"Okay, then I’d guess that undergrads at research schools like Michigan are pretty successful at getting summer internships and then getting a decent job after graduation. People at LA schools sit around writing papers and stuff and probably aren’t prepared to get a job. So they go hide in grad school. Even if they try to get an internship, why would a software company in the bay area, for example, want someone even from a good school like Swarthmore when they can grab someone from Berkeley, Stanford, or even UCLA, where the CS/engineering programs are 1000x better?
The bottom line, if you want a Ph.D., you should go to as good of a research university as you can, get to know your professors, do well in classes, and get research experience. The only thing LA colleges have on research universities is small classes, but there are private research universities that are way better anyway. Plus the LORs you get aren’t going to be coming from someone famous, likely not even someone well-known."
I’m always surprised when I see someone post something so confidently, so surely, that isn’t accurate.
Michigan is a great school, as are Cal and UCLA, but the top LACs do better than those large schools at placing undergraduates in PhD programs AND in professional schools. Michigan graduates over 7000 students a year, while Amherst and Williams graduate 500 or less. Percentage wise, the Amherst and Williams grads get many, many more than their share of spaces in every PhD and professional program out there, as well as Fulbright scholarships and everything else.
(and believe me I’m not knocking Michigan - I went there)