<p>I have a question to which the answer can either make me more depressed or cheer me up....</p>
<p>I am currently doing psychology w/ a minor in English for undergrad at UC Berkeley. Obviously a BA in psych will only get me a job in retail or food service and if I really want to do anything in applied psychology I have to go grad school. Now, we all know what the admissions criteria for graduate school are: good transcript (GPA), letters of rec, research experience, etc. so my question if the school you go to for undergrad really matters. Like could I have gone to any state school and still have had an equal chance to get into places like Standford, for example, as everybody else? Will the fact that I went to UC Berkeley make a difference in my app or do they just care about the basic admissions criteria?</p>
<p>I ask because if this is the case then I could have gone to a state school, stayed at home, been more comfortable, and not have to compete so fiercely for research positions. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying my time at Berkeley, but if I could have gotten into a top notch grad program by coming out of a state school........well........</p>
<p>Don’t do that. Your question was pointless. “Equal chance” is impossible to know. It is possible to do well from any school. Is it easier from Berkeley? Maybe. I don’t know.</p>
<p>A letter of rec from a top-level prof might be useful.</p>
<p>If I had opted to enroll in a state school like SFSU or SJSU things could <em>possibly</em> be easier. And in the long run my chances of getting into grad school could have been better.</p>
<p>I just cannot accept the possibility of a SJSU/SFSU student getting into Standford’s grad program over me. I don’t have anything against these students, just the situation. Maybe I should just transfer.</p>
It may be easier for you at Berkeley. It may be harder. None of us can know. But if you’re holding out for that kind of absolute advantage, you aren’t going to get it.</p>
<p>At least in engineering, students from top undergrad programs are disproportionately represented among domestic students (internationals are still the majority). Here’s where it comes in:</p>
<p>1) You should have letters from more well-known professors.
2) You have more resources. Your research should’ve been better.
3) Most grad school recommendation forms ask the letter writer to rank the student. I don’t mean the GPA-based rank, just subjective things like “top 1%”. This counts for a lot more than most people realize. Top 10% out of Berkeley probably counts the same as top 3% from a lower UC and “best in 5 years” from some no-name college. Yes, that last one is a real check box in some letter forms. If you can get that one from Berkeley, no-name undergrads basically can’t touch you.</p>
<p>However, most of it’s probably accounted for by the fact that top programs just have better students in the first place. Anyway, grad school apps are reviewed by professors, not professional admissions committees. They know how to account for differences in undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>Sometimes it seems as though CC has contradictory information on the subject of “no name undergraduate” versus “top university” when it comes to graduate admissions. Some people claim that it makes no difference where you went to undergraduate; however, that’s not entirely true. If you go to a weaker school, you can still get into a top program, but you have to be among the very best students at that college; your results will be less predictable. At a university known for its rigor, you still have to be very good, but you have a little more leeway – in the top group, for instance, not just the top individual. Since you are coming from Berkeley, it will be assumed that your courses adequately prepared you for advanced material. If the graduate admissions committee doesn’t know your undergraduate institution very well, they will have to turn to other evidence of preparation – test scores, maybe, or letters from REU PIs at other, well-known universities. </p>
<p>Although adcoms will definitely be impressed that you went to Berkeley, you will be judged by what you did with your opportunities and what your professors think of you. Your advantage will come from the known rigor of your department and the high-caliber faculty/research available to you. But if you don’t excel, none of that will make a difference. Transferring to a lesser state school will probably hurt you more than if you had started at one, because it might look like you cannot hack the more intense academic environment. You would have to address this in your SOP. </p>
<p>But is there a difference in admissions between Berkeley and a university ranked ten points below in USNWR? Probably not. The differences are most evident between first tier and third. These arguments about no-name vs. prestigious schools usually fail to take into account universities just below the top schools. Some schools that you might consider inferior to Berkeley might actually have top programs in certain areas, and so those students might have an edge over you.</p>
<p>It’s not true that a BA in psychology can only get you a job in retail or food service. People keep saying this, but the vast majority of jobs (including top consulting jobs and the like) are open to major. You could get a job as a middle-manager or administrator in a lot of places with a BA in psychology (or history, or political science).</p>
<p>But moving on, your university might give you a slight edge in the sense that it is a known quantity. Very likely the top PhD programs have experience with students from Berkeley; they know that Berkeley turns out good researchers and students with strong content knowledge, and so that may give you a small benefit in the application process. But any benefit will be small, since graduate school admissions are more contingent upon what you do in university than where you go. So yes, you can go to a small non-prestigious school regardless of public status (I mean…you already DO go to a state school, UC Berkeley is a public university) and still go to a top graduate scool. Happens often; I’m at Columbia from a good top 100 LAC and I know people here from “where is that now?” to “Wow, how was Harvard?”</p>
<p>It also may help your admissions if you could spell the name right - there’s only one D in Stanford. I’m not just being snarky; I remember an admissions officer telling me that one year, they just decided to throw out the applications of everyone who couldn’t spell “Johns Hopkins” correctly (and left off the S in Johns). Although that’s an extreme example, it’s not unheard of for professors to look very unfavorably at people who can’t spell the name of their institution correctly.</p>
<p>I don’t think that GShine’s conclusions are 100% right - you also have to account for the fact that students who go to top schools are more likely to <em>want</em> to go to graduate school, so they are more represented partially because more of them applied and decided to attend and had the money to attend. Top schools have higher proportions of upper-middle-class students and families who can have the credit borrow the money to pay for graduate school (or the funds to pay partially out of pocket); they just also have more students who were exposed to the idea of graduate school and going. That’s at least partially responsible for the representation.</p>
<p>In general, your Cal profs will know and be known to profs at the schools you seek to attend, that can only help. You will garner some level of basic respect from being a Cal student, but you still need a sold CV. The SFSU student needs an amazing CV to compete against you.</p>