<p>Does anyone have the statistics for Chicago undergraduates’ placement into grad schools? Or anything more comprehensive.</p>
<p>Chicago is one of the top schools in the country for placing students in Ph D programs. Here are some specifics for the physical and natural sciences, I believe it is even higher for social sciences:</p>
<p>BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES: Reed, CalTech, Swarthmore, U Chicago, Kalamazoo, MIT, Earlham, Harvey Mudd, U Sciences Philadelphia, Grinnell</p>
<p>CHEMISTRY: Harvey Mudd, Reed, CalTech, Wabash, Carleton, Grinnell, Wooster, Kalamazoo, Texas Lutheran, Bowdoin</p>
<p>MATH & COMPUTER SCIENCES: CalTech, Harvey Mudd, MIT, Reed, Rice, Princeton, U Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, St. John’s, Pomona</p>
<p>MEDICAL SCIENCES: U Sciences Philladelphia, Albany College of Pharmacy, Hampshire, UCSF, Ohio Northern, Stanford, U Texas Health Science Center, Reed, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley</p>
<p>PHYSICAL SCIENCES: Harvey Mudd, CalTech, MIT, Reed, NM Institute of Mining, Carleton, Wabash, U Chicago, Grinnell, Rice</p>
<p>PHYSICS: CalTech, Harvey Mudd, MIT, NM Institute of Mining, Reed, U Chicago, Princeton, Carleton, Marlboro, Rice</p>
<p>SCIENCES & ENGINEERING: CalTech, Harvey Mudd, MIT, Reed, Swarthmore, Carleton, U Chicago, Rice, Princeton, Haverford</p>
<p>Source: Weighted Baccalaureate Origins Study, Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (2004)</p>
<p>That data is slightly misleading. For example, though Harvard is probably the best school in America for % of undergraduate students getting into top graduate programs, it doesn’t place highly on any of the lists. For such desired statistic, Chicago would rank in the top 5-10 schools (including liberal arts colleges) without a doubt. It does, of course, depend upon the field in question. Generally, from what I have seen, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Harvard, Chicago, and a few LACs such as Swarthmore and Harvey Mudd have the best grad school placement. Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any data sets to support this conclusion.</p>
<p>I have not seen any published study which reports this about Harvard, is there a source? Perhaps business, law and medical school numbers would be different.</p>
<p>Here is a further list which includes other fields from Reed College:</p>
<p><a href=“http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html[/url]”>http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html</a></p>
<p>The study is titled “PERCENTAGE RANKING OF PH.D.S, BY ACADEMIC FIELD, CONFERRED UPON GRADUATES OF LISTED INSTITUTIONS”. I’m taking this to mean percent of undergraduates in a specific field who go on to get their PhDs. However, I think the OP is asking how difficult it would be to get into a good graduate school coming from Chicago. I’ll use my major to show how the two are entirely different.</p>
<p>Many math majors get recruited from schools like HYP directly out of undergrad to work at decent-paying jobs in a variety of areas. Math majors from, say, Harvey Mudd, don’t necessarily have the same advantage due to lack of HYP-like prestige. But in almost any case, a high-GPA B.A. in math from Harvard will be looked better upon in graduate admissions than a high-GPA B.A. in math from Harvey Mudd. (No offense to HM, as I have more than a few friends there who tell me that the math program is excellent.) This illustrates how a more respected school in a particular field can have a not-so-great ranking in said study. This may be irrelevant for Chicago’s case, though, as I think Chicago would rank high on both lists.</p>
<p>Not really relevant, but interesting: <a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights;
<p>This interpretation would suggest that far fewer students from Harvard are interested in academic study, and are instead essentially interested in some form of professional career. Yale and Princeton appear on the lists, which suggests there is somewhat more interest in academe at those schools. </p>
<p>For grad school, it is much more important to have good faculty recommendations and research experience than it is to be from a particular undergrad school. It carries much less weight than many of the so-called top tier undergrad schools care to admit. I have a very academically respected friend who, for quality of life reasons, chose to teach and do research at a third tier college. All of the many students he has recommended to top Ph.D. programs in his field have been eagerly accepted and have done well. Going to Harvard or Chicago would have conferred no advantage to his students in terms of top Ph.D. program placement.</p>
<p>My daughter is a graduating fourth year. Anecdotally, I can tell you that she and her fellow classics majors have done well this year. Her close friend was accepted at Berkeley, Duke, Michigan, UNC and Stanford that I know of. He chose Michigan (which is great for classics). My daughter was accepted at Berkeley, Chicago, Illinois and Yale. She opted for Yale. Oh – both are going to combined MA/PhD programs. She received tuition remission for six years and a very large stipend. She was ultra-happy at Chicago and with her Chicago profs and education.</p>
<p>I think an important point is nestled in the folds of the phuriku-idad conversation above. One of the reasons Chicago has a good record for producing PhDs is that it attracts a lot of students who are likely to pursue PhDs – more, probably, on a percentage basis than Harvard (which attracts more students who are likely to pursue the Presidency or a Hollywood producing contract, on a percentage basis, than Chicago). Chicago isn’t the only college like that, but there aren’t so many where such a high percentage of the students have PhD-type ambitions. What that means to an individual student is that there is a culture amenable to graduate school applications – lots of information, vicarious experience, buzz, professors expect it of their students, and graduate admissions committees elsewhere expect to see and to admit a bunch of applicants.</p>
<p>idad is certainly right that a respected academic anywhere can do a good job placing his top students into good grad programs. What Chicago offers is a wide variety of respected academics in many fields, and a culture where going on to PhD study is normal, not exceptional. As for whether the university’s brand, by itself, adds anything: I think it does, to a limited extent. (My neighbor, then an academic scientist and graduate admissions committee member at his university, told one of my children, during the college decision process, “When you apply to graduate school, the University of Chicago really means something.”)</p>
<p>Idad’s post makes much sense. I cannot think of any of my daughter’s friends who did not apply to grad school or to law school or to med school. All, that I know of, are continuing their education in some way. One applied for a Fulbright and delayed his grad school app for that reason, but plans to apply in the next round. </p>
<p>So it is true, Chicago student probably are successful at grad school placement because they are predisposed to attend.</p>