<p>"If you want to try to attempt this kind of analysis, at least start with the big picture (like science, math, and engineering) to even see if you numbers make any sense. "</p>
<p>The concern there is that for engineering , and maybe CS, PhD may not be the preferred terminal path for many, where presumably it may be more the case for , e.g., math.</p>
<p>Y’all should just stick to the gross #s produced, clearly if a college has produced 6 zillion future PhDs in a subject somebody having that interest can achieve that goal if they matriculate there. Otherwise, you just don’t have a good count of how many people went in there having such goal, so none of the % things really work.</p>
<p>Then look at aspects of the actual programs: # courses offered (if they don’t teach it you can’t learn it), undergrad research opportunities, etc.</p>
<p>That being said, I doubt that the number of students who go from bio to another science or vice versa is the kind of thing that’s not happening everywhere to a similar degree. There’s no reason to believe that this bleed disproportionately affects certain schools.</p>
<p>Right. Each field has its own quirks. Like Economics is not a big PhD field. Those trends are universal.</p>
<p>The problem with what collegehelp is trying to do is different. Slicing and dicing science majors may actual keep you from getting meaningful accurate data – particularly when you are dividing two fields (“biology” and “chemistry”) that are inextricably linked in today’s academic world. It’s like counting “political science” but not “political economy” or “international relations”. Especially with your first shot where you want to see if the data you getting even look plausible. You at least have a chance to spot check some total science/math majors for a few schools to see if the data is valid. </p>
<p>This is particularly problematic in this case, because collegehelp just wiped out a full half of all the non-engineering PhDs awarded over the last ten years.</p>
<p>Engineering PhDs: 24,099
Bio and Heath Sciences PhDs: 47,259
All other math/science PhDs: 39,237</p>
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</p>
<p>I doubt that it does affect certain schools. I’m saying that it may affect the abilty to get accurate data on college majors, period. The databases have “labeled buckets” that don’t match the real world. For example, if you search the Tri-College course catalog for “English” courses at Swarthmore, you get ZERO courses. That’s because Swarthmore’s Department is called English Literature. This is a big problem searching a database for sciences and excluding the biology bucket where many of what used to be “chemistry” majors are placed in today’s world. You have a similar problem trying to slice up Computer Science and Computer Engineering at a place like Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>You want physics, astro, chemisty, math, and computer science, right?</p>
<p>Swarthmore had 149 of those majors over that three year period, including 6 astrophysics majors and 1 Chemical Physics major, but not counting 12 Bio Chem majors or any Bio or Engineering majors. Your IPEDS data shows 117. Something is wrong with the IPEDs data.</p>
<p>If one spot sample is off by that much, then I suspect you’ve got major issues elsewhere. For example, it makes no sense whatsover that Princeton, with three times the enrollment only had 80 more majors in the departments you listed than tiny Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I think the numbers are accurate. They come from the IPEDS website and are reported to the US Dept of Education by the schools themselves according to specific definitions and guidelines. The classification is according to CIP code, a standard coding system for academic disciplines based on the content of the major, not the title.</p>
<p>According to IPEDS, Swarthmore had 42 graduates in comp sci, math, physical sciences in 2007. It seems plausible that the 3-year total in 2002-04 could have been 117 (which is what I posted). Princeton had 85 grads in 2007 (versus the 3-year total of 198 that I posted). The numbers are plausible. IPEDS is the most authoritative source of data about colleges (although an occasional error creeps in).</p>
<p>modestmelody is correct: as long as the transferring between undergrad and grad programs occurs at all colleges about equally, changing majors won’t affect the rankings much.</p>
<p>I gave you the exact numbers for the three year period at Swarthmore. They vary wildly from you numbers. I think that you may have only counted “first” majors, not “second” majors. I don’t really know.</p>
<p>BTW, I think you are missing the whole point of looking at PhD production. The idea is not to see the “odds” of a given chemistry major going on to get a PhD. The idea, IMO, is to get a sense of the overall position of the Chemistry department at a college. One of the keys that you want to capture is whether there are a lot of majors, so you don’t really want to “correct” for the number of majors. You are looking to identify the “strong” departments at schools by seeing which departments rank high in PhD production (in part because they have high enrollment) and which don’t.</p>
<p>If you are able to accurately capture the undergrad majors. By attempting to slice out Bio (and biochem, and molecular bio, and neuro science, and cognitive science), I think you are rendering your science data questionable.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you are trying to slice out Bio. Do you not count it as a science? The reason would have to be pretty strong. Otherwise, just run your data with all science and math majors versus all science and math PhDs. You eliminate the whole problem of two fields (Bio and Chemistry) that now have an inextricably blurred borderline.</p>
<p>You have to be very, very careful with that data. Many times, when you actually look at what is being reported, it’s along the lines of “20% of those students getting graduate degrees got MDs” and so on a so forth. I would never assume that you are comparing apples to apples unless the data is clearly specified. It’s like “med school admissions rates” that may or may not include alumni applications.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure why you are trying to slice out Bio”</p>
<p>I’m not him, but maybe:
a) thought bio PhD would be highly polluted by med school being #1 option in a number of cases, not just Phd; whereas this might be much less the case in physics or math; so best to do separately;
b) wanted to do physical science & math, did not seek to do biological sciences, which are not classified as physical sciences and generally have less overlap/ stuff in common with fields such as physics, math & CS.</p>
<p>unnaturally low % phd, compared to physics or math, or compared to what the % would otherwise be, in any event, because so many majors in this particular subject go on to med school, dental school, vet school, etc. instead of doing PhD. For a large number of majors in this subject, Phd is not necessarily the terminal degree of choice. Unlike, or to a different extent than, some of the other fields.</p>
<p>But, that is not the case. I’ve already posted the data. Biology alone accounts for more PhDs than Chemistry, Physics, Math, Statisitics, Geology, Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Marine Sciences, and Computer Science combined.</p>
<p>interesteddad-
I only counted “first major”. That may be why our numbers differ. But, I did that for every school so it should be a constant factor, not a biased factor. Hence, rankings would remain valid.</p>
<p>I focused on physical sciences and excluded life sciences for the reasons monydad mentioned and also because it was convenient. The NSF provided a physical sciences PhD subtotal that included comp sci so I tried to match that with the IPEDS baccalaureates granted data in the denominator. Life sciences are generally less math intensive. The life sciences/physical sciences distinction is pretty common and is evidently recognized by NSF.</p>
<p>Yes, raw number PhD production is a useful way to identify which programs are strong within a college. On the other hand, some departments are larger than others within a college. That is a good point. But, by “normalizing” for size, you can try to compare among colleges, too.</p>
<p>Princeton’s rank might be artificially inflated because I think their comp sci program may have been housed in engineering maybe? I noticed that in 2007, they had no comp sci grads. That didn’t make sense. Anybody know where the Princeton comp sci grads went?</p>
<p>I still am not convinced that PhD production determines a strong department. None of my friends who wanted to go to chemistry graduate school had a hard time at all. Many of them are choosing between places like Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and various other chemistry powerhouses. Had I chosen to go that route, it would have been something I’m clearly prepared for. However, because I chose to switch my interests and earn a masters in urban education policy at Brown (I think I may end up going for a PhD but probably after a few years of work), now my chemistry department looks weaker? Because about 1/3 of our chemistry students are premed our chemistry program is worse?</p>
<p>There may be some correlation there, but to say department A produced more PhDs so it’s better than department B is not something I’d say. I’m not even sure it’s an indicator of that at all. Furthermore, clumping all of the physical sciences, you’ll lose data when some schools are better in some areas versus others.</p>
<p>I do agree with interesteddad about chemistry and biology becoming more blurred. It’s true in the physics direction as well, but there are quite a few biochemists that Brown considers “life sciences” some places and “physical sciences” other places. As someone who focused in organic chemistry at Brown, if I did biochemistry I’d only have to change 2-3 of my 20 courses I took for my concentration.</p>
<p>Also, counting first major is unfair to schools that double concentrating is more common versus schools where it does not happen at all.
<p>That’s a pretty big assumption. What’s a “first” major and a “second” major? Do you just list the two majors alphabetically? I bet many schools do when they report it. Flip a coin? </p>
<p>Some schools don’t allow double-majoring. The numbers are all over the place. For example, 25% of Swarthmore grads double-major, but that’s probably low because the Swarthmore Honors Program requires a Minor (with outside oral and written exams), so Honors grad usally don’t double major. On the physical science side, a full 33% of Swarthmore’s engineering majors double major and get a B.A. degree in science and arts as well as their B.S. degree in Engineering. Many of these are doubling in math or computer science, so you’ve captured them on the undergrad side (depending on the flip of the first/second major coin), but not on the graduate school side, where you’ve arbitrarily excluded engineering despite the fact that a PhD in Computer Engineering or Robotics is hard to differentiate (in practice) from Computer Science.</p>
<p>Your guess about Princeton’s Computer Science majors moving to the Engineering program may well be true. They went from huge numbers of computer science majors to almost none in one year and there is a footnote in their data for majors saying, “not including engineering”.</p>
<p>It’s not about “quality”. It’s descriptive. The fact that you opted for (let’s say) a PhD. in urban education policy may contribute to a picture of Brown emerging from the PhD data as a school more likely to send students into education policy than chemistry, just like a school sending a very high percentage of its graduates to MBA programs is “descriptive” of that school’s culture.</p>
<p>College presidents and admissions offices view future PhDs as indicative of an “academic” culture. They say so explicitly in their strategic planning and self-study reports and many even have a “future PhD/academic” tag on admissions folders as a category they want to be sure to get enough of.</p>
<p>When it comes to total PhD production, it is difficult (although not completely impossible) to be near the top of the per capita production lists without a lot of future science PhDs. That’s descriptive of a school, too.</p>
<p>However in contrast to above assertion, the most frequent context this data is used on CC is, some kid will ask " which schools are the “best” in [name subject], and then someone trots out one of these lists.</p>
<p>The lists don’t highly inform that. They don’t shed light on depth & breadth of course offerings, or quality of research opportunities available to those students who want PhDs. Or the proportion of students who matriculate to that institution intending to get future phds and are variously either helped or discouraged (e.g, by low grades) from these efforts by the institution. Or the number who do get in to PhD programs from that institution, but then find their training was relatively inadequate compared to their fellow grad students. Or the proportion getting into mediocre PhD programs, vs. “top” programs. It doesn’t really indicate that the department there is highly “good”. Mostly it indicates the degree to which the university and/ or the department has a homogeneous student body who, as a group, uniformly seek PhDs over other vocational options (if they have any),and are at least smart enough to get them. Though maybe not smart enough, or have right personality, to land other career choices that a good number of very top students prefer. Because the denominators are never the right denominator to be used for the purpose CC people are most frequently using it for. To that purpose, the denominator would have to be: people who go there and actually want to get a PhD in a particular subject.</p>
<p>Unless you have the right denominator, the gross number should be used, IMO. Else what is put forth will be misleading, as to the point these tables are actually being used for. It is true they may be a descriptive indicator of a form of lack of diversity, but that is not what they are being presented as most commonly, or even hardly ever, on CC.</p>