<p>I know there are studies on the undergraduate origins of math/science PhD recipients, but I’m having trouble finding them on the web. Can anyone direct me to a good link or source? I’m particularly interested in seeing the undergraduate origins of biology PhDs.
Thanks</p>
<p>[PhD</a> Rates in Life Sciences - soc.college.admissions | Google Groups](<a href=“http://groups.google.com/group/soc.college.admissions/browse_thread/thread/e32724a9b80b7fd9]PhD”>http://groups.google.com/group/soc.college.admissions/browse_thread/thread/e32724a9b80b7fd9)</p>
<p>not exactly what you are loking for but may be of interest and its old</p>
<p>I think you’d be better of googling bio phds at particular colleges and looking at their past</p>
<p>Thanks, Sax.</p>
<p>This is fairly recent data. It’s the percentage of total graduates from each undergrad school getting a PhD in the “Biological Sciences”, “Health Sciences”, and “Life Sciences” categories of the NSF database.</p>
<p>The first column is the total number of grads over a 10 year period. The second number is the number of getting a Ph.D. in an offset 10 year period, divided by the total number of grads. In other words, approximately 5% of all CalTech grads got a Ph.D in the biological and health sciences.</p>
<p>This is the top 100 in PhD percentage in those fields.</p>
<p>**Percent of PhDs per gradutate<br>
Academic field: Bio and Health Sciences</p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database</p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period**<br>
2059 5.39% California Institute of Technology
2599 4.77% Reed College
3657 4.40% Swarthmore College
8270 3.29% University of Chicago
11348 3.08% Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1015 3.05% University of California-San Francisco
17855 3.04% Harvard University
2565 3.00% Kalamazoo College
1335 2.92% Harvey Mudd College
2410 2.82% Earlham College
9260 2.68% Johns Hopkins University
11101 2.60% Princeton University
2773 2.60% Haverford College
4936 2.57% Mount Holyoke College
12941 2.50% Yale University
6432 2.47% Rice University
2598 2.46% Lawrence University
4561 2.46% Carleton College
16662 2.45% Stanford University
7067 2.43% Oberlin College
33736 2.37% Cornell University, All Campuses
3229 2.26% Grinnell College
2041 2.25% Hendrix College
2879 2.12% Bryn Mawr College
3740 2.11% Bowdoin College
5840 2.11% Wellesley College
4179 2.06% Amherst College
3578 2.04% Pomona College
2308 2.04% Beloit College
14669 2.02% Brown University
11830 2.00% University of Rochester
2047 2.00% Long Island University Southampton Campus
6751 1.97% Case Western Reserve University
15531 1.94% Duke University
2361 1.91% Hampshire College
1535 1.89% Ripon College
2966 1.85% SUNY College of Environmental Sci & Forestry
2199 1.82% Knox College
5082 1.81% Williams College
3821 1.78% Occidental College
3989 1.75% Allegheny College
2911 1.75% Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science
38488 1.75% University of California-Davis
2462 1.75% Juniata College
6901 1.74% St Olaf College
30559 1.74% University of California-San Diego
4113 1.70% Bates College
3945 1.70% Macalester College
56363 1.69% University of California-Berkeley
12784 1.65% College of William and Mary
1363 1.61% New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
1971 1.57% Centre College
1092 1.56% Rush University
7081 1.53% Wesleyan University
1277 1.49% Fisk University
1753 1.48% Wabash College
2640 1.48% Hiram College
13887 1.48% Washington University
2081 1.44% University of Dallas
21761 1.40% University of California-Santa Cruz
7162 1.40% Smith College
6987 1.37% Brandeis University
25853 1.35% University of Pennsylvania
8170 1.33% Bucknell University
4361 1.33% Franklin and Marshall College
3769 1.33% Davidson College
4926 1.30% Colorado College
10684 1.29% Dartmouth College
1255 1.27% Albertson College
2868 1.26% Whitman College
3847 1.25% College of Wooster
4917 1.24% Trinity University
3952 1.24% Illinois Wesleyan University
1972 1.22% University of Tennessee Memphis
3047 1.18% Rhodes College
5536 1.17% Barnard College
1194 1.17% Tougaloo College
5702 1.16% Vassar College
1907 1.15% Texas Lutheran University
4632 1.14% Trinity College (Hartford, CT)
1229 1.14% Northland College
53612 1.13% University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
8364 1.11% Wake Forest University
1263 1.11% Bethel College (North Newton, KS)
1806 1.11% Goucher College
9428 1.10% Carnegie Mellon University
1639 1.10% St John's College (both campus)
2376 1.09% Lebanon Valley College
1012 1.09% Chatham College
1499 1.07% Texas A&M University at Galveston
3954 1.06% Ohio Wesleyan University
5006 1.06% Union College (Schenectady, NY)
19770 1.05% Northwestern Univ
5411 1.03% Middlebury College
5835 1.03% Furman University
2537 1.02% Washington and Jefferson College
4597 1.02% Colby College
4705 1.02% Connecticut College
12422 1.01% Tufts University
29049 1.01% University of Virginia, Main Campus
</p>
<p>Gary Glen Price! I remember him from Usenet!</p>
<p>[also this](<a href=“Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College”>http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html</a>)</p>
<p>One more thing…in looking at these stats, remember it’s percentage of GRADUATES, not entering students. Some of the schools on this list do lose a substantial percentage of students during those 4 years.</p>
<p>I’m confused: is that NSF data the number/percentage of undergraduates from a specific institution that went on to get a PhD or the number of PhD graduates at a specific institution? The reason I’m confused is that UC San Francisco (#6) does not offer any undergraduate degrees, it is purely a medical and graduate school. There are no undergrads.</p>
<p>Thanks to all, with special tip of the hat to Interesteddad!</p>
<p>
Three more issues:</p>
<p>1) The stats say nothing about where graduates end up. Penn, for example, places fairly low on the list. Looking over the list of graduates, however, one sees that biology graduates have attended the following graduate schools:</p>
<p>Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Penn, Princeton, UCLA, UCR, UCSD, UNC, Oregon State (marine science), Yale…and more. All elite and highly selective biology grad programs.</p>
<p>Although I do not have the stats at hand, I can assure you that U Memphis is not anywhere within five leagues of this, although the percentages would lead you to think otherwise. Graduates there count themselves extremely fortunate if they get into Ole Miss or UT Knoxville. That’s not to knock on those schools, and academic fit matters more than name, but realistically there are probably superior programs with those same research foci.</p>
<p>2) The stats say nothing about how many students apply and/or are admitted. A department can have very few students plan to go to graduate school, but that does not mean it has inferior placement. Using my own college as an example, the biology department at Duke is rampant with pre-meds, but it has extraordinarily good graduate placement.</p>
<p>3) The stats do not break down biology by specialty. Colleges like Colorado and Washington are feeder schools for ecology programs, whereas Hopkins, CMU, and MIT funnel nearly all of their graduates into molecular biology. Eckerd and Miami produce many times more future marine biology PhDs than Hendrix or Davidson. That’s not to say one could not pursue graduate studies in another field at one of those places, of course, but the percentage of PhDs produced should not be treated as a dependable measure of department strength.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It is the students who got a BA or BS degree from a specific school who went on to get a PhD at any school.</p>
<p>Yes, UC-San Francisco is a unusual case. You see those pop up in the list. It is not an undergrad school, but the IPEDS data base shows them granting about 100 undergrad degrees per year. I’m guessing that they may have some combined degree programs. I don’t know.</p>
<p>You see a similar kind of aberration with Doctrates of Theology and Doctorates of Music where some theology and conservatory schools pop up on the lists. I think people can generally sort these out.</p>
<p>Normally, a situation like UC-San Francisco would have been filtered out by my threshold of 1000 undergrad degrees in ten years, but it just made the cut. This is the only list where it would show up, because it is a biology/health sciences specialty school.</p>