<p>Basically can one find information on the percentages of what school all the grad students at a particular university went for undergrad? I'm especially curious about the Ivy League.</p>
<p>No. First of all, that would be an absurdly strenuous undertaking. Many large research universities have tens of thousands of graduate students, and trying to collect that information across departments would take a lot of coordinated effort from professors and administrators who don’t normally work together.</p>
<p>More importantly, though, that information is not useful to you. The percentage of people who come from a particular school has nothing to do with whether an individual person from that institution would get in. It would only serve to discourage students from less-well-represented institutions and artificially encourage students from the better-represented institutions, perhaps undeservedly, and continue the cycle.</p>
<p>I don’t know what college you attend/are planning to attend, but wherever it is you can to go to a top graduate school from there - if you want. If you’re planning academic studies (a PhD or academic MA/MS), you need excellent grades, research experience, and strong letters of recommendation; you also need to find programs where you are a good research fit to the research there. Those may not be at Ivy Leagues. As has been pointed out in many threads on this board, the Ivy League is an athletic conference and not an indicator of quality. And in many fields, the Ivy League schools are not the best or not even in the top 20 or 30 programs. In each field there are literally hundreds of other elite non-Ivy private universities and amazing public institutions, and I am quite frankly baffled about why people focus on just these 8 schools. (And don’t get me wrong - I am currently attending an Ivy for my PhD. I’m proud to go here, but that’s because it’s a great institution, is tops in my field and has been an awesome place to be a graduate student on the whole.)</p>
<p>For professional schools, you need excellent grades and high test scores for whatever test it is you need to take. For some work experience or internship/volunteer/other experiences are important.</p>
<p>No, no, I understand that the Ivy League doesn’t always (or even usually) have the top programs in every field. I was just curious if they disliked accepting other Ivy League students because it limits diversity or something and because they’re over-represented. </p>
<p>I’m by no means an expert in graduate school admissions, but my impression is that for any research-based graduate program (ie, PhD or thesis Masters), the concern is not with little things like that but with whether or not a particular aplicant will do good research and good work. Applications tend to be reviewed by the specific department and professors within that department, and decisions are made based on whether or not the applicant will be a good fit for the program and a good fit for a particular faculty member’s work. I can’t imagine the name of the school itself plays a big role, if any, in most cases.</p>
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<p>Oh, nope, that’s not a concern. They’re not really as concerned with promoting diversity on the grad level; it’s more about selecting the best possible students who are going to make the program look good and do excellent work with their professors.</p>