<p>I hope to someday get my physics PhD. My question is: how important is the name of your undergraduate institution when applying to graduate school? The school I'm particularly thinking of is Lehigh University, which is highly ranked overall, but rather low for physics.</p>
<p>PhD programs may consider reputation in major among applicants. However, each PhD program is different in how much it considers such reputation, and each may have a different “ranking” (which may be based on that department’s history with students from your undergraduate school).</p>