davida1

Some may remember the Wall Street Journal study which revealed the colleges sending the greatest percentage of their class to top business, law, and medical schools. The study was imperfect. For medical school it included Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UCSF, and Yale; for law school it included U Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, U Michigan, and Yale; for business it included Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, U Pennsylvania (Wharton), and U Chicago.

The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition

One of the biggest problems with the study was the regional bias (it included no schools from the South and only one from the West) and the exclusion of some notable programs like say Stanford's professional schools and perhaps the overrepresented University of Chicago (it's business and law school were both used while that wasn't the case for U Pennsylvania, Duke, or UVA). Harvard was used for all three categories, which could have inflated Harvard's numbers as well.

Over time I worked on a study (nerdy I know) that was more broad and all-encompassing that looked at the undergraduate institutions attended by one current class at the top 15 law, business, and medical schools according to U.S. News and World Report. The data was taken from Facebook groups like "SLS 2010" (for Stanford Law, for example). Every school had a Facebook group that represented at least one class year of students, and most profiles listed the undergraduate institution attended by the student*.

I think the use of percentages as opposed to total number was not a great idea for WSJ because it doesn't make sense to count say NYU's Tisch school in the numbers (how many of them are really pre-law, pre-med, or pre-MBA?), but they did.

By number (as opposed to percentage), the WSJ data looked like this:

1. Harvard (358)
2. Yale (231)
3. Stanford (181)
4. Princeton (174)
5. U Michigan (156)
6. U Pennsylvania (153)
7. Duke (139)
8. Columbia (118)
9. UC Berkeley (118)
10. Cornell (115)
11. Brown (98)
12. Dartmouth (93)
13. MIT (92)
14. UCLA (92)
15. Georgetown (85)
16. U Virginia (82)
17. Northwestern (73)
18. U Chicago (59)
19. U Texas – Austin (49)
20. Williams (47)

My Data was as follows (by number):

(1) 234 - Harvard
(2) 177 - Stanford
(3) 177 - U Pennsylvania
(4) 154 - Yale
(5) 150 - UC Berkeley
(6) 143 - Duke
(7) 134 - Cornell
(8) 123 - Princeton
(9) 121 - Columbia (includes Barnard College/CGS)
(10) 111 - U Michigan
(11) 111 - Georgetown
(12) 102 - UCLA
(13) 94 - U Virginia
(14) 89 - Dartmouth
(15) 87 - Brown
(16) 87 - Northwestern
(17) 75 - MIT
74 - U Texas - Austin
59 - Johns Hopkins
56 - NYU
53 - Rice U
51 - Washington U in St. Louis
50 - UCSD
48 - USC
47 - U Notre Dame
46 - U Chicago
42 - Emory, U North Carolina - Chapel Hill
41 - Amherst, Tufts
38 - U Florida
37 - Vanderbilt, Williams
36 - The Claremont Colleges
33 - U Washington
32 - U Wisconsin - Madison
30 - George Washington U
28 - Boston College
27 - Wellesley
26 - Swarthmore, U Maryland

*Note: Northwestern's Kellogg school did not have a Facebook group for a current class so I used an old class. As a result, I had to count some profiles that just listed "Northwestern Alumni" as undergrad alumni, which gave Northwestern better results than it would have gotten ordinarily.

**While the order is different, the top 17 schools are the same (which I found interesting). If you are curious about how an individual school did that is not listed here I will provide it (if I have time)...

The institutions included the following (directly from U.S. News Top 15):

MBA: Harvard, Stanford, U Pennsylvania (Wharton), MIT, Northwestern (Kellogg)*, U Chicago, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, Columbia, NYU (Stern), UCLA, U Michigan, Yale, U Virginia, Duke, and Cornell

JD: Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, NYU, UC Berkeley, U Chicago, U Pennsylvania, Northwestern, U Michigan, U Virginia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, and Vanderbilt

MD: Harvard, Johns Hopkins, WUSTL, U Pennsylvania, UCSF, Duke, U Washington, Stanford, UCLA, Yale, Columbia, U Michigan, Baylor College of Medicine, UCSD, and U Pittsburgh

***The problems with the study are obvious: a significant percentage of professional school students do not have Facebook accounts or their undergraduate institution is not listed (but this should not favor one school over another), Facebook is more popular at some schools than others (legitimate concern), the sample size compared to the total number of students that should be in one class is relatively small, the Claremont Colleges can not be viewed separately, the issues with Columbia, some Facebook groups are much larger than others which means some MD/JD/MBA programs are disproportionately represented, etc., etc.

****Besides Penn (maybe Facebook is more popular?!) doing particularly well and Princeton not doing as expected, my study seemed to jive with the WSJ numbers for the most part. As expected, the pro-U Chicago bias was removed which made it drop several spots.

P.S. If you want to find out the per capita data go ahead. It seems less significant to me for a number of reasons (but it is impossible to know how well Pomona or Claremont McKenna did or what percentage of the Columbia alumni went to Barnard or the small portion that went to the CGS for that matter).

Sectumsempra

wow good work

coughdrop

get a life

posterX

Per capita wise, the numbers would look similar to the WSJ article, i.e., with HYP far ahead at the top.

Can you give us a breakdown based just on the top 5 schools in each area? That would be interesting.

skbike2

I saw Boston College on there.

What is Boston University's ranking?

foto2gem

Size of school must matter somewhat..uPenn is twice the size of Princeton, etc. One must compare true numbers I would think. UMich should send many more if considering this data.

al6200

Where did you get your data from? Does Harvard/MIT/Princeton publish where their grad students came from? Do you know where I could get those figures?

Thanks.

AdamJaz

Do they have the data isolated for Med School placement?

Descartesz

Top 30 based on estimated average class size. The class size divisor is not perfect but at least as accurate as the Facebook-based method of gathering the raw totals.

Harvard 13.3%
Yale 11.7%
Stanford 11.0%
Princeton 10.7%
Amherst 10.1%
Duke 9.2%
Dartmouth 9.0%
Columbia 8.4%
Rice 7.8%
Williams 7.5%
U Penn 7.4%
Swarthmore 7.3%
MIT 7.2%
Georgetown 6.7%
Brown 6.1%
JHU 5.5%
Wellesley 4.9%
Chicago 4.7%
Northwestern 4.5%
Cornell 4.0%
Claremonts 3.6%
Tufts 3.3%
WUSTL 3.2%
Emory 2.8%
UVA 2.7%
UCB 2.4%
Vanderbilt 2.3%
ND 2.2%
U MI 1.9%
UCLA 1.6%

LAC Amherst, which controls no professional schools into which it might funnel its grads, does especially well. Techy Rice also deserves special recognition.

xNYer

Schools with large professional programs are at a disadvantage using this methodology.
As an example I would imagine you would need to deduct from the Cornell numbers all of the engineers, architects, hotel mngmt etc. to keep it apples to apples.
This group generally goes right into the marketplace rather than on to any JD/MBA/MD programs.

anxiousmom

Yeahhh!!! Plus it doesn't take into account that many Rice students will shoot for MUCH MUCH cheaper University of Texas - Austin Law School (just outside the top 15) over big debt at most of the top 15. Also, lots of kids are engineering or sciency types so go to PHd or employment....

45 Percenter

^ LOTS of Rice grads at UT Law (which is currently #16, used to be in the top 15, and is shooting to be there again). Hook 'em Horns!

beefs

I honestly feel like you have no life.

DunninLA

Once again Davida1, you've posted information that is not relevant. That list is approximately the same as a rank order admissions selectivity to american universities. In other words, it is a rank order of how smart kids are before they get to college.

The college does nothing to promote or inhibit a student's chances in applying to Law/Business/Med school.

45 Percenter

. . . . . says the kid with 242 threads and 1,889 posts.