Top 50 US Baccalaureate Institutions of PhDs 1995-1999

College Search & Lists
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<p>source: National Science Foundation

  • = private</p>

<p>Baccalaureate origins of PhDs 1995-99</p>

<p>Baccalaureate institution, (1995–99) Ph.D.s produced </p>

<p>All U.S. institutions 140,286
University of California Berkeley 2,330
University of Michigan Ann Arbor 1,562
Cornell University * 1,545
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 1,524
University of Wisconsin Madison 1,390
University of Texas Austin 1,328
Pennsylvania State University University Park 1,274
Harvard University * 1,209
University of California Los Angeles 1,171
University of Minnesota Twin Cities 1,105
Massachusetts Institute of Technology * 1,053
Ohio State University Columbus 1,038
Brigham Young University * 1,011
Michigan State University 1,004
Yale University * 973
Stanford University * 937
Texas A&M University College Station 902
University of California Davis 890
University of Pennsylvania * 888
University of Florida 882
Purdue University West Lafayette 866
Indiana University Bloomington 829
University of Washington Seattle 814
Princeton University * 807
University of Virginia Charlottesville 806
Rutgers State University of New Jersey New Brunswick 794
Brown University * 774
University of Colorado Boulder 770
University of Maryland College Park 752
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 698
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 697
Duke University * 688
University of Massachusetts Amherst 671
University of California San Diego 661
Northwestern University * 651
Iowa State University 644
State University of New York at Buffalo 643
University of Chicago * 642
University of Arizona 635
University of Iowa 620
University of California Santa Barbara 604
Oberlin College * 582
University of California Santa Cruz 575
Boston University * 569
University of Missouri Columbia 547
Arizona State University Tempe 535
Florida State University 532
Columbia University in City of New York * 531
University of Tennessee Knoxville 523
University of California Irvine 511</p>

<p>Top 50 as percentage of total 31.4</p>

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<p>What are the *s ? What does this list even represent?</p>

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<p>And why does this matter…? hehe.</p>

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<p>Top 50 US Baccalaureate Institutions of Science and Engineering PhDs 1995-1999 </p>

<p>Baccalaureate institution, (1995–99) Ph.D.s produced</p>

<p>All U.S. institutions 80,596
University of California Berkeley 1,704
Cornell University * 1,223
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 1,085
University of Michigan Ann Arbor 1,070
Massachusetts Institute of Technology * 985
University of Wisconsin Madison 936
Pennsylvania State University University Park 870
University of Texas Austin 828
Harvard University * 799
University of California Los Angeles 756
University of Minnesota Twin Cities 739
University of California Davis 722
Texas A&M University College Station 680
Stanford University * 654
Purdue University West Lafayette 653
Michigan State University 629
Ohio State University Columbus 618
Brigham Young University * 582
Princeton University * 582
University of Pennsylvania * 581
University of Washington Seattle 568
University of Florida 564
Yale University * 561
Rutgers State University of New Jersey New Brunswick 555
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 555
University of California San Diego 547
University of Virginia Charlottesville 536
University of Colorado Boulder 532
Brown University * 511
Duke University * 492
University of Maryland College Park 490
Iowa State University 474
University of Chicago * 463
University of Massachusetts Amherst 435
University of California Santa Cruz 420
Northwestern University * 410
University of California Irvine 402
University of California Santa Barbara 401
California Institute of Technology * 394
North Carolina State University Raleigh 389
University of Arizona 388
State University of New York at Buffalo 386
Indiana University Bloomington 378
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 375
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute * 366
Washington University Saint Louis * 355
Georgia Institute of Technology 350
Rice University * 342
University of Iowa 336
University of Notre Dame * 336</p>

<p>Top 50 as percentage of total 37.2</p>

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<p>There are about 1800 schools in the US that award bachelors degrees. The 50 schools listed above comprise only 2-3% of all bachelors-granting colleges. Yet bachelors graduates of the 50 schools listed above go on to earn about one-third of all Ph.D.s and nearly 4 out of 10 Ph.D.s in science and engineering.</p>

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<p>The only LAC I see is Oberlin, and it falls off the Science/Engineering list. Class size is obviously a factor - any comparable per capita data?</p>

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<p>Phead seems to discredit any ranking without Hopkins at the top. hmmm…</p>

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<p>Bias towards large publics. And I don’t think the NUMBER of phd’s awarded is really significant unless combined with another factor.</p>

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<p>Its interesting because so many large public schools are in the mix. That could mean they offer the best opportunities, it could mean they produce the largest number of graduates and “fill the pool”, or it could mean that graduates of other colleges and universities are going onto Law School, Medical School, MBA school or another professional school…and NOT becoming PhD’s. We all know that doctoral students eventually become college professors…a substantial majority of them at least. </p>

<p>Still its an interesting statistic.</p>

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<p>Interesteddad has posted the per capita list more often than one could hope for. Despite the !extreme lack of relevance of the absolute of the per capita lists to the college life in general, I pasted one of ID’s versions. This said, we should all remember that the undergraduate > PhD represents a *very *small fraction of the college world and that such statistics are ONLY relevant to the production of PhD. In no way or shape does this offer an insight as to the quality of an undergraduate school and its ability to graduate its students or send them to graduate school in subjects that are every bit as important as a PhD in sciences. </p>

<p>Here you have it:</p>

<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database</p>

<p>Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database </p>

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

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<p>Given its size, I’m surprised NYU isn’t on the first list.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Of course, the original list would indicate that the last school listed (50th) represents a better choice to prepare for a scientific PhD than … Caltech. </p>

<p>Irvine versus Pasadena? The choice is clear. :)</p>

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<p>Both list have value. If you’re thinking of going to a large institution in their honors program or an advanced track of learning, the first list is quite relevant. The second list helps one understand the intellectual climate of LACs and private institutions.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Oh, you can find value in everything! The question is about how much!</p>

<p>The other question is how misleading a list can be. Again, how does one interpret the lack of listing of Caltech in the first list? Would someone automatically remember the very small size of Caltech and correctly compare the school to the various industrial-sized academic factories? Are we measuring quantity or quality?</p>

<p>Yes, there is some value in such lists. However, when it comes to provide insights for UNDERGRADUATE schools --which seems to be intent in similar posts-- the value is buried in a sea of irrelevance.</p>

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<p>Perfectly said Maximus. Both lists provide useful data for comparing among their peers and in absolute terms.</p>

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<p>The lack of one unique school does not invalidate the overall data. CT is an outlier. I think most people are aware of it and what it does.</p>

<p>Quantity also can matter. It means the path from the UCB to grad schools is well worn and they have established relationships. Tghe grad schools know that a student from UCB with a certain proflie is a good candidate to finish a PhD program. That’s important to both sides.</p>

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<p>

xiggi states this as if it were fact. My opinion is that when over one-third of CalTech’s science and engineering undergrads earn a PhD, it indeed reflects on the overall level and quality of undergrad teaching.</p>

<p>The original purpose of gathering these PhD statistics was to show that liberal arts colleges are not at a disadvantage to research universities when comparing the quality of undergrad instruction.</p>

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<p>Xiggi, something’s wrong with the per capita list.
UCSF has no undergraduate students.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>I strongly disagree. Both lists taken together tell you a lot; not everything you want to know about a school to be sure, but a lot that’s valuable. The information may be quite irrelevant for someone looking to end up in business, medical school, or law school, but if you’re thinking about going into a more purely academic field that leads to a Ph.D., these lists reveal some clear differences among schools. </p>

<p>List #1 is not just about size; some very large schools like NYU, Arizona State (now possibly the largest in the country), Central Florida, and South Florida just don’t make that list (or the per capita list either). Nor are the schools at the top of the list the largest; Berkeley and Michigan are big schools, no doubt, but neither is among the ten largest; same for Cornell and UIUC which round out the top 4 Ph.D. producers.</p>

<p>Some very good medium-sized schools, like Vanderbilt, Emory, and Georgetown, also don’t make either list, suggesting these might not be at the top of your list if your interests tend toward the purely academic and you’re thinking you might want to pursue a Ph.D. someday. Notre Dame just barely makes the first list but not the second. (Hmmm . . . . anyone notice a correlation here between production of future Ph.Ds and US News PA rating/NRC faculty quality rating?).</p>

<p>At the other end of the scale, it’s worth noting some schools that do show up strongly on these lists. Perhaps not surprisingly, Swarthmore, Williams and Amherst, often considered the elite of the elite among LACs, all rank highly in per capita Ph.D. production, but it’s telling that Swarthmore’s figure is nearly double that of its two rivals, confirming the conventional wisdom that Swat is the most purely intellectual of the LACs. It’s also worth noting that a number of LACs that don’t traditionally rank at the top of the US News charts have a very strong record of turning out future Ph.Ds: Reed, Kalamazoo, Earlham, Beloit, Lawrence U, Hendrix, College of Wooster among them, suggesting there’s a serious academic culture at these schools even if they’re neither as well-heeled nor as selective as some of their rivals. (It’s a credit to CC users, by the way, that these schools are regularly singled out for praise on these pages). Worth looking at some of these if you can’t get into your top choices. </p>

<p>It’s also worth noting that some top LACs don’t make the list: Claremont-McKenna, Washington & Lee, Colorado College, Scripps among them. Fine schools, no doubt, but it raises questions about how deeply academic their cultures are.</p>

<p>It’s telling that among women’s colleges, Bryn Mawr outpaces its rivals in Ph.D. production by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, and ranks very near the top of the list for all schools.</p>

<p>Finally, it’s worth noting that in absolute numbers of future Ph.D.s, the UC system, the Big Ten (led by Michigan, UIUC, and Wisconsin), and HYPSM absolutely dominate: 9 of the top 10 and 17 of the top 20 Ph.D producers fit one of those three categories. Among other things this strongly confirms that not all publics are created equal. The UCs and the Big Ten schools are big, multi-functional institutions that will never rival the smaller privates in the percentage of their graduates who go on to obtain Ph.D.s; but they are major centers of and magnets for academic talent, and they stand apart from public institutions generally as places that produce the next generations of academic researchers and scholars not only at the grad school level, but also by educating large numbers of undergrads who ultimately go on to earn Ph.D.s.</p>

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<p>xiggi - I can see networking value in the absolute number of Ph.D. holders, for both the undergraduate or masters student looking for a Ph.D. mentor/ advisor, and for the Ph.D. holder seeking employment opportunities.</p>