<p>My S is trying to decide which college to attend and one factor he is considering is where he will be able to get into graduate school (once he completes his undergraduate program). Is there any factual information about where different grads are accepted into graduate school? All the schools seem to say that all their grads are accepted into wonderful, competitive grad schools, but I'd like to see the facts. Thanks.</p>
<p>Some data is available, but is hard to tease out and interpret.</p>
<p>The CC conventional wisdom on law and med school admission seems to be that your choice of undergraduate school does not matter much, if at all. It’s all about GPAs and test scores (LSATs or MCATs), not where you go to college. If Ivy League students have a higher rate of law or med school admission than average students, it is probably because they were better test-takers in the first place. </p>
<p>Small liberal arts colleges as a class seem to have a relatively high per capita rate of PhD production ([COLLEGE</a> PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]COLLEGE”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)). However, I’ve never seen good data that compares the rate of admission to specific graduate schools from specific undergraduate institutions, let alone any analysis that tries to compare apples to apples by adjusting for different student qualifications. Does a student from College X have a better chance of admission to a “top” graduate school than an equally accomplished student from College Y? I don’t think any study exists to tell us that. I would look for colleges that you think would do a good job of helping your kid build a record of accomplishments. Many factors could influence that.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal did a report, maybe a decade ago, that claimed to identify the top 50 “feeder schools” to a basket of top law, medical, and business schools. The methodology has been widely derided on CC. Besides, it would be rather out-of-date by now.</p>
<p>[Want</a> to Go to Harvard Law? - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB106453459428307800-search.html]Want”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB106453459428307800-search.html)</p>
<p>Thanks tk21769 and golden boy for the replies. I didn’t think there would be too much data, but thought I would ask. We have a similar situation to the family in the WSJ article - state school with low tuition or small private with higher tuition. We’re trying to weigh pros and cons.</p>