How much does undergrad school matter?

Graduate School
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<p>t’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>Not even that, because I went to a “non-research school” (aka a small liberal arts college) and I got an excellent foundation in research, did summer research internships and had an undergraduate research fellowship. Many schools that don’t give doctoral degrees have strong undergraduate research traditions. Not only that, but many people do research at nearby institutions. My small LAC was in Atlanta, and in addition to doing research with professors at my school many of my classmates did research at Emory, Georgia Tech and Georgia State.</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>That’s not what I said. I said “Don’t select an undergrad school based on what you think will look good to grad committees.” I say this because what 17-year-olds think is important to professors usually does not line up with what professors think are important. Professors are not impressed by U.S. News rankings; they know who they believe are the top schools and have top professors in your field.</p>

<p>Nobody is saying that going to MIT for a BS in engineering DOESN’T boost your chances of getting into graduate school - or in other words, that going into a top school can’t give you a small advantage in admissions. What I’m saying is that that small advantage is rarely worth the amount of debt that OP would have to go into to go to the slightly better school. And in this case, we aren’t comparing a place with “nearly no research opportunities” to a a place full of them. GW and Pitt probably have about as comparable research programs.</p>

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<p>If you were specifically talking about this OP’s decision, yeah there is no point choosing based on what they think would look good. It’s splitting hairs.</p>

<p>Depending on the field and goals though, I believe some alumni would argue there can be more than a small advantage to attending a school like MIT over another place, so the decision may be hazy there. That is, even when finances are a concern. </p>

<p>Another thing is that a 17 year old’s naive guess can be right on if the US News rankings are divergent enough :slight_smile: although for horrible reasons. Using US News to make such decisions is certainly a horrible decision.</p>

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<p>Congratulations. No one is disputing that. The point (which you’ve seemed to miss) is that the dichotomy of schools is traditionally along the lines of who is handing out doctorates and who is not(USNews calls them national universities and regional universities respectively). Obviously there are “state schools” handing out doctorates, and private schools that don’t even have a post-graduate presence. </p>

<p>My comment was adding clarification to YOUR comment, not dismissing it. /shrug</p>

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<p>I think US News is a good starting point for further research (NCR rankings for example). It’s not entirely pointless, but does leave a lot of the justification out for its rankings.</p>

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<p>@ANDS! regarding US News - yes I agree. Very true. I still sometimes will use it as a rough barometer, but beyond that, it starts looking stupid when one knows what the faculty actually work on.</p>

<p>I’ll also emphasize that I agreed with all you wrote about graduate strength as related to undergrad strength, but had something to add (which had surprised me as an additional dimension of subtlety when I learned of it). </p>

<p>In maybe one line, what I was trying to say is academic style and environment of a program is very important in development. So much so that beyond a somewhat basic level, academic strength, which is often measurable for both undergrad and grad simultaneously by grad rankings, actually becomes irrelevant.</p>