I intend to move to Howard University this Fall as an Intl student. It is not quite a great university (rank #145 on USnews). Tt is reported that up to 40% of its students do not graduate after 8 years. As a result, my family is worried if I could advance to a good grad school.
My ultimate aim is one of the top Grad schools in US on aerospace engineering. And I heard that an undergrad school is not really important. So I wonder if studying in Howard may hinder my chance to the top Grad Schools?
I am just a freshman this Fall, so I am quite naive in this topic. I would be really glad if anyone could give me some advice.
It is a little bit important in engineering, but not so much that you should be overly worried about it, as it is mostly indirect in its effect on your graduate school choices. Basically, as long as you excel at the university you attend, you should be fine. The disadvantage of the smaller or less well-known schools is that they don’t generally have the same breadth of electives or research opportunities that you can use to refine your interests and get research experience and good letters of recommendation from professors. You can still move on to a good grad school without those built-in opportunities at your school, though. It’s just nice to have them.
IMHO the ranking itself is not that important.
But research experience and letters of recommendation are. Usually a school with great research opportunities and famous professors are of high ranking. My D was recently admitted to some top ranking grad schools. One of her letters of recommendation came from a well-known professors whose many past students currently are professors in those grad schools. Imagine you receiving a letter from your PhD adviser highly recommending a candidate… Also, her 3 years of research helped tremendously.
As an international student your off campus, that is REU, research opportunities might be limited and so you need to be able to find on campus research. Since Howard is not a Ph.D. granting university, these might be somewhat more limited than at a research university. On the other hand, Howard is a well known minority-serving institution and so graduate programs understand that and factor that into the admissions process. I would say that it won’t matter too much if you have excellent academics.
Thank you very much for your replies.
@xraymancs Sorry but it is not quite clear for me. So even if I stay on campus, it is still hard to get research? And because I am asian, I do not know if graduate programs would consider my studying in a minority-serving institution as a factor.
@boneh3ad @Pentaprism @xraymancs If I participate in internships, will it make up for my disadvantages? And btw, is it significantly more difficult for International students to get an internship?
Internships are not likely to help you with graduate school unless they have a research focus, which is unusual but completely out of the question either. I am not aware of there being any added difficulty in international students getting internships in general, though in aerospace you may run into the same issues that you would have when you look for full time jobs.
Internationals can’t do REUs because they’re funded by the NSF.
Is there any way to participate in a research with well-known professors? I have read an article about a student in a modest liberal arts college invited to do research with a renowned professor in Harvard.
@xraymancs, Howard is indeed a PhD-granting university. It even offers a PhD in some engineering areas - civil & environmental engineering, electrical & computer engineering, and mechanical engineering. In fact, Howard is an RU/H (R2) university. There are plenty of research opportunities on campus.
OP, first of all, even if rankings were important, #145 on U.S. News is very good. If you are only comparing Howard to the other 300 or so schools ranked with the national universities, then it doesn’t look great, but there are 3,000 degree-granting undergraduate institutions in the U.S. Being ranked #145 by U.S. News puts Howard in the top 5% of them, at least in U.S. News’ estimation.
Second of all, no, ranking doesn’t matter that much. As others said, it’s primarily the opportunities that are available to do research on-campus, but with Howard being an R2 university (in the same research tier as Clemson, William & Mary, Fordham and Lehigh) you should be able to find many opportunities. As an aerospace engineering student, the Beltsville Center for Climate System Observation - a NASA University Research Center located at Howard - might be appealing to you.
Howard has spawned several well-known NASA scientists (Beth A. Brown, Ira Andrew Harden, Cheick Modibo Diarra) as well as several other prominent figures in other fields. Lots of people who went to Howard go onto top graduate schools afterward. (Having gone to another HBCU, I have a lot of friends who went to Howard for undergrad.)
Oops! I should look before I type. As i said though Howard is quite well respected.