recently i have heard from many friends of my mom who are doing PhD progroms at UNC-ch (biology related, so it must be very high ranked). they tell me that if you plan to attend PHD program in the future, where you go to undergraduate dooesn’t matter that much. well it makes a difference between a south dakota college and harvard. but it’s like, as long as the schools are in the top 100 list, it’s fine. and also, they said it’s easier to have a higher GPA at some small schools and be teh number 1 there. anybody has any thought on this?
<p>This isn't quite so cut and dried as one might wish: It is not necessarily easier to get high grades at good small schools; some of the Ivys are known for grade inflation while some of the top 20 LACs are known for what might almost be called grade deflation. You might be a star or at least have a better class rank as one of the better prepared students at a school in the low part of the top 100 (and remember that USNews, for example, has both university and liberal arts college rankings, so there are really two top 100s by that standard), but good grad programs are also pretty sophisticated about the quality of the undergaduate programs from which their applicants come. And keep in mind too that for academic grad programs your undergrad recommendationa are are important, and your professors' recommendations are likely to carry more weight if they are people recognized in their field and known either pesonally or by reputation to the grad school people. I think you are best off attending the best school you can as an undergraduate and do as well asyou can there. It is likely to prepare you better for a rigorous graduate program.</p>
<p>Mattmom makes some good points. It isn't just about where your undergraduate program will place you into grad school. A good program will prepare you for the rigors of graduate study as well as provide you with good facilities and well known faculty to do research with and to write recommendations for you. Also, just about any top 100 school would have a decent biology program, but this is definitely not true for Engineering, where the best facilities and research opportunities are concentrated in a few dozen programs. For example, I'm in the EE graduate program at Stanford and just about everyone is from a top 10-15 undergraduate EE program, such as MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, UIUC, Cornell, and UCLA.</p>
<p>so a person from UIUC, georgia tech, or purdue are not that less competitive as to those graduated from MIT, sstandofrd and uc berkeley?, coz i'm thinking if i should try my best to transfer out of a "not so high ranked" school to a high ranked one after a year. i missed out lots of opportunities in high school and hoping that i can achieve higher at college and get into a top phd program</p>
<p>what's a grade deflation/inflation??</p>
<p>inflaction is when the average GPA is too high, like most ppl get a very high gpa, deflation is the opposite, just like money,,, it's inflated when everyone gets 1 million dollars in the bank</p>
<p>I know someone who works in a highly ranked science department at a major research university. He is involved in graduate admissions for his department and I asked him how important where someone did undergrad was to being admitted to his program. He said that first of all they do an initial sort based on grades and GRE scores. A perfect score on the GRE is 2400. The GPA is multiplied by 600 so a perfect undergrad GPA of 4.0 would equate to a score of 2400 as well. So the highest score an applicant could have would be 4800. </p>
<p>His department sets the initial cutoff at around 4000. They occassionally will look at students below this but it is unusual. It is also highly unlikely that they will admit someone with a GPA below 3.5. At this point in the application process, it doesn't matter where you went to school. They are looking expressly at the numbers. However, once you make the initial cut, all the other things come in to play - things such as recommendations, undergrad research, and the quality of the undergrad program. He also said that students whose total scores are 4600 and above are actively recruited by his department and highly desired. Students with scores in 4400 range are usually offered extra awards as an insentive to come. Again, these are regardless of where you went to school. Where your undergrad institution will likely be a factor is those students whose scores are less than 4400. </p>
<p>If you attend a lesser ranked program and finish with a great GPA, have great GRE scores and some undergrad research, you will be all set for acceptance at most grad schools in the country. I am not saying that every grad department does admissions this way, but most probably do some variation of this. They know what basic requirements will be needed for their students to be successful in the PhD program. They will take a smaller class during a given year rather than admit students they feel are substandard. So while where you do your undergrad can be a factor in admission to highly ranked graduate programs, it is only one of many.</p>
<p>I have a pretty big bias on this question. If you are interested in ultimately getting a PhD I'd suggest researching where the students currently in the top PhD programs in the field in which you are interested went to school. </p>
<p>From my experiece what you will find is that there will be a bunch of people who went to State U (and got 4.0s) but the disproportiant percentage of students went to top tier private research univerisites (Standford, Yale, etc), private LACs (Williams, Swarthmore, etc), or great public univerisites (UM, Berkley, etc). InterestedDad (?, one of the "Dads") has some great data on students who pursue PhD and where they were undergrads.</p>
<p>Then the $64,000 question is ... are there so many PhD students from those top undergraduate schools because they went to school there or because high achieving motivated students tend to pick those schools (and still would have done fine of they went to a "lesser" undergraduate program)</p>
<p>I want to underscore here what is the single most important element ( other things being equal- ie relatively good gres, grades)- is that you have substantial undergrad research experience, for a good length of time, and you receive a good recommendation from your mentor. Being successful in pursuing a Ph.D. in the sciences is often more about persistence and dedication and a love for the process than having the best scores. no decent program would even consider you if they feel you don't know what you are getting into, and that can only come from experience. Reading about science (and doing well in classes and labs) is a far cry from knowing anything about the research experience. You have to be willing to work in the face of failure- over and over again, without allowing it to demoralize you. There is a great rate of attrition in Ph.D. candidates- even those from the most stellar backgrounds (and who have had some ug research experience). This is because many bright people are not used to dealing with the failure that is a common aspect of research. The head of an admissions committee for a top-rated biology program once said that they actually would tend to avoid the kids with 4.0s. Kids who were so concerned about getting the perfect score tended to do miserably in the real world of science. They preferred kids who were so turned on by and so busy doing research that they didn't spend all their time with the pursuit of the perfect grade.</p>
<p>That said, picking a decent ug school where you have many opportunities to do research is the best strategy. And it can't hurt to have a recommendation from someone with a reputation in their field. The state U. can often be a great choice for that.</p>