My daughter is a junior in high school and is starting to put together her initial reach/match/safety lists. Unlike most high school kids, she thinks she really knows what she wants to do, and that field will likely require a PhD level science degree. I understand that the quality of her PhD program will be far more important than her undergrad program, and given that, my question is: How difficult is it to get into a top-tier PhD science program from a lower tier undergraduate program?
A bit of background: D is a high stats kid with nearly perfect PSAT/ACT & SAT scores, is ranked in the top 1% of a competitive high school, and is currently performing research in her chosen field at an HYPMS. So she is in contention for admission into some of the top undergraduate programs, though nothing is guaranteed. Finances are not the issue–her college fund is fully funded.
But those same stats make it likely that she can get full rides at some lower tier schools as well. She has a good shot at becoming a National Merit Scholar and the scholarship opportunities that open up as a result. In addition, some higher ranked schools like Vanderbilt and BU give out considerable merit aid as well.
What are other people’s experiences with getting into a top graduate program from a lesser ranked school, assuming top grades in undergrad? If we find that it matters little in terms of admission, we would be overjoyed to give her $250K to start her career, rather than spend it on a top undergraduate program.
It seems like a lot of the recently minted PhDs in engineering that I come across did their undergraduate work outside of the U.S. You might want to look into some of the top programs in the fields that you think may be of interest and see where their students came from to give some sense of what bias, if any exists in terms of undergraduate training. (As an aside, in some of these fields, some of the more exciting and innovative work is happening in the labs of publics, rather than the usual suspects, so it’ll be interesting sleuthing.) You’re smart, though, to be thinking about the “long game” with that many years in front. I’d think about some of the honors colleges too if you’re looking for lots of bang for your buck.
I don’t know very much firsthand about graduate admissions - I’m in my first undergraduate year.
To summarize what I’ve learned after reading lots of old threads similar to this one:
A 4.0 from an elite school can help with graduate school admissions a lot, but more so with JD/Masters programs than with the MD or PhD route.
For the MD and PHD schools, the biggest advantage of better schools seem to be better research oppurtunities. A letter of rec from someone with a Nobel prize seems like a big deal.
On the other hand, a lot of people seem to be disadvantaged by more competitive schools. All things held equal, a 4.0 from Harvard would probably beat a 4.0 from UC Riverside. But if the same pre-med student would get a 3.5 from Harvard but a 4.0 from UC Riverside, it seems like they’d be better off at the state school.
I bet some graduate admissions councelors have written about it somewhere - they’d be more credible.
If you plan to give her $250K for undergraduate education or after undergraduate education then you should let her decide. Also nothing will guarantee that your D will continue her interest in PhD.
You probably will receive more advices to go to a school with free money because there less people who have both money and kids who are admitted to top colleges.
She is aware that the money is there for her. But I don’t think she is qualified to make the decision on her own, yet.
I am also aware that she might not pursue that PhD. I have had conversations with her that the last degree matters most. There are some fields where just a bachelor’s degree is enough to launch a career (e.g. engineering or computer science). And if she was interested in either of those, I would suggest undergrad programs like MIT, Stanford, or Carnegie Mellon. But that’s not where she wants to be.
Here is the scoop. Let’s say she is interested in pursuing a PhD in science. She will likely want an undergraduate school with faculty members doing research in an area that interests her. Naturally her interests may change. But, despite people who warn that 99% change interests, I think many students continue to be interested in areas they started out interested in.
So let’s say that is some area of neuroscience, biochemistry, or psychology or the like, it would be important that she is at an undergraduate program that has some active researchers in those areas. And it would be important that she get experience in someone’s lab. Staying in the same lab for a while would be a plus. Many of the most prolific labs are not in Ivy league schools (although many are) so she could go to a school where merit aid is likely. She will want to get good grades and GREs but mostly she will want the endorsement of the PI of the lab. Then, when she applies to graduate school, the letter from a well known person in that area of research will carry a lot of weight. Most programs will give her a tuition waiver and stipend which she will have to earn by either working in a funded lab or TAing. People on this site often talk about how the college isn’t important if you plan to go on. I’d say that is somewhat true. But if someone decides not to go on, then of course it becomes more important. And who knows what will happen in 4 year’s time. But, I think most important is being at an undergraduate program with a good deal of funded research and with PIs willing to give students experience.
^I came to ask the same question as @GMTplus7. Some people say “lesser-ranked” and they mean the choice between full pay at Harvard or Duke vs. a full scholarship at University of Alabama or going to Virginia Commonwealth. Those are excellent research universities, and nobody who goes there should have any qualms about their chances of getting into graduate school.
Here’s the reality: Coming from an elite school can help out at least a little, insofar as elite schools tend to have very good departments and well known faculty members. It does make a difference if your undergraduate research advisor went to graduate school or spoke on a symposium with the guy you want to do your PhD with and can put in a call for you, or if you get experience with an fMRI scanner at a stage that most undergraduates don’t have that. It’s not the name so much as it is the experiences that you can get at a higher-tier school sometimes.
However, what your daughter does at undergrad is FAR more important than where she goes. And since she knows ahead of time what she wants to do, she can start early - in fact, she already has by doing research at an elite university. She just needs to make sure that her desired university has research experiences, but most good colleges have faculty doing research who want to take on undergraduates and mentor them. They don’t have to be in exactly what she wants to do, and in fact, it’s good for her to get some experience in areas that are a little bit different than what she does - it can help her solidify her interests and learn some skills or think about ways in which different areas intersect.
I was in sort of the same position as your daughter - several full merit offers at very good, but not elite schools and admission to elite schools my family couldn’t really afford. In my case I didn’t really have that much of a choice, but I went to a good top-100 ranked liberal arts college (Spelman College, a small historically black college for women). It’s ranked high 60s/low 70s most years in the national liberal arts rankings - which you realize still puts a college in the top 5-10% of colleges in the country. I got a great education, made some fantastic relationships, and got into a top 15 PhD program in my own field. I finished that program a year and a half ago and I work at a household name technology company now.
And I gotta say, as a 29-year-old, I’d much rather have $250,000 to buy a house or invest than I would’ve had it to pay for a fancy degree. She may not fully realize that right now - I wouldn’t have either, at 16.
I think it matters a fair amount to get through the initial filters. Graduate school decisions are made by professors. Doing well in a competitive program means something. The most important thing is having done research before and getting good recommendations from professors leading the research. Even REU decisions are made by professors.
My D is currently going through the grad school process and will be starting in the fall. She has several excellent acceptances, a few rejections, and a few pending. At several schools, decisions involve rigorous interviews with professors, no less rigorous than a job interview. Although she’d done a fair bit of undergrad research at her elite school, and works for a respected firm doing research, looking back she wishes she gave undergrad research a higher priority. Publications would have given her a leg up. Of course, when I look back, I see that if she had focused on her preprofessional aspirations as an undergrad, she wouldn’t have gotten the broad education that she wanted and wouldn’t have sampled as many areas to give her the confidence that the field that she has chosen for a PhD was what she really wanted to do. She’s a very academic kid, and I strongly suspected that a PhD was in her future.
As far as the $250K, we had no hesitation on spending it on an elite undergrad. I’m even spending it on an excellent but not elite private for D2. I think that it has been worth it. I have no doubt my kids will be able to buy houses when the time comes. They have no loans.
Table 4 is particularly interesting as it shows schools where a high percentage of graduates eventually get their STEM PhDs. Table 3 is interesting too in that it shows Top 10 U.S. baccalaureate-origin institutions of 2002–11 S&E doctorate recipients. Even there, you see only top public schools along with elite privates.
Professor’s livelihoods depend on the quality of their graduate students, and you don’t see them taking risks that they don’t have to take.
So to answer your question I think quality matters.
Thanks for the link to the article. I don’t doubt there is some truth in what she wrote, but I wonder if she is either naive about the process or if she has an axe to grind. The process described seems similar to hiring decisions made on a regular basis everywhere–you need a way to focus attention on candidates worth further study, and GPA and test scores seem a perfectly good first filter.
I was wondering if quality of school also matters, and it sounds like it does.
GPA and high GRE scores are more important to graduate admissions committees than the name of the undergraduate college but quality undergraduate programs may provide greater opportunities for REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) plus the important letters of recommendations for graduate school may come from more well known faculty members.
My experience advising physics majors at Illinois Tech for the past 30 years is that, at least in physics, graduate programs look at the accomplishments of the student just as much as where they get their degree. In no particular order, the important things are:
strength of undergraduate curriculum - It is important to take a rigorous set of courses and use electives to take courses in the discipline, possibly even some graduate courses if available. This argues for attending a university that has a graduate program and a big enough program that all the core courses can be offered every year. Of course there are plenty of successful Ph.D.s who attended smaller LAC programs where this is not the case. Every rule has an exception.
quality of research experience - It is not so important what specifically the student does in their research experience but it is important to get a significant quantity and high quality experience. REUs are great but research during the academic year is essential because that is where the strongest recommendation letters come from. While any research experience is good, being at a research university will give the student a good idea of what it is like to be a graduate student and there are usually much larger resources available than at a non-research university.
do well on the GREs - This is unfortunately important. Unfortunate because the GRE, like many standardized exams has inherent biases. Nevertheless, the highly selective graduate programs which have hundreds of applicants often will have to triage their applications and GPA and GRE scores are convenient for this purpose.
Ultimately, the most important factor is that your daughter is comfortable at the school and able to take advantage of all the opportunities available to her.
Take tables about baccalaureate origin with a grain of salt. This is potentially a case of correlation =/= causation. Some of the list has a lot to do with sheer size - note the number of giant public universities on the list, and note the absence of small liberal arts colleges like Reed, Amherst, and Swarthmore. However, elite small LACs have been noted as excellent places and disproportionately send students to PhD programs even if they don’t have the numbers. (This is for 10 years. Even #50 on the list, University of Delaware, sent 734 students to science and engineering doctoral programs in the last 10 years. 734 students might be 15-20%+ of 10 years of graduating classes for a small LAC, though.)
And a lot of it has to do with exposure and desire. The type of motivated, ambitious, and highly competitive student who can get into Harvard or Wisconsin is more likely to be the kind of student who wants to go to get a PhD later, but that doesn’t meant that if that same ambitious student goes to Central Michigan instead that she still won’t get a PhD. Many students who go to small regionals or small private colleges may come from less wealthy, less well-educated families and thus have little to no desire to go get a PhD, so they don’t even apply.
Sure, professors’ livelihoods and success do partially rely on the quality of their graduate students - but there are lots of different ways that they measure quality, and the range of schools they think of is far wider than the average person. As I mentioned, I went to a top 15 PhD program and my colleagues and I came from all kinds of schools. Sure there were lots of students from elite universities, but there were also plenty of us from public universities (both flagships and regionals) and some relatively unknown private schools.
Of course they will probably be able to buy houses when the time comes. That wasn’t my point. I just finished my PhD in 2014, about a year and a half ago. I have little debt from college and grad school, comparatively speaking. However, given that I made below $35,000 for most of my 20s, I also have very little savings. I live in a high cost-of-living area where median sales price of homes is nearly $450,000 (and, in reality, buying a home in the town I’d really love to live in would cost around $600-700K). If my parents could just drop a $250K payment on me to buy a house right now? That’d be awesome. And in hindsight, if I could choose between them spending $250K for me to go to a fancy private vs. them spending $250K on a down payment (or even a trip or part of it on my wedding or investments or a savings account or retirement), I’d choose the latter every time. Because I probably would’ve ended up in the same place anyway. But I would’ve never known that at 18!
I’m currently in the PhD application process (with a couple of acceptances and an interview), and I came from a good but not universally-known undergrad university. But the professors I did my research with are pretty well-known within their field. When I was invited to an interview at Northwestern, the head of admissions told me how much he enjoyed reading two of my letters of recommendation, since he knows both of them personally and puts a lot of weight in what they have to say. At Harvard, some of the professors I interviewed with had been collaborators with my undergrad research advisors, and they know my university (also being in Boston). I guess my take-away is that the name of the undergrad university isn’t make or break. Like others have said, it’s what you do with your time there and even the network you build. I also had a chance to be more of a big fish in a small pond and got a lot of attention and support from professors and administration with regards to research and fellowships that I don’t think I would have gotten at an HYPSM-type school.
From everything I’ve read on this (with my own freshman D in mind who has also already decided go to grad school) the quality of the undergraduate program does matter, but the difference in academic rigor and quality between “elite” schools (HYPS/etc) and “excellent” schools (the kind that she would likely get merit aid at, such as good LACs or flagship state schools) isn’t that big in terms of access to top grad schools. As others have mentioned, other things matter as much or more.
If I had to choose between my daughter attending Princeton full pay or Grinnell at half that cost on a scholarship, I’d go with Grinnell and save the $130K for grad school or to help her get started after she finishes her studies. (On the other hand, if I had to choose between Grinnell on half a scholarship and U of Alabama for free, I’d probably choose Grinnell.)
I’d suggest applying to a couple of top-10 schools that she really wants to go to, as well as some other excellent schools where she is likely to get merit aid, and then a few where she might even get a full ride, see what offers come in and make the decision based on the numbers.
Here’s another insider account of graduate admissions from a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington:
"So, what goes into the subjective (admissions) judgment?
Confidence that the student will not fail our rigorous written qualifying exam. We usually judge this based upon excellent work in physics courses, a record of actually taking a lot of physics courses (this is getting to be a real problem, as undergraduate astronomy programs proliferate), and/or strong physics GRE scores.
Evidence of research potential. This is usually shown by participating in one or more REU programs, with a big extra bonus point for actually publishing a paper. However, we do sometimes admit students who, while lacking direct research experience, show evidence of tremendous drive and/or creativity."