<p>yeah theres no such thing as an academic scholarship at an ivy it doesn’t matter if you’re a genius, ivies only give need based aid, and its tough to even qualify for need</p>
<p>cellardweller,
Sorry but I’m not sure I understand your statistics in post #87. In the first list, is a “top 10 PhD producing institution” a school with the largest number of undergrads who then go on to get a Phd in a STEM field? In the second list, are you comparing total number of bachelor degrees, or number of bachelor degrees only in a STEM field?
Maybe. But the 4% higher acceptance rate to top 10 Phd programs wouldn’t justify the cost of Princeton vs. Berkeley in-state to me, unless the student is eligible for a large amount of financial aid.</p>
<p>Great post. Honestly, reading this has made me feel a lot better about my decision (which is about 90% made) to turn down full-pay at my dream school.</p>
<p>The financial comparison between top privates and state publics will be different for each student depending on their family’s financial situation. But for the middle class, it is only in the last couple years – and still, only at a handful of the very top schools – that the costs may be comparable.
While low-income students may have been given adequate financial aid at the wealthiest elite schools, this group only comprised a small percentage of the student body and has stayed low for decades. The larger number of middle-income applicants were not receiving enough aid and as a result, their percentages gradually dropped while the percentage of upper-income students grew. Up until the last year or two, when Congress started putting pressure on top schools to use their huge endowments for scholarship money, financial aid at the very wealthiest schools included a large loan component that was not really “aid.” </p>
<p>
The amount may have increased, but it did not keep up with the increase in college costs.</p>
<p>
Not true. “Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, in a sample of eleven prestigious colleges, the percentage of students from families in the bottom quartile of national family income remained roughly steadyaround 10 percent. During the same period the percentage of students from the top quartile rose sharply, from a little more than one third to fully half.” [Scandals</a> of Higher Education - The New York Review of Books](<a href=“http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20011]Scandals”>Scandals of Higher Education | Andrew Delbanco | The New York Review of Books)</p>
<p>Top privates schools have made it clear they were losing the middle class.
MIT Chancellor: We lost ground with students from families making greater than $100,000, but less than $200,000, said Clay. [Tuition</a> Increase is Lowest in 8 Yrs, High Relative to Inflation - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N6/tuition.html]Tuition”>http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N6/tuition.html)</p>
<p>"As higher-income students maintain, and continue to expand, their admissions advantage and higher-ed institutions react by reaching out to low-income studentsoften with an emphasis on first-generation college studentsits those in the middle that feel the heat… The institutions are doing better, but now it is the middle two quarters that are getting pancaked in the process, said Georgetown Senior Associate Dean Hugh Cloke, who has been involved in admissions for 35 years…there are very few poor students at Americas top colleges, and a large and growing number of rich ones. [Squeezed</a> Out](<a href=“http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/squeezed]Squeezed”>http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/squeezed)</p>
<p>OK, I found the data referred to in Post #87:
Well, the first three schools on this list are science/tech schools – it’s no wonder that they would have the largest percentages of students going on for Science & Technology Phds, especially when compared to large state schools that have students majoring in so many other fields. So, for the top of the list, the high percentages may simply be a function of the focus of the school rather than the fact that they are “private elites.” For the next seven, these percentages may or may not be impressive. We don’t know since the data do not tell us the quality of the Phd programs these students enrolled in. Here’s the original study:
Baccalaureate Origins of S&E Doctorate Recipients
[nsf.gov</a> - SRS Baccalaureate Origins of S&E Doctorate Recipients - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“Archive Goodbye | NCSES | NSF”>Archive Goodbye | NCSES | NSF)
Actually, looking further into the data, it seems it might be advisable not to attend an American university at all, since 37% of Science & Engineering Phd’s at U.S. universities earned their undergrad degrees from foreign schools.
Check out the list – New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (8.7%) beats out Yale (8.4%)
It’s clear that there are some (non-tech) schools that are sending a relatively high percentage of students on to Science and Technology Phds. But after the top few schools, the price differential may not be justified. For example, U-C Berkeley ties with Dartmouth at 5.7%
It’s not so surprising that the <em>percentage</em> of state university students going on to Science & Technology Phd’s is relatively small. These are huge schools with lots of students, and only a small percentage majors in a Science or Technology field.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The percentage of student majoring in the sciences is not vastly different between private and public universities. Outside of a few schools such as MIT and Caltech, public universities have a larger percentage majoring in the sciences. According to the CDS of the schools, 30% of Princeton grads major in the sciences as opposed to 33% at Berkeley. So the difference in PhD productivity is even greater after adjustment for majors. Most publics hover around 30% majoring in STEM fields. Yale has only 18%.</p>
<p>In short, you are twice as likely to get to a PhD at Princeton compared to Berkeley after adjusting for major distribution. And again Berkeley is the very best public by a mile. The difference gets much larger as you go down the line. Four to one over UCLA, Michigan or Georgia Tech, six to one over Illinois and Wisconsin…Once you get outside the research powerhouses, you are dropping off a cliff as far as PhD productivity among public universities. As far as getting into top PhD programs the difference in expectations gets to 100 to 1 very quickly.</p>
<p>
First of all this study was not only STEM fields. It was for Science and Engineering, which includes social sciences, so actually Yale has 47%. [nsf.gov</a> - SRS 2007 Records Fifth Consecutive Annual Increase in U.S. Doctoral Awards - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf09307/]nsf.gov”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf09307/)
The data says nothing about getting into “top” PhD programs – it doesn’t rank the PhD programs at all, so we have no idea what the quality is. I have no idea if those Reed students, for example, were accepted to top or bottom PhD programs.
“Twice as likely” is not quite what the data tells us. The data shows that from 1997-2006, 10.3% of science & engineering doctorates were earned by students who graduated from Princeton vs. 5.7% from Berkeley. We have no idea how many students from either school applied and weren’t accepted to PhD programs, so we have no idea if students are more “likely” to get a PhD after Princeton. All we know is that there is a total higher percentage from Princeton. We also don’t know the stats for the two groups. Given the relative size of the two schools and the higher selectivity at Princeton, I would expect the smaller Princeton group to be stronger overall. Since Berkeley is a less selective school and much larger, there will naturally be a larger number of weaker students in the cohort, even in science fields. I have known plenty of science majors who were accepted at Berkeley and rejected at Princeton, but never the reverse.</p>
<p>I don’t want to suggest that the percentage of students who go on for a PhD is the only measure of the quality of an undergraduate institution. For most engineering students, that is not even a goal since so many well-paid jobs are available with a bachelor’s or master’s degree.</p>
<p>This thread is about top students choosing a full-ride at a state school, so the overall rates for PhD students coming from state schools are not completely relevant. Obviously there is a large range in student abilities at any public school and the general rate of admittance to PhD programs is bound to be lower than those of the top private schools. The important comparison would be between honors students at the state universities and students at elite colleges.</p>
<p>anneroku:Thanks for addressing the charts. Which I am still studying. The only way it makes sense to me to answer the question of how undergrad school might possibly negatively impact PhD opportunities would be to look at the “top” grad programs (however we define them) and see if there are students from undergrad institutions not considered tops in the field. I think you already suggested this. If the students are in the grad programs, it is obviously possible. Then we might want to think about what they did to maximize chances: picking a professor who could help, summer research opportunities (isn’t that sort of the purpose of REUs?), etc. (Of course, the students from top schools did that, too.) If they aren’t there, is it just because that type of PhD planning student already self-selected in some way for the top undergrad program? Or because the science students at the non-top undergrad school had planned on med school and chose what they considered the best option for that goal? I am not seeing how it is possible to really come with evidence to convincingly argue undergrad institutions limit later options. Though I am starting to wonder if that is the case. Obviously the special program the OP participated in doesn’t disadvantage students in their after undergrad opportunities. That is an impressive list.</p>
<p>alh,
It’s not and the NSF data above do not show that undergrad institutions limit later options, particularly in the sciences. </p>
<p>Anecdotally, I have been observing the following for many years: top kids at our state flagship have the same grad school/professional school results as their high school classmates who ended up at HYPMS, etc. I have been able to follow the paths of outstanding kids who attended our public magnet high school, many of whom turned down elite universities for financial reasons, or never applied in the first place. These kids are regularly admitted to fully-funded PhD programs at the top schools in their field, as well as top law and medical schools. And these kids are not necessarily in an honors program, since our flagship doesn’t have one comparable to what the OP described. </p>
<p>There may be an advantage to attending a top school for the social sciences – I don’t know and that data cannot be teased out of the total NSF results above. But for the hard sciences and engineering, HYP is not always the clear choice. And you are right that we can’t account for any possible bias in what type of student chooses to go to which school and how this correlates to future career plans. I am just confirming what the OP posted – for a strong, top student, the state flagship is often not just a good financial choice, but also a good academic one.</p>
<p>How does this analysis apply to Ph.D programs in the humanities/social sciences, where fully-funded is much rarer? Does prestige then play a more important role? (I’ve always guessed that ambitious science students can do fine at state universities. What about the humanities, where undergrad research is also commensurately rarer?)</p>
<p>“I am just confirming what the OP posted – for a strong, top student, the state flagship is often not just a good financial choice, but also a good academic one.”</p>
<p>Possibly some students actually fare better (with regard to graduate opportunites) in the sort of special program the OP participated in because of the increased investment of the administration and faculty in that student’s later success, compared to being one of many at a more elite institution. Imho only a certain type of student is going to be looking at PhD programs, and to be successful straight from an undergraduate program will probably need to be (again jmho) extremely focused and careful with course selection and research. So wouldn’t it make sense for that student, when looking at the state flagship, to be asking the undergraduate adviser and department head if they had sent students to the graduate programs in which student will be interested and if not, if there is a reasonable plan of how to make that happen?</p>
<p>“How does this analysis apply to Ph.D programs in the humanities/social sciences, where fully-funded is much rarer? Does prestige then play a more important role?”</p>
<p>keilexander: This is what I wonder, too. If you had an in-state public option with faculty who were students of the professors with whom you eventually want to study in graduate school, it seems like it could work to me.</p>
<p>I don’t know the answer for outcomes in humanities/social sciences. I just want to point out that it is never advisable to enter an unfunded PhD program in any field. While the total numbers of students may be smaller than for funded science PhD’s, universities do fund their PhD students in all fields. Never pay for a PhD – if that is your only option it is a sign to wait or do something else.</p>
<p>^^ditto. unless you are in the enviable position of being able to afford grad school solely for your own entertainment.</p>
<p>…So, then why does everyone talk about choosing in-state undergrad in order to save money for grad school? I understand the rationale behind cheaper period, but if decent grad schools are funded, then it seems like those able to pay for only 4 years should invest it in undergrad.</p>
<p>Admission to funded PhD programs is very competitive. And most students go to professional school, not graduate school – law, business or med school – all of which are unfunded.</p>
<p>Keilexandra: Sometimes when posters on this board talk about graduate school they seem to mean what I think of as professional schools: med, law, business … and sensibly plan on having to pay for those schools. That is totally different imho than planning for a PhD program. And I agree with you that if you are able to afford four years of college and want a top humanities program PhD that undergrad is where to spend the money. But for some that won’t be an option. One thing I would caution, if you haven’t figured it out already, is to find out exactly what you will need to accomplish as an undergraduate to be eligible for the graduate program you want (languages are sometimes a big issue) so you aren’t surprised in four years.</p>
<p>sorry, typing at the same time and repeating info above. </p>
<p>I think your question is really good because imho it isn’t adequately addressed on this forum. But honestly, how many highschool students are like you, already seriously planning on a PhD??</p>
<p>My experience at elite universities is that social science/humanities PhDs tend to be fully funded while professional school students aren’t. By fully funded I mean full tuition scholarship plus stipend. Usually supplemented by research or teaching assistant pay. Otherwise nobody but the idle rich would undertake such a program. And there aren’t enough smart ones.
You certainly don’t sound 16 or 17. Well beyond many parents on these threads.</p>
<p>Keilexandra, having just scanned your LAC thread I can’t help myself from asking: Is the CS to satisfy your parents? Just curious lol</p>
<p>^ alh, you guessed it. Don’t get me wrong, I do have an interest in CS–but my passion is definitely in the humanities and social sciences. I’m interested most in English, with as-yet-unplumbed possibles in linguistics and social-justice type areas (anthro, sociology; I’m attracted to the race/class/gender subsets of many fields).</p>
<p>None of that is remotely employable or practical; thus the CS.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ll stop derailing this thread now!</p>