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<p>Post of the day.</p>
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It’s only irrelevant if Caltech doesn’t place any students into Harvard’s divinity school, but places some of its students into Marquette’s divinity school.
I assume you did not score very high on the analogy section back in the day.</p>
<p>I assume you don’t score very high on the common-sense part of life.<br>
Here’s a puzzle:
1 Caltech student decides to apply to divinity school. He’s from Milwaukee and he wants to go back there and minister to the local community. He applies to and gets accepted into Marquette’s divinity school. Congrats to him!<br>
Is it A) good or B) bad that no students from Caltech got into Harvard divinity school that year?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, you’re not following.</p>
<p>The point is, at Caltech there’s almost definitely 0 people going to divinity school, so it’s not a valid comparison. It would be valid if there were some people going to divinity school, but they chose other top programs rather than Harvard’s, because in this scenario, it’s not that Penn Physics students are absent from the PhD pool in physics, it’s that they are present elsewhere.</p>
<p>Your second post explains why the situations would be analogous if students from CalTech did go to Marquette for divinity, but misses that it was initially a bad analogy because there aren’t CalTech students going to Marquette for divinity.</p>
<p>At least, that’s how I read middsmith’s comment.</p>
<p>Then one might also assume that he would not be highlighting Penn’s dismal performance at Cal Tech and Harvard Physics programs unless the performance of his own school at these programs was significantly, not trivially, better at both schools.</p>
<p>On this theory, using posts#19 & 95, I would eliminate Dartmouth and Duke, and probably Columbia.</p>
<p>That leaves: Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford or Chicago.</p>
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<p>So, they are present elsewhere. So what? If they are present where THEY WANT TO BE, then that’s what matters. Not that they are present at the OP’s pet place.</p>
<p>Melody- What makes you think no one from Cal Tech is going to go to Div School? There are doctors who go to Div School! </p>
<p>And as for Penn v. Brown…When I go to bed tonight and say my prayers, one of them will be that I never hear the words “pre-professional” again. Stupid term. Stupid concept.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that no one does, I’m saying I think that was the translation of middsmith’s comment.</p>
<p>As for the words “pre-professional”, do you have a better descriptor to differentiate between these school cultures?</p>
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<p>I thank you for reading and comprehending my comment.</p>
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<p>Some kids at Penn (particularly Wharton) are pre-professional. Others aren’t. Really, you can find future PhD’s at Penn too. It’s such a lame way to tag a school that has a lot of diversity. </p>
<p>BTW, I don’t see Caltech placing well into any history PhD programs, or the renowned Creative Writing graduate program at Iowa. It must not be a good school then.<br>
Oh! And Juilliard doesn’t seem to place really well into Caltech’s physics PhD programs. I bet it sucks.</p>
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<p>1) Of course there is a continuum and students are distributed every which way along that, no one denies that.
2) Culturally, there are still some pretty clear, real differences between the schools.
3) The best descriptor I have is that Penn is that pre-professionalism is more pervasive there than at other institutions. Generally, that’s been true in my experience and in the experience of others who are making a fair assessment. Is that the perfect description of the totality of a culture? Nope, but it does not evoke a wholly inaccurate picture, relatively speaking. So I’m asking, what’s a better way to describe the very real, tangible difference?</p>
<p>^can you come up with a term that doesn’t have as many negative connotations as “preprofessional.” I always feel like people champion “intellectualism” and look down on “preprofessionalism” in colleges. Maybe that’s just me though.</p>
<p>Why are you so intent on describing the difference in the first place, given that you’re not going to Penn? It seems to be really important to you to paint Penn as … something. Not sure what. Why can’t it just be a good school that wasn’t to your particular liking?</p>
<p>I don’t have another term, that’s why I’m asking for another that’s equally accurate.</p>
<p>I personally did not want to be in a pre-professional environment, I’m not sure that it universally has a negative connotation.</p>
<p>Pizza-- it’s not just a good school that was not to my liking, it is a great school that’s not to my liking. I love quite a few people who attend Penn, including one girl who’s probably one of the most impressive people I know. However, on these forums, and formerly, as a tour guide, I was often asked about Penn and how to contrast Penn against my experience at Brown. Pre-professionalism is not only a convenient term, but off of this forum, one that my Penn friends have told me is quite accurate.</p>
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Yep. Brown (10%) is a fair amount higher up in PhD production than Penn (6.5%), but both pale in comparison to Swarthmore (20%) or Caltech (30%).</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, Penn produces more PhDs per capita than “intellectual” schools like Kenyon and Sarah Lawrence, as well as many other LACs (Hamilton, Middlebury, etc.).</p>
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Maybe it has something to do with graduating from a preprofessional school, but Pizzagirl still doesn’t “get” it. ;-)<br>
Must be the fact that only students from semi-intellectual schools understand each other.</p>
<p>PhD production per-capita is not the best measure for that kind of thing, IMO. Curriculum structure can have a huge influence.</p>
<p>Another set of numbers to look at is number of people going into employment versus any kind of graduate school. At Brown, 55% of the class of 2008 went off to employment whereas 27% went on to more eduction. Of those 27%, 35% were enrolling in master’s programs, 28% in medical school, 22% in doctoral programs, and 14% in law. Ten years out from graduation, 75% of the members of the class of 1998 have enrolled in a graduate or professional degree program.</p>
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<p>Yes I do. That word is</p>
<p>Splunge</p>
<p>Free bagel for whoever gets the reference.</p>
<p>Monty Python.</p>
<p>I would much rather see my D as a “pre-professional” with a good career outlook, than as an “intellectual” with a chip on her shoulder. 
…And a future trying to explain why she is so smart, and unemployed or underemployed.</p>