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I wasn’t going to get involved but I have to disagree vehemently at this point.</p>
<p>Institutional affiliation is not at all irrelevant from the standpoint of an individual student. When I was applying to PhD programs in mathematics, I was told repeatedly that I would not have been admitted as a Bryn Mawr student if I didn’t have a record of classes from the University of Pennsylvania and also letters of recommendations from there. The more selective PhD programs simply didn’t trust my undergraduate college. FWIW, I am the only liberal arts college student in my current PhD program. I was also the only liberal arts college student who had been offered admission to a couple of other “top” PhD programs in a several-year period. </p>
<p>And my institutional affiliation did not only matter for my graduate school applications. When I signed up for my first class at Penn, the professor told me point blank that he would rather not have me in the class because he believed that math classes at Bryn Mawr were not “rigorous” enough to prepare me for his class. When I participated in an REU after my second year in college, the adviser mentioned that the main reason he accepted me was my gender; he didn’t trust my undergraduate background but he felt obligated to have a girl in the group. When I was awarded an NSF fellowship, my institutional affiliation to Penn was highlighted as one deciding factor in my reviews. </p>
<p>That’s for math, not English, but it certainly does show that institutional affiliation can matter quite a bit for an individual student.</p>