<p>Hi, I'm a high school junior and I'm considering which colleges to apply to this coming fall. I'm pretty sure I'll go on to grad school/medical school, so what I'm wondering is if it would greatly help my chances of getting into a great grad school which undergrad school I go to? </p>
<p>The reason I ask this is because I want to stay close to home (Minnesota) and I can go to the UofM almost for free, UW-Madison (better school) for about $12k a year, or a good LAC like Macalester or Carleton, which are about $40k a year. </p>
<p>Since I want to go on to grad school at a good, most likely private university, I'd like to go to a cheap school like the UofM. But would going to Carleton or Macalester significantly improve my chances of getting into one of the Ivies, or near-Ivy type of grad school?</p>
<p>1) Never pick an undergrad school based on what you think you are going to do in grad school. It's one of the best ways to end up somewhere you don't like and don't fit in, only to see your post-undergrad plans change 45 times like they have for me and everyone else on this board. Especially for medicine, which is very difficult to get into, there is no point on planning that far ahead.</p>
<p>2) Personally, I would go to UW Madison or Minny if I were you. Both are fairly good insitutions, and I doubt going to a tiny LAC will boost your academic profile much more than going to either of these schools. Also, your under grad insititution has alot less to do with grad admission that what you actually did academically while you were an undergrad.</p>
<p>You'll find that at the graduate level, many top publics (Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, UCSD, etc.) are in fact better than privates for many (most if it's Cal...) programs. </p>
<p>Anyway, grad school and med school are completely different beasts, and it sounds to me like you really aren't sure what you want to do. Check out some of taxguy's posts on how much $40K a year really costs in the long run (a lot). LACs are very good at grad placement, but UW-Madison is awfully good for the price.</p>
<p>Do you like any of them better than the others?</p>
<p>Something that's more important than the name of the undergrad school you attend is the number of opportunities to which you'll be exposed as an undergrad. At a smaller school, you'll often get more personal attention from faculty members and have less competition for things like research jobs.</p>
<p>That's certainly not to say that big schools are a bad choice, but it can often be easier to take advantage of the resources of a smaller school.</p>
<p>And as UCLAri notes, when applying for graduate programs, you're only interested in the quality of different schools in your discipline -- the best programs in your particular field are only rarely similar to US News' top undergraduate schools.</p>
<p>Although I am no drinker of the Prestige Kool Aid, one reason you might want to seriously look into some high end schools down the road is for networking possibilities. If you do go into med school, I really don't know how important netwroking it, but in some other fields the opportunities to network are awesome at big name schools. Honestly, when I see a Harvard graduate, I don't envy their education, I envy the sheer amount of sweet, sweet, networking they have available for them. Ahh...jealousy.</p>
<p>I doubt this is helpful to the original poster, but I thought I would throw the elite schools a bone for once.</p>
<p>As for if LACs like Carleton give you a leg up for grad school, I will say for engr/cs, the answer is obviously no. For MBA, I am looking at the admit list for Cornell this year, the undergrad institutions are all over the map, from HYPS (etc) to UW-Madison (Three badgers! Hooray!) to LACs like Vassar. Amherst etc. Professor X has made several very insightful comments about humanities and social sciences in the past. </p>
<p>The four schools you mentioned are definitely not the types that lack the resources/opportunities for you to make yourself a superb grad school candidate. So go to one that "fits" you best.</p>
<p>Thanks, jmlleadpipe. I am glad you have a change of heart. :) </p>
<p>I think alum networking is usually a local politics and often a hit-or-miss experience depends on individual group dynamics. My experience with local UW chapter has been great but the Ivy one is so-so. Nonetheless I did find an e-mail list for the Ivy graduates interested at startup opportunites awesome.</p>