<p>If I attend Harvard as an undergraduate, can it negatively affect my admission chance into Harvard for grad school? I want to do an MBA but I read in a couple of places that attending a certain school for undergrad negatively impacts your admission chance into the same school for post grad studies.</p>
<p>As a general rule in academic, inbreeding is considered as bad. Staying at the same place for both undergraduate and graduate studies could be considered as a form of inbreeding ;-). But, there is no real evidence that Harvard would turn down their own top graduate for graduate studies. It seems the opposite is true.</p>
<p>And there is no threat of academic inbreeding for Harvard Business School since Harvard College does not have a business degree.</p>
<p>It’s usually not an issue with professional schools. In fact, law schools and bschools actually prefer their own college graduates.</p>
<p>In medicine, the perception lingers that the top schools do not have a special preference for their own undergrads, or that they do in fact discourage “inbreeding”.
However in medicine, the subtle differences in reputation or popularity amongst the top schools is not as important (as that may be for law or business)… and in all likelihood would have much less impact on your career trajectory in medicine or earnings for that matter.</p>
<p>Not really an issue for professional schools. More of an issue for GSAS.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Harvard Medicine takes more of its own undergraduates than it does from any other school. So there may be a preference for its own, since I’d say there is no shortage of qualified applicants from Stanford, MIT, etc.</p>
<p>Inbreeding is not a detriment for professional schools, only for other grad schools(e.g., science grad school)</p>
<p>The real problem behind so-called academic inbreeding is not an unfounded concern. With research programs, it’s very easy for a certain approach or theory or trend to take over a department. While many departments do try to encourage intellectual diversity (i.e. research areas or enthusiasms) among its staff hires, it nevertheless is the case that many departments become ‘known for’ a particular approach or another, esp if there is a larger-than-life personality in the department (such as someone with particular political skills or influence in the field, i.e. certain Nobel laureates or a Pulitzer winner or something like that). </p>
<p>By encouraging undergrads to apply to different grad schools for their chosen discipline is in effect an attempt to broaden students’ horizons and expose them to competing/complementary ideas. </p>
<p>OTHO, this is not at all an issue with bschool, or law school or medical school, because those are largely non-research degrees. In the off chance someone attends bschool or med school for a PhD, the area of research will be so far removed from one’s undergrad discipline that it is unlikely to cause any problems.</p>
<p>Thanks DwightEisenhower, Collegealum314 and WindCloudUltra. I get it.</p>
<p>Everybody always says that academic “inbreeding” is bad, really bad. And I understand the logic behind that notion. But at the same time I’ve known many very successful professors and scientists who earned both their bachelors and PhD at the same school and yet had great careers. </p>
<p>I personally earned my BS and PhD at different schools, but I think the phobia against getting them from the same school is way overblown. It’s one of those things that “everybody knows” in theory, but in actual practice doesn’t amount to all that much.</p>
<p>The discouragement of academic inbreeding is kind of silly in my opinion. Undergrad and grad school is completely different for lab-based disciplines, anyway. And for some reason, academic inbreeding is ok for engineering but not for science. It’s arbitrary.</p>
<p>It’s actually probably much, much less of a problem in the sciences or engineering. I think people make the most fuss about it in the humanities, followed by the social sciences.</p>
<p>Whether or not the fuss is warranted, I really have no opinion one way or the other.</p>