<p>If you are a National Merit Finalist, there are about 90 schools that offer you either a full ride, or very close to it. Some throw in computers and parking spots! Just this group represents about 8,000 kids each year. The non-Ivies in the top 10 list of National Merit Scholars have hundreds of kids on their campuses getting full rides.</p>
<p>And why not?! Why should so many athletes get scholarships and so few uber-academic-achievers!</p>
<p>I feel that the effort to compare experiences of students in institutions in very different places in the national system of higher education is a a poor choice of ways to understand what is going on. Does anyone try to compare being a mayor to being an astronaut or being a brain surgeon? No. Many jobs, we know have challenges we can barely imagine and comparison is not possible. There would be no need to go on about this if the oldest and richest colleges had no desire to solidify their dominance by seeking the best and the brightest. Their desire to do that wouldn’t be decisive, if people were unwilling or unable to go there, But they are willing and financial aid at the top schools has now made them able. No one at those schools thought too much about what this intensification of the yield effect would be. Consider that tests do not discriminate among test takers well at the top end of the instruments. Consider that about half the students with perfect test scores are turned away at the very top schools. This suggests that the tests do not measure at the top end what the top colleges are selecting for and that if anything, the scores flatten out the curve of attainment that those students actually represent. They are a group that has been marshaled in this way only since financial aid policies at the top schools were changed a few years ago. No one has really looked at what these students are like and what kind of culture has arisen out of it. We have a better idea of the topography of the moon than we do of those top campuses now. The reason that the students from those schools don’t comment on their experience is that it is just not possible to make themselves understood. The campus life is like living in a superconducting fluid - resistance to the inner drive to excel on your own terms has dropped to zero. Everyone believes that any level of attainment you mention makes sense and there is no shortfall of talent or resources. Many people on this list wonder how the top schools can presume to so much. Those schools know exactly how they can presume so much - they planned on creating dominating levels of attainment and it has worked out for them much better than they could have expected. Mostly, they just hope that no one notices right away and so far no one has. They are becoming more dominant not less. Is that a good idea? Probably not, but it is happening anyway.</p>
<p>SRVR
I don’t think you are nuts at all. While visiting a LAC, after being admitted, my S asked to speak to a physics prof. Turns out they didn’t offer enough courses for him (he had taken a few classes at local U while in HS). Another college, with excellent CS school, was weak in an interdisciplinary field that also interested him. At 17, why limit himself? There were no such issues at Caltech or MIT. The flagship U is so huge he probably could have dined well, but our flagship is no UCLA or UCB!!! By the way, Caltech cost $25K less than MIT, and then lovely upperclass merit awards!!! Plus, jobs paying $35/hour.</p>
<p>Only comparison I can make is that I attended Honors program at a flagship, and huge school with Greek life and sports was a terrible fit for me. Education and profs were great, admittance into grad schools was a breeze, but in an alternate universe, I wish I had taken the other path. DS, on the other hand, would probably love to spend the rest of his life at his former college. Choices are tied to our own experiences.</p>
<p>cpenoi,</p>
<p>You have some thought provoking comments. We should all note (and probably fear) the increase in stratification within higher ed over the past generation. The phenomenon is real and the impact affects all too many students. For example, these high achievers bought through merit scholarships at state U face a dwindling peer group of equally talented individuals compared to my generation. Worse, though is the impact of dwindling need based financial aid, including that diverted to these merit programs, on kids with fewer financial resources. All to many of these kids now end up at community colleges, at who knows what loss. </p>
<p>It is also interesting to note your comments on the use of test scores. The testing term that is relevant is “ceiling effect”. The practical impact is that, as you point out, these tests do not separate among the very top few percent in a statistically (i.e. honest) way. Worse, it is precisely these merit awarding state U that are the most guilty of excessive reliance on (unreliable) test scores. So that vaunted peer group of that merit award winner may not be so vaunted after all, especially if it is composed of high SAT scoring part time slackers. Automatic awards to NM finalists can, and do, bias towards this group.</p>
<p>The elite U report SAT scores, because everyone understands them and they are nationally normed. But do not be misled to think they give heavy reliance to them. Truth is they have so many applicants that they can select kids that are extraordinarily strong performers academically that also happen to have high SAT scores. (in practice, will they use SAT scores as a pre-screen? We don’t really know. We do know that high academic performance is very highly correlated with high SAT scores. We also know that high SAT scores are not as well correlated with high academic performance. See any of a number of CB papers published over the past 15 years.)</p>
<p>What this means in practice is that it is extraordinarily difficult to compare student bodies at elite colleges and universities with the student bodies at elite programs within a state U. It is just as true that resources at the elite colleges (faculty, facilities and so forth) can’t be compared to a state U. And the playing field may be level even with regard to benefits. For instance, even “lesser” elites like U Chicago have pretty big undergrad grant resources for summer activities, such as Foreign Language Acquisition Grants (FLAG) for summer study to learn a foreign language, or HHMI funds to do research. Any student can apply for these.</p>
<p>No doubt the saving grace for many of us is that individual differences so far outweigh these group effects that for any individual kid, there’s a good chance they’ll find a setting where they will excel. The ivies have no lock on national scholarships like Rhodes and Marshall, to use one example.</p>
<p>Up until very recently family income was the largest factor in determining where top students enrolled. Now maybe that has changed to some extent for a small number of applicants to the very top schools due to improvements in financial aid policy in the last couple years. I’d like to note that these changes coincided with Congress taking a look into those large college endowments – I don’t think Harvard and others eliminated loans, etc., out of the kindness of their hearts. They could have funded the current level of financial aid for many years, but there was no political pressure to do so.</p>
<p>For at least the past decade there has been a well-documented loss of the middle class from the top schools. In my own community, I have seen many students turn down the Ivies, MIT, Caltech, etc. for our state flagship purely for financial reasons. Of course, the quality of the state school matters a lot. The one bright spot I see is when I look at <em>graduate</em> school admissions to top programs in a variety of fields. Most people would be surprised by the wide range of undergraduate schools that you find represented in top grad departments.</p>
<p>anneroku,</p>
<p>spot on with your comments. The stratification I comments about is occurring on two dimensions - narrowly on academic ability, where the academic superstars are being filtered off by various means, affecting a small percentage, but more broadly on a family income basis.</p>
<p>Truth is though, that the new financial aid policies you mention that are much more generous to the middle class will lead to more of the academic stars being plucked off by the wealthy elites. </p>
<p>I suspect this means the state U will dip lower into the talent pool even with their merit awards, and certainly with their non scholarship honors programs. </p>
<p>Keep in mind too that grad school and professional school admissions are not the same. I still see that the majority of kids attending Harvard Med or Yale law seem to be ivy graduates (OK, maybe not a clear majority - have not counted - but a disproportionate share?). OTOH, maybe this is a money phenomenon, too, since top grad school programs are funded but professional school slots are not.</p>
<p>“The one bright spot I see is when I look at <em>graduate</em> school admissions to top programs in a variety of fields. Most people would be surprised by the wide range of undergraduate schools that you find represented in top grad departments. “</p>
<p>My offspring and their friends are now in a pretty fair number of top graduate programs. Before their experience it seemed to me undergrad institution prestige didn’t really matter for PhD programs; now I am not at all sure of that. Based on a very small completely non-scientific sampling, it would seem to me it matters a lot for humanities, especially as graduate student slots are cut due to economic woes, but not so much for sciences. It seems to be extremely important for math. I know nothing about engineering. For biological sciences I wonder if more elite school grads had planned on med school from the beginning and that impacts what I see in my very small world? This does seem to me an interesting discussion and worth exploring as students make final decisions on undergraduate schools. I guess if I had a student choosing an undergrad school who would clearly be looking at grad school next, it would make sense for the student to be asking about those placements before making a final choice.</p>
<p>newmassdad,
I agree this is a key point that is missed in most discussions:
“grad school and professional school admissions are not the same.”
Ivy and elites send more of their undergrads to top professional schools – MBA and Law in particular. For MD, not so much. I also suspect some of this is a result of student self-selection by ability to pay.
You will see a much broader range of undergraduate institutions represented in funded PhD programs.</p>
<p>alh,
I am most familiar with science and engineering PhD programs and the perceived prestige of the undergraduate program is not as important. Of course, this discussion is complicated by the fact that most people have no idea what the top schools are in a particular field. Schools like Harvard and Yale, for example, have little prestige in engineering. And some of the best science and engineering departments are found at state universities. Top grad departments are familiar with the best programs in their field; they know that they are not always found in the name-brand colleges everyone considers to be “elite.” The quality of the undergrad department is still important, but an individual department’s prestige may be vastly different than the overall school reputation.</p>
<p>It’s easy to check – look at the websites of top grad schools and see where their grad students studied as undergrads. As for MD programs, strong students at our state flagship have no problem being admitted to top MD programs. From the lists I’ve seen, graduates of Ivies and elites don’t seem to have an edge there.</p>
<p>In the humanities, my own anecdotal information differs from yours, but I don’t have as much data about that.</p>
<p>Just remember that the bottom of the class grad from a bottom tier medical school is still called “Doctor”…</p>
<p>“Of course, this discussion is complicated by the fact that most people have no idea what the top schools are in a particular field.”</p>
<p>Agreed! When I say these students attend top grad programs they aren’t necessarily HYPXYZ; they are the programs with the best reputations among those in that field and the most difficult to get into. In some cases it will be much easier to get into the HYP program for that very reason. </p>
<p>I think the undergrad education matters for grad school, not necessarily the name of the school but the individual dept reputation, calibre of professors and how willing they are to mentor undergrads. Sometimes though the top grad programs will be at HYPXYZ and in that case the schools may (?) just kind of trade their undergrads around. Maybe. It has all been rather a surprise to me since I know individuals my age who went to lesser rated state schools with lousy departments in their area of interest, slightly better grad schools though certainly not the best for that field and ended up professors with international reputations at top schools for the particular field. Could this happen now? I assumed so till very recently.</p>
<p>Sorry to be so very very far from the original topic of thread</p>
<p>The assumption that the undergraduate degree has little influence on admission to top grad schools, even in the sciences, is just false. Research studies on that specific issue have shown it matters a great deal. At places like MIT, Stanford and other top ranked research universities there is huge advantage for admission to PhD programs to students already with undergraduate degrees from the best private research universities. </p>
<p>The reality is that if you are an undergrad majoring in a department that is also a top ten department in that field in the NRC rankings, you are more likely than not to be able to attend a top ten PhD program. It is just a big game of musical chairs. Frequently, your academic advisor will know very well his counterparts at the institutions you are applying to. For grad school admission, recommendations are vastly more important than GPA. </p>
<p>It is true that many elite colleges are not necessarily also elite research universities and data has shown that their graduates also will be penalized when seeking admission to top PhD programs.</p>
<p>You can certainly proceed to grad school from a state flagship, but most likely it will not be at a top PhD program. Without a PhD from a top program, your chances of success in academia are much reduced. You won’t have the ability to publish as much and you won’t have the recommendations that really matter. Academia is extremely elite conscious and PhDs from the top programs are the ones most likely to get tenure track appointments. One of the criteria for tenure is that you have to be at least as good as half of the existing tenured faculty in that department. The faculty does not want to lower the average quality of their department. Since the current faculty is the one that votes you in, they have to believe you will add to the prestige of their department. </p>
<p>I tend to agree with cpenoi and newmassdad that the gap between top privates and top publics is widening, not narrowing. Financial aid at such schools is such that is cheaper for the vast majority of students actually admitted to enroll at Harvard, Stanford or MIT than Cal or Michigan. Yields have been steadily climbing as the middle class is increasingly able to afford an ever reduced tuition after aid is accounted for. These schools hardly ever lose kids for financial reasons: they mostly lose them to each other. </p>
<p>The idea that honors colleges somehow offer a viable alternative to top private universities is a big illusion, promoted through anecdotal evidence not facts. The ROI for top privates has always been much greater, even after accounting for the net cost of tuition.</p>
<p>
Agreed. But these top ten departments are not found exclusively at the “best private research universities.”
I would not say this is true for the “vast majority.” Sticker price for in-state at Cal or Michigan is a better deal for most applicants, particularly the middle class who may be on the border of financial need. The generous financial aid at HYP is a very recent change in policy. Previously financial aid was aimed at very low income students and the result was a decrease in the percentage of middle class students.</p>
<p>CD, are you saying we should rely on data from 1995, the most recent completed study by NRC? Sorry, the online links no longer even work so I can’t take a fresh look, but I seem to recall that, as anneroku said, many top programs are at flagship state universities. I recall that Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin and others have a good number of top programs. </p>
<p>We must keep in mind that undergraduate rankings have little to do with graduate schools - and vice versa.</p>
<p>Thanks to those who picked up on my post. First, on the ceiling effect: where the tests start to lose their ability to discriminate among students, the top schools have to build an admissions process that grades the students on out beyond what the tests measure. The top schools, in my view, recruit the way you would for a 007 - students who just knock down whatever stands in their way. These kids will get good grades just be be left alone to do what the want. So high SAT scores and grades are pieces of a pattern that they are looking for that includes self directed attainment. If they don’t see the self directed attainment, that means the kid is just a good student. A top school spends a great deal of money on a small group of students. They need to know that a student will be ready to take advantage of that level of resources. The top schools are confident that the intense concentration of resources on those students most ready to take advantage of them will work through elective affinity to opportunities that only come into view in those small and intense settings. Many top school graduates decide to compete even up in the marketplace. However, that is not where they begin. With a no loan policy at those schools, the students can afford to go the Barak Obama way and start out with a non-profit for a number of years. At Princeton, these jobs are preidentified for recent graduates to apply to. The ‘cop-out’ course is to work for a consulting firm. So far as I know, they recruit only at the top schools. Once you go to one of those schools, the real world most of us live in is not their real world. That doesn’t mean you won’t find one of the working at Starbucks. The guy I know who just graduated from Yale who was working a Starbucks was doing that so he could work on a non-paying gig directing a play. He went from there to Palestine to collect material for a play on the conflict there. When you go to those places, how you see opportunity is not in the same territory that most of us are working in. It’s kind of like Frodo with the Ring on - scary and great.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is not a recent phenomenon. Aid programs have improved every year for the past decade. There never was a decrease in middle class students at top privates. The number of students on financial aid, even after excluding those at the low end on Pell grants, has been on a constant increase at HYPSM. </p>
<p>Unless you are instate, Cal and Michigan are not cheaper than HYPSM for the vast majority of students. Even for instate the net average difference in tuition has been decreasing every year. After accounting for the fact that only 60% of Cal students and 70% of michigan students graduate in 4 years as compared to close to 90% for HYPSM, the value proposition becomes even more dubious. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While its is true that a few state flagships are also research powerhouses, the rate of admission of their graduates to top PhD programs is much lower than their private counterparts, sometimes even lower than elite privates universities outside the top ten or even LACs.</p>
<p>nmd:</p>
<p>I don’t think it really matters if you use the RNC 1995 ranking or some other more recent ranking. The science rankings have not changed that much.</p>
<p>Here is the data from a 1999 study on the rate of acceptance to top 10 phD programs in the sciences:</p>
<p>Harvard 62%
MIT 57%
Princeton 52 %
Yale 52 %
Berkeley 48 %
Swarthmore 44 %
Michigan 39 %
Williams 39%
Carleton 28 %
Amherst 25 %</p>
<p>Yale, with hardly any science programs in the top 10, provides a significant boost in admission to its graduates and does better than Cal for instance. </p>
<p>Surprisingly, Swarthmore, a college with no PhD programs does nearly as well as Cal and better than Michigan at getting its students into top programs. </p>
<p>I can’t seem to find the data for Stanford but I believe it showed about the same as MIT or about a 10 point increase over Cal.</p>
<p>Outside of Cal and Michigan, no state school broke the 25% admission rate to top PhD programs.</p>
<p>“Surprisingly, Swarthmore, a college with no PhD programs does nearly as well as Cal and better than Michigan at getting its students into top programs. “</p>
<p>Not really surprising at all imho given Swarthmore’s reputation. Students there who want graduate courses have access to nearby universities and I assume are provided research opportunities as well.</p>
<p>Yes, but compare that to the relatively low number for Amherst and Carleton. Swarthmore has obviously done a much better job than other LACs establishing a reputation among the top science PhD programs.</p>
<p>^^apples to oranges imho.</p>
<p>How does Reed rank in that list?</p>