<p>(This may have been asked quite a few times before, but I can't seem to find a thread on this topic.)</p>
<p>Statistically and experience-wise, is it easier to get into an Ivy League grad school if you did your undergrad at an Ivy?</p>
<p>Thanks a bunch.</p>
<p>I don't know anything about the statistics, but I did not go to an Ivy for undergrad but am currently at an Ivy for grad school. I would roughly estimate that about half of the grad students in my program attended Ivies--a little less than half of next year's incoming class did--with Harvard being the most well-represented, and the other half attended a broad range of liberal arts colleges, state universities, relatively prestigious private universities (Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford, etc.), and foreign universities, especially Oxbridge. </p>
<p>Like I said, that's only from personal experience--I have no hard data to back that up. Also, I'm in a humanities department, and can't really say whether programs in the sciences or social sciences have a similar breakdown.</p>
<p>I'm heading to a biology program at Harvard next year, and a third of my incoming class is from HYPMS. Harvard and MIT are best-represented.</p>
<p>In my experience, top grad schools are disproportionately full of students from top undergrad schools. I'm not sure the Ivy label really has anything to do with it.</p>
<p>i did my masters at an ivy and there were very few students there from ivies. i also live very near to another ivy and socialize with all of the ivy grad students and there are far more people from state schools than ivies.</p>
<p>In terms of engineering I don't believe it matters too much where you studied for undergrad. I've seen people from all sorts of different universities at top engineering schools. One reason I think Ivy leaguers want to stick with Ivy league grad school is because its an ego thing. They don't want to feel they are dropping lower. For example, some of the best engineering programs are not top overall universities. Purdue is ranked 60 some overall( I think) but has one of the top engineering programs. For someone from Harvard "dropping" down to Purdue gives them to much shame.</p>
<p>it is easier to get in if you're from an ivy with strong department in the field and you have a high GPA -- just an ivy name will not help you significantly -- may be a bit as there may be people on admissions biased for that particular ivy or something but there may very well not be</p>
<p>As far as science grad school goes, doing your undergrad at an Ivy would potentially give you the chance to work with someone who is an internationally recognized leader (perhaps THE internationally recognized leader) in his/her field. A good rec letter from this person (or one of their postdocs) is going to matter a whole lot more in admission to graduate schools (Ivy or not) than the name of the school.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies everyone!</p>
<p>So I guess Ivy grad schools aren't more lenient toward Ivy undergrads, meaning that the schools won't accept someone with slightly lower stats over another person with higher stats because the former attended an Ivy?</p>
<p>I think if you went to an undergrad Ivy league school it may be easier to get into that specific Ivy league grad school. For example, say you went to Harvard and wanted to go to the Kennedy School of Government. I would think you'd have a better chance just given because your familiarity with the school and so on.</p>
<p>It may really depend on the Ivy. Harvard is infamous for grade inflation, so i would guess that a high GPA from Harvard wouldn't necessarily carry more weight than anywhere else. On the other hand (and correct me if I'm worng), Princeton tends to grad harshly, so a high GPA from there would prbably carry a lot of weight. GRE scores are standardized, so I believe they're pretty much looked at the same. But these observations apply to any known school, not just Ivies.</p>
<p>Grad schools really don't take people on stats alone. They'll evaluate you as a whole (providing your stats are high enough to qualify for the first cut). I don't necessarily believe extra points are given to Ivy grads.</p>
<p>Also, while you would think it would be easier to get into, as the example said, Kennedy from Harvard, that's not necessarily true. The top grad schools sometimes get kitchy about what they see as an inbred education. On the other hand, if you're steller, they won't care. Of course, that's the case anywhere.</p>
<p>Now I've ended up taking in circles :)</p>
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On the other hand (and correct me if I'm worng), Princeton tends to grad harshly,
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<p>Not according to the historical data.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/princeton.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/princeton.html</a>
<a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/harvard.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/harvard.html</a></p>
<p>Now, it is true that Princeton has lately been trying to combat grade inflation. I believe that the new policy is that no more than 35% of the grades given out can be A's. But that's still pretty darn inflated to me. I think a LOT of students at, say, MIT or Caltech would love to be in classes where 35% of the students get A's. </p>
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so a high GPA from there would prbably carry a lot of weight.
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<p>That depends on the graduate school in question, but what I would say is that for professional schools, it is unlikely that much 'grade compensation' occurs. This is something that has been discussed many times before. For example, it has been noted that about 75% of MIT premeds who apply to med-school are able to get in somewhere, compared to about 90% at peer schools such as HYPS. Furthermore, the GPA's of these admitted MIT premeds shows no significant difference from the GPA's of the admitted HYPS premeds. You would think that if the med-schools were compensating for different grading standards, then they would be admitting more MIT students with lower grades. This does not seem to be happening. </p>
<p>
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Also, while you would think it would be easier to get into, as the example said, Kennedy from Harvard, that's not necessarily true. The top grad schools sometimes get kitchy about what they see as an inbred education. On the other hand, if you're steller, they won't care. Of course, that's the case anywher
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<p>Again, this seems to depends on the program in question, but I would say that in general, Harvard seems to LOVE inbreeding. For example, every year, the largest cohort of students at Harvard Law, HBS, Harvard Medical, KSG, and many of the other Harvard graduate programs were former Harvard undergrads. In fact, it's become something of a running joke that some people go to Harvard as freshmen and never leave - they get their graduate degree there, then they become profs there, and they basically spend their whole lives at Harvard. </p>
<p>The same thing is also largely true at MIT. Far and away the most common graduate school for MIT undergrads to attend is MIT itself. In fact, it has become so common for MIT undergrads to go to MIT for graduate school that a term has been coined for it: "MIT-cubed", for those people who get their bachelor's, master's, and PhD all at MIT. Ellen Spertus, the "Sexiest Geek Alive", is MIT-cubed.</p>
<p>According to page 5 of the latest MIT graduation survey, far and away the most popular choice of graduate school for MIT undergrads was MIT itself. In fact, even if you took the combined total of MIT undergrads who went to the next 9 most popular graduate schools, and then doubled that number, it STILL would not be equal to the number who stayed at MIT. In fact, more than 7 times the number of students stay at MIT as are going to the next most popular graduate school (which was Harvard).</p>
<p>The upshot is that Harvard and MIT are pretty strongly inbred.</p>