<p>What impact does your undergrad school make on grad schools.</p>
<p>For example, where would you expect someone from Villanova to go compared to a more prestigious place such as UCB with the same stats like gpa and such?</p>
<p>Unanswerable. There is no place anyone is “expected” to go.</p>
<p>The applicants would differ in personality, goals, interests, research experience, and numerous other factors that would vastly change where they would best benefit from a graduate program, or where they would be accepted. As polarscribe said, there are no expectations of students based on their undergraduate school.</p>
<p>so there is essentially no value in the claims of “our graduates go to these top schools: list” as top students will go to top graduate schools regardless of undergraduate school assuming not significantly different academics?</p>
<p>Top students tend to end up at big-name, “prestigious” universities that hand out big financial aid awards based on need or merit. It is not, therefore, surprising that such top students tend to end up in big-name, “prestigious” graduate school slots.</p>
<p>But graduate students can and do come from anywhere and all over. Different schools have different strengths in different fields, and traditional notions of “prestige” are often irrelevant - the Ivies don’t even have graduate programs in many fields, never mind being the “best.”</p>
<p>I earned a BS in journalism from the University of Idaho. Can anyone tell where I ended up in graduate school solely from that information? Of course not. There is no “expectation” that if you graduate from University A, you’ll go to Grad School B. It’s far, far more complex than that.</p>
<p>I went to a state school. We had people people heading to Columbia, Harvard etc. in our department, and we received folks from Berkeley, Stanford, etc. for our grad. program. You never know who will end up where. . .just because you went to a “No name school. . .” doesn’t mean you got a “No name. . .” education and certainly doesn’t mean you are immediately boxed out of an excellent graduate school education.</p>
<p>I’d like to present a different point of view. In some fields, your undergraduate institutional affiliation <em>will</em> be a big factor in graduate admissions. My field - mathematics - is one of those. Why does it make such a big difference? Here’s a few reasons I’ve heard from professors:</p>
<ul>
<li>The top universities just happen to have the better students.</li>
<li>Math courses at the top universities are much more rigorous, so students from the top universities are better prepared than their peers from less selective institutions with the same formal course work.<br></li>
<li>The professors at top universities are more credible references than professors at no-name schools. What does it mean for a student from a no-name school to be the most talented student this professors has seen in a decade? Who knows. Could be a genius, could be below average at a place like Stanford. In contrast, knowing that a student is one of the strongest math majors in his class at Stanford/Harvard/MIT is a very reliable indicator the student’s strength.</li>
</ul>
<p>A few hard numbers. Every math PhD applicant who got admitted to MIT, Princeton or Stanford in my year had their undergraduate degree from a university with a top 20 math program (or spent significant time in such a department but formally graduated elsewhere). I saw their list of admitted students but I didn’t hold onto it. I still do have the invitation to Columbia’s Open House though. Columbia’s list of admitted students was a bit more diverse but still very top-heavy. Undergraduate affiliations of their admitted US students in alphabetical order, not counting multiplicities: Chicago, Florida State, Harvard, Michigan, MIT, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, Stony Brook, Yale.</p>
<p>That being said, math is probably more prestige-focused than most other fields.</p>
<p>b@rium, you’re creating a controversy where there isn’t one. :)</p>
<p>Nobody disagrees that where you graduate from influences graduate admissions. But there’s absolutely no way to quantify that, as the OP apparently wants. Nobody has any idea where “someone from Villanova is expected to go” vs. where “someone from UCB is expected to go.” It’s an unanswerable question.</p>
<p>I think you are taking the OP’s question too literally. I interpreted it to mean, “Does my undergraduate institution impact graduate admissions, and how much?” Or in other words: is a Villanova student at a disadvantage compared to an undergrad from Berkeley?</p>
<p>I wanted to give a resounding “yes” because everyone else’s answer sounded like a “no.” Though I agree with you that the answer is difficult to quantify except in a few circumstances (like trying to get into MIT for a PhD in math).</p>
<p>I think you’re right when you say that “math is probably more prestige-focused than most other fields.” My feeling is that math is much less holistic than other fields, because of the lack of other available qualifiers.</p>
<p>In most other fields, things like undergraduate research, internship/professional experiences, publications, etc. distinguish candidates on a finer sift, if you will. It’s my understanding that those things don’t really apply in math programs, thus direct “reputation” of the department would seem to weigh more heavily - given equal GPAs, it would be about program rigor.</p>
<p>I just remembered: didn’t Berkeley’s law school adjust GPAs depending on the undergraduate institution? That may not translate directly into other fields, but it’s probably as close to a quantitative answer as the OP will get. </p>
<p>Here’s a ranking that’s supposed to capture the relative difficulty of obtaining a high GPA from a given institution: <a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm[/url]”>http://web.archive.org/web/20000829094953/http://www.pcmagic.net/abe/gradeadj.htm</a></p>
<p>It’s a bit outdated and Villanova is not on the list, but the OP might find it interesting anyway.</p>
<p>The problem is that it’s not a resounding yes. It’s a “maybe, but not as much as you think, and not always in the way you expect.” And I believe that’s true even for math, because although you have some evidence, it’s anecdotal experience of one cohort in three programs. Are students from top 20 programs more likely to get accepted to PhD programs? Probably yes. Does that mean that a student from Villanova can’t get accepted? No. Admissions to PhD programs in most fields are top-heavy, but students at top schools are more likely to want to get PhDs anyway.</p>
<p>What impact does undergrad school make?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Top schools have top professors in the field. This only matters, of course, if you have taken classes with or done research with those professors.</p></li>
<li><p>Top schools in a particular field are more likely to have more rigorous courses and exposure to a wider breadth, and more depth, in the field. However, you have to prove that you can handle that curriculum - a 3.1 from a rigorous program is not going to help you much.</p></li>
<li><p>Connections, networks, resources. Top schools have better labs, better libraries, bigger networks, more people to work with, more summer research programs and internships…you get the idea. However, a student would have to take advantage of those opportunities to benefit from them, you see?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Simply going to Harvard is not enough; you have to get the Harvard treatment, so to speak. A Harvard student who went, did nothing, and got a 3.0 cum and major GPA is not going to be more competitive than an Idaho State grad who did two summer REUs and worked with the most productive faculty in his department (regardless of what field he’s in). But the point is, most Harvard (and other top school) grads who are competitive for PhD programs don’t do nothing, and therefore they are more comptitive because they have access to better resources. It’s not simply the name, is the qualitative experiences that top school grads have access to that students from other schools do not.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t mean you can’t get in. I have a BA from a small LAC that’s in the second tier of the US News and I’m in a top 20/top 10 PhD program (it’s interdisciplinary, hence the dual designator) at an Ivy League university.</p>