Is reputation of undergrad school important for grad school admission?

Graduate School
1

<p>Is reputation of undergrad school important for grad school admission?
Let's say one come from Berkeley, one come from a not-so-famous school(or nobody know what school it is), will the student come from Berkeley gain some advantages?
Anyone knows someone who comes from a not-so-famous school studying at a super grad school like MIT,Caltech?</p>

<p>I'm curious about this.</p>

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<p>Depends on the program you’re applying to. In my experience, as long as you have good stats and have done good work (EC or research depending on the field) then it doesn’t matter.</p>

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<p>I would disagree with the poster above. Based on what I’ve heard, it makes a pretty big difference (more than, say, in law school or med school). The reason is because letters of recommendation carry so much weight–having one of the experts in your field say that you are a great student is very impressive to an admissions committee. And often (but not always!) the best professors are at schools like MIT/CalTech.</p>

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<p>^ Well that depends on the professors, not the school.</p>

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<p>True, if the OP knows really well-known professors at his school, that could make up for the fact. But remember, academia is a relatively prestige-oriented institution. Who deems colleges to be famous? Also, following one’s Ph.D., R1 tenure-track positions are generally only selected from top-five universities.</p>

<p>I’m not saying it’s fair, and neither am I saying that it is impossible to be selected from a “less-prestigious” institution–in fact many people at the graduate school at my university come from small liberal arts colleges. They just had to find other ways to stand out.</p>

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<p>The answer is, not really.</p>

<p>I go to Columbia, and I went to Spelman College for my undergrad – well-known, not super-famous. There are quite a few people at my school, in Ph.D programs, who went to not-famous (I’ve-never-even-heard-of-this-place) schools.</p>

<p>As for the professor issue – a letter of recommendation from a big-name only carries more weight if the professor actually knew you and that is reflected in the letter. A generic form-LOR with Your Name Here doesn’t do anything for you no matter who it’s from. And getting high-profile LOR writers is not the same thing as your undergraduate school mattering. The <em>school</em> doesn’t matter, the <em>letters of recommendation</em> do, and sometimes the first indirectly influences the other.</p>

<p>None of my recommendations were from famous people and I fared just fine – matter of fact, the vast majority of your competitors will not have recommendations from famous people. Those very famous people aren’t often working directly with undergraduates.</p>

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<p>I think you guys are right–maybe I do have to revise my statement a little bit. If this thread is to give the OP advice between choosing a relatively less prestigious college versus a more prestigious one, then I would say he should look up the quality of the professors whose field he wants to go into. So, if one college has better engineering professors than the other, he should consider going there. If he isn’t sure which field he wants to go to graduate school in, then at prestigious colleges, he faces a better probability of coming across “well-known” professors.</p>

<p>But you guys are right–there is a stronger correlation between quality of professor writing the letter (given that it is personal) and graduate school admissions than a correlation between prestige and admissions (although I would argue that the quality of one’s undergraduate education would still go into the equation).</p>

<p>I was assuming that the professor’s knowledge about the UG would be the same in both cases. But, as juillet says, often well-known professors don’t mingle with UGs.</p>

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<p>It’s easier to get into a good grad school from a prestigious college than from a little known school, but it’s not insurmountable, by any means. You have to do well. A 2.6 GPA from Berkeley will not trump a 3.8 from Spelman. (BTW, I disagree that Spelman is not widely recognized.) But a 3.8 from Berkeley will probably be more impressive than a 3.8 from Podunk U.</p>