<p>Looking at the matriculation data of top BSs, A lot of BS graduates went to Ivys (Harvard, Yale), far fewer went to MIT, or CIT. Anyone noticed that?</p>
<p>Are you comparing apples and oranges? </p>
<p>There r 7 ivy schools vs the 2 technology schools u mentioned. The 7 ivy schools r on the east coast, vs, only 1 of the technology schools And most BS students hail from the east coast, so I would expect more ivy matriculations.</p>
<p>You should try comparing the ratio of IVY:technolgy matriculations of BS vs non-BS to see if BS students lean towards the liberal arts</p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<p>PA: </p>
<p>Last Five year: Harvard 78 Yale 73 MIT 23 CIT (CalTech 2)</p>
<p>PEA: </p>
<p>Last Three years: </p>
<p>Harvard 37 Yale 29 MIT 27 CIT 1</p>
<p>DA 2011</p>
<p>Harvar 3 Yale 6 MIT 0 CIT 0</p>
<p>Groton (2006-2011)</p>
<p>Harvard 30 Yale 11 MIT 0 (1) CIT (0, OR 1)</p>
<p>I would imagine many of the kids at boarding school want a similar environment (“best years of my life!”), and boarding schools seem like they produce pretty well rounded graduates. I’m NOT saying MIT students are not well rounded but there seems to be more of an emphasis on the ivies coming out (plus there might be a more diverse curriculum available, which would in turn attract more applicants).</p>
<p>As far as I am aware, the Ivy’s also offer STEM degrees. I don’t see an issue here.</p>
<p>Again, you have to compare the Ivy:Technology matriculation ratios of BS’s to non-BS’s to see a meaningful relationship</p>
<p>Many smart STEM (and humanities) kids favor Stanford, too, which holds its own compared to MIT in these subjects. Last year more PA kids went there than anywhere else.</p>
<p>Something else to consider is the element of athletic recruitment. The eight schools that make up the Ivy League do draw many of their athletes from prep schools, and they have the ability to give a written commitment (via a Likely Letter) to their recruits. The Ivies are all D1 - MIT is a DIII school (other than their crew team) - and I think CIT is too, so their ability to recruit athletes is not as strong as with an ivy. Athletic recruits can make up a sizable percentage of the students each prep school is sending to an ivy.</p>
<p>Right - plus some of us who “bucked the trend” were actively discouraged from applying to MIT by boarding school college counselors. It’s just that hard to get into and has been for decades. I applied against the advice of my college counselor. I’m hearing similar things from other students. But that may be that people still don’t quite understand what MIT is or how it operates.</p>
<p>MIT is at about 9% acceptance. The application pool actually grew in a bad economy due to the shift in policy to reduced tuition to $0 for families making less than $75,000.</p>
<p>So the “numbers” may simply reflect the low admissions rate in general, combined with the fact that MIT tends to lean heavily towards STEM degrees (although is not limited to that).</p>
<p>As mentioned earlier, it’s a combo of the liberal arts education at the top boarding schools, and athletics. These boarding schools aren’t tech or business schools. I know some parents would like them to be, but that’s not what they do traditionally. In terms of athletics, the Ivy’s struggle to find D1 level athletes that can handle the academic rigor. Nearly 20% of DA’s class of 2011 was recruited athletes.</p>
<p>There must also be subtleties at the boarding schools. I used to work in Cambridge; we know that MIT would be a great fit for our child. Similar to how we knew that our child would flourish at DA. Yet, our child absolutely refuses to visit MIT. Meanwhile, we’ve visited all the Ivy’s at least once, some more than that.</p>
<p>GMTplus7 makes a good point – those most qualified for schools like MIT and Caltech (strong STEM students) can also look to the IVYs and Stanford. So the IVY’s attract strong students from across the BS population – humanities, STEM kids, and top athletes, whereas potential MIT/Caltech students need to particularly excel in math & science, and that is a much smaller pool at every BS. And as Exie noted – MIT acceptance is 9% of an already self selected pool of strong STEM students. MIT is its own culture – not every student is drawn to that (like Alextwoofour’s child). My own child refused to visit Harvard – but MIT made his heart sing!</p>
<p>Slightly off topic but if anyone can confirm or counter, I’d love to hear it. At my non-Ivy university I was friends undergrad with nearly 10 students who have gone on to excel in the field of medicine (M.D.s, Ph.Ds, etc). VERY few of my HADES classmates seem to have gone into medicine, and even when I read through the class notes for a wide swath of years, it seems that far fewer of my BS’ alums have entered the field of medicine than say business, entertainment, law, non-profits…anyone else seen this?</p>
<p>Times have changed. Medicine isn’t what it once was (over a third of my high school classmates when into medicine many decades ago). Now there are many jobs that didn’t exist 30 years ago.
In a few places, DA prides itself for having produced more doctors than lawyers. But, that could be an obsolete comment.</p>