<p>Hello!
I am going to be joining my undergrad college soon in India.I want to know if the the name and ranking of the college matters if I want to get into a top 10 college in the U.S for M.S
Thanks!</p>
<p>It does, absolutely!</p>
<p>Oh…so can good gpa+good gre score compensate for the lack of college name/ranking?</p>
<p>Yes it can compensate.</p>
<p>You have to take the advice you get on this board with a grain of salt because admission practices vary by discipline, university and your country of origin. </p>
<p>A couple of months ago a professor elaborated on how he is evaluating applications from Chinese students (with Chinese college degrees) by a completely different set of standards. He seemed to have a hard time making a fair assessment about the potential of Chinese applicants because their educational culture was so different. (He said that it’s hard for him to tell whether or not an applicant’s grades are legitimate because some departments distribute As like candy, or whether letters of recommendations are reliable because some students compose all of their letters themselves and faculty will sign off on them without even reading them.) His solution: only accept students from a small set of departments which he knows to be legitimate, preferably students of faculty who he personally knows, and give a LOT of weight to Subject GRE scores.</p>
<p>Long story short: lack of name recognition might hurt you much more when you are applying from overseas than it would for an American applicant, and we really can’t give you advice because we don’t know what’s going through the head of people who will be reading your applications. Your best resource might be the department you are about to join: ask them about their history of sending students to US graduate programs.</p>
<p>Here’s the list of the undergraduate institutions of Harvard Business School.</p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> Institutions - MBA - Harvard Business School](<a href=“http://www.hbs.edu/mba/perspectives/undergraduate-institutions.html]Undergraduate”>Undergraduate Institutions - MBA - Harvard Business School)</p>
<p>As you can see, even schools not known to you are represented. I reckon those students have superior GMAT scores and Latin Honors + excellent track employment record. </p>
<p>Therefore graduating from, say Ball State University would not be a hindrance to get into Harvard when you have excellent undergrad stats to back you up. But I also reckon that Harvard won’t be pleased if Ball State would become overrepresented at their school. I’m sure Harvard would not mind if they have many undergrad students from HYPSM, other Ivies, Berkeley, Duke, Northwestern, Michigan and the like, however.</p>
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<p>Actually its pretty easy to give advise though for international students especially ones from places like India. If you are not coming from the IITs get ready for a bumpy ride, and its very unlikely that you would get into a top 10 MS even if you come first in your class and maybe have loads of publications. </p>
<p>I can make a safe bet that you are planning to study engineering or computer science (since you want to do an M.S.). No subject tests and higher GRE verbal scores are not going to help too much.</p>
<p>Look through: [Graduate</a> School Admission, Advice, Discussions, Help and Information - The GradCafe Forums](<a href=“http://forum.thegradcafe.com/]Graduate”>http://forum.thegradcafe.com/)</p>
<p>For profiles of students from your country, and what they did they get into grad school. Also check with graduating final years students in your department. However dont be too preoccupied with top ten programs too much because they are very very hard to get into as a foreign student.</p>
<p>I cannot stress how hard they are to get into for international students until you get into the application process.</p>
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<p>RML, I was waiting patiently for you to drop that line and you did act perfectly to the script I predicted lol.</p>
<p>I think the prospective applicant though is interested in graduate school (MS, PhD) which is quite different from professional school (MBA, JD, MD). Though I am sure your advise will not gounappreciated in the future.</p>