<p>What killed my dream of going to American grad schools is, simply put, the PGRE; the earliest date was like 3-4 months past the deadline.</p>
<p>I knew one person who went to a low-end public college for an athletic scholarship and regretted it. He was a smart guy, and he was incredibly bored and not challenged academically.</p>
<p>I’m lucky my undergraduate school is a top-100 (worldwide) and I don’t regret attending it as an undergrad; my other undergraduate physics option, McGill, a worldwide top-20 school which, alongside U Toronto, were the only top-20s I could attend without either ECs or SAT scores. But, as faculty at my school realized, and dealt with, McGill physics alumni (they are now graduate students at my school, while ~50% of the graduating physics class at my school stays there for grad school) that the McGill undergraduate physics program wasn’t exactly the best.</p>
<p>So, really, I ride on field-specific prestige, with my school having the best physics department in Canada with respect to citations and publications per faculty, which usually counts for a lot in university rankings for a given field.</p>
<p>So I’m confused… why not stay at your own university for grad school?</p>
<p>What could hint to a graduate adcom that parents were involved in the grad school selection process, other than showing up at open houses or calling the profs in the kid’s stead?</p>
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<p>It’s not that simple; even as I acknowledge that my current university is pretty high up there in physics, either the profs that do what I want to do are not taking any more grad students (one of those profs would have taken me if he had the grants to fund me), or there isn’t anyone doing it.</p>
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<p>Parents writing the student’s recommendation letters (heard of it), student mentioning parents’ involvement in their statement of purpose, student discussing parents’ role either during formal interviews or informal interactions with current students. (And yes, during those informal interactions with current students in the lab, you are still being evaluated. I participate in my department’s selection of students and we hang out with them during the day and take them to dinner - my PI asks his grad students about the students later, and what we thought of them. It’s more of a personality thing at that point, though.)</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to any reach schools in high school - a match (perhaps a high match), a low match, and a bunch of safeties. I did this because I needed substantial merit-based aid to go to college.</p>
<p>I went to one of my safety schools. I had a fantastic experience there - I was intellectually challenged in multiple ways, surrounded by great people and felt wonderfully prepared for my top 10 graduate school. My school had a large emphasis on giving back to communities through service and devoting one’s life and work to helping others, and that stuck with me. I give to my alma mater every year and am preparing to return for my fifth year reunion this coming May. I wouldn’t change my decision, even though I got admitted to every other school I applied to, including that high match. (My alma mater is a top 100 LAC, so it’s not like I went to an unranked school, but still.)</p>
<p>FWIW, I don’t think being in the bottom 25% as far as high school grades and test scores go mean being in the bottom “as far as talent and ability,” nor do I think that’s where you’ll be for the next four years. Some people loathe the highly structured, spoon-fed curriculum of high school but thrive in the more unstructured environment of college. Some people are just lazy and get their act together in college. And talent and ability can be measured in many different ways, not all of which are through high school grades and test scores.</p>
<p>As far as Quebecer students are concerned, reaching is usually not an undergraduate issue for most fields, where most people tend to stay in-province, since the difference between any two Quebec school is not nearly as great as the difference between, say, Berkeley and a “bottom-of-the-barrel” CSU. On the other hand, the Quebecer equivalent to a “reach-for-anyone” is law school, dental school or med school, since they are all “first-tiers” when compared to American programs.</p>
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<ol>
<li>What major was he pursuing?</li>
<li>What school did he attend?</li>
</ol>
<p>The value of “reach” schools is that many of them are need-blind, meets full- need schools. I encouraged my kids to apply to them, and truth be told, they both did better with those schools than with the next tier need sensitive schools. They each attended a “reach” school with generous FA. They are both in grad school, and I know that their “pedigree” helped in acceptance.</p>
<p>Sometimes I feel that I might get shut out completely for grad school. no matter how low I aim.</p>
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<p>Except that, if attending Canadian schools for graduate school, there is some overlap between school lists for MSc and PhD, since a MSc is often a prerequisite for a PhD in Canadian schools and leads to both a job and research, now that I completely gave up on American grad schools.</p>
<p>My reachiest grad school is McGill now…</p>