<p>My eventual goal is to get my PhD and work at the college or university level. I would also like to teach at a top college. Does it matter if I attend a top college as an undergrad? I have some chances for excellent scholarships at some schools that are not top schools, that I actually like. But I feel like I need to just go to a top ranked school, so that I can get in to a top ranked grad school, so that I can work at a top college or university (not HYP top, but still top). </p>
<p>Unfortunately yes, it does really matter. There’s good evidence that those who go to lower-tiered schools do not favor well in admissions for top graduate programs, even if the departments are highly ranked. And essentially whether you get into a top graduate program or not will determine whether you get one of the few TT positions there are, or whether you’ll be an adjunct. I’ve argued the point here:</p>
<p>I have a slightly different take. It’s not the overall ranking of the undergrad school, it’s the quality of the education you get there, how well you do as an undergrad not just in compiling a strong GPA but in doing really serious original work, the kinds of letters of recommendation you get from faculty in your field, and who your recommenders are.</p>
<p>I studied philosophy as an undergrad at Michigan, did very well academically, and wrote some philosophy papers that really impressed my professors, who were happy to write me very strong letters of recommendation that got me admitted to the best graduate programs in the field. It wasn’t Michigan’s overall ranking that mattered. What mattered was that Michigan then had (and still has) one of the 4 or 5 best philosophy faculties in the country. I was well trained by some of they very best in the field, and their recommendations carried a great deal of weight with their peers in other top philosophy departments. My cohort in grad school included a couple people from Harvard, a couple from Duke, myself and one other from Michigan, one each from Columbia, Cornell, UCLA, a couple from top LACs. All came from very good schools, but coming from a highly ranked school with a top GPA wouldn’t have been enough. You needed to have done work as an undergrad that caught the eye of people well respected in the field, who were willing to put their own reputations on the line in recommending you. To that extent, it’s something of an insider’s game. And the distribution of schools represented in my graduate school cohort didn’t track the overall U.S. News ranking so much as it tracked the ranking of top philosophy departments. Yale, for example, was then (as it is now) one of the most highly ranked schools in the country, but its philosophy department at the time was not strong, and I think it’s no accident that there was no one from Yale in my grad school class.</p>
<p>That said, I’d encourage you to think long and hard before setting yourself on a course toward a Ph.D. There’s a huge oversupply in many fields these days, which translates into insane competition for the handful of attractive tenure-track positions that open up each year. That’s certainly true for most fields in the humanities and social sciences, but I believe also some natural sciences.</p>
<p>Note that to the extent that undergraduate ranking matters for PhD program admissions and PhD school ranking matters for academic jobs, it is ranking in major, not overall school ranking, that matters.</p>
<p>A few years ago, one the brightest kids in our small rural town turned down a top 5 national university for a fair-to-middling state university (ranked 50-something). He’s now in a physics PhD program at one of the world’s most famous universities. I think it was not recommendations that got him there, but publications. But yes, he evidently did work as an undergrad that caught the eye of people well respected in the field. Having done that, the reputation of his college did not hold him back.</p>
<p>Probably varies to the extent that there are no valid generalizations about this among the “hard sciences”.</p>
<p>In addition, there are differing notions of “quality” of undergraduate school, which may vary from one PhD program to another. Unlike general school prestige, which is typically concerned about the worst students in the school (i.e. the minimum standard for admission), PhD programs are more likely to be concerned with how the best students are able to handle PhD study.</p>
<p>A mediocre-for-general-prestige state university like Arizona State may have enough top students who find enough advanced courses and research opportunities to shine and be prepared well for PhD study, so PhD programs may be willing to admit students from such a school. Meanwhile, there may be another school with higher minimum admissions standards, but a narrower range of students that lacks the top students that PhD programs like, and has fewer advanced courses and research opportunities for such PhD-bound students, so it would not be as suitable, even though it may have higher general prestige based on its higher minimum admission standards.</p>