<p>I know that there's a thread for future doctors/lawyers, but what about a similar scenario for those interested in entering the realm of academia? Is it worth it to go to a top school over a less expensive but more obscure college?</p>
<p>If you can distinguish yourself at a big University as an undergraduate then you’ll be able to be admitted to the top graduate schools and from there you’ll be able to pursue a career in academics at the University level. Going to a small obscure college might make this path a little harder, but I’m sure that has been done also.</p>
<p>I assume “in academia” means that your are going to pursue a PhD and professorship. “Prestige of the undergrad degree in academia” equals to zero, zip, nada. Things that matter the most for getting a teaching/research professorship position in academia are: “prestige” of your graduate lab and your advisor’s name, your post-doctoral work, your ability to get funding (grant writing skills), and how much you published, patented, presented etc. during your training. It doesn’t hurt to get a PhD from/do a post-doc in the lab of a “well-connected” advisor.</p>
<p>Get solid grades as an undergrad, pursue internships in the area that interests you as your future research field, get a good GRE score, and then you will have a shot at great PhD programs.</p>
<p>It also helps if you have a faculty sponsor who is well-connected to get you into a well-connected PhD program. Luckily, academic talent is spread all over the American university system. A prof at Harvard will be well-connected almost by definition, but you can find well-connected profs at Directional State U, as well (just not necessarily all of them).</p>
<p>The main difference is probably the number of student peers with similar interests. At Famous Prestigious U (private or public) or Famous Snooty LAC, there will probably be a significant number of students who want PhDs and academic careers. So, lots of support and lots of competition. At Directional State U, you may feel lonelier (and more special).</p>
<p>Didn’t mean anything to me!</p>
<p>I think this is one area that your undergraduate degree does make a difference. In the past, I’ve read that a professorship was offered to a professor with a more prestigious undergrad like Yale over a professor with a less pretigious undergraduate. This professorship is for a top 50 university.</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter at all in sciences or engineering. Don’t know about humanities.</p>
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Thank you for making that distinction. The vast majority of (would-be) graduate students on CC are in the sciences and tend to think that their experiences are the rule rather than potentially an exception.</p>
<p>I’m in the humanities, and I subscribe to the unpopular view that where you attend for undergrad can have a tremendous impact on where you are admitted as a graduate applicant. Bluntly put, most of the top programs are filled with students from top 30 or so schools. I interviewed at several schools when I was applying, and virtually all of the other shortlisted candidates were from Penn, Oxford, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, Brandeis, and the like. With upwards of 100+ people competing for 2-3 funded spots, you need EVERY leg up you can possibly get.</p>
<p>Here’s a similar view from a professor at UC Riverside:
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That seems to be too general of a statement.</p>
<p>The director of the graduate math program at Cornell explicitly said that applicants from colleges without or with a weak graduate department in math are at a disadvantage because they have to prove through means other than coursework that they can excel in a rigorous graduate-level math program. Apparently Cornell gets enough strong applicants that they don’t like to admit “underdogs” who have not proven themselves already.</p>
<p>I would assume that the opportunities you have in your undergraduate years will impact which graduate programs you are competitive for, which will in turn impact your first job out of grad school.</p>
<p>There can be big differences between fields of study. If you are very, very clear now about your long-term goal, you should to a bit of research on the academic history of the current faculty members who are working in your prospective field. For example, relative to other areas of study, an inordinate number of the professors of Classical Archaeology in the US have completed at least one of their degrees at Bryn Mawr. In other cases relatively no-name colleges and universities are grad school feeders in one or two specific subjects. My grad school lab partner at Cornell had come out of a state Agriculture school none of the rest of the students had ever heard of, but that was well known to every single faculty member in the department.</p>
<p>For more ideas, you might want to take a look at the Grad School Forum. Click on “Discussion Home” in the upper-left of this screen, and scroll down.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>
<p>If you dig really deep within most college websites, you can usually find the bios of the professors. I find this to be “interesting” reading and am surprised as to how many went to average undergrad schools and then top grad programs.</p>
<p>I know several of the EnviSci profs at our local Flagship State U. They had a discussion one day about how they’d each essentially ended up in the same place professionally but came from WIDELY varying ug backgrounds–everything from Ivy League to Community College. Agree that in the more technical fields it matters much more where you go to graduate school than undergraduate. Smart people will succeed.</p>
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Most of those professors earned their PhDs over 20 years ago and applied to graduate school long before even that.</p>
<p>With increasing application numbers and decreasing funding, it’s decidedly unrealistic to think that conditions are at all similar to those of years past. Many elite schools virtually halved the number of students admitted in the last year alone.</p>
<p>In some Ph.D. programs, there seems to be a game of circular musical chairs in that they tend to send their students to one another. There are about ten of those. In others, some undergraduate programs tend to be as strong as those at more prestigious research universities. Bryn Mawr is a good example of this in archaeology; Carleton has had very good success in placing its students in top math programs. For specific subfields, such as South Asian or East Asian history, it is better to come from certain schools than others. In the history of the American West, it may be better to have studied at University of Colorado than at Harvard or Yale.
So no real generalization is possible.</p>
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I’m in the sciences, and my experience is still absolutely in line with this. The top feeder schools to my top biology PhD program (per biology undergrad) are MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, and MIT and Harvard still lead when you look at absolute numbers of students sent to my program.</p>
<p>I don’t actually think this is due to the prestige of the schools, but rather due to the resources available to undergraduates. In the sciences, it’s necessary to have an outstanding research resume to be admitted to top programs, and it’s much easier to get research experience as one of a few undergraduates at a top school with many outstanding professors, rather than one of many undergraduates at a lower-ranked school with few outstanding professors. </p>
<p>One place where success probably is really about the prestige of one’s undergraduate education is in graduate fellowship applications. I have applied for two competitive government fellowships during my PhD, and in both cases reviewers specifically mentioned my undergraduate background as a factor in my favor. </p>
<p>I think it absolutely matters more for one’s academic career where one attends graduate school. But it’s important to remember that one has to get into that top PhD program first.</p>
<p>mollie, what you said about research experience importance is absolutely true. However, one doesn’t have to get it at their undergrad school. Sure, it is more convenient, but there are other options (I’m obviously talking about the sciences). For example, NSF funds summer reseach programs, and so do some big corporations (e.g., Amgen Scholars program). There are summer research opportunities at non-profit science institutes (in my area, these include Fred Hutchinson Research Center, SBRI, etc.) and NIH. It does require more legwork and persistence to get into these programs compared to walking into a molecular bilogy lab and asking if the postdocs need any help in running PCR. Research experience does matter, its quality does matter, but where one gets their undergrad diploma from - doesn’t.</p>
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My impression is that this is mostly a result of who knows whom, rather than the prestige of the colleges or even opportunities available on various campuses. My husband teaches in one of the top-ranked departments in an engineering field. An applicant from Yale, for example, would be at a disadvantage here simply because few faculty members would know their counterparts there – it’s just not a school known for research in this field. </p>
<p>Faculty tend to favor letters from professors they know at other schools. Maybe in biology the top researchers are all congregated at these particular top schools, but it’s not the same top schools in all science disciplines. Certainly professors send their students to the grad programs where they have contacts, and these students will have the most success in admissions. I guess I’m trying to say that to a certain extent, it’s who you know! So I think undergrads should focus on the ranking of their particular department, rather than the school as a whole because they sometimes can be quite different. Grad schools are well aware of the top <em>departments</em> in their fields.</p>
<p>My advice to anyone wondering about this is to look at the rankings by discipline at US News & World Report and check out the websites of grad students who are currently at the top programs in your field of interest and you will be able to see the range of undergraduate institutions. My friends who teach in humanities fields tell me it is quite different and the prestige of the undergrad school carries more weight in grad admissions.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen from those applying to Ph.D. programs in humanities, it’s not the reputation of the school name that makes the student a strong candidate, but rather the reputation of the <em>program</em> at that school. Many of the strongest programs in some disciplines are found at schools that otherwise may never appeal to you.</p>
<p>One way to figure out where much of the research is being done in your field is to see who is publishing what journal articles in your area of interest and what program/school that professor is associated with. If there are programs that stand out, you will begin to see a pattern of the same names popping up. </p>
<p>With Ph.D. applications, it’s about fit of your research interests with the research being done by the faculty at that school. If you share the same research interest (and experience) and your grades/GRE scores are strong, then you’re a good candidate.</p>
<p>Besides research experience, I’d also encourage you to attend professional conferences of your discipline as a student. DD was able to introduce herself to faculty that she’s applying to at universities across the country and get a feel for their personalities, and her mentor professor was able to talk with them about her strengths.</p>
<p>For financial reasons, I would never recommend going to graduate school for a Ph.D in the humanities unless you are awarded a fellowship. I’ve observed that students who attend prestigious undergraduate colleges, especially LACs, are more likely to get fellowships in the humanities at the graduate level. It is true, however, that the best and most prestigious graduate program fellowships in a discipline may not be at a university that is particularly well-known or prestigious at the undergraduate level. You have to know what you are looking for.</p>
<p>I asked this question over on the -strong programs at unknown colleges- thread (paraphrased name), but didn’t get any answer. Where, specifically, are the “hidden gem” humanities programs?</p>
<p>Off the top of my head, I know that Pittsburgh is very strong in philosophy on the graduate level. I’d guess that would trickle down favorably for letters of rec.</p>
<p>And of course, the other problem with picking a school for department prestige vs. overall prestige–what if you change your mind? What if you decide to pursue a PhD in history instead of English, or philosophy? OTOH, pre-professional programs like engineering require a commitment right from freshman year, so the risk is smaller.</p>