@ThankYouforHelp, yes, that’s why I noted that LACs dominate the percapita_ PhD feeder lists.
But someone on here was giving the misleading impression that they lead state schools even in total numbers, which just isn’t the case.
In any case, you have to take both inputs and majors in to account. All else being equal, I would expect Amherst to send more kids to PhD programs or elite professional schools than PSU on a per capita basis even if the education is exactly the same and the majors are exactly the same simply because the average quality of the entering students at Amherst is much higher than the average quality of students entering PSU. Plus, the majors aren’t exactly the same. State schools have a bunch more pre-professional majors where the goal generally isn’t to prepare kids for PhD programs (like Accounting or Industrial Design, etc.)
What would be much more interesting to look at is the per capita PhD and top professional program degree rates of the honors college kids at state schools (the kids who could have gotten in to elite LACs or at least had a shot) compared to elite LACs.
I think that you’ll find Shreyer’s per capita PhD/elite professional degree rates to be much closer to (or possibly even surpassing) Amherst’s than they are to PSU’s overall per capita rates.