Reply to I go to a top LAC for history and stem. It is overrated.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]From what I can see, it does seem there's an issue for lac grads to get into good grad programs. From Pomona, where 2 recent Apker award winners have come from: [quote]
Independent of the job market, if you want to consider graduate school you have to ask yourself three questions:
-Do I have the grades to get into a reasonable graduate school?
-What subfield of physics am I interested in, and what does this tell me about grad schools I should look at?
-Do I have the motivation to go to and stay in graduate school?
We can help you with the first two questions, but the third you have to answer for yourself. Coming from a small college with no Nobel laureates to write you letters of recommendation means that to get into the very top programs you will need both very good grades and a very good score on the GRE subject test. The “very top” programs are places like UC Berkeley, Stanford, CalTech, and Princeton. If your physics GPA isn’t a steady string of A’s and A-‘s, though, that doesn’t mean that you should start thinking about taking the LSAT. Many good graduate programs exist at schools other than the top ten; the “very top” programs have that ranking partly because they have excellent programs in essentially all subfields of physics. Especially if you have a pretty good idea of the subfield you might want to enter, you should look around at less well-known schools for strong programs in your particular area.[/quote]
If a top LAC is explaining that they're at a disadvantage, no reason to not believe them. It is an issue that your professors aren't well known researchers/advancing the field of physics.
Source: [url]https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/physics-and-astronomy/physics-academics/plan-senior-year[/url][/quote]

You missed the point entirely. They are saying don’t expect a Hail Mary letter of recommendation to get you into a top program if you aren’t deserving. That’s exactly what any college should be telling a student, even the ones who have Nobel prize winners on campus (who aren’t exactly in the habit of writing them anyway).  I found the level of advice on the Pomona page extremely impressive, and it’s probably a valuable resource  for students from all colleges. Having read it I understand better why their STEM PhD feeder rate is in the top 10 (Table 6) among all institutions.

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf22321

From a different section of Pomona’s site you can see the actual [b]PhD programs [/b]their students most frequently matriculated into for the past 15 years. The 5 most frequent in order:

1. Berkeley (ranked 3rd by USNWR)
2. Madison (ranked 21st)
3. Boulder (17th)
4. UCLA  (17th)
5. Stanford (1st)

https://tableau.campus.pomona.edu/views/Pomonagraduateschooloutcomes/EnrollmentsandCompletions?%3Aembed=y

The USNWR list includes 190 programs. So of course even Madison is a fantastic destination.

The LAC bashers on this forum are truly some of the most uninformed people I’ve encountered on the Internet. That’s not the surprising part, as it necessarily excludes the LAC crowd, who tend to be some of the best informed consumers with so many academia insiders preferring those destinations for their own children. The surprising part is the basher’s proud commitment to absurdity. Even when faced with very consistent and clear data on how PhD rates are higher for LAC alumni, they revert to the least likely theory supported only by hearsay that those students most be going to the bad grad programs. It’s just nonsense upon nonsense.

There are fine reasons to prefer universities for one’s own child, but LACs are at least as strong an option— and probably stronger— if the goal is advanced study past the baccalaureate. [/quote]

Physics PhD programs, that is.  [/quote]

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