Why Can't University of Penn place any students into CalTech Physics PhD Program?

College Search & Lists
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<p>

I intentionally used the NRC rankings, since they date to 1993. </p>

<p>Even in the early 90s, Penn was a top 15 university and had an extremely good claim to the top 10.</p>

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<p>"so Yale had 4 and Penn had 2, not that bad… "</p>

<p>I agree. Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan and several other elite universities also did not have impressive numbers. I do not believe it is possible to draw any conclusion based on those numbers. </p>

<p>“and I didn’t know Caltech PhD physics admissions were the last word on what is a “good” college-”</p>

<p>I never said it was. I merely said it was interesting.</p>

<p>“…perhaps the allure of Goldman Sachs offering $100,000 your first year out of college derailed some bright physics and math grads who may have been talented enough to go on for a PhD…”</p>

<p>Then how do you explain Harvard and Princeton’s numbers?</p>

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<p>How is ranking based on Caltech Physics placement (a really really low sample) in any way better than the US News method?</p>

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<p>

We now know two things:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Alexandre has a lot of time on his hand.</p></li>
<li><p>Even Alexandre missed count sometimes. There is at least one more school with more than 3 entries. The University of Washington placed at least 4 students (2008/2005/2002/1997). The other Washington U has at least 3 (2007/2006/2002).</p></li>
</ol>

<p>

There is a major difference. If you count back only 18 years, Penn has zero.</p>

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<p>Hehe! Actially GoBlue, I was only tracking a dozen or so universities and UDub wasn’t one of them. I was tracking WUSTL, but I only included universities with over 3 graduates attending Caltech’s PhD Physics program, so WUSTL did not stay on the list.</p>

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<p>So there’s one tiny program that penn kids don’t place well in…■■■■■ thread.</p>

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<p>

FALSE. Not even a Penn grad. Any other “evidence” you care to offer? :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>According to the 2006 career survey, a Penn student went to Caltech for a PhD in astrophysics.
<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/2006cpsurvey.pdf[/url]”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/2006cpsurvey.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>In 2003 Penn had a student go to Caltech for a PhD in biochem</p>

<p>I mean, neither major is physics, but they’re not pushover majors at Caltech either.</p>

<p>I only looked at Penn career surveys for graduating students. Not all students fill out the sureys and I only looked at Caltech. While doing the search I did see plenty of Penn students going to Berkeley every year for PhDs. Not too shabby considering how awful of a school Penn is and how it has nothing to offer aside from a business school.</p>

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<p>Here is Robert Morse’s biography</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>The Editor-in-Chief of US News, Mort Zuckerman, graduated from McGill, got an MBA from Wharton and an LLM from Harvard. The Editor of US News, Brian Kelly, graduated from Georgetown. </p>

<p>I seriously doubt that any of these individuals are rigging the rankings, although I believe that people obviously have legitimate concerns about the methodologies used by US News.</p>

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<p>I know a lot of Brown students (admittedly, in chemistry and biochemistry primarily) who turned down Caltech for UChicago, MIT, Harvard, or Stanford. A lot of Brown people don’t seem to be very impressed/excited by the Caltech program, in my experience. </p>

<p>I think it’s completely unsurprising that say, CMU has better numbers than Brown and Dartmouth. The schools are more similar and more likely to attract the same kind of student. If the data is simply enrolled, and not admitted (which we need to be compared to who even applied), then you should use all top 10 programs and look at distributions.</p>

<p>More than that, in science graduate school, institution matters less than lab, and it’s quite possible that some schools one would expect to be better represented, like Penn, has competencies in areas not well represented at CalTech, and so instead they’re feeding into, say, the best X lab in the country which happens to be at University of Washington, or UW-Madison, or Northwestern, or UT-Austin, or MIT, etc. This is especially true of smaller programs.</p>

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<p>^If Zuckerman was trying to game anything, wouldn’t he have Wharton MBA ranked higher? Thats really the only Penn ranking he would remotely care about.</p>

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<p>^ Wait–wasn’t Zuckerman really born in KENYA???</p>

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<p>

Not only one. I bet Penn engineering students don’t place that well at Stanford or Berkeley too.</p>

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<p>^ Why just bet when you can get the facts? See pages 15-16 for the Class of 2008:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/Survey2008.pdf[/url]”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/Survey2008.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And here are links for the career surveys going back to the Class of 2003:</p>

<p>[Career</a> Services, University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/surveys.html]Career”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/surveys.html)</p>

<p>Lots of top grad programs there, including Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Cornell, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, etc.</p>

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<p>We are talking about Penn’s placement in physics, not engineering. Let’s compare apple with apple.</p>

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<p>Y7ongjun, the career survey for physics has already been posted. </p>

<p>See post #5, where I noted that Penn physics students have attended Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Chicago, Cornell, and other excellent programs.</p>

<p>It apparently bothers people that Penn students aren’t kept out of superb graduate programs, even in fields in which Penn is comparatively weak. :D</p>

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<p>My husband, who was a Penn physics undergraduate, was accepted into the graduate physics programs at Stanford, Berkeley and Princeton. He enrolled in the Princeton program and earned a Ph.D. in particle physics. Not too shabby, I should think. ;)</p>

<p>His Penn undergraduate physics degree was excellent preparation for the Princeton graduate program.</p>

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<p>Come on. Penn has an undergraduate student population of 10000. Placing 1-3 students each year to Harvard, UChicago, MIT or Stanford or other top 10 physics programs is something the University of Arizona, or University of IL can do. </p>

<p>If you have time, please check how many students Penn placed into the top 10 physics PhD program from 2005-2008 (4 year period), and divide that number by the undergraduate student poplulation at Penn, then compare that number with say University of Arizona, or say University of IL or University of Michigan, U of Texas Austin’s number. That is a fair comparison.</p>

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No. If you have the time, divide that number by the number of undergraduate physics majors. Even better, divide that number by the number of physics majors applying to graduate school.</p>

<p>Get real. Penn SEAS only has about 0.8% of its majors (32 kids) apply to graduate school in engineering each year. Assuming physics had somewhat comparable numbers and that it has an absurdly high 40 majors a year (even Cornell has 90 for all physical sciences, so this is definitely too high), it would only have about 3 kids applying each year.</p>

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<p>^ I don’t know a single engineer at Penn who is seriously looking at an engineering PhD. Most are looking to go into the work force and get the MBA later on. You generally don’t go to Penn SEAS if you’re a super serious engineer wanting to get a PhD in engineering (There are a few who get PhDs in econ and business though) instead going to places like Michigan and Georgia Tech.</p>

<p>I have met some kids very gifted in physics at Penn though. I can see them going to top 10 programs come graduation.</p>