Why do we have to adjust the figures to size? I think that's silly, if the intention is to get the names of schools viewed by these top professional schools as prestigious.





Sorry @ chocolatenutz. The Ivies are great and the data would show that they are, if getting into a top professional school is the basis. But this also goes to show that you don't have to graduate from an Ivy to get into a top professional school. Going to your State U will not bar you from getting excellent opportunities such as attending a top professional school.

How is prestige determined by the number of people attending?

[U]Feeder schools for Grad Program X[/U]

School A: 100 applicants, 16 acceptances, 15 attend

School B: 32 applicants, 14 acceptances, 8 attend

Clearly, School A is viewed more favorably because it has 15 attending, right?

And I don't think it's about "prestige," it's about admitting qualified students. Many schools have a disproportionately large amount of qualified students, but any school can produce a qualified student.

No no no, what is this acceptance rate you speak of? Nonsense!!! If a school has 25,000 undergraduates, of whom 1,500 apply to Harvard Law and 50 get in, then that school is automatically, obviously, indubitably, inarguably more [I][B][I]PRESTIGIOUS [/I][/B][/I](the most beautiful adjective in the English language, clearly) than some depressingly bourgeois liberal arts college (Williams? Smith? Such common, classless names!) that has 30 applicants and 15 admits. What misguided definition of prestige are you using, my friend?

[quote]bourgeois liberal arts college (Williams? Smith? Such common, classless names!)[/quote]
I can't even tell what side of the class line you're trying to mock.

^ Let's use schools for your examples. Assuming:

Duke: 6k undergrad: 100 applicants, 16 acceptances, 15 attend

University of Georgia: 28k undergrad: 32 applicants, 14 acceptances, 8 attend

Amherst College: 1 applicant, 1 acceptance, 1 attend

Utah State University: 12k undergrads: 1 applicant, 1 acceptance, 1 attend


What conclusion can you draw from that?


Admits must be computed against the # of applicants, not the size of the school, if we are to establish school prestige to the sight of these top professional schools.

[quote]Duke: 6k undergrad: 100 applicants, 16 acceptances, 15 attend

University of Georgia: 28k undergrad: 32 applicants, 14 acceptances, 8 attend

Amherst College: 1 applicant, 1 acceptance, 1 attend

Utah State University: 12k undergrads: 1 applicant, 1 acceptance, 1 attend


What conclusion can you draw from that?[/quote]
That this entire exercise in "prestige" is ridiculous. Oh, and that you're pulling numbers out of your ass.

It saddens me that there are people obsessed with college prestige as their main worry, while others starve in the street and die in the dirt, after toiling away their lives for bread. Really, people, is this what matters in life?

^ You are in denial with reality. I was giving you an example upon which I challenge you to draw a conclusion from it.



[b]How do law schools decide which students they will admit? [/b]

Law schools look closely at five factors:

1. College GPA. The higher your grades, the
better. Grades can account for 30-40 percent
(or even 50 percent) of the admission decision.
[b]The college you attended and the major in
which you earned your degree often are taken
into consideration[/b], so attending Berkeley is an
advantage. An excessive number of courses
taken passed/not passed could work against
you because law schools cannot interpret your
accomplishments accurately. Many law school
admissions officers assume that a GPA would be
lower if all courses had been taken for a grade.

[url]http://students.berkeley.edu/files/Admissions/12626_6.PreLaw.pdf[/url]



This isn't just true at Berkeley Law. I would wager that it is also true at Harvard, law, Yale Law, Stanford Law, Columbia Law, NYU Law and all the rest of the so-called, T-14 law schools.

I too agree that the title is misleading. It's not the college per se that is prestigious, but it's students, which are really, really smart even before they book a trip to Cambridge. Harvard has the highest mean LSAT scores which means that the students are great test takers. Indeed, Harvard (and other top schools) screens for such in admissions process. Since the LSAT is at least 50% of law school admissions by definition, H will have the highest acceptances to top law schools.

Does anyone seriously believe that it was Harvard's undergraduate "teaching" that got the students those scores? Is it really that much better than Amherst, Williams and top LACs, which are (supposedly) known for teaching?

And of course, there is the element of wealth. Many Texans, for example, would rather just stay home and attend their instate med at a whole lot less cost than H or H.

^ I'd say the grades and the school name of the applicant made him win the slot, in the end.

Berkeley issues aside, this is a pretty interesting list. If anything it seems to suggest that law schools and medical schools really do care about your undergraduate institution and aren't entirely driven by test scores and GPA. It also seems to suggest that grad schools prefer their own. I agree with others that weighting against school size is a good idea.

I know that Harvard tends to give high GPAs, its student body has high test taking ability (i.e. LSATs), and they probably send out a lot of law school applications, but there is no way that those difference accounts for Harvard Law having more Harvard undergraduates than nearly all other undergraduate schools combined. It seems like they'd have to prefer applicants from Harvard/Yale/Princeton.

^ Its not sufficient proof or even close to it.

Harvard favors its grad for all their professional school. Its the same in all schools. Check out the Hopkins link. Check out Yale's link. Every school favors their undergrads at the professional level. I bet Penn too favors their grads. Every school which has a professional school sends a lot of their undergrads.

Its different at the graduate level where the student is encouraged to do a PhD/Masters at another institution for academic development.

al6200, there's actually a huge gap between H/Y and P. Look at the numbers again.

And, please notice that both H & Y don't have strong engineering/tech programs.

What's amazing, for me, is Stanford. Stanford has the undergrad size of H. It has a great engineering department which accounts a good percentage of students of the student body. It is in the West Coast. And it has professional programs that are as highly rated as those of Harvard's, Yale's and JHU's.

Adjusting for size is no more telling than not doing so. Some universities have a significantly higher rate of pre-law, pre-med, pre-MBA students than others. Is there a point of comparing per-capita figures if over 25% of undergrads at one university applies to law schools as opposed to under 15% at another school? Cal, Johns Hopkins, MIT and Michigan are going have a lower percentage of pre-law students than universities with large A&S and most LACs.

Also, different schools have different demographics which will also impact per capita figures.

Ideally, one would compare admissions data of similar students across universities. Unfortunately, there is no such data.

In short, I think both absolute and per capita figures are telling...and misleading in their own way.

[quote] It seems like they'd have to prefer applicants from Harvard/Yale/Princeton. [/quote]

Students from these places get high LSAT scores and MCAT scores. For Business school they feed into IB/Managment Consultancy firms at a higher rate than normal which means they would be represented more in B- school.

Moreover, my biggest gripe is that this is a socio-economic issue- very few people are rich enough to afford these expensive professional schools. Mostly those who can attend are upper-middle class kids (who are concentrated in guess where?)

Its likely I am not saying anything new. Its probably being argued a gazillion times in other threads

[url]http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/656128-schools-harvard-law.html[/url]

[url]http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/331960-undergraduate-schools-most-commonly-found-top-law-schools.html[/url]

There are lots of them, but dont have time to search.

The main issue here is that this is a publicity stunt for Cal

Well... This list is completely statistically insignificant and if you'd like to know why:

(1) You've given a list of # of students from A-Z schools that attend X school.
How this bears any statistical significance I have no idea. Anyway... You need to factor in the # of applicant who applied to X school from each A-Z school, how many were accepted and how many chose to attend. Since it's the total # of applicants and the total # of acceptance that really matter. Why? Well...

Here's essentially the list you have provided:
X school is the most prestigious school for studying Φ.

A school 50
B school 20
C school 10
D school 5
E school 1

Okay so great; we now know how many students from each school A-E decided to attend X. Which... Isn't helpful. And here's why:

Assume:
A school has 25,000 undergrads
B school has 15,000
C school has 12,000
D school has 1,000
E school has 10,000

Which in reality means that, of the total student population, the following percent decided to attend X school:

A school 0.2%
B school 0.13%
C school 0.083%
D school 0.5%
E school 0.01%

Here's what's important: D school had only 5 graduates in attendance at X, yet it had the highest percentage of students attending X. Ok great, so now we know the % of student from A-E who go to X. STILL NOT RELEVANT.

You still need the # of students who applied, the # accepted and the # who attended. That way instead of telling us the % of students in attendance, we actually have some sort of statistically significant number as to why we're trying to analyze. As it is now, you've given us a correlation, not a causation.

This is why:
Suppose the following number of students applied to X from each school, followed by the number accepted and the number who attended and then the acceptance rate:
A school 100 70 50 -> 70%
B school 200 23 20 -> 11.5%
C school 25 10 10 -> 40%
D school 500 10 5 -> 2%
E school 10 1 1 -> 100%

Now, D school, who had the largest percentage representation also has, by far the lowest acceptance rate into X school. Whereas E school who has the lowest representation at X school, happens to have the highest acceptance rate into X.

Do you see why posting numbers of people attending XZY college is statistically insignificant if you're trying to determine which schools are favored by graduate schools?