I plan on getting a BS in biology before moving on to an MS. I was wondering if which undergrad you go to impacts grad school admissions beyond the research opportunities offeted by the school. For example, would a 3.3 at, say, Vanderbilt be more likely to get into a top grad school than a 3.7 at UNC Chapel Hill, all other things held equal?
@Mukigachar - Your question is focused on a MS, but I thought it could be worthwhile to share what I learned about PhD admissions, which are based on many of the same factors.
There have been many posts on this subject and I think the consensus for technical (STEM) PhD admissions is that your undergraduate school may be a factor, but it is minor compared to grades, research experience, letters of recommendation, and GRE’s. I thought that it might be useful to collect just a little data, based on my son’s current plans. He will soon have completed his junior year at Texas A&M and is on track to graduate next spring with honors and a degree in aerospace engineering. He has decided to go right away into graduate school to pursue a PhD, focusing on electric/plasma space propulsion. Based on our research, the top three colleges that have laboratories that train PhDs in this area are Michigan, Princeton, and Georgia Tech. (There are other great PhD aerospace engineering schools, but many do not focus on this field. So, additional words of advice are to figure out what you are really interested in, not just what school you want to go to.)
I decided to look on the laboratory websites and see where graduate students have come from in recent years. I added up current post-docs, 2016 PhDs, PhD candidates, and PhD pre-candidates (admitted but have not yet passed qualifying exams).
The Michigan Lab is the Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory. http://pepl.engin.umich.edu/. 12 people met my criteria. They came from Arizona State, Yale, Michigan State, Georgia Tech (2), Missouri University of Science and Technology, Southern Cal, McGill, Maryland, Columbia, and Michigan (2).
The Princeton Lab is the Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory. http://alfven.princeton.edu/. Five people qualified. They came from Caltech (2), Penn State, Indiana, and University of Alabama, Huntsville.
At Georgia Tech, the lab is the High-Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory. http://mwalker.gatech.edu/hpepl/ Seven people qualified. They came from M.I.T, Georgia Tech (3), Texas, Cal Berkeley, and one not specified.
So my conclusion for this very small sample is that the top university PhD programs in this field draw from some of the top undergraduate engineering institutions in the country, but smart students from other colleges were also admitted. (This field is more applied physics than it is traditional engineering. Several students graduated from college with physics degrees.)
One other observation, two of these labs also provide data on where they are placing PhDs. This seems like very important information to have before selecting a PhD program.
Michigan’s PEPL PhD placements from 2010-2016: Post-doc @ PEPL (2), Aerospace Engineer at Lockheed Martin - Skunk Works, Research Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States Marine Corps, R&D Engineer at Space Systems/Loral, LLC, Palo Alto, CA, Technical Staff, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, Product Development Engineer, Federal-Mogul Corporation, Naval Research Laboratory, Research Engineer in electric propulsion, NASA Glenn Research Center, Air Force Research Laboratory (Wright Patterson AFB), Research Engineer in electric propulsion, NASA Glenn Research Center, Research Engineer in the High-Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, and Research Scientist in electric propulsion, Air Force Research Laboratory (Edwards AFB).
For Georgia Tech’s HPEPL they did not specify the degree earned (Masters or PhD) or the year of completion. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive list: Propulsion Vibroacoustics Engineer, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Postdoc at Naval Research Laboratory, Postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Manufacturing Manager, Lam Research, Independant Consultant, CERN, NSF Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Captain, United States Air Force, Thermal Engineer, Zinn Technologies, Electric Propulsion Development Engineer, SpaceX, Research Engineer II, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Senior Consultant, Booz Allen Hamilton, Assistant Professor, University of Brasilia, Technical Staff, The Aerospace Corporation, Naval Research Laboratory, Professor of Aerospace Engineering, University of Alabama at Hunstville, Propulsion Engineer, NASA Glenn Research Center, Nuclear Fusion Engineer.
(I would note that Professor Mitchell Walker, the Georgia Tech HPEPL Director, earned his PhD in 2005 from Michigan after many years with their PEPL.)
There is one other factor that comes to mind that I have not seen discussed on this forum. What kind of connections do the faculty have that will be writing your letters of recommendations? My son has been fortunate here. Texas A&M is just starting its own plasma research programs. Dr. Ken Hara is a 2015 Michigan PhD and PEPL alum and also did a post-doc with Princeton’s Plasma Dynamics Modeling Laboratory. He has just started A&M’s Plasma Dynamics Modeling Laboratory. My son is just finishing up Dr. Hara’s special topics class in Electric Propulsion. Texas A&M also just hired Chris Limbach, a Princeton PhD, specializing in Plasma numerical simulations. My son has signed up next fall for Dr. Limbach’s special topics class in Computational Fluid Dynamics. He expects to be doing a joint research project next fall with both Dr. Hara and Dr. Limbach. So if all goes well, my son will have both classroom and research experience in his field and should be able to get solid letters of recommendation. This is still a relatively niche research area and everyone pretty well knows everyone else.
@Beaudreau Wow - thanks for such a detailed response!
You do realize that UNC Chapel Hill is an excellent school, considered one of the best state universities in the country? Access to prof’s for letters of rec and undergrad research matter (here some schools will have clear advantage). I think a 3.3 would be a tough sell from any school depending on how competitive the grad school is.
People who go to expensive LACs like to believe that undergrad matters…but it doesn’t. I went to grad school and the other students came from a wide variety of colleges.
@Sportsman88 Mukigachar - Yes UNC is an excellent college, right up there with Michigan, Virginia, Cal, and UCLA. For graduate programs in biology, it is ranked @ 26, tied with Northwestern and Vanderbilt. If you get good grades there and solid recommendations, you should be golden!
Thanks for the responses everyone! Yes, I realize UNC is a wonderful school, but I was just wondering if an admissions committee would be as impressed with it. The impression I’m getting from this thread and from digging around is that u grad prestige is a fairly small factor in the admissions process.
^From the FAQ.
UNC Chapel Hill is an excellent school, and I don’t think graduate school admissions officers would think much of an academic difference between UNC and Vanderbilt. UNC and Vanderbilt are also roughly equivalent in terms of research and excellent departments - in fact, I would say that in most fields that I am familiar with, UNC has better departments. So a Vanderbilt degree would not necessarily impress an admissions committee more than a UNC degree.
@juillet Thanks!
I agree that in the sciences where you graduate from is less important than what you did while there. Grades matter, and so do the GREs. I know you were just throwing out the number 3.3, but that is too low to get into grad school, and 3.7 may be a bit low for the very top grad schools depending on the rest of your record.
Sometimes small private schools are nice if the profs get to know you. I went to a small school with no grad program in biology. As a result, I was a TA and research assistant since there were no grad students to do the work and got my name on two papers and was admitted to my top choice of med school. But I was in undergrad on a scholarship so I didn’t pay private school tuition.
The main thing is, it matters far more what YOU do than the name of the undergraduate school.
The answer is no… Admissions committees will not be more impressed with one school over another. You will get into grad school for biology by maintaining a high GPA, doing well on the GRE, getting to know your professors so that they can write you personalized letters of rec, doing research, etc.
My daughter has an internship this summer in the sciences at a very well known facility. There are about 50 students from a variety of schools: UNC, Duke, Harvard, Cornell, Clemson, U Mississippi, Kentucky, Clemson, etc.
It’s what you do …not where you go. You also seem to be underestimating the strength of the programs at UNC.
As a member of an admissions committee, I can tell you this is generally false. The school you attend is factored in in my STEM field… to a point. If everything else on your application is stellar, then it doesn’t matter where you got your BS; you will still get into many graduate schools. If you are a borderline candidate, then the school you attend can matter since faculty on the admissions committee are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt if you came from a program they know and respect.
If a student has a high GPA, excellent GRE scores, relationships with professors and outstanding letters of recommendation, strong research positions and internships, etc… then that student will not have any trouble getting into grad school coming from UNC or almost any other school.
If a student has a relatively low GPA, no/little research, weak relationships with professors etc… then getting into grad school may not be so easy regardless of school.
The answer to the original question- will graduating from Vanderbilt with a 3.3 have an edge in grad school admissions for biology over a 3.7 from UNC, all things being equal… My answer is still no. The OP is grossly underestimating UNC.
Are there people on admissions committees who give certain people the benefit of the doubt coming from certain schools because they are familiar with certain programs? I would say yes- that may happen.
Again… It’s not where you go … it’s what you do. I don’t believe that this is a false statement. My daughter’s friend graduated at the top of her class at a regular state school that is not hard to get into. She is now in medical school at an Ivy ( any medical school admissions would be great- I am just making a point).
Thanks for the feedback everyone! It was my initial suspicion that 3.7 at UNC > 3.3 and Vanderbilt but I wanted some outside opinions to confirm it.