<p>It's in the basic values imparted and student self-selection--anti-business pro grad school.</p>
<p>For example.</p>
<p>How about some Pomona stats:</p>
<p>60% are employed or looking for employment (2006 grads) There is a wide variety of employment listed, including many traditional businesses - </p>
<p>23% are going on to grad or professional schools (which includes Law, Medicine, Business as well as academic pursuits</p>
<p>Sorry, but I don't see an "anti business" bias at any of the LACs my kids looked at when applying. The kids I know coming from LACs are going into Ibanking or consulting , as well as medicine, law, and biotech- </p>
<p>The cc student boards show a lot of interest in these areas as well.</p>
<p>The Grinnell responses seem to be, well, Grinnellian.
.</p>
<p>If Grinnell changes its focus a little bit, there goes the phd ratio, right out the window. </p>
<p>Nice links barrons. The Grinnell grads... they're just people.</p>
<p>It may seem that "so many LAC grads go on to PhDs" because the admit rate to grad schools from LACs is very high. Most grads don't go on, however, but the ones who do have very good luck with admissions.</p>
<p>And I like *Grinnellians. They're good people.</p>
<p>barrons, I think you are simplifying the issue too much here by extrapolating data and statements from one top LAC, particularly known for its quirky students and academic bent, to the entire population of thousands of LAC grads from across the nation. </p>
<p>The LACs are not a uniform bloc, and vary substantially by the makeup of the student body and administration (and region, to some extent). Grinnell, Carleton, Swat and Oberlin have very little in common with places like Williams, W&L, or CMC. If one were to examine the grad data of the latter group, I guarantee you would find a MUCH higher percentage of the student body going into investment banking, management, and professional schools (JD, MBA, MD) than you would in the former group. </p>
<p>As for the "why" of this differential, I can't answer that for sure, as it poses the old chicken-egg (or nature-nurture) conundrum. But I think it is certainly necessary to point out that certainly not all LACs are alike, and even at the academic, nerdy ones you will find plenty of individuals who aren't focused on the PhD route. (yours truly while at Carleton, for instance)</p>
<p>guess what. not everyone at big universities major in something immediately applicable (i.e. finance, engineering, etc). Aren't the most popular majors at the big schools still history/english/psychology/etc??? they are in the same boat.</p>
<p>Many of the top PhD LAC's have a similar nature--Reed for example. Swarthmore too. Of course it's a generalization but it's got a large kernel of truth to it too.
The Top 10 by % are not Williams, W&L etc. They are schools like Harvey Mudd, Swat, Reed Carelton, Oberlin, Haverford etc. And they do share that Grinnellian outlook to some degree. As I was talking about the Top PhD producers and not the entire LAC universe I think the point holds well. It's self-selection augmented by the colleges values.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ok, fine, but I don't think that was readily discernable to the rest of us from your initial post and subject line. In any event, similar characterizations can be made about the per-capita PhD production and focus at the top private universities: Cal Tech, MIT, Yale, Chicago, etc. So Grinnell-type LACs are far from unique in this regard.</p>
<p>You have not been around very long. We have had long discussions of this previously so most people know what I was referring to.</p>
<p>barrons, thanks for your concern and being so welcoming of a newcomer - pardon me while I hop into my DeLorean time machine and register for CC earlier so I can be privy to all of the inside jokes and conversations.</p>
<p>And I would surmise from the other responses that I was not the only one to interpret your original post in the same manner.</p>
<p>One offered explanation for "why" is that proportionately more LAC graduates have already done original research as undergraduates, so PhD admission committees look more favorably upon them, or it instills more of a desire to <em>want</em> a PhD.</p>
<p>The basic problem with propotionality is that when you get into large populations it would be virtually impossible for all of them to go to grad school. There are not that many desirable grad school slots. You could fill every decent Psychology PhD program slot with psych grads from UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan and Wisconsin. So they can take a trivial 4 of the 20 psych grads from Carleton but there is not going to be room for the 400 out of 2000 or so from the big schools. In absolute numbers there are still lots more PhD's coming out of the big schools.</p>
<p>The graduates of the big schools are not crowding out the LAC graduates from the limited spots, so there's a reason why the LAC grads are admitted in greater proportion. Perhaps it <em>is</em> because the PhD programs are admitting lesser-qualified LAC graduates in token amounts (therefore artificially raising the LAC proportion above the big-school proportion), or perhaps the LAC grads are more qualified. We'd have to ask the PhD programs which it is.</p>
<p>It looks like we just ran around in a big circle here - most of the top "per capita PhD" schools, especially outside of science & engineering, are LACs, while large, public flagship research unis provide more PhD students in terms of overall quantity. And it really isn't really breaking news that top-flight PhD slots are limited. "Overrepresentation" of top LACs stands to reason somewhat, as the average student at a Carleton, Amherst, Reed, etc. is going to have entering stats (h.s. class rank & SAT/ACT) that would put them near the top of their entering class at a Michigan or Wisconsin. All things being equal, grad programs are usually willing to dip deeper into the pool of candidates from these so-called elite schools, knowing that the mid-pack candidates are still impressive. </p>
<p>I'm still not really sure what you are proposing or arguing about at this point, barrons. That PhD programs are giving universities the shaft? I don't necessarily think that is the case at all.</p>
<p>One basic problem with proportionality is crafting an "apples to apples" denominator. There are many students at large universities that are in specialized programs for which a PhD is not a common terminal degree of choice. If you could confine your study to isolate just the liberal arts colleges of these multi-college universities you'd have a more reasonable comparison.</p>
<p>Still better would be using the actual # majors in the denominator. Or the actual # of students there who wanted to go to grad school in that subject. Otherwise you're just penalizing one department because the school has an unusually large department in another area, hence the first has a smaller % of the whole. Or perhaps the school has a student body with diverse capabilities, yet many of its students are outstanding. These outstanding students may even be separated from the others, to various degrees.</p>
<p>Even if lots of kids at a given university don't go on to grad school, that's not really the important question for an applicant. The important question is: if YOU want to go, how well does the university advance your ambitions. The total PhD production may be more relevant for this than the % PhD, IMO.</p>
<p>IF 6 gazillion other guys from that university have gone on to get PhDs, probably you'll have a good shot too, if you're good enough. Even if there are other kids also going to school there that don't want to get a PhD, or aren't good enough.</p>
<p>Then finally there is no concensus that, even among liberal arts colleges, a PhD is always, or even usually, the most desired terminal outcome. There are no statistics to track other outcomes that may be held equally or more desireable to many liberal arts students: law school, medical school, certain high-paying jobs. Yet there is reason to believe that some schools that send lots to PhD programs do not have commensurately high performance regarding, e.g., sending kids to top investment banking jobs.</p>
<p>Lack of diversity in goals among incoming students does not in itself prove excellence. It does, however, lead to higher % of something.</p>
<p>Is there an appreciable difference in your ability to get into a top PhD program, say in Economics, if you do your econ undergrad at an Ivy (Yale/Brown/Dartmouth) vs. LAC (Middlebury/Williams/Amherst)?</p>
<p>monydad basically said what I was trying to get at. It is very hard to do an apples to apples comparison between a school of 1500 and one of 28,000 students. Those that like to imply that sending a higher % on to get PhD's automatically means one is "better" as a department than the other is just not a reasonable conclusion from very limited facts. </p>
<p>As to entering stats--maybe at Swat and Amherst and Carleton but other high PhD producers like Grinnell, Reed, Oberlin are not significantly more selective overall than UM and UW.</p>
<p>I don't see how you decide a particular department is "good" without analyzing anything whatsoever relating to the department. Breadth and depth of course offerings has got to enter into this, as does upper-level class sizes and, where relevant, research opportunities.</p>
<p>To my mind, for some LACs there comes a point where there are just too few professors in a particular department to provide comprehensive offerings in all of its major sub-areas. In such cases the department can't be excellent, even if every kid goes on for a doctorate. Probably a number of those same kids wish they had more elective choices in their field come senior year.</p>
<p>Take an extreme example: a college has one Physics professor, who is expert at one particular area of Physics. There is one student majoring in Physics, who does everything with that one guy and necessarily can only study and do research in that one particular sub-area that the guy knows about. That kid goes on and gets a Phd. Moreover, he's the only student in the school. The school has 100% PhD production total, and 100% PhD production in Physics.</p>
<p>But does that mean that school's Physics department is excellent??? Or that the school is excellent???
I think not!!!!
In reality both are quite limited, and the kid was actually short-changed in some significant ways.</p>
<p>Not to suggest that most LACs fall strictly under my hypothetical. More just to caution against using this % thing as the be-all and end-all.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The total PhD production may be more relevant for this than the % PhD, IMO.
[/quote]
Not IMO. If a HS grad wants to do biology research, she has a better shot at getting good prep at a school where 10 of 40 bio majors later earn a PhD than where 50 of 500 do so.</p>
<p>Here are the 25-75% SAT figures, using latest available CDS from each school:</p>
<p>Grinnell: V = 630-740, M = 620-720
Reed: V = 660-750, M = 620-710
Wisconsin: V = 560-670, M = 610-710
Michigan: V = 590-690, M = 630-730</p>
<p>I was surprised that the math scores were roughly equivalent for all four schools, until thinking about the large presence of the engineering schools at UM and UW, which comprise some 15-20% of the students at those schools and likely skews the numbers upward a bit. In any event, I would say the differential in verbal scores between the LACs and Unis in this small sample is quite significant, and perhaps somewhat of an indicative factor? </p>
<p>Not that having being a high math splitter is bad or anything (I was one myself, to some extent), but I think it may highlight somewhat the disparate foci between a state flagship and "PhD mill" LAC.</p>