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I think it's actually Nobel Prizes per alumnus, i.e., it includes advanced degree-holders as well. (See http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/about/notable http://
by mhartl 18y ago
I think it's actually Nobel Prizes per alumnus, i.e., it includes advanced degree-holders as well. (See http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/about/notable http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/about/notable, which states that "Caltech has over 20,000 living alumni—of whom 17 are Nobel Prize-winning scientists", and goes on to list lots of notable Caltech Ph.D. alumni.) So the graduate admissions committees are apparently doing a good job, too (though clearly they screwed up in my case :-).
- Retric 18y agoYou can get a Nobel Prize science prizes for "physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine" but they often give them to 2 or 3 people so let's say 17 / (~8 per year over ~40 years) which gives you ~5%. That sounds great but I think most Nobel Ph.D. have 2 or 3 schools (if not more) in their background so it's really more like 2% which sounds about right for one of the top 25 science schools in the world.
- michael_nielsen 18y agoI've heard two different figures for Caltech. The 17 figure I read on Steve Hsu's blog; presumably he has the same source as you, although I assumed he was referring to undergrad only. That assumption seems to have been a mistake. The reason I made the assumption is that while I was a postdoc, one of the oncampus papers ran an article that set the number at 27, if I recall correctly, roughly equally split between undergrad and grad. In either case they're a long way ahead of other US Schools.