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<p><5% of the physics profs at Harvard that got their PhD at Harvard did their undergrad at a LAC.</p>
<p>Looking at one department at Harvard is not exactly a compelling argument. It’s even less compelling when one considers that only about 3% of college students attend LACs.</p>
<p>In numbers, LAC graduates consistently (and dramatically) outnumber university grads in PhD productivity. If there’s any question as to whether they ultimately achieve equal or higher status in their fields, they also dramatically outperform university grads (correcting for enrollment numbers) by most measures of achievement from Pulitzer Prizes won to National Academy of Sciences election.</p>
<p>I don’t believe for one minute that LACs are for everyone. But the most compelling argument in favor of a small school experience is something not addressed (as far as I’ve seen) thus far in this thread - the significantly stronger lifelong connection students, as a whole, feel toward their alma maters. From the percentage of grads who donate, to attendance at alumni gatherings, universities take a notable back seat in this very, very important regard.</p>
<p>Does anyone else find it odd that monydad treats the specific cases involving his daughter as law while simultaneously rejecting the specific cases of others for no other reason than that they are specific cases and so not represent the whole?</p>
<p>oh, so you would like to make comments about me, personally?
I am not the topic of this thread.
Why don’t we make comments about you instead???</p>
<p>Manarius, have you posted any substantive perspectives relevant to this topic?
Where are they?
what is your specific experience with LAcs and universities, manarius??
What did you, manarius, experience at an LAC? at a university?
do you have anything constructive to contribute here, besides commenting about me personally?</p>
<p>Lol that response was better than I could have possibly imagined.</p>
<p>Seriously, that was great.</p>
<p>Anyway, though, the point of my post was not to condemn you as a person, nor insult you. I’m sure you’re no more a scumbag than the rest of humanity. The point was that every post of yours has been extremely biased by your own personal experience. Not only that, since we are all biased by our experiences, but that because you refuse to even acknowledge the personal experiences of others, somehow believing that your own experiences (your daughter’s really) are in some way more valid than others’, your posts on this issue should be read with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>It is not up to me to acknowledge the personal experience of others. Not that I know what you’re talking about, but anyway. I am giving my perspective, based on experiences I am aware of, other people can give theirs, based on their experiences which are their own and not mine. It is up to each reader to synthesize all the perspectives themselves, or not, but in any event draw their own conclusions.</p>
<p>They are not here to draw conclusions about me, or how well I have done so. I am not the topic of this thread.</p>
<p>I suggest you address your comments to the content of posts regarding the topic of threads, and not the posters.</p>
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<p>Yes, but refusing to acknowledge the experiences of others is arrogant, ignorant, and does not lend itself well to your credibility, which in turn affects the view of your assertions, and does indeed affect the topic of this thread.</p>
<p>Once again, I have nothing against you. I’m not insulting you. My posts were not about you. They were about the issue and how your words (the “content of posts regarding the topic”) affect the arguments included herein. Not about you.</p>
<p>That said, LACs and Universities are inherently different. They both offer completely different things, and comparing them is a very nearly pointless exercise, especially when considering the vast differences between the needs of the students.</p>
<p>“From the percentage of grads who donate,”
I’m guessing this is another thing that is best addressed on an institution by institution basis, seeing as I’ve had two kids attending LACs with not so spectacular alumni giving rates, actually. But anyway there’s more that goes into alumni giving than liking your school.</p>
<p>“…to attendance at alumni gatherings…”
There are constant alumni activities regularly sponsored by my U in my area, many times the number that D1s LAC offers. Not even close.</p>
<p>“phD productivity” - stats do not measure the appropriate denominator, =people of similar abilities who actually wanted PhDs. If it turned out- and it does- that a greater % of Concordia Teachers College grads went on to get math Phds than the % of Stanford grads- even though the number of Stanford grads who got math PhDs was astonomically larger- should one best conclude that Stanford grads who wanted math PhDs were disadvantaged in this effort, vs. Concordia Teacher’s College grads? Consider that perhaps more Stanford grads had other objectives that they preferred, proportionally speaking.</p>
<p>manarius, I think your posts are arrogant and ignorant too. but of course I’'m not insulting you either.</p>
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This really depends on the university. In Big Ten country, alumni are generally very (if not excessively) proud of their alma-mater university. They will bear their university’s flags, regularly attend sports events/reunions, train their children to despise rival schools, etc. Heck on a University of Illinois basketball forum some people were genuinely wondering reasons why a recruit might want to attend Stanford over Illinois. And based on what I’ve seen, donations are probably high among those with the means to do so. </p>
<p>It’s not limited to students or alumni, either, but also residents in the state of interest who religiously follow the sports teams. People have a lot of pride in being a fan of the state school. For instance, I consider myself a Fighting Illini even though I don’t go there. I only know what it’s like in the Midwest, but I assume school fervor is similarly high among the other conferences (especially the SEC and Big 12). </p>
<p>Of course this still only accounts for a few dozen universities, but since these universities are generally so large it involves a ton of students/alumni.</p>
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<p>“Appropriate” for what purpose?
How would you express “people of similar abilities who actually wanted PhDs” as a single number based on collectable measurements?</p>
<p>I’m afraid the measurement monydad considers appropriate would be impossible, or at best very impractical, to collect. Would it even be more appropriate? After all, it wouldn’t be very surprising to verify that PhD candidates who start with higher GPAs, GRE scores, IQ scores … however you want to measure “abilities” … have above-average PhD completion rates. What’s a little surprising to me is that LACs like Earlham, Wooster, and Kalamazoo seem to do a better job of motivating and preparing students to complete PhDs at higher rates in certain fields than any of the Ivies do. </p>
<p>The fact that up to 40% of Harvard’s best and brightest would rather go into investment banking or business consulting does not entirely detract from the significance of these stats. True, it does suggest that they have more high-paying options. Still, liberal arts colleges and universities don’t exist to train investment bankers and business consultants. They exist to create and transmit knowledge in fields like these:
[COLLEGE</a> PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]COLLEGE”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)
If a college is attracting intellectually curious students, and if it is providing a high quality classroom experience, then I would expect a high percentage of its students to be motivated and well prepared to jump into that game.</p>
<p>One measured way to use the available PhD production stats is to compare only peer schools for PhD production v. other outcome measurements.</p>
<p>For example, compare Chicago to some of the Ivies for both PhD production (in which Chicago is higher) and alumni salaries (in which most of the Ivies are higher). Compare Oberlin with Bucknell or Colgate for both outcomes. Or, compare selective private LACs as a class with selective private universities as a class for contrasting sets of outcomes.</p>
<p>In these cases, you are comparing populations of students with roughly similar abilities and roughly similar post-graduate opportunities. Investment banking and high-end business consulting are not closed career options for the population of Chicago graduates. Many graduates of the Ivies or Bucknell presumably would be well prepared to pursue PhDs but choose not to.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, too, that 5-10% is considered a high rate of PhD production.</p>
<p>PhD productivity is irrelevant. Do you think that CMU CE grads want a PhD? No, they want to go into a field that pays them 6 figures to do what they love.
Do you think business grads from Wharton want a PhD? No, they want to go into IB or w/e and make 6 figures doing what they love.</p>
<p>I would argue that LAC numbers for PhD production are higher not because those students are better taught or smarter, but because more students WANT PhDs. Believe it or not, most students at Unis DONT want PhDs and dont NEED PhDs.</p>
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<p>Haha, Bzva, you might argue any point that helps you “hinting” that LACs students must be “less smart” and taught poorly. And, this even if your argument contradicts some of your earlier positions. For instance, you might consider how students who ARE interested in obtaining a PhD might think that the availability of research opportunities are better at … research universities? You might also consider that the degrees that are considered “professional” offer a poor comparison basis for terminal degrees.</p>
<p>By the way, when evaluating anecdotes, you might want to check the posts written by Curmudgeon 4-5 years ago. Since you offered the opinion that students who attend a LAC that is ranked below 30 could not be smarter than the ones attending a top-30 university, it might interest you that a student decided to attend ** the lowly-ranked Rhodes** instead of a higher ranked university. And, fwiw, you might find it surprising --or crazy-- that this student who earned an ACT score of 35 declined the offer of Yale. As far as career, you might consider that the weaker instruction and (misrepresented) lack of research opportunities did not stop her from being able to select an amazing medical school.</p>
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<p>I think what you really mean to say is that PhD production is irrelevant for you.</p>
<p>As I indicated above, a PhD production rate of 5-10% is relatively high. So you are absolutely correct that most students do not want or need a PhD. Does that mean the rate tells us absolutely nothing significant about a school’s quality or atmosphere?</p>
<p>If you are a very career-oriented student (the kind of student who might choose a school like Wharton), maybe so. You may even consider a lower rate desirable. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, however, that schools like Carleton, Chicago, the Claremonts, Grinnell, Reed, Swarthmore, or St. John’s have relatively high rates. For a certain kind of student, these schools are a good fit (partly for reasons reflected in those numbers).</p>
<p>Granted, I have a fairly Old School, idealistic view of what’s good in a college. Of course I’m impressed with students who start up a Google or a Teach for America, but I don’t think I would prefer a school full of people who are frantically running around doing these things. A little quiet time is good in a college.</p>
<p>For those relatively few high school students who believe they want to go into research or academia, the PhD productivity numbers can guide them to schools where they will be studying with a relatively high percentage of students sharing such goals. These schools are also known to provide good preparation for that eventual PhD.</p>
<p>I’ll just throw these reports into the mix regarding PhD productivity of LACs vs. Universities, one for Physics and one for History:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The American Institute of Physics issued a report, “Does it matter where I go to college?” [Undergraduate</a> Education - American Institute of Physics<a href=“Scroll%20down%20this%20page%20to%20get%20to%20this%20.pdf%20report”>/url</a>.
This report compares outcomes for physics bachelors from large and small departments, defined by number of bachelor’s degrees awarded. It also looks at differences in physics bachelors’ outcomes between departments that grant PhDs in physics and those that award only a bachelor’s degree in physics.
Among the findings:
-Physics bachelors from large departments are more likely to attend graduate or professional school with the intention of earning a degree in any field than physics bachelors from smaller departments.
-Graduates of large departments rate their physics and math preparation for a career more highly than graduates of smaller departments. Graduates from departments that offer only bachelor’s degrees in physics rate their career communication and teamwork preparation more highly than graduates of departments that offer PhDs in physics.
-Physics bachelors are more satisfied with the department climate when they graduate from departments that do not offer graduate degrees in physics.
-Many very important outcomes are not affected by size and type of department, including salary, working in a science or technology job, and length of time spent looking for work.</p></li>
<li><p>The American Historical Association issued a report on undergraduate origins of history PhDs. While a majority of history PhDs did their undergraduate studies in departments that also grant the PhD, certain LACs produce a disproportionate number of PhDs.
[url=<a href=“Perspectives on History | AHA”>Privileging History: Trends in the Undergraduate Origins of History PhDs | Perspectives on History | AHA]Privileging</a> History: Trends in the Undergraduate Origins](<a href=“http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/undergradtrends.html]Undergraduate”>http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/undergradtrends.html)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>To me the tenor of the arguments by the pro-LAC writers seems to be that LACs are the superior environment to produce eventual PhDs. If I misread your comments, I apologize. I will restate that my interest in this argument is that my daughter is a physics student at a top research university who hopes to go on to a PhD and eventually become a physics prof at a top research university. I previously compiled data for the physics department at Harvard which showed only 3 of 63 faculty (admittedly I could not identify the undergrad institution for thirteen of them) members attended a LAC. I have now gone through the website of the Stanford physics department and found that none of the 38 faculty members went to a LAC. The most numerous undergrad institution for both Harvard and Stanford was Harvard. The most numerous PhD institution for each were themselves.</p>
<p>My takeaway is that in physics it is preferable to go to a top research university. Faculty at the top physics schools got their PhDs at top physics schools and for the most part got their undergrad degrees from top physics schools. The research that you can do as an undergrad and the letters of recommendation that you get from leaders in the field are very important factors in getting into the top PhD programs. And a PhD from a top program appears to be a prerequisite to joining the faculty of a top physics school.</p>
<p>Now I don’t know what Harvard’s PhD productivity numbers are and I do know that only about half their undergrad physics majors pursue a PhD, but it looks to me like a pretty good place to start out if that is your goal. Yes, the other half do largely go into investment banking, etc. But I don’t think that will sway my daughter to deviate from her intended path. There are plenty of others as well as faculty and grad students to help guide her on this path.</p>
<p>I am sure that there are other fields (maybe most of them) where what school you start from is less determinant in terms of getting to the top. But I would suggest that any HS student that thinks they want to become an academic should look carefully at what the best path is for the field that they want to study. There probably are fields where the LAC environment is superior to the the research university for producing PhD candidates, but I will leave it to others to uncover the data to support that.</p>
<p>LACs are cute universities, but their degrees are more difficult to market to potential employers than a specific field degree (like science, finance, etc.).</p>
<p>The top 10 LACs are outstanding, the rest are all pretty similar. </p>
<p>I would put Amherst and Williams on par with the Ivies.</p>
<p>LACs grant the same degrees (anthropology, biology, chemistry, english, history, math, physics, etc.) but their grads more often want grad schools, not employment.</p>