Trip report: Bates, Bowdoin & Colby

Papa_Chicken
Thu, 27 Jul 2006 10:30:07 +0000

I gathered some more data while researching strong programs at Bowdoin, and although the info I present below represents only a facet (& perhaps a controversial one) to the strengths & weaknesses of those programs, its interesting nevertheless IMHO.

Professional school placement
WSJ article circa 2003 regarding professional grad degree program placement from undergrad schools to elite institutions (law, med, business, etc.)
WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights;

Bowdoin ranks #19 nationally here, implying that their pre-med, pre-law, etc professional program prep is very good. (Bates #40, Colby #46.)

PhD production.
Last year, interesteddad culled some fed reports on Phd graduates by discipline (1994-2003) sorted by originating undergraduate school. He then took those data, normalized by undergarduate student body size, and ranked (limited to top 50 or so) the undergraduate origins by number of PhD’s produced per 1000 students.
Here’s a link to interesteddad’s threads (a thread per discipline):
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?searchid=3729133

For Bowdoin, here’s what he came up with:

RANK…DISCIPLINE (# PhD’s produced per 1000 students)
32…Total (203)
30…Total Math, Sciences & engineering (100)

…so half of the PhD’s that Bowdoin undergraduates produced during that time period where in the math, sciences, & engineering disciplines.

RANK DISCIPLINE (# PhD’s produced per 1000 students)
7…Chemistry (26)
17…Economics (7)
18…Anthropology (7)
24…Biology & Health Sciences (46)
30…Political Science & Public Admin (8)
31…Sociology (4)
33…History (9)
33…Music & Art (9)
37…Math & Comp Science (7)
39…English Lit (13)
57…Physics & Astronomy (7)
not rated…Language & Linguistics (<5)

There must be a few disciplines missing here, as the disciplines don’t add up to the totals. However, looks like relative to its overall #30 rank, chemistry & biology look particularly strong for the natural sciences, and economics & anthropology appear very strong as well. Of note, Bowdoin does not appear to be strong in languages, relative to other listed disciplines.

ps…Bates & Colby show up on the top ~50 PhD production lists quite a bit, but not as often or generally as high a rank as Bowdoin (although there are some exceptions to that last point.)