Reply to Are Asian Americans not interested in top SLACs?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Asians study serious stuff like CS and engineering. That's why.[/quote]

% STEM majors averaged across Ivy League: 35.1%

% STEM majors averaged across Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Bowdoin, Carleton, and Grinnell: 38.3% [/quote]
DP. But STEM majors at SLACs are mickey mouse stuff comparing to ivy schools. I think that's what PP was saying.[/quote]

Someone forgot to tell the grad schools that.

Science and Eng PhD rate for Ivies: 8%
Science and Eng PhD rate for above 8 LACs: 10.9% [/quote]
Why is PhD rate important? Is it supposed to be something prestigious? (it's not!) Sounds like some random thinking to me.[/quote]

[b]STEM PhD programs are highly competitive because they are funded[/b]. You effectively get paid to create new knowledge while working with the best and brightest on important and unsolved problems, often brought to you by industry. Upon completion you are in a position to guide a company's R&D in an area you now are expert in, assuming you aren't interested in academia. PhD programs would not year after year pull from the same LACs more than certain well known universities if they were actually less rigorous.  If anything, LACs are more rigorous on average, as a study by Vanderbilt economists showing LAC alumni finished econ PhD programs on average a year faster than university alumni. The position that "not everyone is interested in PhDs" though true wouldn't account for LAC alumni being better prepared compared to those who got their undergrad degrees at universities.

But I think if you are asking such a question then you really don't understand the significant of STEM PhDs to the nation's economy and security.  Suffice it to say that those interested in LACs are, on average, informed of such matters to a greater extent than those who blindly assume universities are more rigorous.

https://cset.georgetown.edu/article/should-the-us-fear-rising-number-of-stem-phds-in-china/[/quote]
This statement cannot be more false. It's actually the opposite. As a matter of fact, top STEM talents born and raised in US typically don't do PhDs. So those schools have to recruit heavily from international sources. I won't be surprised if the ivy school PhD applicants are mostly those without a working visa.
One of the only PhD degrees that's competitive is in business school, such as Finance PhDs.[/quote]

Well actually *you* couldn't be more wrong: yes, STEM PhD programs are almost always funded, and yes they are highly competitive. If you have gone through the process or researched it you will find that the admission rates are very low, typically single digits or close to that, and all the candidates are very academically motivated and self-selecting, far more so than the pool that simply wants to apply to college. They don't just have great grades and sparkling letters of recommendation but also have meaningful research experience. The top universities have a larger percentage of international applicants at the grad than at the undergrad level because they are so competitive, not because they aren't: our STEM grad schools are even more of a draw than our colleges at the global level, so you are competing against the best from everywhere more so than with college admissions. A smaller percentage of US born students will make the cut because the competition is simply fiercer. [/quote]

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