<p>i know letter of intent, recommendations, GRE scores, and GPA are all factors in determining your admission, but i was wondering about your undergraduate school.</p>
<p>on one hand, i could go to a great, well-known school like tulane filled with thousands of students just like me, or i could go to a smaller school like furman or oglethorpe where i could get to know the professors alot better.</p>
<p>you see, in high school, i never reached my potential. i worked pretty hard, maintained a very good gpa, was in the top 5% of my class every semester, got good SAT & ACT scores, was in ECs that i was interested and involved in, and took difficult classes; however, now as i apply to college, i wish i had studied every day and night, had a perfect GPA, valedictorian, 2200+ and 33+ scores, taken office in more clubs earlier, become an eagle scout, and gotten all 5's on my APs. so i really want to do the undergraduate equivalents so i can go to the grad school of my dreams instead of the grad school i was able to get accepted into.</p>
<p>so my question is are the grad schools going to consider the prestige of schools the professors that wrote my recommendations teach at or is it better to go to a smaller, less prestigious school that i can get to know the professors in so they can write better recommendations? and will grad schools consider where you went to for undergrads in the admission process?</p>
<p>sorry my post was so long-winded, thank you for any advice!</p>
<p>There needs to be a sticky that is dedicated to answering this question because it gets asked about a thousands times a month.</p>
<p>Short answer: It matters depending on how rigorous and selective the program you are applying to is. Generally though, the prestige of your UG is maybe the fifth or sixth most important part of your application.</p>
<p>so would i'm assuming if it's the fifth or sixth considered thing, it would probably be plausible to expect to get into, say, the english grad program at duke after going to oglethorpe for UG, correct?</p>
<p>If you do well, going to Olglethorpe won't hurt you. Realize however, Duke english is insanely hard to get into, even for those earning top grades from the best colleges. Don't expect to get in as English admissions is very hard but do well and hope for the best when admissions rolls around.</p>
<p>i have another, a bit more personal question i suppose.</p>
<p>suppose i were to settle on someplace i don't particularly want to go compared to oglethorpe, someplace that was nationally ranked, say, UGA.</p>
<p>would it be worth it in the long run to settle on a more well-known undergrad that i would not want to attend nessacarily in attempts to get admitted into a better program that i would want to attend?</p>
<p>Going to an UG you wont like or feel comfortable at will never prove to be an advantage. One of the things I have learned throughout UG is that you are ALWAYS better off in the long run at a school where you will be happy and excel.</p>
<p>ok, so how would schools know whether you got a rec letter from a presitigous professor? I'm sure there are some who are better known than others. You might work for a professor who is well known in one field but you are applying to another totally unrelated field (pharmacology--> engineering, for example). So what exactly is a "presitigious professor"? One who went to a good school?</p>
<p>After spending my freshman year at tier 2 school, I ended up hating my experience and transferred to a local university in my hometown (a state school no one's ever heard of). At first I was upset and felt defeated. But as it would turn out, attending this small and unknown university turned out to be incredibly advantageous for me. Due to the small student body, I was able to participate in many different organizations; I was a senator, president of a couple clubs, held prominent positions in student government, established personal relations with several deans, administration members, even the university president. Those experiences coupled with internships, study abroad and a high GPA enabled me to get into highly competitive grad programs at NYU, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, BU and UF. Moral of the story: even if you attend a tier 4 university, as long as you make the best of it you can get into a great graduate program (and even save a lot of money by attending a state school). Also, the course load wasn't too intense allowing more opportunities for internships and free/fun time.</p>
<p>I would prefer a recommendation letter that details how amazing I am from an unknown professor, than a mediocre and impersonal letter from a "prestigious" professor. But if you can have both, all the better.</p>
<p>thank you all! all of your help is greatly appreciated and is taken into consideration more than you will ever know. especially georgia1982, that was wonderful advice.</p>
<p>What I've been wondering is if you do summer research at a different school, then can't you get recommendations from those professors? An example is MIT's undergraduate summer research program or Cal Tech's SURF. That way its a win win situation. You do research, and will probably be able to get good recs from notable professors. So, it wouldn't really matter what school you came from. Now, I know its probably not easy to get in to those programs, and you should probably also get recs from professors at your home institution, but would something like what I described above work?</p>
<p>I think you will always get the requisite poster who will insist that udnergrad prestige does, in fact, matter when it comes to graduate admissions, but will then buttress their argument by pointing to certain specific and often highly competitive programs at powerhouse schools. The general consensus, however, and one that is echoed by actual studies done on the subject, is that your undergrad institution matters to a far lesser degree than a host fo other factors in your application.</p>
<p>Symlink, I think it's a lot more difficult to get into those summer programs than it is to get admission to the school itself for graduate studies (for example, I didn't get into the summer program at my current school, nor another one I was admitted to). Especially if you're a non-minority, female, or your undergrad school is itself a large research institution since so many of those programs are geared towards students that don't necessarily have all the same opportunities.</p>
<p>jmleadpipe, I don't see why both can't be true -- your undergrad institution does matter (particularly if you're applying to top programs), but it's not the most important thing in your application.</p>
<p>That was sort of my point. In general, your undergrad institution is no so important in grad school admission unless you are applying to certain very selective programs at very selective schools.</p>
<p>Thats what I'm kinda worried about. If I earn a 3.9 from a ok school( i.e UCLA) and get top GRE scores and complete decent research, I'll still lose because everyone applying to top programs mostly because they have the aforementioned stats in addition to attending a top school. Is this correct thinking?</p>