LACs vs HYPS

interesteddad · October 21, 2006, 11:07am

Vossman:

It wasn’t a complaint. And, I don’t think it would be possible to unfairly overstate Reed’s PhD productivity, which is very high.

I think the best way to present the data is the percentage of grads going on to get a PhD. Here’s the data for the most recent 10 year period:

Academic field: ALL

PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database

Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database 
Percentage of graduates receiving a doctorate degree.

Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period

1 California Institute of Technology 35.8% 
2 ** Harvey Mudd College 24.7% **
3 ** Swarthmore College 21.1% **
4 ** Reed College 19.9% **
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 18.3% 
6 ** Carleton College 16.8% **
7 ** Bryn Mawr College 15.8% **
8 ** Oberlin College 15.7% **
9 University of Chicago 15.3% 
10 Yale University 14.5% 
11 Princeton University 14.3% 
12 Harvard University 14.3% 
13 ** Grinnell College 14.1% **
14 ** Haverford College 13.8% **
15 ** Pomona College 13.8% **
16 Rice University 13.1% 
17 ** Williams College 12.7% **
18 ** Amherst College 12.4% **
19 Stanford University 11.4% 
20 ** Kalamazoo College 11.3% **
21 ** Wesleyan University 11.0% **
22 ** St John’s College (both campus) 10.6% **
23 Brown University 10.6% 
24 ** Wellesley College 10.4% **
25 ** Earlham College 10.0% **
26 ** Beloit College 9.6% **
27 ** Lawrence University 9.5% **
28 ** Macalester College 9.3% **
29 Cornell University, All Campuses 9.0% 
30 ** Bowdoin College 9.0% **
31 ** Mount Holyoke College 8.9% **
32 ** Smith College 8.9% **
33 ** Vassar College 8.8% **
34 Case Western Reserve University 8.7% 
35 Johns Hopkins University 8.7% 
36 ** St Olaf College 8.7% **
37 ** Hendrix College 8.7% **
38 ** Hampshire College 8.6% **
39 Trinity University 8.5% 
40 ** Knox College 8.5% **
41 Duke University 8.5% 
42 ** Occidental College 8.4% **
43 University of Rochester 8.3% 
44 ** College of Wooster 8.3% **
45 ** Barnard College 8.3% **
46 ** Bennington College 8.2% **
47 Columbia University in the City of New York 8.1% 
48 ** Whitman College 8.0% **
49 University of California-Berkeley 7.9% 
50 College of William and Mary 7.9% 
51 Carnegie Mellon University 7.8% 
52 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 7.8% 
53 Brandeis University 7.7% 
54 Dartmouth College 7.6% 
55 ** Wabash College 7.5% **
56 ** Bates College 7.5% **
57 ** Davidson College 7.5% **
58 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 7.2% 
59 ** Franklin and Marshall College 7.2% **
60 Fisk University 7.1% 
61 Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) 7.1% 
62 University of California-San Francisco 6.8% 
63 Allegheny College 6.8% 
64 Furman University 6.6% 
65 University of Pennsylvania 6.5% 
66 Washington University 6.5% 
67 Bard College 6.5% 
68 Northwestern Univ 6.4% 
69 Rhodes College 6.4% 
70 Agnes Scott College 6.3% 
71 Spelman College 6.3% 
72 Antioch University, All Campuses 6.2% 
73 Kenyon College 6.2% 
74 University of Dallas 6.2% 
75 Ripon College 6.1% 
76 Colorado College 6.1% 
77 Bethel College (North Newton, KS) 6.1% 
78 Hamilton College 6.0% 
79 Goshen College 6.0% 
80 Middlebury College 6.0% 
81 Erskine College 6.0% 
82 University of the South 5.9% 
83 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 5.8% 
84 Drew University 5.8% 
85 Wake Forest University 5.8% 
86 Tougaloo College 5.8% 
87 Goucher College 5.8% 
88 Chatham College 5.7% 
89 Cooper Union 5.7% 
90 Alfred University, Main Campus 5.7% 
91 Tufts University 5.7% 
92 University of California-Santa Cruz 5.6% 
93 Colgate University 5.6% 
94 Colby College 5.5% 
95 Bucknell University 5.4% 
96 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 5.4% 
97 Concordia Teachers College 5.4% 
98 University of Virginia, Main Campus 5.4% 
99 Sarah Lawrence College 5.3% 
100 Southwestern University 5.3%

pbwain · October 21, 2006, 11:44am

This list is interesting but basically worthless, many PhDs never use their degrees or are students who do not want to face the real world and are just procrastinating the future. What we want to ask is what is the best place to begin your education so you are sucessful in your field ie LAC vs IVY. This thread has shown that it probably depends on the individual.

mini · October 21, 2006, 3:54pm

It also shows major self-selection bias. It is mainly a measure of professors’ abilities (with the help of admissions offices, of course) to clone themselves. Now, if you go in thinking that you wish to be a professor clone, it is a good measure. But for the majority of students at any of these schools don’t go on for future degrees, so what one would want to measure is the value of the B.A. for the average student attending, and definitely not the academic superstars (who would likely do well wherever they went.)

vonlost · October 21, 2006, 4:22pm

I would have thought that the majority of students attending these top LACs and RUs do go on to get an advanced degree of some kind (but I have no data to support this). As such, I would consider the PhD numbers to be indicative of the overall quality of preparation for advanced degrees.

Hanna · October 21, 2006, 4:36pm

“BTW, one thing I would point out. Inherent in Hanna’s analysis is a total dismissal of collaborative learning.”

Apparently we understand “collaborative learning” differently. I was extremely interested in learning from my classmates. I just don’t believe that the presence or absence of a person with tenure is the defining factor in whether it occurs; I did way more of it in most of my TF-led sections at Harvard than I did in most of my prof-led seminars at Bryn Mawr (and Haverford).

I was also not interested in a one-way exchange where I spoke and the other students listened. I don’t see what’s “collaborative” about that. Now, it wasn’t quiet like that at Swarthmore, based on the classes I shopped, but that’s not because it’s a small LAC; that’s because it’s Swarthmore and filled with Swarthmore kids. “Collaborative learning” doesn’t automatically happen because you’re at an LAC.

Now, I took professor-led seminar classes at Harvard and loved them (in Japanese, Mood Disorders, Eating Disorders, Race and the American Legal Process, & Phonetics and Phonology – I still remember every course I took). They were great. But even if you believe TA’s destroy small-group discussion, I don’t think every course in every subject requires that kind of environment. I don’t feel cheated that there wasn’t much opportunity for collaborative learning in my freshman calculus class; it was about mastering a set of skills, not about negotiating a clash of viewpoints. (And it was a 60-student lecture, by the way.)

Are you suggesting that the students at Swarthmore choose to go there for the greater good of society? As an act of charity toward their fellow students? Please. They’re there for personal self-improvement, just as Harvard students are. The fact that they chose a school with a different atmosphere does not mean they based the choice on some selfless motive. If they didn’t think it was best for THEM, they’d go elsewhere. And that’s just as it should be.

afan · October 21, 2006, 10:20pm

And you would be right. The proportion who go on to some advanced degree is usually in the range of 60-80% for these elite colleges. Most do NOT end their educations with BA degrees.

Unfortunately, I don’t know of any centralized source. You have to look at each college’s site to find the information.

interesteddad · October 22, 2006, 12:09am

It’s really hard to track because so much of post grad study doesn’t begin immediately after college. For example, it’s extremely rare to go straight into an MBA program and increasingly rare to go straight into med school.

afan · October 22, 2006, 10:03am

Standardized numbers for professional school do not exist as far as I know. However, colleges survey their alumns and report the results.

It is actually relatively easy for them to have numbers for medical school since the vast majority of people who apply do so within a few years of graduation and use the premed systems at their colleges. Therefore the college knows who is appllying and who is getting in. Alum surveys then are used to rack how many get degrees (for medical school nearly everyone who enrolls graduates).

For students at elite private colleges, ending formal education with a bachelor’s degree is the exception rather than the norm. For this reason, valuable as the PhD data is, it is a little misleading, in that so many people who do not get research doctoral degrees get professional degrees that one cannot interpret the ranking on PhD production as a ranking on overall graduate level education. To a large extent, among the elites, colleges that are higher on the PhD ranking end up somewhat lower on the professional school ranking.

interesteddad · October 22, 2006, 1:30pm

Right. But, there is no standardization of reporting. In particular, the med school placement rates colleges throw up on their websites are all over the board. Some are percentages of all pre-meds. Some are percentages of just the pre-meds the college agreed to support in the application process. Some are rates for just graduating seniors. Others are rates for seniors and alums. Some are rates for the first try. Some are rates for multiple tries.

Actually, the med school placement system HAS the data, but they don’t make it available publicly like the NSF does with the PhD data.

The one that is nearly impossible to track is MBA degrees. That relies entirely on self-reporting, often from later in life, to the alumni office. Colleges can come up with rough percentages, but there is no standardization in reporting at all. Often, it’s impossible to even know where a college is getting its data.

LACs vs HYPS

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