@PurpleTitan You said: “PSU (which isn’t UMich or Cal) had 6 times the number of undergrads who went on to get science/tech PhDs compared to Amherst, for instance.”
I’m not sure how that is meaningful here. Penn State is literally 25 times bigger than Amherst. The chance that any particular student at Amherst will get a science/tech PhD is 400% higher than for a student at Penn State. That percentage is even more true for medical school. 90 percent of Amherst students who apply to med school get in (and there is no Amherst committee deciding what students to support for med school the way there is at large schools).