<p>I know that the general consensus is that if you go to a top LAC you will do fine (provided you do wel enough on your own merit) in top graduate school admissions. However, the WSJ rankings (however flawed they may be) scare me a little.</p>
<p>Currently I’m considering Middlebury, I think it is a match school, and though I may get in to a more competitive program, I loved Midd and my chances are great + legacy, so I feel increasingly like Midd is where I’m going to end up. The numbers from WSJ scare me a bit, hower. As it stands Middlebury sends about 4% of its students to a top Law/Med/MBA program, whereas Harvard sends about 21%. However, these numbers compare the number of students who are accepted to these top schools to the class size, not the number who applied, so it’s an inherently flawed data set. Now I can’t change where I’m going to end up going to school, and there’s no real use in fretting about it, but is it really much more difficult to get into a school coming from Midd then it is, say, from HYP or maybe Williams? Will I have to work harder at a place like Midd then someone at Harvard to distinguish myself for Grad School?</p>
<p>will you have to work harder at Midd than you would at Harvard?? if prestige/reputation is taken into consideration at all, of course you would. if not then the question in moot. but actually that’s not exactly true. there are also things such as, will you have to work harder to find research opportunities (probably) or to get to know your professors (probably not), assuming prestige is taken into account. that is to say, if prestige matters, how much, and how strong are other relationships. you can see this explodes so just do the best you can and you will do fine! have faith and try hard :)</p>
<p>Also, the ratings you mentioned are for professional degrees. LACs tend to fare much better in terms of phd placement. If you look at those rankings, a lot of LACs tend to come out on top, I believe.</p>
<p>Well, look who you’re comparing yourself to. You’re comparing yourself to the very best of the best. Any comparison with schools like HYP and with Williams is going to be a losing one. </p>
<p>Look at it this way. Middlebury’s WSJ placement rating is very good, beating all public schools, and also beating out Cornell. I think that’s pretty darn respectable. And, like others said, the LAC’s tend to do quite well in PhD placement, which is not shown in the WSJ ranking.</p>
<p>But I must say that I strongly take issue with the fifteen schools they selected to use as the schools-into-which-students-feed.</p>
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<p>For medicine, the inclusion of Yale is absurd, and the inclusion of UCSF will bias that list in favor of schools (i.e. Berkeley) that include lots of CA graduates. (It does seem, however, that Berkeley needs the help.) UCSF is a highly selective school but it includes a strong state-resident bias which would render any ranking based off of it less useful. Many, many schools would have made better choices than these two; Mayo, Penn, Northwestern, and Duke come to mind.</p>
<p>MBA is beyond my expertise, but suffice to say I’m a little surprised that Tuck is included over Kellogg.</p>
<p>While they confess that they don’t have the data for the Stanford MBA (but otherwise would have included it), to leave off the Stanford JD is again ridiculous. And why Michigan over NYU or Berkeley, both of which are much more selective? (While we’re naming schools that are more selective than Michigan by admissions percentage, why not include the University of Toledo, George Mason, and the University of Hawaii?)</p>
<p>If you’re really worried about prestige at the graduate level, why don’t you worry about prestige at the undergraduate level? There’s nothing wrong with Middlebury, but I’d say people tend to respect the Ivy Leagues more than top LAC. I’d say education-wise LACs do a very fine job, but I think the Ivy Leagues tend to open up more doors for jobs/internships/grad schools, considering that you do equally well. If you’re considering between harvard and middlebury, then I’d say go to Harvard if you think that it’s an environment in which you can do well academically. If not, then go to Middlebury. Do well at Midd and you’ll probably get into a top grad program. Harvard has a higher placement rate into the top grad programs is probably because it’s students strive to go to those top grad programs and that on average, Harvard tend to have a much higher caliber of students.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t understand why they include Columbia and Yale their top med schools. Penn, and Duke would be way better choices than Columbia and Yale. Why would Tuck be considered to be the top over Stanford b-school? Why would Michigan be considered over Stanford or Penn for law school? Not sure if I trust this ranking.</p>
<p>Both are great choices and have their own pros and cons.</p>
<p>But what you DO need to remember is that the low number reflects on the percentage of students choosing to attend graduate school. A place like Harvard and Chicago are much more likely to push their students to go to graduate school because THEY have the programs and professors already know what their students are capable of. These students already have an idea of what graduate school is like and can take courses in their junior and senior years. Students in LAC, on other hand, will have much close attention from the professors for grad school prep work (think honing skills). But it’s only undergraduate and students don’t have strong ideas of what graduate schools mean. It’s hard to believe it when your college life revolves around people going for the BA. The other downside is that professors might not be as WELL known to the graduate schools unless they’re superinvolved in their field (remember professors at LAC spend more time teaching than researching).</p>
<p>So tell me, in which environment do you think you’d be more likely to go to grad school under? </p>
<p>My school provides very high quality education and has incredible professors who are very involved with their students. Yet, the students couldn’t care less about going to graduate school unless it’s law or med because they just don’t think about getting a MA/PhD because they don’t understand or are aware of these options (though the professors do bring it up to some students). We have about 20% of our graduates who go off to graduate school (meaning any degree beyond BA).</p>
<p>Re #12: I agree that this undermines the ranking, but I suspect the reason is pretty basic: they couldn’t get the information for those schools.</p>
<p>Ivy = elite LAC = elite private research university > everything else in graduate admissions from what I’ve seen, including the great state schools (which always struck me as strange). Your data pool is for JD and MD and MBA, which is a somewhat awkward data pool. MBA should be on its own, as the major prerequisite for gaining admission to an MBA program is not GRE/GMAT scores (they certainly play a role) or undergraduate record–but work experience, and the quality of work experience. Data on the industry the average accepted MBA comes from would be more useful, although that’s published by most schools and it’s pretty much what you’d guess (finance, consulting, general management, technology in a business setting are normally 80%+ from everything I’ve seen). JD and MD are closer to more normal doctoral programs, especially JD, although they’re obviously geared towards some other things.</p>
<p>Anyway, if nothing else this should make you feel better. Bolded are LACs.</p>
<p>2005-06 HEDS Weighted Baccalaureate Origins Study
Top 20 Institutions: Ph.D. Productivity
Relative to Institutional Size, 1995-2004
California Institute of Technology… # 1 Harvey Mudd College… # 2
Swarthmore College … # 3
Reed College… # 4
Massachusetts Institute of Technology… # 5 Carleton College… # 6
Oberlin College … # 7
Bryn Mawr College… # 8
University of Chicago… # 9 Grinnell College … # 10
Yale University… # 11
Princeton University… # 12 Haverford College… # 13
Pomona College … # 14
Rice University … # 15 Amherst College… # 16
Harvard University … # 17
St John’s College (Annapolis, MD)… # 18 Williams College … # 19
Cleveland Institute of Music … # 20</p>
<p>Including the percentages shows how far CalTech is ahead of the rest (this list is for slightly different years, compiled by interesteddad, not Reed):</p>
<p>Percentage of PhDs per graduate
Academic field: ALL
PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database
Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period
Note: Includes all NSF doctoral degrees inc. PhD, Divinity, etc., but not M.D. or Law.</p>
<p>1 35.8% California Institute of Technology<br>
2 24.7% Harvey Mudd College
3 21.1% Swarthmore College<br>
4 19.9% Reed College<br>
5 18.3% Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
6 16.8% Carleton College<br>
7 15.8% Bryn Mawr College<br>
8 15.7% Oberlin College
9 15.3% University of Chicago<br>
10 14.5% Yale University
11 14.3% Princeton University<br>
12 14.3% Harvard University<br>
13 14.1% Grinnell College<br>
14 13.8% Haverford College<br>
15 13.8% Pomona College<br>
16 13.1% Rice University
17 12.7% Williams College<br>
18 12.4% Amherst College
19 11.4% Stanford University
20 11.3% Kalamazoo College</p>
<p>I thought we’re looking at TOP graduate programs. It’s no doubt that the LACs produce a lot of PhDs, but I thought the initial question was zoning in on the top graduate programs. If that’s the case, then I don’t think this data directly reflects that. Unless you assume that on average, these schools send students to pretty much the same top programs.</p>
<p>the OP wants to choose an undergrad program that’ll make it easy to get into a TOP grad program, so what i’m saying is that putting data showing the percentage of people going to get PhDs doesn’t reflect if going to a LAC makes it easier or harder to get into a TOP grad program.</p>