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

College Search & Lists
81

<p>Does Penn have College of Arts and Sciences. It is the largest colleges among Penn’s many colleges. Where did you get your data that Penn is top 3 in PhD productivity. Show me the data, and I will be happy to change my perceptions on Penn. </p>

<p>Sorry, I never applied to Penn. But I do know several friends who applied to Penn and were rejected by Penn. They have been happily enrolled at HYPSMC. Very strange. I know there is some randomness in college admissions. But come on. Rejected by Penn, and accepted by HYPSMC? I personally find it hard to believe.</p>

82

<p>^were you referring to my post? I said that MIT was top 3 in PhD production, from the data you provided. 45 said that Penn probably compares better to non-HPY Ivies if you just look at CAS. I’d still assume that Penn’s PhD production is slightly lower, but the MD/JD/MBA production is higher. Keep in mind, it’s much more worthwhile to get an MBA or JD from a top program than a PhD from some random university.</p>

<p>I know one person rejected by Penn who now attends Princeton. I have a friend at Princeton and another at Yale who turned down Penn. Most people I know who were rejected by Penn ED end up at Michigan, Northwestern, Cornell, or similar schools. Were your frineds rejected from Penn and accepted to several schools in HYPSMC? Maybe your friends all applied to Wharton without as strong leadership or business backgrounds, but applied to MIT/Caltech as a science/engineering major or HPY as an English major. Wharton is at the same selectivity level as HYPSMC but more specialized. If they were accepted to MIT or Caltech engineering and rejected by Penn engineering that would throw me for a loop.</p>

83

<p>Penn did not make the top 15 list in placing its student into top professional med, law, and MBA program according to Wall Street Journal.</p>

<p>The schools included Harvard, Yale law, HBS, Whrton, Harvard med, Johns Hopkins Med and other elite law, med, and BSchools.</p>

<p>Sorry: Stanford, MIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, and UChicago beats Penn again.</p>

<p>Here you go:</p>

<p><a href=“http://wsjclassroom.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf[/url]”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights;

<p>What I have found:</p>

<ol>
<li>Penn’s placement to top PhD program is not in top 30 for sure.</li>
<li>Penn’s placement tolite (top 5, or at least top 10) professionl medica school, law school and BSchools is not in the top 15.</li>
</ol>

84

<p>My friends were too good for Penn. Penn rejected them because Penn knows they re good and would not enroll even if admitted. Penn is playing an admissions game to increase its yield, and its US News ranking.</p>

<p>I wish Penn spends more resources in research to compete with Stanford, MIT, CalTech, Chicago or Columbia if it really wants to be a top 10 research university.</p>

<p>HYPSMCCCC Berkeley all have better research than Penn.</p>

<p>Penn is good for Wharton. Even Wharton is overrated (many think Wharton is top 3 BSchool) by objetive standard. Other than Wharton, Penn is top 15-20 school in science, no where near HYPSMCCCC Berkeley.</p>

85

<ol>
<li>What about the top 5 med school and all the research it does?</li>
<li>What does Wharton have to do with Penn’s science programs?</li>
<li>Are you really putting Yale on the same level and Harvard and MIT science programs?</li>
<li>Yield doesn’t directly factor into US News rankings. Admission rate does, but not enough to push Penn from being ranked #20 where you think it should be all the way up to #4. Penn is big on interest. If your friends didn’t take their Penn applications seriously or applied to Wharton it could explain why they were rejected. Personally, most people I know admitted to HYPSM who applied to Penn were admitted to Penn. If they were rejected it was because they applied to the joint degree programs which admit about 50 students each.</li>
</ol>

86

<p>

You’re right. Penn was undoubtedly trying to lower its acceptance rate, which counts for a whopping 1.5% of the USNWR ranking. </p>

<p>The admit rates at Penn go up with class rank and test scores. I mean, Penn is CLEARLY rejecting overqualified applicants. </p>

<p>

In breadth and depth of graduate programs, the National Research Council ranked Penn ahead of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and Chicago.</p>

<p>Are you willing to [donate</a> money](<a href=“https://medley.isc-seo.upenn.edu/giving/jsp/fast.do]donate”>Giving to Penn) to help Penn improve its research? You seem quite concerned about its status. :)</p>

87

<p>Venkat & all rational people- Y7ongjun, despite what he is saying, clearly is a Penn-reject case. It’s incredible how badly he wants Penn to suck, and sad how he ignores the uniqueness of Penn by referring to lists that Penn does not do well on. Want a list it DOES do well on? Check the one that came out 10 days ago.</p>

<p>Honestly usually I wouldn’t even get involved in threads with such desperate people… but Y7ongjun is so pathetic it hurts!!</p>

<p>Anyway, saying Penn practices yield protection because you have friends that were rejected and got into other top schools is a JOKE. Please… don’t deteriorate your argument any further. I’m sorry Penn did not see in you and your friends what it sees in the applicants it accepts… but please, get over it and stop this sad tirade.</p>

88

<p>This is really sad. Really, really sad. I don’t know what’s worse, his irrational hatred of Penn or the amount of ******** statements he constantly makes. </p>

<p>“My friends were too good for Penn. Penn rejected them because Penn knows they re good and would not enroll even if admitted.”
Okay. Why did they apply to Penn then? Did the admissions officers tell you that’s why they were rejected? No, because they don’t even exist and you are a blatant liar. </p>

<p>“Even Wharton is overrated (many think Wharton is top 3 BSchool) by objetive standard.” I don’t even know what this means. It’s objectively overrated…? So that means you possess THE ultimate knowledge about how good it is. Go ask all the recruiters that head to Wharton before any other school if they think it’s overrated.</p>

<p>Jesus Christ. I mean really. This is worse than ■■■■■ status. At least ■■■■■■ know they’re being ridiculous. Get a ****ing grip on reality.</p>

89

<p>

And I should take you more seriously because you claimed your brown friends aren’t impressed with Caltech biology/chemistry PhD programs? Seriously, Caltech is THE place for biology.</p>

90

<p>It is dangerous to judge a university’s undergraduate quality by its placement statistics into graduate programs or professions. We often seem to do that on this forum and it is not ver constructive. Those placement data areinteresting and fun but they aren’t very telling. </p>

<p>The primary reason for this is that different universities attract different types of students. For example, schools like Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale are far more likely to have a large pre-law student population relative to schools like Cal, Caltech, Cornell, Michigan, MIT, Northwestern and Rice. </p>

<p>And schools like Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Penn and Princeton are far more likely to have a large percentage of students interested in careers in IB/Consulting than schools like Brown, Caltech, Chicago, Cornell, Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford and Yale.</p>

<p>Alternatively, schools like Cal, Caltech, Cornell, MIT, Princeton are probably going to have a larger portion of students interested in pursuing careers in the hard sciences (Chemistry, Engineering and Physics) than schools like Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Penn and Yale. </p>

<p>That does not mean that one group of those elite schools is better at placing students into specific graduate programs or profession…it simply means that one group will place students more frequently because a larger number of students from that group (relatively speaking anyway) will seek to follow that given path.</p>

91

<p>

</p>

<p>They chose other places. It’s not a matter of being unimpressed, it’s a matter of feeling somewhere else was a better fit for them, either because research interests matched up, location, money, the people, etc etc.</p>

92

<p>90% of the students will choose CalTech over Penn if they are interested in science and engineering, just like 90% will choose Harvard over Penn. They are different tiers.</p>

93

<p>Excellent post by Alexandre. Many elite schools cater to specific student demographics. For example, Caltech may be excellent for someone with a STEM background, but it is a poor choice for someone with a humanities/social sciences focus.</p>

94

<p>The post of Alexander, would partially explain why I prefer Berkeley - a public school with a faculty-to-student ratio of 1:50 or so than places like Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Amherst or Williams…all with higher 4-yr graduation rates. Or why I prefer UPenn over Columbia or why I prefer Georgia Tech over Emory, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame or Washington U.</p>

95

<hr>

<p>Penn can not place its students into CalTech’s physics PhD program. </p>

<p>Harvard physics department seems not like Penn student either. For the Past 10 years from 2000-2009, none or at most 1 student from Penn graduated with a PhD in Harvard Physics department.</p>

<p>Stanford, MIT is more than 10 times better than Penn despite its # 4 ranking tied with Penn in US News. </p>

<p>Penn has much worse placement than either Stanford or MIT in placing students into top professional medical, law and business schools. Penn is worse than all Ivy (except Cornell) in placing students to top professional programs.</p>

<p>Penn is worse than non-Ivy school such as UChicago and Duke in placement.</p>

<p>Here is the rank of colleges based on its placement into Harvard physics department. </p>

<p>Ranking College NumberPhD
1 Princeton 19
2 Stanford 18
3 Harvard 14
4 MIT 11
5 Uchicago 8
6 Yale 7
7 CalTech 6
8 Michigan 6
9 Berkeley 5
10 Duke 4
11 Brown 4
12 Dartmouth 3
13 Columbia 3
14 Cornell 3
15 Texas Austin 4
16 UCLA 3
17 Swarthmore 2
18 Williams 2
19 Harverford 2
20 Brigham Young 2
21 Case Western 2
22 Wshington STL 2
23 Maryland 2
24 Rice 1
25 Vanderbilt 1
26 NYU 1
27 Leheigh 1
28 Ohio State 1
29 Illinois 1
30 Bates 1
31 Florida 1
32 Colorado 1
33 Prurdue 1
34 Missouri 1
35 Harvey Mudd 1
36 Calvin College 1
37 Trinity College 1
38 Mt. Holyoke 1
39 Virgnia Polytech 1
40 Wheaton College 1
41 Tennessee State U 1
42 Penn 1 or 0 ? You check </p>

<p>What is my point?
A school like Penn that is only excellent in one or two subjects does not deserve #4 ranking tied with Stanford, MIT or CalTech. </p>

<p>Penn should be happy if it is ranked in only top 20 by objective measure.</p>

96

<p>

Here’s what you said.

</p>

<p>I really question the validity of this claim.</p>

97

<p>

[■■■■■</a>!! There’s a ■■■■■ in the dungeon!!](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063166382-post18.html][size=+1]■■■■■”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063166382-post18.html)</p>

<p>Thought you ought to know… ;)</p>

98

<p>You know what everybody, just pray he picks a college based on rankings and no other criteria and then goes on to have a completely miserable experience. And not get into Caltech or Harvard’s physics PhD programs.</p>

99

<p>^ I just hope that the poor kid either gets over this on his own, or gets some help. Going through life with negative obsessions like this is not good for one’s happiness and mental health.</p>

100

<p>

Perhaps my precision in my initial post could use some work. Excited was the better word. I was defining “impressed” initially as having had the feeling that they wanted to be a part of the community at CalTech because of what was being accomplished and how, and many of friends didn’t care for the “what” (in their sub-field/interests) or “how” at CalTech versus other places.</p>

<p>The most excited was one who chose UChicago, who could do nothing but rave about how the chem department not only felt like they had the research chops and brilliance, but the genuine interest in cultivating the next generation of scholars. Next would probably be my friend, the biophysicists who found the perfect lab for him at UCSF and nothing else even mattered at that point.</p>

<p>My point is, ranking number one or having more dollars or even having impressive researchers is hardly the end of the line for people choosing graduate school. In my experience, CalTech hasn’t been somewhere people didn’t get into, but rather, somewhere they weren’t interested in attending after finding their place somewhere else. Considering the very small number of students nationwide entering top ten or fifteen physics programs, the admission statistics would be far, far more valuable than the enrollment.</p>

<p>And that’s all I have to say about that issue.</p>