Yale good at everything????

GuitarManARS · May 17, 2006, 10:16pm

posterX--Where did you get that data (more Yale rejects at Harvard than Harvard rejects at Yale)?

Byerly--Let's not forget, though, about the students who choose Harvard over Yale because of prestige, US News, etc., just assuming it's a better school for them. Not that I think that can account for the high H-Y crossover tendency towards Harvard...

Byerly · May 17, 2006, 10:42pm

He make it up. He has always, for the last 5-6 years, proceeded on the "big lie" theory of stat-providing.

bobbobbob · May 17, 2006, 11:22pm

saying that students pick one college over another isnt a direct indicator of quality.

f.scottie · May 17, 2006, 11:46pm

another "big lie":

"Also, the editors have connections with Princeton, which probably explains why that school is often rated #1."

this has been alleged and debunked elsewhere.

Byerly · May 17, 2006, 11:51pm

The TROLLSTER has repeated this little fib a hundred times or more.

rorosen · May 17, 2006, 11:53pm

this could not have been going on for 5-6 years! No one, not even a Beefeater patrolling the walls of Yale with a gigantic decorative spear, could maintain such unsmiling rhetorical persistence and duty over such a span.

Byerly · May 18, 2006, 12:16am

He took some time off after using up all his "credits" at a former site, where his shtick was to post using a string of aliases associated with other schools ("Penn Parent", "Brown Alum", "Harvard '05" etc - all of whom tended to confess that "their" school was inferior to Yale!) , but now seems to have reemerged here.

I think he posted here, also, as "Brown Alum" for a while. Suffice it to say, "Brown Alum" was devoted to Yale, and had very little good to say about his putative alma mater!

dmw123 · May 18, 2006, 12:41am

This should probably be posted elsewhere, but I generally distrust the US News and World Report ranking. Here's a great criticism of it (if a bit old) from Slate.com <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/34027/%5B/url%5D">http://www.slate.com/id/34027/</a>

dmw123 · May 18, 2006, 12:43am

Also - please, PosterX, stop posting. I understand you may love Yale, but you are doing Yale a disservice with your riidculous, unsupported hyperbole.

Best,
DMW

GuitarManARS · May 18, 2006, 1:06am

Interesting what a stir the difference between #1 and #3 on the ultra-subjective US News list causes :)

shimmya2893 · May 18, 2006, 1:34am

lol i agree with guitarmanars. I mean, really, I don't understand why everyone here takes the US news rankings so seriously when slight changes in criteria could easily put Yale at #1 or, conversely, out of the top five. I do think that US news does a decent job of naming the top 10 or so colleges but the differences between these schools, in terms of overall academics, are essentially negligible

ske293 · May 18, 2006, 9:36am

Harvard Yale Princeton Stanford
RESOURCES 
1 Endowment 2004 ($billion) 22.6 12.7 9.9 9.9
2 Library (million volumes) 15.4 11.7 6.2 8.2
AWARDS AND HONORS 
3 Nobel Prize winners 75 19 29 37
4 Current Faculty in National Academy of Sciences 164 62 70 124
5 Current Faculty in National Academy of Engineering 14 5 20 87
6 Current Faculty in Institute of Medicine 101 37 8 81
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT 
7 2005 National Merit Scholars 287 232 180 194
8 2005 National Achievement
Scholars 70 57 40 51
9 Rhodes Scholars 315 166 126 84
10 Marshall Scholars 239 112 101 74
11 Putnam Math Competition
First Place Finish 25 0 0 0
12 Putnam Math Competition
Top Five Finish 51 11 24 5
13 2003 College Class Enrolling in Top
Graduate Schools 358 231 174 181
ALUMNI 
14 U.S. Presidents 7 5 3 1
15 Current U.S. Senators 17 7 3 5
16 Current U.S. Supreme
Court Justices 6 2 1 2
LAW SCHOOL 
17 Supreme Court clerks 1991-2005 128 100 N/A 42
18 2005 Law School Class Hired by Top 50 law firms 166 46 N/A 57
MEDICAL SCHOOL 
19 2005 NIH grants ($billion) 1170 300 N/A 244
20 Current Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
Investigators 32 17 3 13
BUSINESS SCHOOL 
21 B-School Alumni among Fortune 500 CEOs with MBA
23% ? N/A ?
22 Undergraduate Alumni
Among Fortune 500 CEOs 
13 8 9 10

Sources:
1. <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112636.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112636.html</a>
2. <a href="http://hul.harvard.edu/about.html%5B/url%5D">http://hul.harvard.edu/about.html</a>
<a href="http://www.yale.edu/oir/factsheet.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.yale.edu/oir/factsheet.html</a>
<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/library/%5B/url%5D">http://www.princeton.edu/main/library/</a>
<a href="http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/libraries.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.stanford.edu/home/stanford/facts/libraries.html</a>

ske293 · May 18, 2006, 9:48am

FACT:

<ol>
<li>Yale is by far the weakest school in the sciences among the big six: HYPSMC.</li>
<li>Harvard and Yale have about the same number of faculty in the Arts and Sciences but Harvard has nearly 3 times as many faculty in the National Academy of Sciences. They just elected 6 more Harvard Faculty so there are 170 total.</li>
<li>Yale has a School of Engineering and Harvard has a Division, which is more like a Department within Arts and Sciences, and is less than 1/2 the size of Yale's Engineering Faculty. But Harvard has 3 times more faculty in the National Academy of Engineering.</li>
<li>Harvard has more than 3 times the number of Nobel Prize winners as does Yale.</li>
<li>Harvard brings in more than a billion in NIH grant money, more than 3 times as many as Yale. Just two of Harvard hospitals, Mass General and Brigham and Women's, alone bring in a billion in NIH and private foundation money. </li>
<li>Every year, Harvard gets several times the number of U.S. and International Math Olympiad competitors, Physics and Chemistry Olympiad competitors, and Intel Science Competition winners. This year, for example, 13 Intel winners are going to Harvard, and just one to Yale.</li>
<li>Harvard has won the Putnam competition 25 times while Yale has never won it.</li>
<li>Harvard has nearly double the number of faculty in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences compared to Yale.</li>
<li>Harvard has double (or more) the number of Rhodes and Marshall Scholars than Yale.</li>
<li>Harvard students are far more successful in getting into top grad schools than Yale. Both Yale Law School and Yale Medical School enroll more Harvard graduates than Yale graduates. Harvard Medical, Law, Business Schools all enroll many more Harvard graduates than Yale graduates.</li>
<li>For most of the past decade, Harvard has enrolled double the number of National Merit Scholars than Yale.</li>
</ol>

Is there still a question about parity between Harvard and Yale?

ske293 · May 18, 2006, 9:51am

I do grant that Yale has a nursing school and Harvard doesn't, so if you have a nurse fetish of some sort, it's the place to be.

Father_of_the_Boarder · May 18, 2006, 10:06am

Interestingly, posterx pollutes other boards about other schools by ranting and raving about the superioity of Yale to the school to which the blog is dedicated.

Here are some great examples of posterx:

ON HOW YALE PROF'S ARE ACCESIBLE:
"Professors at Yale are more accessible than those at most LACs. 60% of the faculty lives in central New Haven, within a short walk of the campus. LACs tend to be more isolated, and faculty lives farther away from campus."

ON WHY YALE'S WEDSITE HAS STATS CONTRADICTORY TO HIS OWN:
"Furthermore, and I'm sure you know this, just because a university website gives a number doesn't mean it is accurate. Many of those kinds of websites are written by lower level staff, and they are just copying the numbers from USNews or some other 'source.'"

ON JUSTIFICATION of ARGUMENT BEING CONTRARY TO PUBLICATIONS:
"I would not place 100% authority in anything printed on the internet, or in a newspaper, or even in a government publication, no matter who wrote it."

and then Yale's activism is proven by the fact that --

"Mother Jones magazine named Yale th #1 'activist campus' in the country a few years ago. The New York Times just did a story about activists at Yale, who pressured Yale into being one of the first places in the country to divest from the Sudan."

Thank God he has recently decided to place most of his postings at the Yale blog.

posterX · May 18, 2006, 10:30am

It has to be accounted for that Harvard has a larger enrollment, plus most of your facts are simply incorrect or outdated beyond value.

f.scottie · May 18, 2006, 10:41am

bottom line: if posterX doesn't like the number, it's inaccurate.

posterX · May 18, 2006, 10:44am

Yale is actually by far the strongest school in the sciences among the top six, at the undergraduate level.

Even in engineering, where Yale's department is relatively small in size, Yale has the highest-quality department in the country. That's according to the ISI (the world's most respected scientific information organization): <a href="http://www.sciencewatch.com/nov-dec2002/sw_nov-dec2002_page2.htm#Engineering%5B/url%5D">http://www.sciencewatch.com/nov-dec2002/sw_nov-dec2002_page2.htm#Engineering</a>

midatlmom · May 18, 2006, 11:40am

ske293--I think that about 5 of your 11 posts have been of the same set of statistics. As I posted before, the statistics are not meaningful unless you take into account differences in enrollment and the existence of various graduate programs. As I stated previously,

"For example, while Princeton might be tied for 3rd largest overall endowment, it has the highest endowment per student in the country-- see <a href="http://en.wikpedia.org/wiki/Ivy-league%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikpedia.org/wiki/Ivy-league</a>. Also, while 6 Supreme Court justices have gone to Harvard Law School, only 2 (Souter and Roberts) attended Harvard undergrad. Also, I believe that the statistic relating to Supreme Court justices is only looking at placements from law school, not undergraduate schools. Since Princeton has no law school, that statistic is not relevant for Princeton and it is somewhat misleading to put down a "0" for Princeton."

ske293 · May 18, 2006, 1:04pm

Does the title of your article say "Physical Sciences at U.S. Universities: Harvard, Stanford Top the "Top Tens" or am I hallucinating? How is it that Harvard has a smaller engineering dept than Yale but produces many more papers? The impact factor can be a useful indicator of quality but is by no means the only one, because it is often distorted by a few papers that get cited a lot. MIT, the premier engineering school in the country, is not even in the top 10 by these measures.

Endowment per student hardly means anything. It might if the endowment was being divided up equally and checks were being mailed out to individual students. In reality, what matters is what you can do with the money in terms of recruiting star faculty, upgrading and maintaining facilities, and being able to invest in new innovative programs that require large sums of money. Harvard surpasses everyone else in these regards, including being able to award very generous financial aid packages. A school with two students and a 5 million dollar endowment will have a higher endowment per student than Harvard, but do you really think they can do as much with 5 million as Harvard can do with its 25 billion?

Similarly, the size of a program is extremely important in science. For students, it means there are more professors who are experts in fields that interest you and you wont be limited in your options. For the faculty, it means there are more colleagues and collaborators who can help you with your research. At Harvard, you can find a world leader no matter which area you are interested in. He/she will be just down the street, will be available for a face-to-face chat on the same day, and will give you reagents and help you with techniques that you are not familiar with. The same cannot be said of schools that dont have as large a collection of exceptional scientists.

OK, your point about the Supreme Court justices is well-taken. Lets look at the breakdowns.

Law School:
Harvard 6, Yale 2, Northwestern 1, Stanford 0
(Princeton has no law school)

College:
Harvard 2, Stanford 2, Princeton 1, Chicago, Cornell, Georgetown, Holy Cross each 1, Yale 0

That doesnt make it look any better for Yale, does it?

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Yale good at everything????

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