Baccalaureate Origins of Sloan Fellows, part 1

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Analysis of the baccalaureate origins of Sloan fellows in the hard sciences across the Equality of Opportunity tiers of institutions.

The Sloan Fellowship is a prestigious award for early career scientists at U.S. and Canadian academic institutions. Each year 126 scientists are recognized. From the Sloan Fellowship website: “These 126 early-career scholars represent the most promising scientific researchers working today. Their achievements and potential place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada.” Forty-three Sloan Fellows have gone on to win a Nobel Prize and 16 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics.

I looked up the CVs for all the Sloan Fellowship winners for all available years (2008-2016) in all fields: Math, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, Neuroscience, Computational Biology and Ocean Sciences. The names of the awardees are listed in the Sloan Foundation press releases. I noted the school where the awardee got their undergraduate degree. Here I analyze the patterns of the undergraduate institutions of those awardees who received their undergraduate degree in the United States (about 50% of awardees). I supplemented this data, with data on the undergraduate institutions from the Scorecard database on U.S. Baccalaureate institutions.

I will be showing a series of cumulative plots where I look at the Sloan production within groups of schools. I am not concerned with individual schools, but rather the production within a whole group of schools. Cumulative plots help one see patterns when one is looking at rare events, like Sloan fellows. Within a group, I sort by size of school (this is step is not important), and then take the cumulative sum of school size and number of Sloan fellows. I then plot cumulative sum of size (enrollment) against cumulative number of Sloan fellows.

For the first analysis, I used the tiers defined by the Equality of Opportunity Project (EOP) . These tiers include a relatively small set of schools (relative to all the private and public schools). I’m not sure how this set was defined, but certainly not using number of future Sloan Fellows. Notice the mean upper 75% ACT scores are similar across the groups within a tier (elite or highly selective). The EOP did not separate out the Liberal Arts colleges. I have to create separate tiers for these colleges. I did not use the EOP ‘highly selective public’ group since there are too many name differences between the EOP and Scorecard databases.

The Equality of Opportunity ‘Tiers’

EOP Ivy Plus group

Mean upper 75% ACT is 34.4615385.

##  [1] "brown university"                     
##  [2] "columbia university"                  
##  [3] "cornell university"                   
##  [4] "dartmouth college"                    
##  [5] "duke university"                      
##  [6] "harvard university"                   
##  [7] "princeton university"                 
##  [8] "stanford university"                  
##  [9] "university of chicago"                
## [10] "university of pennsylvania"           
## [11] "yale university"                      
## [12] "massachusetts institute of technology"
## [13] "california institute of technology"

EOP Elite Private group, no LACs

Mean upper 75% ACT is 33.1052632.

##  [1] "boston college"                   
##  [2] "brandeis university"              
##  [3] "carnegie mellon university"       
##  [4] "case western reserve university"  
##  [5] "emory university"                 
##  [6] "georgetown university"            
##  [7] "johns hopkins university"         
##  [8] "lehigh university"                
##  [9] "new york university"              
## [10] "northeastern university"          
## [11] "northwestern university"          
## [12] "rice university"                  
## [13] "tufts university"                 
## [14] "tulane university"                
## [15] "university of miami"              
## [16] "university of notre dame"         
## [17] "university of rochester"          
## [18] "university of southern california"
## [19] "vanderbilt university"            
## [20] "wake forest university"           
## [21] "washington university in st louis"

EOP Elite Public group

Mean upper 75% ACT is 33.

## [1] "college of william and mary"                
## [2] "university of california-berkeley"          
## [3] "university of california-los angeles"       
## [4] "university of michigan-ann arbor"           
## [5] "university of north carolina at chapel hill"
## [6] "university of virginia-main campus"

EOP Elite group, only Liberal Arts colleges

Mean upper 75% ACT is 32.53125.

##  [1] "amherst college"               "barnard college"              
##  [3] "bates college"                 "bowdoin college"              
##  [5] "bryn mawr college"             "bucknell university"          
##  [7] "carleton college"              "claremont mckenna college"    
##  [9] "colby college"                 "colgate university"           
## [11] "college of the holy cross"     "colorado college"             
## [13] "davidson college"              "franklin and marshall college"
## [15] "grinnell college"              "hamilton college"             
## [17] "haverford college"             "illinois wesleyan university" 
## [19] "kenyon college"                "macalester college"           
## [21] "middlebury college"            "oberlin college"              
## [23] "pomona college"                "reed college"                 
## [25] "scripps college"               "swarthmore college"           
## [27] "vassar college"                "washington and lee university"
## [29] "wellesley college"             "wesleyan university"          
## [31] "whitman college"               "williams college"

EOP Highly Selective private, no LACs

Mean upper 75% ACT is 29.9130435.

##  [1] "american university"           "baylor university"            
##  [3] "boston university"             "chapman university"           
##  [5] "college of new jersey"         "elon university"              
##  [7] "emerson college"               "fordham university"           
##  [9] "george washington university"  "gonzaga university"           
## [11] "loyola university chicago"     "loyola university maryland"   
## [13] "loyola university new orleans" "marquette university"         
## [15] "pepperdine university"         "providence college"           
## [17] "quinnipiac university"         "santa clara university"       
## [19] "southern methodist university" "syracuse university"          
## [21] "texas christian university"    "university of richmond"       
## [23] "university of san diego"       "university of tulsa"          
## [25] "villanova university"

EOP Highly Selective private, LACs only

Mean upper 75% ACT is 30.35.

##  [1] "american university"           "baylor university"            
##  [3] "boston university"             "chapman university"           
##  [5] "college of new jersey"         "elon university"              
##  [7] "emerson college"               "fordham university"           
##  [9] "george washington university"  "gonzaga university"           
## [11] "loyola university chicago"     "loyola university maryland"   
## [13] "loyola university new orleans" "marquette university"         
## [15] "pepperdine university"         "providence college"           
## [17] "quinnipiac university"         "santa clara university"       
## [19] "southern methodist university" "syracuse university"          
## [21] "texas christian university"    "university of richmond"       
## [23] "university of san diego"       "university of tulsa"          
## [25] "villanova university"

Sloan Fellows Produced in Math and Physics

This shows the cumulative number of Sloan fellows in each tier group. The x-axis is the cumulative total number of undergraduates in the tier group; I’ve ordered the institutions by size and then summed the sizes and number of Sloan fellows. Cumulative plots help one see patterns for rare events, and Sloan fellows are rare. If the line is higher it means the per capita production is higher in that tier group. The ‘Ivy Plus’ group greatly outproduced future Sloan Fellows in Math and Physics, however as you will see in the next blog post this is actually due to just four institutions: MIT, CalTech, Harvard and Princeton.

Sloan Fellows Produced in Neuroscience, Ocean Sciences, and Chemistry

Again the ‘Ivy Plus’ group outproduced Sloan Fellows. However, for these fields, the ‘Elite’ Liberal Arts colleges have a higher per capita (per undergraduate) production of future Sloan Fellows than the ‘Elite’ private and public schools.

Liberal Arts Schools

This uses the Equality of Opportunity Project ‘elite private’ and ‘highly selective private’ tiers, but only looks at the Liberal Arts colleges. Mean upper 75% ACT for the ‘elite’ Liberal Arts colleges is 32.53125 and the mean for the ‘highly selective’ schools is 30.35. The more selective LACs (elite) outproduce the less selective LACs.

These patterns across the tier groups might simply represent the pool of undergraduates in the different tier groups and not represent any additional value added by the institutions.

Sloan Fellows by ACT brackets

For this analysis, I ignore the EOP tiers and simply plot the cumulative sum of Sloan Fellows for schools with a upper 75% ACT score of 35, 34, …, or 31 (as reported in the Scorecard data). This plot shows that clearly the upper 75% ACT is a predictor for the number of future Sloan Fellows. I will need to correct for the differences in the selectivity of each school. If a school has more students with a very high ACT score, they would be expected to have more future Sloan fellows simply because they have a large ‘pool’.

Sloan Fellows for schools with upper 75% ACT = 34 or 33 broken out by type of school

Before doing that (in the next post), I will do a preliminary analysis of the effect of ‘school type’. I abandon the Equality of Opportunity Project tier groups and I switch to defining the Carnegie School Classifications. I will use only resarch universities and baccalaureate colleges (liberal arts colleges). This information is part of the Scorecard data along with information on whether the institution is public or private.

  • 15 = Doctoral Universities: Highest Research Activity
  • 16 = Doctoral Universities: Higher Research Activity
  • 18 = Master’s Colleges & Universities: Larger Programs
  • 21 = Baccalaureate Colleges: Arts & Sciences Focus

The idea is to examine whether there is a difference in the production of future Sloan Fellows based on the type of institution (research university versus undergraduate institution).

For this analysis, I used all schools in the above categories with upper 75% ACT of 34 or 33. Scroll below the plot to see the schools in each group. I labelled schools as either LAC (baccalaureate), private (Carnegie Classification 15, 16 or 18 and private) or public (Carnegie Classification 15, 16 or 18 and public).

This plot shows that within this very high ACT group, LACs and private research universities have similar per capita Sloan production but public schools are lower even with the same upper 75% ACT scores.

act34.33.private

##  [1] "northwestern university"          
##  [2] "university of notre dame"         
##  [3] "johns hopkins university"         
##  [4] "washington university in st louis"
##  [5] "dartmouth college"                
##  [6] "columbia university"              
##  [7] "cornell university"               
##  [8] "duke university"                  
##  [9] "carnegie mellon university"       
## [10] "university of pennsylvania"       
## [11] "brown university"                 
## [12] "vanderbilt university"            
## [13] "rice university"                  
## [14] "stanford university"              
## [15] "university of southern california"
## [16] "georgetown university"            
## [17] "boston college"                   
## [18] "brandeis university"              
## [19] "northeastern university"          
## [20] "tufts university"                 
## [21] "case western reserve university"

act34.33.public

## [1] "university of california-berkeley"          
## [2] "university of california-los angeles"       
## [3] "georgia institute of technology-main campus"
## [4] "university of michigan-ann arbor"           
## [5] "college of william and mary"                
## [6] "university of virginia-main campus"

act34.33.lac

##  [1] "pomona college"                "amherst college"              
##  [3] "williams college"              "haverford college"            
##  [5] "swarthmore college"            "claremont mckenna college"    
##  [7] "scripps college"               "wesleyan university"          
##  [9] "grinnell college"              "bowdoin college"              
## [11] "wellesley college"             "carleton college"             
## [13] "hamilton college"              "vassar college"               
## [15] "reed college"                  "middlebury college"           
## [17] "washington and lee university"

Next Analysis

For the next analyses, I control for the (estimated) number of undergraduates with high math SAT scores at each institution. Math SAT scores are not a perfect metric of future STEM productivity, but are highly correlated with required career prerequisites for a Sloan fellowship, namely a PhD in a STEM field.

Raw Data

Math and Physics Data

EOP Ivy Plus group

SchoolFellowsSize
brown university56264
california institute of technology12983
columbia university68100
cornell university414195
dartmouth college14184
duke university16480
harvard university237236
massachusetts institute of technology94476
princeton university225258
stanford university97018
university of chicago95729
university of pennsylvania110678
yale university85473

EOP Elite private group, no LACs

SchoolFellowsSize
boston college09483
brandeis university03715
carnegie mellon university25819
case western reserve university14807
emory university07730
georgetown university07211
johns hopkins university16039
lehigh university05034
new york university224539
northeastern university013492
northwestern university18725
rice university43888
tufts university05143
tulane university07892
university of miami010828
university of notre dame18427
university of rochester06074
university of southern california018392
vanderbilt university06818
wake forest university04861
washington university in st louis46913

EOP Elite private group, only LACs

SchoolFellowsSize
amherst college01792
barnard college02556
bates college11773
bowdoin college01797
bryn mawr college01303
bucknell university03528
carleton college22042
claremont mckenna college01293
colby college01847
colgate university12865
college of the holy cross02754
colorado college12036
davidson college01765
franklin and marshall college02182
grinnell college01670
hamilton college01890
haverford college01187
illinois wesleyan university01883
kenyon college01651
macalester college12053
middlebury college02498
oberlin college02961
pomona college01635
reed college11335
scripps college0962
swarthmore college11530
vassar college02389
washington and lee university01880
wellesley college02172
wesleyan university12907
whitman college11480
williams college02019

EOP Elite public group

SchoolFellowsSize
college of william and mary06256
university of california-berkeley927126
university of california-los angeles129627
university of michigan-ann arbor328217
university of north carolina at chapel hill017908
university of virginia-main campus415515

Neuroscience, Chemistry and Ocean Sciences Data

Ivy Plus

SchoolFellowsSize
brown university56264
california institute of technology9983
columbia university38100
cornell university514195
dartmouth college64184
duke university26480
harvard university167236
massachusetts institute of technology144476
princeton university95258
stanford university77018
university of chicago25729
university of pennsylvania210678
yale university35473

Elite private

SchoolFellowsSize
boston college19483
brandeis university33715
carnegie mellon university15819
case western reserve university04807
emory university17730
georgetown university07211
johns hopkins university26039
lehigh university15034
new york university324539
northeastern university013492
northwestern university18725
rice university23888
tufts university25143
tulane university07892
university of miami010828
university of notre dame18427
university of rochester36074
university of southern california318392
vanderbilt university06818
wake forest university04861
washington university in st louis66913

Elite private LAC

SchoolFellowsSize
amherst college01792
barnard college02556
bates college11773
bowdoin college11797
bryn mawr college11303
bucknell university03528
carleton college12042
claremont mckenna college01293
colby college11847
colgate university12865
college of the holy cross02754
colorado college02036
davidson college01765
franklin and marshall college02182
grinnell college01670
hamilton college11890
haverford college01187
illinois wesleyan university11883
kenyon college01651
macalester college42053
middlebury college32498
oberlin college12961
pomona college11635
reed college21335
scripps college0962
swarthmore college31530
vassar college02389
washington and lee university01880
wellesley college12172
wesleyan university22907
whitman college01480
williams college42019

EOP Elite public group

SchoolFellowsSize
college of william and mary46256
university of california-berkeley827126
university of california-los angeles529627
university of michigan-ann arbor428217
university of north carolina at chapel hill317908
university of virginia-main campus315515