<p>Why does it seem like a lot of people out there went to average/unknown schools for undergrad and yet manage to have the courage to apply to top schools like MIT or Princeton for grad school? How is grad school admissions different than undergrad admissions? When I was a senior in high school, I applied to three "reach" schools, three "match" schools and two "safety" schools. Is this the same strategy to take when applying to grad schools? </p>
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For some it is optimism, for others hope, for a few it is an understanding that they genuinely do have a chance! An individual application is not so large an investment of time or money to dissuade a lot of people, and some percentage of them will be admitted - even at “average/unknown” schools, a smart and motivated student can get the right preparation for a top program.</p>
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Quite. For undergrad, grades were king, followed by “future President” characteristics like leadership and volunteer experience. For grad, research is king, followed by grades, followed by get back to work this is serious. For more details, check out:</p>
<p><a href=“Graduate school admissions 101 - Graduate School - College Confidential Forums”>Graduate school admissions 101 - Graduate School - College Confidential Forums; </p>
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Substitute “departments” for “schools” - in grad school you are not going to switch fields midcourse, and the quality of your department may be substantially higher or lower than that of your school overall. But the same principle applies - because grad admissions is holistic and individual, you can never be sure where you will get in, so applying to a largeish number of schools with a range of standards is a good idea. That having been said, you should never apply to a school you would not attend - if MIT intimidates you, or if South Central Louisiana State (GO MUDDOGS!) is beneath you, don’t waste the time and money applying.</p>
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<p>Because they understand that your undergrad college doesn’t really matter much when applying for graduate school. What matters much more is what you did in undergrad. Top schools have students from all kinds of undergrads - from tiny unknown colleges to peer schools.</p>
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<p>Here I am assuming that we are talking about academic MA and PhD programs, because professional degree programs operate a little differently. The major difference is that grad school admissions is much less numbers-focused and more holistic than undergrad admissions. There may be GPA thresholds or GRE floors, but beyond that higher scores don’t necessarily mean much. For example, if a program requires or recommends a minimum of a 155 on each section, it doesn’t really matter much to them whether you score a 160 or a 169. (I’m excepting quant programs, that kind of expect that you’re going to score 165+ on the quant section.) What they care much, much more about is your fit with the department and your previous research and professional experience that prepares you to undertake study in a specific field.</p>
<p>As to your second question…sort of. It kind of depends on your field and your competitiveness as an applicant, as well as what you want to do. First, there’s really no such thing as a ‘safety’ school in grad admissions. Number one, because there’s no place where you’re virtually guaranteed admission (although you certainly have better chances at some places than others). Number two…is difficult to explain, but ‘safety’ implies that it’s a school you really would rather not attend. Grad school is completely optional, so you should never apply somewhere you wouldn’t want to go - although of course it’s fine to rank your schools and realize that out of 8 schools, XYZ University is where you want to go 8th, but you still would enjoy being a student there.</p>
<p>Career goals are another big thing. If you know that you want to be a professor at an RU/VH university (that means one with lots of research output - like a UCLA, an MIT, a Harvard, a Tulane…) then you might not want to bother applying to lower-tier programs, because getting a PhD there won’t help you get to your goal. If you want to study an obscure area and it’s only offer at 4 programs within your field, you might only apply to those 4 programs regardless of how reachy they are for you. If you are geographically limited due to elderly relatives or other family obligations, or you need to attend part-time (moreso for MAs than PhDs), that may also decide where you apply.</p>
<p>When I was in undergrad I wanted to get a PhD. I thought I was not a competitive applicant for PhD programs, so my plan was to get an MPH first (public health) and then apply for a PhD later. I <em>knew</em> I was a very competitive applicant for MPH programs, though, so I only applied to top 15 programs (and only one school was outside the top 10). I also applied to one ‘dream’ top 5 PhD program. Personally I wasn’t willing to fork over the dollars for a non-elite MPH program. Well, I got into the top 5 PhD program, and I am finishing there next Monday when I defend my dissertation :D</p>
<p>Had I applied directly to PhD programs, I would’ve done the same thing. I would rather have not gotten a PhD at all than gone to a non-top program - mostly because I knew what I was capable of and my career goals necessitated a competitive degree from a great program. So my list of PhD programs to apply for in the future were all also top 25ish programs. Since grad school is optional, and given the competitiveness of the academic and PhD-level research market, I figured that if I was going to spend my money and/or time that the only way I should do it is going to a program competitive enough to get me to my goal. Otherwise, I would probably be better off working.</p>
<p>Others don’t have the same mindset, though - some people want to enter academia any way they can and wouldn’t mind working in rural Iowa as a professor (and power to them! Those colleges need professors, too). Or they want an MA or a PhD for personal enrichment (which I also don’t agree with), so going to a mid-tier or unranked program is okay for them.</p>
<p>Your undergrad institution only matters in the sense that if you went to a well known school, it is easier to gauge your abilities. However, there are still many ways applicants from less well known schools can show their abilities like doing great research and maybe attending an REU. Also something I noticed in my field is that many students from schools that are not ranked as highly (UCSB for example) but have great programs in the field also do very well in grad school admissions and send many graduates to top schools.</p>
<p>PhD admissions for top 20 schools are much less mysterious than undergrad. The most important parts of your application are your research experience and recommendation letters. These are the things the are the most helpful in predicting your ability to be a great researcher. </p>
<p>Next comes the rigor of your coursework and grades, although grad school is much more forgiving regarding grades than undergrad. Coursework is used to show you have a strong foundation in your field so taking easy classes and getting a high GPA will actually be motif a disadvantage than getting a slightly lower GPA having taken much harder classes.</p>
<p>I am starting my PhD in Physics next year and chose between Harvard and Stanford. I applied to twelve schools (I was also in officially accepted to my own institution which is a top 20 school in my field). Nine of them were top 10, one top 15, one top 20, and one top 30.</p>
<p>I also do not completely agree that grad school admissions are unpredictable, especially for the top applicants. When I went on visits to top ten schools, most of the students there had been admitted to several top ten schools and I ended up seeing many of them at several visits.</p>
<p>So my conclusion is that if you are a very strong applicant and professors think you are very competitive at the top places, it’s not a matter of getting into a few of these schools but rather which places you are accepted to. This depends more on things like research interests.</p>
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Many schools that are “average and unknown” to many on CC (Knox, Hendrix, Muhlenberg, Kalamazoo,etc.) are very well known to graduate school admissions offices.</p>
<p>Since you brought up Knox I will say that a great many of the professors there attended top graduate schools for their PhDs and are well known to those schools, confirming what you’ve said snarlatron.</p>
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<p>This depends entirely upon your field. I am in social psychology, a field in which many strong applicants have to apply two rounds because they are shut out in the first round, or only get into lower-tier programs they later decide are not a good fit for them. But in other subfields in psychology - like cognitive, experimental, quantitative - are probably more like that. I would imagine it is the same in other fields, in that it varies greatly.</p>
<p>Applying to grad school is a lot more like applying for a job. The people doing the deciding - actual professors who will have to mentor you and who need you to do their research - have a lot more at stake for graduate school then undergraduate admissions officers, who are usually young alums (who maybe couldn’t get a higher paying job) who have virtually nothing at stake. </p>
<p>One could say that PhD apps are unpredictable because most applicants waive access to their letters of recommendation and that students’ estimates of the strength of their recs is not always reliable…</p>
<p>@juillet, yes that does make sense for the humanities since programs are so much smaller and have much less funding. My observations really just apply to STEM fields</p>
<p>@Catria, you honestly should be able to gauge the strength of your recommendations by interacting with your recommenders. If you ask them where you should apply and they mention top schools, then they will do as much as they can to get you into them. I brought mine a list of schools and professors and went through it with them.</p>
<p>Psychology isn’t in the humanities (and many psychology departments are comparable in size to STEM departments and have similar funding structures, since most psychologists are funded either by the NIH or NSF). My hypothesis is that it has more to do with the competitiveness of the (sub)field than the type of program. If you have 20 people applying for each slot at all of the top 15 programs, far fewer of the top students are going to get admitted than if you have just 5 people applying for each slot.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, in essence I agree with you. The strongest students don’t really need to worry about getting shut out, and have a reasonable expectation of getting admitted to at least some top programs within the field.</p>