Hello, I was just wondering if undergrad school’s prestige weigh heavily in a grad school decision? I am choosing between UCI and UCSD. I know SD has a better engineering program and it is more prestigious but i would need to declare a major in Computer Engineering first (current undeclared). At UCI my major is Engineering Undeclared. So would is it wise to go to UCI, get a great gpa and then apply for grad school or should I go to UCSD switch to Computer Engineering and hope that the prestige helps me getting into grad school?
What kind of grad schools are you thinking of? MS or PhD?
As a general rule, I wouldn’t count on relatively small differences in school prestige to help very much in graduate school admissions. I would expect your grades, scores, and the clarity of your research/career objectives to count much more.
If you are talking about admission to tip top PhD programs, then enrollment at a tip top college (like MIT or Caltech) might carry more weight on an application than UCI (assuming the objective factors … GPA, GRE … are fairly close). Do you think UCSD’s undergraduate engineering programs are that much more respected than UCI’s?
You could try contacting UCI for information about student outcomes. For the UCI department/program you’re considering, what do students do after graduation? How many of them apply, and get admitted, to the kind of graduate program you’re considering?