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After saving Tom Thumb's life Jumbo's legend grew. He is at least 15 feet tall in the eyes of Tufts students - that is the benefit afforded those who live a life such as his. Nameless Mammoths are afforded no such benefit.
If you want to refute Barnum's claim, then the burden of proof is on you - The skeletons are available for the measuring.
Jumbo's skeleton resides in the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, but it is only displayed periodically, so you will need to give them a call.
.
Cornell was given Jumbo's heart, but they lost it. We are not pleased with that.
Jumbo's skeleton resides in the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, but it is only displayed periodically, so you will need to give them a call.
I'm sure I'd have seen it, that was my favorite class-skipping destination as a kid. (Mom if you're reading this, I'm kidding. I never cut class to go to the Natural History Museum, even if you saw all the little colored metal lapel pins in my drawer. I just collected them, that's all).
I think i saw the Asian elephant statue when we visited. It was summer of 2014.
You saw the "interim" Jumbo (who was in place for almost 40 years). The new Jumbo is certainly more impressive, but the interim Jumbo was kind of cute. He arrived on campus a little before I did and departed a little before my daughter graduated - so our family identifies more with him...
It is probably a good time to shift the conversation from extinct mascots to the related topic of law school admissions.
When evaluating undergraduate programs...
One cannot perform a "per capita" calculation by just taking the number of students from a particular undergraduate school that are enrolled at a particular law school (or set of law schools) and divide that by the total number of students at the undergraduate school and come up with a meaningful number. This is because the number of students that apply to law school in general varies strongly by major, so the mix of majors at the school impacts the total number of students applying.
As an example, if we compare the most popular majors for law school between Amherst and Tufts we get:
So a simple per capita calculation comparison is going to be heavily biased in favor of a school (like Amherst) with a high percantage of typical "pre law majors". This is the same flaw in reasoning as comparing the average starting salaries of two schools without considering the mix of majors. Likewise for simple per capita Phd calculations.
One cannot just take a single ranking of law schools and assume that the number of students enrolled from a particular undergraduate school indicates some level of goodness. This is because the level of desireablity of a particular law school to a particular applicant can be a function of the law school's perceived strength in a particular area of law, its geographic location relative to where the applicant would like to live after graduation as well as its cost relative to other options.
One cannot infer the probability of any particular candidate getting into any particular law school based on a per capita admission calculation for a particular undergraduate school. This is "lemming logic" and we all know what happens to lemmings. One would really need to know not only the number of applicants, but all the applicant's attributes (GPA/difficulty of coursework, LSAT and related extra-curriculars) to try to determine if a particular school has an advantage.
I was able to find some data for Tufts that includes the number of applications/acceptances/enrollments per law school along with average GPAs and LSATs for the applicants. A quick analysis of seems to indicate that the most popular law schools for Tufts undergrads are the top rated schools for international law (makes sense given Tufts' international focus), schools located in the cities of Boston, New York, and DC and schools that have special joint JD programs with some of Tufts' grad schools. NYU, Harvard, and GTown are really popular, but Yale is not. BC, BU and Harvard have joint degree programs and cross enrollment with Tufts. Fordham in NYC and GWU and American in DC are also popular. Some midwestern and southern T14 law schools have high acceptance rates, but zero yield (i.e. no accepted Tufts students chose to enroll).
Come now, you are reaching pretty far to muddy up the water. Tufts has over 5200 undergrads, while Amherst has under 1800. You can't be claiming that Amherst nevertheless has a huge number MORE people applying to law school than Tufts does, or the fact that Amherst has 18 students at Yale Law while Tufts only has one is because Tufts students don't want to go to the top ranked law school in the country.
Objecting to the classification of Amherst's Law, jurisprudence and Social Thought as a "typical pre law major." Even Amherst's catalog states emphatically that it is NOT a pre-law major. It is an intellectual study, not a pre-professional program. I grant you that a lot of people who are interested in it may go on to law school. But Amherst makes it very, very clear that that is not what the major is all about.
Lots of overlap between tufts, williams & Amherst applicants and those admitted. Their high school stats are indistinguishable, and all are highly selective. You'll be among smart peers at all these schools. What's different is campus culture, student population size and campus size, and location. My son did a summer program at Amherst and after that realized that a remote, small town, small campus wasn't for him. Even having just one dining hall that closed early bugged him.
He's loved tufts and is doing a paid internship for the in-house, tufts general counsel. He's actually doing more substantial work for them than he'd probably be doing at a law firm as a paralegal. Because he's still not sure he wants to be lawyer vs going into consulting, he's interviewing at Bain right now for a fall internship in Boston, another benefit to being at Tufts, or really any college near or in a city (already has a different internship lined up for summer). He's an English major/Econ minor.
Really, you can't make a mistake choosing either of these schools. Go for fit. If you think you'd prefer a small LAC in a small, cute town, go to Amherst. If you'd rather live on a campus that's an easy commute to Cambridge, Somerville and Boston, and want a mid-size research university, go to Tufts. Either will get you to law school as long as you perform well academically and on the LSAT.
No, I am simply saying that the mix of majors matters when attempting to predict the number of law school applications because law school is a more popular career path for some majors than others. The the numbers I provided show that the majors where law school is most popular represent a much larger percentage of Amherst's undergraduate population than Tuft's. This means that one would expect a higher application rate (not necessarily a higher absolute number of applications) at Amherst than Tufts.
That comment is most relevant to @merc81 tables which (because they assume an equal application rate across all majors) are biased towards schools that have a high percentage of students enrolled in majors that are popular for pre-law. (Just like starting salary data will be biased toward schools with lots of engineers, Computer Science majors, business/finance majors and nurses)
Tufts' median early career salary is $10,000 higher than Amherst's, but it would be misleading to claim that as a figure of merit without accounting for the mix of majors.
When looking at the undergrad populations, Tufts has about
500 Fine Arts majors
150 Child Development majors
100 Clinical Psychology majors
700 Biology Majors
700 Engineers
500 CS majors
150 Quantitative Economics majors
500 IR Majors
None of these majors (except possibly IR) is going to produce a lot of Law School applicants. Subtract these out and one is left with a big LAC. IR majors are going to be attracted to Tufts' own Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (or one of the other top 5 IR schools in the country). If they do go to a traditional law school, one might expect them to favor a school with a strong international law program.
As far as the Yale Law situation goes, if one looks at the link I provided, the student application data shows that (for whatever reason) Yale receives the least number of applications of any top law school. (* means T14) This is why one cannot conclude much of anything from a matriculation number for a single Law School. It would be interesting to see the Amherst application numbers for Yale.
Harvard is among the top recipients of applications (about 2.5 times Yale's number) and students who matriculate- (with seven in one year).
@Mastadon what's the thinking behind that list of majors at Tufts? Tufts has a few dozen majors, many of which strike me as "pre-law-ish" or certainly appropriate undergrad majors for a law applicant. Where's History, Economics, Gender Studies, Poli Sci, Philosophy just to name a few?
ETA: Oh I see you are listing majors that you think won't apply to law school. I question a few of those but i get what you're trying to say.
WildestDreamRegistered UserPosts: 223Junior Member
edited May 5
It literally will not matter for law. Law schools don't really care about where you went to undergrad. It's almost all LSAT+GPA. So a student at UMass with a 3.5 and 160 LSAT should basically have the same law school acceptances as a student at Tufts or Amherst with the same numbers (any boost from "prestige" will be negligible).
Snowball CityRegistered UserPosts: 1,144Senior Member
Neither of these are Western Hooterville State. They will both make sure you can write well and think deeply. The only variable is whether or not the student works hard and takes advantage of the educational opportunities that the classes provide.
Replies to: Amherst or Tufts? (for law)
After saving Tom Thumb's life Jumbo's legend grew. He is at least 15 feet tall in the eyes of Tufts students - that is the benefit afforded those who live a life such as his. Nameless Mammoths are afforded no such benefit.
If you want to refute Barnum's claim, then the burden of proof is on you - The skeletons are available for the measuring.
The Mammoth was not lean - it had large fatty deposits that served as an adaptation against the cold...
(By the way, the genetic sequencing of the Mammoth was probably performed on equipment invented by Tufts)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-mammoths-idUSKCN0PC2LZ20150702
In fact, the Mammoths pointy head (and resulting extra height) is the result of a big fat deposit! :-)
Are they, though? We know the Beneski one's is, but according to Tufts Jumbo's skeleton was never on campus - only his skin, stuffed.
I know when we toured Tufts the only one we saw was concrete or something.
And we now have a second mascot as part of the recent School of the Museum of Fine Arts acquisition. If you mess with Jumbo, you will have to deal with him as well!
http://admissions.tufts.edu/files/dogwood/posts/img_3228.jpg
Jumbo's skeleton resides in the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, but it is only displayed periodically, so you will need to give them a call.
.
Cornell was given Jumbo's heart, but they lost it. We are not pleased with that.
Real Jumbo
http://cdn-news.wgbh.org/s3fs-public/styles/half_width/public/800px_jumbo_and_matthew_scott__.png?itok=gPRSwZ2d
Stuffed Jumbo at Tufts (burned in the 70's)
https://travsd.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/jumbo2.jpg?w=450
Interim Jumbo at Tufts- A cement (Asian Elephant) statue purchased from Benson's Wild Animal Farm.
https://images.vice.com/noisey/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/58bc9e6e0b6bcf51b0389825a12c6669.jpg
New Jumbo at Tufts- A bigger, more realistic, bronze (African Elephant) statue commisioned by an alum.
http://blog.cleanenergy.org/files/2017/02/Tufts-jumbo.jpg
Jumbo's statue in St Thomas Canada (where he was hit and killed by a train) and Jumbo's skeleton in NYC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_viS_Ge1dU
I'm sure I'd have seen it, that was my favorite class-skipping destination as a kid. (Mom if you're reading this, I'm kidding. I never cut class to go to the Natural History Museum, even if you saw all the little colored metal lapel pins in my drawer. I just collected them, that's all).
I think i saw the Asian elephant statue when we visited. It was summer of 2014.
When evaluating undergraduate programs...
One cannot perform a "per capita" calculation by just taking the number of students from a particular undergraduate school that are enrolled at a particular law school (or set of law schools) and divide that by the total number of students at the undergraduate school and come up with a meaningful number. This is because the number of students that apply to law school in general varies strongly by major, so the mix of majors at the school impacts the total number of students applying.
As an example, if we compare the most popular majors for law school between Amherst and Tufts we get:
.................Amherst....Tufts
Law..............13.............0
Poly Sci........27............56
English.........39............56
History..........29............34
%of Grads....25%.........10.6%
So a simple per capita calculation comparison is going to be heavily biased in favor of a school (like Amherst) with a high percantage of typical "pre law majors". This is the same flaw in reasoning as comparing the average starting salaries of two schools without considering the mix of majors. Likewise for simple per capita Phd calculations.
One cannot just take a single ranking of law schools and assume that the number of students enrolled from a particular undergraduate school indicates some level of goodness. This is because the level of desireablity of a particular law school to a particular applicant can be a function of the law school's perceived strength in a particular area of law, its geographic location relative to where the applicant would like to live after graduation as well as its cost relative to other options.
One cannot infer the probability of any particular candidate getting into any particular law school based on a per capita admission calculation for a particular undergraduate school. This is "lemming logic" and we all know what happens to lemmings. One would really need to know not only the number of applicants, but all the applicant's attributes (GPA/difficulty of coursework, LSAT and related extra-curriculars) to try to determine if a particular school has an advantage.
I was able to find some data for Tufts that includes the number of applications/acceptances/enrollments per law school along with average GPAs and LSATs for the applicants. A quick analysis of seems to indicate that the most popular law schools for Tufts undergrads are the top rated schools for international law (makes sense given Tufts' international focus), schools located in the cities of Boston, New York, and DC and schools that have special joint JD programs with some of Tufts' grad schools. NYU, Harvard, and GTown are really popular, but Yale is not. BC, BU and Harvard have joint degree programs and cross enrollment with Tufts. Fordham in NYC and GWU and American in DC are also popular. Some midwestern and southern T14 law schools have high acceptance rates, but zero yield (i.e. no accepted Tufts students chose to enroll).
Here are the related links:
http://students.tufts.edu/sites/default/files/AASLawSchoolMatriculants2013.2014.pdf
https://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/1/asc/Accept
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/international-law-rankings
He's loved tufts and is doing a paid internship for the in-house, tufts general counsel. He's actually doing more substantial work for them than he'd probably be doing at a law firm as a paralegal. Because he's still not sure he wants to be lawyer vs going into consulting, he's interviewing at Bain right now for a fall internship in Boston, another benefit to being at Tufts, or really any college near or in a city (already has a different internship lined up for summer). He's an English major/Econ minor.
Really, you can't make a mistake choosing either of these schools. Go for fit. If you think you'd prefer a small LAC in a small, cute town, go to Amherst. If you'd rather live on a campus that's an easy commute to Cambridge, Somerville and Boston, and want a mid-size research university, go to Tufts. Either will get you to law school as long as you perform well academically and on the LSAT.
No, I am simply saying that the mix of majors matters when attempting to predict the number of law school applications because law school is a more popular career path for some majors than others. The the numbers I provided show that the majors where law school is most popular represent a much larger percentage of Amherst's undergraduate population than Tuft's. This means that one would expect a higher application rate (not necessarily a higher absolute number of applications) at Amherst than Tufts.
That comment is most relevant to @merc81 tables which (because they assume an equal application rate across all majors) are biased towards schools that have a high percentage of students enrolled in majors that are popular for pre-law. (Just like starting salary data will be biased toward schools with lots of engineers, Computer Science majors, business/finance majors and nurses)
Tufts' median early career salary is $10,000 higher than Amherst's, but it would be misleading to claim that as a figure of merit without accounting for the mix of majors.
When looking at the undergrad populations, Tufts has about
500 Fine Arts majors
150 Child Development majors
100 Clinical Psychology majors
700 Biology Majors
700 Engineers
500 CS majors
150 Quantitative Economics majors
500 IR Majors
None of these majors (except possibly IR) is going to produce a lot of Law School applicants. Subtract these out and one is left with a big LAC. IR majors are going to be attracted to Tufts' own Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (or one of the other top 5 IR schools in the country). If they do go to a traditional law school, one might expect them to favor a school with a strong international law program.
As far as the Yale Law situation goes, if one looks at the link I provided, the student application data shows that (for whatever reason) Yale receives the least number of applications of any top law school. (* means T14) This is why one cannot conclude much of anything from a matriculation number for a single Law School. It would be interesting to see the Amherst application numbers for Yale.
Harvard is among the top recipients of applications (about 2.5 times Yale's number) and students who matriculate- (with seven in one year).
Int Law Rank……. School..........#Applied............#Admitted............#Matriculated
………2………….GTown*..............53.......................22.........................5
….......1…..………..NYU*................48......................18.........................7
………4………….Columbia*...........47......................12..........................3
………7…………..GWU.................41.........................22........................2
……………………BC......................41......................28..........................7
……………………BU......................41......................19..........................5
……………………UPenn*...............41.........................7..........................1
………3…………..Harvard*............40........................10..........................7
…….10……………Duke*.................38........................10.........................1
………9…………..Berkeley*............32.........................8..........................2
……………………Northwestern*......32........................11.........................0
…….11……………UVa*....................30.........................4.........................0
………6……………Michigan*............29.......................10.........................0
…………………….UCLA..................29........................13.........................1
……………………..NEU....................28........................19.........................3
…………………….Stanford*..............27.........................3..........................2
………………………Cornell*.............25..........................7..........................2
………………………U Chicago*.........25........................4............................0
……………………..Fordham...............25......................14..........................5
……………………...Suffolk.................21........................20.........................3
………8…………....American..............22.......................14.........................3
………………………Vanderbilt...........20.......................12...........................1
………………………Emory................18.........................6..........................2
………………………Wash U..............17.........................7..........................2
………5………….…Yale*....................17........................1...........................1
………………………William&Mary…...14………………...5…………………1
……………………….USC..................15.........................8..........................2
………………………UTexas……… .. 12………………..6…………………..2
ETA: Oh I see you are listing majors that you think won't apply to law school. I question a few of those but i get what you're trying to say.