CTCL schools

[Anonymous]

From the data, you can see that Dartmouth University and Earlham College both produce 6.0 science and engineering Ph.D.s for every 100 graduates. Duke University and Lawrence University produce 7.1 per 100. Yale and Macalester both produce 7.8 per 100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing to note about these schools--to get a sense of how academically rigorous the schools are, don't look at selectivity via admission rates, rather look at the middle 50% of GPA/SAT to get a sense of the caliber of students they are selecting, their success in PhD placement (NSF publishes this), and the criteria for getting strong merit aid and how much they give (that will tell you the size and caliber of the top group of students).With small SLACs the students that apply aren't throwing their hat in the ring of a reach school etc.--they choose a school that they have figured out is a good fit, or are choosing it as a financial/selectivity safety. So you could have 70% acceptance, but have GPA/SAT that are still in the top 25% nationally. Or you could have 70% acceptance where scores/GPA are more at the national median etc. So sometimes the schools that have seemingly higher acceptance rates actually have higher caliber students because more top students see it as a viable safety or are primarily seeking merit aid.

Hang on -- you can find out the undergrad institutions of PhD graduates? Where? VERY curious to see this.

I know where you can get it for Science and Engineering--this data is for undergrad graduations from 1997-2006 and 2002-2011 I
https://wayback.archive-it.org/5902/20160210152803/http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/
See Table 4

Here are more recent data, but it's more general patterns about pathways to doctorates (not just STEM)
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvydoctorates/

https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/

Of the CTCLs, there are several schools that have consistently ranked very high as producers of STEM phds per capita: Reed (top 5), Hillsdale, Lawrence, Kalamazoo (top 30), Whitman, Earlham (top 50)


Many good liberal arts colleges will have a page about their PhD productivity--you can search on their website. They will also likely keep lists of programs that recent students have gone too.
If not, if your kid may be on a path to a PhD, I highly recommend you talk to the major program and ask about it, where students go, success rate etc. There is wide variability in quality of preparation for this among seemingly similarly schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing to note about these schools--to get a sense of how academically rigorous the schools are, don't look at selectivity via admission rates, rather look at the middle 50% of GPA/SAT to get a sense of the caliber of students they are selecting, their success in PhD placement (NSF publishes this), and the criteria for getting strong merit aid and how much they give (that will tell you the size and caliber of the top group of students).With small SLACs the students that apply aren't throwing their hat in the ring of a reach school etc.--they choose a school that they have figured out is a good fit, or are choosing it as a financial/selectivity safety. So you could have 70% acceptance, but have GPA/SAT that are still in the top 25% nationally. Or you could have 70% acceptance where scores/GPA are more at the national median etc. So sometimes the schools that have seemingly higher acceptance rates actually have higher caliber students because more top students see it as a viable safety or are primarily seeking merit aid.

Hang on -- you can find out the undergrad institutions of PhD graduates? Where? VERY curious to see this.

This table of stats regarding science PhD production is a little old but may be helpful. The data used to generate the table can be found publicly, I think.
https://www.thecollegesolution.com/50-schools-that-produce-the-most-science-and-engineering-phds/

I'm pretty sure CTCLs do even better in humanities than science and engineering.

I attended a school on the CTCL list and the college actually does the best in the sciences with many going on to the top grad schools in those disciplines (though a number of my friends went on to PhDs in humanities, languages, etc as well as professional degrees).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing to note about these schools--to get a sense of how academically rigorous the schools are, don't look at selectivity via admission rates, rather look at the middle 50% of GPA/SAT to get a sense of the caliber of students they are selecting, their success in PhD placement (NSF publishes this), and the criteria for getting strong merit aid and how much they give (that will tell you the size and caliber of the top group of students).With small SLACs the students that apply aren't throwing their hat in the ring of a reach school etc.--they choose a school that they have figured out is a good fit, or are choosing it as a financial/selectivity safety. So you could have 70% acceptance, but have GPA/SAT that are still in the top 25% nationally. Or you could have 70% acceptance where scores/GPA are more at the national median etc. So sometimes the schools that have seemingly higher acceptance rates actually have higher caliber students because more top students see it as a viable safety or are primarily seeking merit aid.

I'm not a numbers person, so thank you for sharing how to analyze this data - very helpful.

[Anonymous]

Agreed. My kid's school has maintained virtually the same acceptance rate since she enrolled, but the mean GPA of accepted students has gone up. So, that to me is a positive trend.

(Remember, mid to lower ranked schools are more likely to be safeties, so they may have to accept alot of applicants to hit the enrollment numbers they seek. That is fine as long as their standards are not slipping.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing to note about these schools--to get a sense of how academically rigorous the schools are, don't look at selectivity via admission rates, rather look at the middle 50% of GPA/SAT to get a sense of the caliber of students they are selecting, their success in PhD placement (NSF publishes this), and the criteria for getting strong merit aid and how much they give (that will tell you the size and caliber of the top group of students).With small SLACs the students that apply aren't throwing their hat in the ring of a reach school etc.--they choose a school that they have figured out is a good fit, or are choosing it as a financial/selectivity safety. So you could have 70% acceptance, but have GPA/SAT that are still in the top 25% nationally. Or you could have 70% acceptance where scores/GPA are more at the national median etc. So sometimes the schools that have seemingly higher acceptance rates actually have higher caliber students because more top students see it as a viable safety or are primarily seeking merit aid.

Hang on -- you can find out the undergrad institutions of PhD graduates? Where? VERY curious to see this.

I know where you can get it for Science and Engineering--this data is for undergrad graduations from 1997-2006 and 2002-2011 I
https://wayback.archive-it.org/5902/20160210152803/http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/
See Table 4

Here are more recent data, but it's more general patterns about pathways to doctorates (not just STEM)
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvydoctorates/

https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/

Of the CTCLs, there are several schools that have consistently ranked very high as producers of STEM phds per capita: Reed (top 5), Hillsdale, Lawrence, Kalamazoo (top 30), Whitman, Earlham (top 50)


Many good liberal arts colleges will have a page about their PhD productivity--you can search on their website. They will also likely keep lists of programs that recent students have gone too.
If not, if your kid may be on a path to a PhD, I highly recommend you talk to the major program and ask about it, where students go, success rate etc. There is wide variability in quality of preparation for this among seemingly similarly schools.

This site does a good job of aggregating the PhD-origins data and making it easy to read. The "adjusted rank" is based on per capita https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs

[Anonymous]

My kid went to a CTCL school and is in a HYPS grad program now. Her roommate is also in a HYPS PhD program. Very nice school, and she got a great education. No, all the kids aren't crazily competitive, but DD found a nice group of very smart friends, and had a nice time there. If you must have a "name" college, then skip CTCL schools, but they won't hold you back professionally if you're smart and ambitious. And the lack of greek life and crazily competitive strivers all around her made for a nice relaxed atmosphere. The stress at elite colleges is over the top. Except for Harvard, but not many kids get in there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid went to a CTCL school and is in a HYPS grad program now. Her roommate is also in a HYPS PhD program. Very nice school, and she got a great education. No, all the kids aren't crazily competitive, but DD found a nice group of very smart friends, and had a nice time there. If you must have a "name" college, then skip CTCL schools, but they won't hold you back professionally if you're smart and ambitious. And the lack of greek life and crazily competitive strivers all around her made for a nice relaxed atmosphere. The stress at elite colleges is over the top. Except for Harvard, but not many kids get in there.

OTOH, I attended one of these schools. Maybe it was just my class, but it was fairly competitive with more people in that category than the more relaxed atmosphere. May have been partially due to a very, very competitive time in med school admissions so folks were not messing around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid went to a CTCL school and is in a HYPS grad program now. Her roommate is also in a HYPS PhD program. Very nice school, and she got a great education. No, all the kids aren't crazily competitive, but DD found a nice group of very smart friends, and had a nice time there. If you must have a "name" college, then skip CTCL schools, but they won't hold you back professionally if you're smart and ambitious. And the lack of greek life and crazily competitive strivers all around her made for a nice relaxed atmosphere. The stress at elite colleges is over the top. Except for Harvard, but not many kids get in there.

What school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid went to a CTCL school and is in a HYPS grad program now. Her roommate is also in a HYPS PhD program. Very nice school, and she got a great education. No, all the kids aren't crazily competitive, but DD found a nice group of very smart friends, and had a nice time there. If you must have a "name" college, then skip CTCL schools, but they won't hold you back professionally if you're smart and ambitious. And the lack of greek life and crazily competitive strivers all around her made for a nice relaxed atmosphere. The stress at elite colleges is over the top. Except for Harvard, but not many kids get in there.

OTOH, I attended one of these schools. Maybe it was just my class, but it was fairly competitive with more people in that category than the more relaxed atmosphere. May have been partially due to a very, very competitive time in med school admissions so folks were not messing around.

What school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid went to a CTCL school and is in a HYPS grad program now. Her roommate is also in a HYPS PhD program. Very nice school, and she got a great education. No, all the kids aren't crazily competitive, but DD found a nice group of very smart friends, and had a nice time there. If you must have a "name" college, then skip CTCL schools, but they won't hold you back professionally if you're smart and ambitious. And the lack of greek life and crazily competitive strivers all around her made for a nice relaxed atmosphere. The stress at elite colleges is over the top. Except for Harvard, but not many kids get in there.

What school?

Not PP, but my kid graduated from Allegheny College several years ago and is in an HYPS grad program now.

[Anonymous]

I went to an extremely selective law school. There were many CTCL grads there from a variety of CTCL schools. There were far more from the more selective LACs like Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Swarthmore, Haverford, Oberlin, Carleton, and Pomona, but CTCL colleges were well represented. I hadn't heard of several of them before law school. Their alumni did just fine.

[Anonymous]

I went to a selective law school too. Definitely kids from all over and different types of schools. Some of the top students in my class went to flagship state schools (like Illinois, Georgia, and Indiana). I also remember someone from Rhodes (which is a CTLC) and small schools that aren’t CTCL (like Sewanee and Albion).

[Anonymous]

CTCL boosters trying wayyyy too hard once again. Sock pupating galore.

[Anonymous]

Damn, he's back.