Feeder Schools

We're just about at the point where you'll have whittled down your list of college possibilities from a hundred or more to a few dozen or less. In the past few posts, I've written about finding schools with good programs in the areas of study in which you're interested. If you have a goal in mind that includes graduate study, you should consider whether your choices are good "feeder schools".

I've written about what a great resource Dr. Sowell's Choosing a College is. In it he speaks about schools that are good "feeder schools", those from which many respected graduate programs accept applicants. By reading Dr. Sowell's book, I found out that the Office of Institutional Research at Franklin and Marshall College issued a publication called, Baccalaureate Origins of Doctorate Recipients: A Ranking of 4-Year Private Institutions. I contacted the research office at Franklin and Marshall and they no longer issue the publication but Dr. Alan Caniglia was kind enough to respond to me and give me a lead that resulted in finding an article out of the University of Illinois. "Graduate and Research Programs" gives synopses of different sites that offer rankings and information about graduate programs. Studies are referenced that show which pre-professional undergraduate programs graduate the most students who get into graduate programs. I found the article at http://www.library.illinois.edu/edx/rankings/rankgrad.html The National Research Council in Washington is given as a source as it is in Dr. Sowell's book. However, these printouts are not free. Your guidance office or library might have a volume of the printouts entitled, Baccaulaureate Origins of Doctorate Recipients from US Universities.

What I found most helpful in the University of Illinois article was the synopsis of a great FREE article that was written by Elizabeth Bernstein, staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The article is entitled, "Want to Go to Harvard Law?" and was published in September 2003. It is available at http://wsjclassroom.com/college/feederschools.htm on The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition site. (I am struck by the number of times in these posts that I've referred to something I've found through The Wall Street Journal. It is a fantastic resource!) The article gives a list of the most effective feeder colleges and the methodology by which they were chosen. It is an excellent tool for students whose career goal necessitates graduate school.

That may have seemed like a very detailed and roundabout way to direct you to a site I could have given you in one paragraph. In December I posted about "leads", detecting information from a site that leads you to another where you learn even more. That's what I did to find this information. You should be doing the same. In this advanced technological age you can find information in a matter of hours that formerly might have taken days or even weeks. I remember snail-mail and microfiche! (I just asked my 20 something daughter how to spell that word and she said, "What's that?" You kids have it easy!)