<p>Could you rank the academic performance of each of the following groups in a normal university: prospective PhD students, prospective medical school students, prospective master, and those who get a job right after the graduation?</p>
<p>I heard that only less than 1 out of 10 people who got Bachelor’s degree get PhD. Is this both because the PhD admission is far more competitive than undergrad admission and because many people drop out the PhD program? </p>
<p>Does high PhD productivity of an undergraduate school (around 20~30%) mean that the school has excellent teaching quality? Or is the number not so important because it’s easy to get PhD in non-competitive PhD programs?</p>
<p>* Could you rank the academic performance of each of the following groups in a normal university: prospective PhD students, prospective medical school students, prospective master, and those who get a job right after the graduation?*</p>
<p>This is impossible to do. Nor is it meaningful for the particular question in which you are interested.</p>
<p>I heard that only less than 1 out of 10 people who got Bachelor’s degree get PhD. Is this both because the PhD admission is far more competitive than undergrad admission and because many people drop out the PhD program?</p>
<p>There are a variety of reasons for this. Here are some:</p>
<p>-PhD programs are very competitive to gain admission to, as you said.
-About 50% of people who begin a PhD don’t finish it, also as you said.
-Most people will NEVER need a PhD to do what they want. There’s no point in wasting the time if you don’t need a PhD.
-Some people would rather not spend 5-7+ years studying something and doing research. (No judgment.)</p>
<p>Does high PhD productivity of an undergraduate school (around 20~30%) mean that the school has excellent teaching quality? Or is the number not so important because it’s easy to get PhD in non-competitive PhD programs?</p>
<p>No, not necessarily. It could mean that the school tends to admit ambitious students. It could mean that the school tends to admit wealthier students (who are more likely to pursue graduate degrees). It could mean that the school has fewer pre-professional programs and encourages graduate school.</p>
<p>Also, low PhD productivity doesn’t mean that a college doesn’t have excellent teaching quality. It could be that the students want to work and make money instead of going to a PhD program, or it could be a numbers game. If Reed (~350 seniors) sends 105 seniors to graduate school, that’s 30% of the class. If The University of Washington (~5,000 seniors) sends 1,000 seniors to grad school, that’s only 20% of the class even though it’s 10 times as many students in grad school than Reed.</p>
<p>Thanks for your response with many helpful information. I like academically tough, PhD prep schools such as UChicago, Swarthmore, Reed and Carleton. If PhD programs are so hard to get into and to survive there, Reed should be the best place for me, even if I will be accepted by higher ranked universities which are unlike the above four colleges. </p>
<p>I think it is a fallacy to categorize schools as “PhD prep”. Getting into a Ph.D. program is more about what you do with your time as an undergraduate than where you get your degree. Ph.D. programs look at the individual more than the school they come from.</p>
<p>^Agree with the above. You can get into a PhD program from anywhere - that was part of the point of my post. You could go to the University of Oregon, or Penn State, or a Cal State or a tiny private LAC no one’s heard of and still go to a great graduate school. What matters is making the most of your resources.</p>
<p>In fact, if you already know that you want to get a PhD where you go matters even less. I think that small LACs like Swarthmore, Reed, and Carleton and highly intellectual schools like Chicago produce higher levels of PhD mostly because of 1) the wealth and ambition of their students prior to coming and 2) the environment of the school persuades students to want to get PhDs because they come to love their professors and admire the scholarly process/work that’s being done by them and others. You’re more likely to write long papers in class and research positions may be easier to come by - professors may advertise in class or personally encourage strong students of theirs to try out research as a career. My own RAship nearly fell into my lap at my LAC, and I had an adviser I saw literally every week who encouraged me personally to try a research career.</p>
<p>But if you already know that you want to get a PhD, if you go to University of Oregon or Portland State you’re going to go seek out professors doing research even if they don’t advertise for an RA or encourage you to do so in class. You’re going to be in professors’ office hours and working as their RA and studying for the GRE because you already know you want a PhD, so you could go anywhere and succeed at that goal as long as you are ambitious and continue to do the things you need to.</p>
<p>I also don’t want to call those schools “PhD prep” because most students from them go on to do something else.</p>