How much does undergrad school matter?

Graduate School
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<p>Hi, I'm a HS Senior. Before you stop reading this, I'm not one of those 17-year-olds-who-think-they-will-do-such-and-such-when-they're-30. No, I have what I believe to be a legitimate question: How much does your undergrad institution affect grad school admissions? The reason I ask is because, as a senior, I'm applying to and selecting an undergrad college to go to next year. I've basically boiled it down to Pitt vs. George Washington. State school vs. Private school. My prospective major is economics, and I feel like GW is more prestigious not only in economics, but in general. Still, Pitt is a pretty high-ranking public university. Now, I know that things change, and who actually knows if I'll graduate with a major in economics, but grad school in SOMETHING seems likely for me. Does the prestige of one of these schools versus the other one matter in terms of grad school admissions? Is it possible to get into a good grad school after going to a public school? I'm not trying to be offensive to people who go to public schools, I'm frankly just ignorant of the whole system.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance.</p>

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<p>If a graduate committee doesn’t have to guess about the quality of instruction (who cares if you got A’s if they were from a poorly run department) it will help your chances for admission. According to USN (ugh) Pitt is ranked quite a bit higher than George Washington in terms of their Economics graduate program; one would think their undergrad focus is similarly rated.</p>

<p>Long story short - neither school should hinder you much assuming you obtain excellent marks. I personally would choose Pittsburgh - as it is one of the FEW “best” places to travel to by National Geographic. GW didn’t make the list (though you’d be a few minutes from the White House. . .if that matters).</p>

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<p>In math, I have noticed that undergraduate students from universities with highly-ranked graduate programs (irrespective of the reputation of the university as a whole) are more successful in graduate admissions. I assume that it’s a combination of three factors:
(a) graduate programs know that these students got a quality undergraduate education
(b) professors like to trade students among collegues
(c) strong high school math students are attracted to universities with strong math departments</p>

<p>I assume that something similar happens in other fields too. US News ranks Pitt a bit higher than GW (39 vs 59, though the difference may not be significant). Pitt is certainly a fine choice for economics, if not the better one. </p>

<p>You said that you are not entirely certain about economics yet. Economics majors usually come from one of two perspectives: there are the pragmatic public policy/politics/business guys and the theoretical math/statistics guys. If you are considering alternate majors in the policy/business camp, you might be happier at GW. If you are more drawn towards theoretical majors like math or computer science, Pitt might be the better option.</p>

<p>Anyway, the bottom line is that both universities are fine choices. Superficial characteristics of your university, like how much tuition you are paying, have absolutely no impact on graduate admissions. If price will play into your decision, I would encourage you to take the cheaper option.</p>

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<p>I think what you do during your undergraduate career matters a lot more than your undergraduate institution. I am an undergrad in a state school that is ranked very low in engineering (and in general), but I have already been accepted to one top 10 engineering graduate school (I also considered it my safety). It just shows that who you are as a person and what you have accomplished matters more. Good luck!</p>

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<p>The name of the undergraduate institution certainly matters but the most important thing is still what you make out of your opportunities there. Even if you go to a school that’s not even ranked you can still excel there, get into research, get great recommendations, good internships, and be admitted to a top notch graduate program.</p>

<p>In your case it probably doesn’t make any difference anyway since both schools are relatively close in terms of ranking. It’s not like we are talking about Harvard vs. unranked state school here. Choose whatever school fits you best in terms of location, tuition costs, or whatever factors are important to you.</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>Don’t pick your undergraduate school based upon what you think will look good to graduate schools.</p></li>
<li><p>“State school vs. private school” is a meaningless comparison. There are many public colleges and universities that are better than private colleges and universities, and vice versa.</p></li>
<li><p>The “undergraduate ranking” of your department (if such a thing even exists) doesn’t matter so much. You need to have a good solid foundation, not necessarily the #1.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>If you are in-state to Pitt, I would go to Pitt. George Washington has horrible financial aid, so unless you are very lucky you probably will be much further in debt at GWU than at Pitt. Pitt is a great school, as you already noted, and the difference between the schools won’t matter much when applying to graduate school. It’s more about what you do. Take the most advanced classes you can, do a summer research experience, maybe an internship at a firm, and make good relationships with professors. That’s what’s most important.</p>

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<p>It’s not really “state school” versus “private school”, but Research School vs. Non-Research School. Research schools will be handing out doctorates. Non-research (which sometimes do include state schools) wont; they will be more focused on serving local educational interests (ie sending masters students to work).</p>

<p>For what its worth, both Pitt and GW are research schools.</p>

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<p>There is both truth and a bit of a lie to this, as I’m sure you know. The truth lies in terms of not forcing yourself to be something, and instead choosing the best environment for development. </p>

<p>However, if one is rather strongly set on graduate studies (and has an actual reason, such as knowledge of the opportunities offered by it and experience being engaged in such activities) then it’s legitimate to want to tailor oneself to attending graduate school and subsequent career. </p>

<p>I’m also convinced that excellent performance at a school famous in your field of study does decidedly boost your performance in getting to graduate school. </p>

<p>Bottom line is don’t lie to yourself – if you supposedly really want graduate school in say a scientific field right now, and have a chance to attend MIT (an example of a place ridiculously full of research opportunity) but turn it down for a school with nearly no research opportunities, then you’d better be able to defend your decision to yourself.</p>

<p>In OP’s particular case, none of this might matter much. I’m unfamiliar with those schools.</p>

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<p>One of the things you might want to consider is the availability of internships at either school. I don’t know about economics specifically, but there are many internship opportunities in D.C. during the school year, not just during the summers.</p>

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<p>Regarding state vs. private - </p>

<p>Nearly irrelevant to your actual academics.</p>

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<p>One interesting thing is that a school can be rated high in a graduate department, yet be not the ideal place to pursue preparation for graduate studies. However, you are right that usually they are highly correlated.</p>

<p>The danger lies when the classes’ selection is low, the department is small, and the rating has mostly to do with the faculty publication record. I feel for undergraduate studies, breadth is quite important (to get an idea of what’s out there). </p>

<p>I don’t agree with people who totally render the graduate and undergraduate periods disjoint, yet I also don’t believe in collapsing them together. They are different, but in the case of an undergraduate strongly wishing to pursue graduate studies, related.</p>

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Do you have a specific department in mind?</p>

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<p>As always, “ideal” depends on the student, and what I was saying should be taken as producing different sample departments on a case to case basis. </p>

<p>A majority of people are probably somewhat clueless about what they want to do with the field when entering. For instance in mathematics, a school such as MIT is strong in both the subject and related areas, offering a large number of things to sample, both in terms of classes and student interests. </p>

<p>On another extreme end, take Princeton. It is a terrific mathematics department, and even great for the undergraduate very sure about wanting it. But I’d say its small department size which is exceptional in certain areas could be more suited for graduate studies. It offers somewhat fewer classes and probably does not strongly represent quite as many mathematical disciplines.</p>

<p>On the other hand, the exact opposite kind of argument may be made when comparing a department possessing breadth of strength but with less personalized instruction in class and outside, against one with basically the reverse qualities.</p>

<p>Basically, some traits of a program are almost always good for undergraduate studies, and may not be found smashed together in the same program. I’m of course only giving an example for the sake of it, and never saying certain traits of a program cannot coexist, only that it may often be the case.</p>

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<p>Are you sure that you are thinking of Princeton? It’s not a small department at all; I counted around 70 faculty members on their website. It’s also one of the top picks of the strongest high school math students who can go anywhere they want (the other two popular choices on the East Coast being Harvard and MIT). They cover the undergraduate curriculum, the basic graduate curriculum and have a plethora of advanced courses in faculty’s areas of expertise. They also have professors in all of the big branches of mathematics - what are they missing?</p>

<p>That aside, I disagree with your assumption that a department needs to be strong in every specialty out there to prepare their undergraduates for graduate school. As long as they cover the basic graduate curriculum in algebra, analysis and topology, it really doesn’t matter to undergraduates if the department has an expert on topos theory or microlocal analysis. Students will thrive where they are planted.</p>

<p>I was asking you to name a department because I honestly cannot think of a math department that is good for graduate students but insufficient to prepare their undergraduates for graduate school.</p>

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<p>I doubt you’ll get one; I come from a state school who generally prepares students for work as pre-secondary teachers or community college professors in math. Those that do go on to graduate school have gone to Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, etc. in recent years. Our department absolutely would NOT qualify as “deep” in terms of topics offered (because that is not the focus). </p>

<p>There are just some disciplines where if you’ve covered your core courses, you’ve covered pre-reqs for graduate work.</p>

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<p>If I ever said insufficient, I misspoke and would have been contradicting myself, but I don’t think I did. What I did say is not ideal, whose meaning I clarified. Different undergraduates learn different ways, and the option to sample a lot of things can be very healthy. It is crucial to understand the core curriculum, and perfectly possible to succeed afterwards with that foundation alone, but in my experience, the option of variety both within so-called pure and applied areas can be a great aid in reflecting on plans.</p>

<p>You’re right that Princeton has plenty of faculty in traditional pure mathematics by number. For some reason it seemed a lot smaller to me, because it appears the faculty are somewhat blotched together in terms of what they do within some of the traditional fields (this leads me to believe the advanced courses you spoke of might actually be as well); this is probably a longer discussion, and my immediate comments, I acknowledge, could be influenced by my own bias.</p>

<p>Funnily, some pretty reputable professors who probably should know have mentioned that there was a somewhat limited supply of introductory courses at that department, and I felt they were right. I should add, I was also acknowledging that mathematics is not just pure mathematics or the almost meaningless term applied mathematics, but a bunch of things.</p>

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<p>In fact, in retrospect the thing about size of department is just more towards what I’ve been trying to say, which is that the things commonly associated with a strong undergraduate program need not necessarily deliver the actual traits that can be useful to an undergraduate. One of these “things” is strength of graduate department. Another is raw size, as was correctly pointed out.</p>

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<p>

Did you look at their undergraduate courses? Among the topics courses this year you will find commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, Riemannian geometry, Lie groups, algebraic topology, representation theory, class field theory, several number theory courses, functional analysis, PDEs, etc. Princeton does teach the full range of “introductory graduate” courses, just to undergraduates instead of graduate students.</p>

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In theory it might be possible to construct strong graduate, lackluster undergraduate departments. But do they exist in the real world? I can’t think of one; but as ANDS! pointed out, it’s unlikely that we will find one in mathematics. Maybe it’s a different story for other fields. I would be curious about reports from other fields, if someone feels inclined to share.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it’s a question of strong or not at all. That was what I meant when I said it’s not about calling one school inadequate. What I wanted to highlight is that because graduate and undergraduate departments are related, but not the same thing, it is neither best to assume the things strong about a grad program don’t apply to the undergraduate (as some do) nor to assume a stronger or equally strong graduate program means the undergraduate program will meet the given student’s needs, even academically, quite as ideally. </p>

<p>From my end, I fully agree that a strong graduate program will also serve its undergraduates well. Strong graduate programs with horrible corresponding undergrad departments do not exist in the real world as far as I know either. </p>

<p>Yet, I’d think we can all acknowledge this does not mean that there aren’t things that can become very significant to an actual individual which don’t really get picked up by the correlation between strong undergraduate and graduate programs.</p>

<p>I seem to remember a thread about the University of Chicago and CalTech in math. What a graduate student and an undergraduate student might see in each of these schools could be rather different. </p>

<p>Factors such as the following can be important to undergraduates: a) what courses are offered, b) departmental breadth, c) how free the student is to pursue his/her education in a flexible fashion. </p>

<p>Factors such as the following can be important to graduates: a) If my faculty adviser leaves, what am I going to do? b) Do students get jobs? c) Are there a lot of people around me to talk to about what I want to talk about?</p>

<p>All of these come up in a significant way in comparing and contrasting the above two schools (well OK, I think getting jobs can’t be too bad from either :D). As one can see, a highly rated graduate program or undergraduate program in a field can have its own pretty significant quirks.</p>

<p>Perhaps my information about Princeton’s courses was outdated, having received it from someone who might have experience with a Princeton long ago. On a somewhat unrelated note though, teaching introductory graduate courses to undergraduates can at times mean changing how it’s taught quite a bit. A bunch of those subjects you mentioned are, at U. Chicago and Harvard, taught at different levels. Perhaps this is related to the professor’s remark that I mentioned.</p>

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<p>Might I add, none of the schools I have mentioned in any way is lackluster either for graduates or undergraduates. That should have been amply clear from the schools I picked :)</p>

<p>By the way, an additional remark: a lot of those courses you mentioned are so standard to most departments that I would not have thought to look them up under “topics course” which I assume is offered only occasionally…</p>