Reply to What's the difference between Amherst and Pomona?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Probably the most famous Pomona alum is Jennifer Doudna. Meanwhile, Amherst has changed American history with alum like Calvin Coolidge and Harlan Fiske Stone. Hell the most famous faculty member of Pomona, David foster Wallace, is an Amherst alum! There’s not a single Pomona alum who is a current professor at Amherst[/quote]

I guess no more arguments, lol.[/quote]
There's not much to say. There's been Pomona alum that are professors at Harvard, Yale, Stanford...
I'd also argue that CRISPR is more consequential than both the Amherst alum PP was bragging about, and that both schools are great in their own respects.[/quote]

A random alum or two is meaningless.[/quote]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pomona_College_people[/url]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amherst_College_people[/url][/quote]

Looks like Amherst outcome is better.[/quote]
Really? Just checked both sources. Amherst has a boost from being 60 years older than Pomona, so many of these alum are either before Pomona is an institution or before it has any real time to establish itself.

They both are incredibly weak when it comes to modern alum (class of 1990 and above). Schools like Stanford and Harvard are always pumping out the best next talent.[/quote]

I guess we look at different things.

Nobel Prize winner, Amherst 5 (from 1990 - 2017), Pomona 1 - 2020
Pulitzer Prize winners, Amherst 12 (1968 - 2007), Pomona 4  (1951-2012)

And Amherst's strength is supposed to produce lawyer, banker and wall street investor.[/quote]
Amherst's most recent alum to get a nobel prize is from class of 1967. Doudna is 1985.
Amherst's latest alum for a pulitzer is class of 1989. Pomona's was 1987.
You're bragging about 60 year olds. [/quote]...which is the median age of a Nobel Prize winner (59). What, you think people are changing the world of science at age 25? [/quote]
That's exactly the problem with using recent Nobel and Pulitzer winners as a proxy for institutional quality.
Nobel Prizes are often awarded decades after the underlying work is completed. The average Nobel laureate is around 60 when they receive the prize, and many are older. If someone graduates in their early 20s, you're frequently looking at a 30- to 40-year lag between college graduation and major recognition. A Nobel awarded in 2020 to a member of the class of 1985 isn't evidence of what a college was doing in 2019; it's evidence of what it was doing in the early 1980s.
The same issue applies, though less dramatically, to Pulitzers. These awards reflect the accomplishments of individuals over entire careers, not the current state of an undergraduate institution.
More importantly, the differences being discussed are tiny. We're talking about two elite liberal arts colleges with a few thousand students each. If one college has five Nobel laureates and another has one, that sounds enormous until you realize you're comparing outcomes driven by a handful of people across many decades.
If you want to compare today's Amherst and today's Pomona, look at current faculty, graduate school placement, fellowship winners, research opportunities, student outcomes, and academic programs. Counting a small number of awards accumulated over half a century mostly tells you that both schools have produced some extraordinarily successful alumni.[/quote]

Today's means nothing since your kids are  looking for college, why not look into the future? Like Wall Street looking at stock, LOL.[/quote]

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