Statistics on Ivy League Admitted Based on College for Undergrad?

[Geust]

Sorry if the title seems confusing, but I'm basically asking if there's data on which schools those admitted to an Ivy League came from, or earned their bachelor's from.
Searches on Google simply give me percentages on those who applied that were admitted. Help would be appreciated.

 

[dustbin]

So you want to know which undergraduate colleges the students who were admitted to Ivy League graduate programs came from?

 

[Geust]

Yes, that is what I'm looking for, thanks for eliminating the confusion. Can you provide a source for this information?

 

[dustbin]

I don't know of any sources or if you are looking for a specific discipline (i.e. specifically physics vs. math vs. chem grad programs). However, most of the graduate (at least PhD) students have websites that often list their CV. You could browse through these to get an idea of where most them came from. That has been my experience in perusing department websites anyways.

 

[Geust]

That's a good idea. I've already looked through some alumni for certain uni's, although not too extensively. I was hoping to find some compiled information from a third party site, though.
Thanks for the info. Oh, and I was looking for math grad programs.

 

[Mépris]

And some programs actually list where students have come from in recent years.

Dartmouth had such data, but it was for transfer applicants at the undergraduate level. I think I've seen similar stuff for grad programs.

One thing I think you should consider doing is properly recording the data you find. For e.g, math PhD program at Columbia: No. of students in first year, second year, and so on. And among those, how many have their CV listed? How detailed is it? Is there any mention for research projects done at the undergraduate level?

I'm sure you could be more meticulous about it, but if I were to do this again, I'd start with at least that. When I did this way back, it was just to get a sense of where people in top programs (lol, not just the ivy league) came from, and I saw people ranging from schools like the MITP (Moscow) to the IITs (India) to State Us and not very well known schools in the US.

One thing I've learned in my time here and pgre.com is that what *you* do with the resources available to you is far more important than where you do it. Sure, going to MIT means you have even more resources, but in how many labs can you be at any given time? You'd definitely get more flexibility than in a liberal arts college, but if you're at a State U with a reasonably sized department (in your case, math), you'll probably be able to do just fine.

Note that I am only an incoming college student myself, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

[Geust]

Thanks for the information Mépris, checking for their CV's is a good idea.
I'll keep an eye out for their research projects completed, as well. Hopefully I myself can find some opportunities for research.
EDIT: I just realized that dustbin mentioned the same course of action in checking CV's, although it passed me for some reason, so thanks for that specific idea too, dustbin.

 

[Jvaljean724]

When you say Ivy league schools, do you mean only the actual Ivy league schools or just the 'elite' schools?

For instance, if you care about Caltech, they list all there incoming classes since 1989 here: http://www.pma.caltech.edu/GSR/gradclasslist.html .

If you're worried about getting into top schools coming from some average state school, don't be. I visited five different schools, all in the top 10 US News rankings, and the prospective students were always a good mix of students from all over (i.e.. from MIT all the way down to nameless liberal arts colleges).

 

[Geust]

Both. It's just that Ivy Leagues are usually associated with "top opportunity," or "the best of the best." I use quotes because that doesn't necessarily mean non-Ivy is not good.
I am more worried about what you mentioned: not making it because I didn't go to an elite or competitive college, possibly a nameless college.

 

[Office_Shredder]

You are going to get ridiculous selection bias. If 80% of the graduate students are from a "top" college, what if 90% of the applicants were from those same colleges? You might have a better chance applying from a less brand name school, but just looking at the class composition isn't going to tell you that.

It's not worth worrying about - if you go to a school that isn't well known, you have to do some research for your application to be strong typically (assuming you are applying for some sort of science or math) but as long as you make sure to do an REU or two then your school choice shouldn't matter too much

 

[Mépris]

Go check out mathematicsgre.com, and it would appear that the grad schools are getting more selective. The people at pgre.com had a pretty messed up cycle it would seem.