Where do PhD students get their BA from?

Graduate School
1

A list of colleges and ranked according to how many PhD’s (from any university) per BA/BS they award, and it looks like the usual suspects. This list/ranking is normalized for the size of the college. As you can see more than 1/3 of Caltech students go on to get their PhD.

California Institute of Technology
785 (Number of PhD’s awarded to alumni 2003-2012)
2160 (Total BA/BS degrees awarded 1998- 2007)
36.3 (PhD’s per 100 BA/BS awarded)
Harvey Mudd College
372
1590
23.4
Swarthmore College
738
3577
20.6
Reed College
563
2829
19.9
Carleton College
811
4621
17.6
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
2026
12076
16.8
Grinnell College
524
3407
15.4
Harvard University
2500
17956
13.9
Princeton University
1555
11267
13.8
University of Chicago
1349
10002
13.5
Haverford College
392
2907
13.5
Oberlin College
897
6895
13.0
Williams College
664
5188
12.8
Pomona College
483
3783
12.8
Amherst College
534
4207
12.7
Bryn Mawr College
384
3035
12.7
Yale University
1671
13329
12.5
Rice University
905
7375
12.3
St John’s College
114
1004
11.4
Macalester College
469
4189
11.2
Brown University
1689
15123
11.2
Stanford University
1880
17242
10.9
Wesleyan University (CT)
745
7278
10.2
Wellesley College
609
5980
10.2
Lawrence University (WI)
277
2729
10.2
Earlham College
221
2328
9.5
Vassar College
571
6032
9.5
University of Rochester
1073
11359
9.4
Hendrix College
205
2174
9.4
Duke University
1456
15474
9.4
Case Western Reserve University
709
7568
9.4
Cornell University, All Campuses
3218
35250
9.1
Kalamazoo College
252
2810
9.0
Dartmouth College
943
10626
8.9
New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology
158
1781
8.9
Smith College
623
7057
8.8
The New England Conservatory of
Music
67
762
8.8

2

And?

All this indicates is that the kind of students who get into Cal Tech, are also the kind who are more likely to go on to a PhD program at some point in their lives. It doesn’t mean that Cal Tech somehow magically makes them good PhD candidates. Had most of them gone anywhere else, chances are that they would have ended up with a doctorate anyway.

3

@happymomof1 This is informative and factual, that is all. Interpret it how you would like.

4

I’d argue it is factual but not informative.

5

Information by definition is informative. Whether you want/use the information is a personal choice.

6

These are environments which seemingly nurture intellectual development.

7

It’s entirely possible that some colleges have a culture where people go onto get PhDs and some have a culture where people get a masters or mba or go right into a career.

Also some students will do what they do no matter where they go, but I think colleges do play a role here. If your advisers send a lot of kids on to PhD programs, more than likely it will come up in your advising at some point.

8

But the thread title says: “Where do PhD students get their BA from?” The data don’t show that, but instead show the percentage of undergraduates from particular universities that go on to get PhDs. That’s quite different. I’m sure that far more PhD students get their undergraduate degrees from large, top-tier public universities such as Michigan than from most of the small private universities on your list.

9

Looks like someone had nothing better to do today than play with stats.

10

@Beaudreau Sure if I had a school of 100,000 students raw numbers would favor that school, as you can see the numbers are normalized for size. UMich doesn’t even have 10% of their graduates get PhD’s. Nothing wrong with that I like to go to parties too.

11

Lol— my kid who is a PhD student now applied to & got into 6 schools on this list (only 2 not on this list). They do attract a certain type of student.

12

@cu123 If your point is that more students from certain colleges go on to get PhDs, then your title should say that. “Where do PhD students get their BA from?” asks something quite different and is unrelated to the data you show. My response answers your question. And it is a low form of debate to make an ad hominem attack on Michigan students as partiers. Or do you have some data that show that Michigan students party more than the schools on your list?

Also, a high percentage of PhD students graduated with BS degrees.

13

I’m thinking that overall they probably party a little more than Caltech students…but that’s just my opinion. However, next time I’m at Caltech I’ll check out the Greek life…oh wait, they don’t have a Greek system. Oh well, I’m sure I can check out the Greek life at UMich to validate my opinion.

BTW, I DO like to go to parties so I don’t really consider it an ad hominem attack. Seriously, even students at top schools do attend a party every once in a while. Socialization is a valuable skill.

14

You need a hobby. Volunteering in your local community would be productive.

15

@CU123 Caltech has a House system. From some angles, the House system looks a lot like mixed gender Greek life.

It’s a chicken and egg thing. I don’t think Caltech is necessarily creating students who go on to get a PhD. I think they are selecting for them during admissions. One of the admissions essay prompts is “Scientific exploration clearly excites you. Beyond our 3:1 student-to-faculty ratio and our intense focus on research opportunities, how do you believe Caltech will best fuel your intellectual curiosity and help you meet your goals?”

I would guess that UCSB’s College of Creative Studies has similar PhD production numbers, mainly because graduate school is their stated goal for students.

BTW, the number of CS majors and students doing summer industry internships at Caltech has gone up a lot in recent years.

16

The house system at Caltech is NOTHING like the Greek system at UMich, that is a stretch beyond all imagination.

17

OK, but I don’t think UMich is alone in having <10% of graduates get PhDs. My guess is that it’s nearly universal that large and/or public universities with a wide range of majors have a <10% PhD production rate.

UMich is also not alone in having a Greek system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States says ~32% of American’s over age 25 have a Bachelor’s degree, while only about 1.8% have a doctorate.

So, if 5.6% of people who get a Bachelor’s go on to get a doctorate, why are you dissing UMich specifically?

18

You don’t know that much about Caltech students, I take it. The ones I know like a drink just as much as the student’s I’ve known from large, less selective programs. Partying is not the cause here.

19

I do know a few Caltech students and I wholly disagree.

20

@CU123 - Just a few recommendations if you want to be persuasive. First, use a title for your argument that is consistent with what you want to establish. Your title makes the reader think that you are going to discuss where PhD’s went to undergraduate school, instead of what the data actually is, a ranking of the colleges with the highest percentage of students going on for PhDs. Second, make sure that the subject and verb of your sentence agree. It should be “where do PhDs get their BAs from.” (I’ll ignore the sentence-ending pronoun. I don’t object to this, but you will offend a large part of your audience by ending a short sentence with a preposition." Third, recognize that many PhD applicants earned a BS or other degree, for example at Caltech. Fourth, when people reasonably disagree with you, don’t resort to semi-personal attacks. Fifth, this is a graduate school forum. There is little doubt that Michigan is one of the world’s great graduate institutions, so you won’t get much sympathy putting down Michigan’s supposed undergraduate party culture/fraternity system. (I have never seen Michigan listed as a top-20 party school, even once.) And even considering undergraduate degrees, Michigan is one of the hardest universities to get into in the US if you are not a Michigan resident. The average SAT score is 1450 for all applicants including in-state, and even higher for OOS applicants.