<p>This is a message board and there will be varying opinions. My opinions are from one perspective from doing 20 years in the I.T./Engineering area. My opinions are not gold.</p>
<p>If you read enough of my posts (and only 42 posts total, you have not been on here long), I only answer questions/topics that I know about. I do not get into the fully-funded/research graduate positions talk because I did the part-time/continuing ed/distance grad study years after undergrad. </p>
<p>Why I DO post a lot about is to let folks know what goes on that is not mentioned enough and how the strict and finite “paths for careers” that these boards like this push down folks throat actually have additional paths.</p>
<p>I do not totally knock the rankings because I would be lying if I said that I was not thinking rankings when I selected U-Wisconsin for grad school in I.E./SysE but, I also took note of what recruiters asked from me when they were considering me for a job position.</p>
<p>Besides…you need to read the disagreeing posts with me and AuburnMathTutor…lol</p>
Most people would call that fairly clear empirical evidence that going to a prestigious undergrad is not necessary for a prestigious grad degree and prestigious career.</p>
<p>I’d also like to add that you are competing with international students when you apply to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Berkeley, Wharton, UPenn, etc. undergrad as well. Besides, it’d probably be easier to get in grad school in the U.S. if you’re a U.S. student for the same reasons as undergrad.</p>
<p>CSMajor… for someone in CS, it’s surprising you don’t understand why students from high-ranking schools do better on the average than students from less high-ranking schools. It’s not a very complicated idea.</p>
<p>Students at more highly-ranked schools are on the average better than students at less highly-ranked schools.</p>
<p>Good students are good students wherever they end up. If more end up in certain schools, it isn’t surprising that students from those schools do better… at least, it’s not any more surprising than realizing the odds of picking a green ball out of a bag with a bunch of green balls is easier than doing it with a bag full of red balls. If anything, students at less well-recognized schools have to work a litter harder to get recognized, but once that has been accomplished, I would submit the difference is negligible in virtually* every sense of the word.</p>
<p>(* some jobs may require certain schools on the degree, but off the cuff, it seems to me that this isn’t for some hypothetically higher level of understanding, but for the brand name… popularity contests)</p>