ‘long words’ because I find them more accurate, because they add wit and verve to my writing. To attack me for using them seems like a mild form of Pol Pot’s regime, which singled you out as an intellectual (to be executed) if you wore glasses. An F. Scott Fitzgerald quote comes to mind, but I fear that noting it here would only bring more castigation.</p>

<p>Frankly, I can take criticism of my writing style, but I am DEEPLY HURT when people assume that I am arrogant or feel self-superior because of what I wrote. I intentionally omitted characterizing myself beyond some simple background facts to avoid this. NOWHERE do I say that I possess this spark.</p>

<p>I get the feeling that some of this anger has to do with a feeling of moral desert that’s attached to getting into a top schools. When I mentioned that this goes against some peoples’ sense of an egalitarian meritocracy, I was speaking of an American kind of merit. We like to believe that with hard work and dedication, ‘passion’, anyone can reach any level of achievement. Furthermore, we see elite schools as a kind of top achievement, and a reward for working hard in high school.
I find this odd. Few in Europe would assume that people at top schools are there because they’re better people, or that you deserve to go to a top school. Rather, getting in is seen as a function of some kind of ‘smarts’ (I’m not going to pick apart ‘intellegent’ vs ‘intellectual’ here). This is a healthy attitude. Universities are communities of learning, and their task is first and foremost to find people who will contribute to that learning. That means that some people will have it an others wont.
But why do some among us have to attach such moral significance to such discrimination? After all, going to HYPS doesn’t make you a better person. I never said it does. I never said these friends of mine are good people, or that I’m somehow better for having gotten into school X. </p>

<p>Does it then make me arrogant and pompous to postulate, that you can attribute unto different people different levels of ‘intellectuality’, and that top schools might consider such a measure?</p>

<p>Finally, let me address some particular criticisms.
I have nothing against PENN or schools other than HYPS. For example, both of my parents have degrees from Penn, it is an amazing school. I just didn’t list it because among most of my friends, and many other cross-admits I met, Penn was not one of the schools they were deciding between, even when they had been admitted.</p>

<p>Additionally, as to how I know these people: I know none of the ‘20’ I mentioned from IMing. If the web did not exist, I would still know all of them. Small sample size? Yes. But I also know plenty of people who weren’t admitted to HYP. I’m also extrapolating from them. And I’m also extrapolating from all the people I met at YPS (no, I didn’t get into Harvard. Boo-hoo, big deal).</p>

<p>Finally, I think someone asked why I was posting at 3am. I’m in a non-US timezone. No, I not on CC at 3am by my time.</p>

<p>I guess I may have misrepresented myself, but I consider myself a nice and generally down to earth guy who was just trying to say something a little controversial. If anyone wants to email me or send me a PM, please go ahead. I’d be happy to talk to you, and maybe convince you I’m not an aloof ****-head after all.</p>

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<p>Both CalTech and Harvey Mudd are incredibly small, with less than 900 undergrads.</p>

<p>There is an unmistakeable correlation between small size and high PhD production -- although it is hard to pinpoint exactly why. Is it simply a mathmatical artifact (smaller denominator)? Or, indicative of an underlying difference in the style of education and, therefore, career paths? Beats me.</p>

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<p>interesteddad, I don't have a clue either. Does seem really aberrant though, doesn't it? Maybe someone who has attended can speak to the enormity of those numbers for CalTech.</p>

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<p>Ah, but you forgot my earlier post - an anti-business bias among a certain segment of the college population (combined with a low percentage of blue-blood business connections) will account for a higher percentage of Ph.D.s among a colleges (Earlham is a GREAT example.) </p>

<p>"There is an unmistakeable correlation between small size and high PhD production -- although it is hard to pinpoint exactly why."</p>

<p>No evidence for that whatsoever, when compared with equivalent students (GPAs, SATs, family income, race, etc.). We could dozens, even 100s, of little colleges with virtually no Ph.D. production. I'd be willing to bet (but I've seen no data) that, in the main, the honors colleges at the top (and largest) public universities have Ph.D. rates just as high. But I don't know that it matters much - for the vast majority of students, a Ph.D. is not a particularly desirable educational outcome.</p>

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<p>Curmudgeon:</p>

<p>I don't know much about tech schools, but I don't find the CalTech number surprising. With the research environment at CalTech and only 871 undergrads, I have to believe that the educational experience is very much along the lines of a 4-year research internship. </p>

<p>If that is the case, then it would be easy to see how it is an incubator for future science and engineering PhDs.</p>

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<p>lki,</p>

<p>Did your friends or their parents have any economic characteristics in common? For example, did they all check 'no' for the 'applying for financial aid' question?</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Ah, but you forgot my earlier post - an anti-business bias among a certain segment of the college population (combined with a low percentage of blue-blood business connections) will account for a higher percentage of Ph.D.s among a colleges (Earlham is a GREAT example.)

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<p>I don't believe than an anti-business and low blue-blood percentage account for the high PhD production rates at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Pomona, Williams, Amherst, and Stanford.</p>

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<p>audiophile, no there weren't any common economic characteristics. In fact, I would say that at least 90% did apply for finaid. I don't know exact numbers, but I know that more than just a couple had EFCs significantly below 10k a year.</p>

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<p>You wanted comparisons AMONG colleges with high Ph.D. rates. As I noted, there are hundreds of little colleges that produce almost no Ph.D.s whatsoever. In the larger scheme of things, I don't think there is anything in the data that needs explaining, because the data itself is equivocal.</p>

<p>But again, what rates of Ph.Ds measures is rate of Ph.D. production. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and for the majority of students, it just isn't particularly beautiful relative to other options.</p>

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<p>Back to the OP-- I apologize if I hijacked your thread.</p>

<p>If your question was, "does my kid (or anyone else's kid) who is a serious student, and has invested her non-classroom time developing "the life of the mind" have a good shot at the Ratings-designated top schools in the country (just to use shorthand; I'm not implying that they're the best, just that some arbitrary magazine has deemed them the top ranked schools) then the answer is an unequivocal no, unless you are from South Dakota, first generation college, have an interesting life story to tell (i.e. boat person, overcame incredible hardship, live in a homeless shelter), or your father is Michael Bloomberg or mother is Jane Fonda.</p>

<p>Could she get in? Absolutely. Is it a slam dunk? Even from one of the categories I designated... not a slam dunk, but her chances go up substantially from the microscopic to the "it could happen". The cold hard fact is that these schools are looking for evidence that beyond "the life of the mind" something else has been developed.... artistic talent, musical skill, the ability to throw a football really far, leadership ability, compassion for the less fortunate which results in a tangible project, etc. I'm not saying your daughter doesn't have these.... nor making a judgement that these are the "what counts factors" in college, but the evidence suggests that pure academic prowess isn't enough at two dozen or so schools.</p>

<p>Now-- factor in Physics olympiad winner, Intel, the landscape shifts.... but then these are the outward manifestations of intellectual interests, which gets back to the original dilemma....</p>

<p>And to mini-- we rarely agree but I love you so. On the subject of the significance of PhD's as a metric for anything other than the number of PhD's-- at last we've found common ground!</p>

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As I noted, there are hundreds of little colleges that produce almost no Ph.D.s whatsoever.

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<p>Assuming that we are talking about schools in, say, the top 500 in terms of admissions selectivity, I can't find any small schools that don't produce large numbers of PhDs relative to more selective large schools.</p>

<p>For example, Vanderbilt, Berea College, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, and Millsaps College all produced 4.7 PhDs per 100 graduates over the most recent 10 year period.</p>

<p>Likewise, Mills College, Pitzer College, and Emory University all had the same rate of PhD production, despite the fact that Emory had, by far, the highest admissions selectivity.</p>

<p>I share your opinion that getting a PhD is not necessarily a desireable career path. However, the schools that produce large numbers of PhDs appear to be schools characterized by "learning for learning's sake" rather than vocational training. That is, IMO, a desireable quality in an undergrad school. It is, IMO, what makes a place like Smith an attractive, interesting, and vibrant option, regardless of eventual career path.</p>

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<p>Good point, Blossom. A person can indeed purport to dedicate herself to the "life of the mind"--but how are you going to show that to an adcom? SHOW ME THE MONEY!! applies not only to Tom Cruise movies.<br>
"Proof" could come in academic competitions, research, etc. But if you didn't participate in any of that, then I suppose you have to show that in an essay--it would have to be a fabulous essay, I think.</p>

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<p>Interesteddad, why are you so in love with PHD ratios? Most intelligent people I know wanted to get on with their lives and did not want to pursue a PHD.
They didn't get stupid.</p>

<p>The PHDs I know are a mile deep and an inch wide.</p>