Is a prestigious university worth it for undergraduate? I plan on pursuing a PhD in physics and I want to know if something like UChicago would be better than University of Illinois- Urbana Champagne.
Urbana-Champaign
Yes, and no. And yes. And no. It depends. My feelings about this have evolved a lot over my career and I think it depends on what you mean by ‘prestigious’ and what you intend to do. It also depends on how much money we’re talking.
First of all, “prestigious” is actually much broader than a lot of students (and some parents) on this site imagine. It also varies a bit by field. I work in tech, and UIUC is prestigious in my circles: we recruit and hire lots of students from Illinois. (One of my best friends, a program manager here at Microsoft, got her BS in CS from Illinois.) In my field - psychology - UIUC is also a prestigious school; it has one of the best psychology programs in the country.
But of course, field matters. If I knew someone who really wanted to go into a super-prestige-hungry field like investment banking or management consulting…well, it would depend on the price differential. Chicago would give better chances, but UIUC wouldn’t completely rule you out of those fields, either.
But then of course, college students often change their minds about what they want to do. And sometimes, the college environment you attend shapes that.
There’s also something intangible about going to a prestigious school that broadens your horizons about what is possible, helps you network, and provides resources that are beyond what you could imagine at a less prestigious school. This is especially important for students from disadvantaged backgrounds - underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities, low-income students, students from rural areas - but even middle-class students will be at least sometimes baffled by the wealth and resources at these places. The kinds of careers that students imagine for themselves and how far they believe they can go in their careers is just way different.
I don’t want to be reductive, but it’s the difference between imagining yourself as a physics professor at a small regional college and imagining yourself as the president of a university after a long and fulfilling career as a prominent physics researcher. It’s the difference between one decent library that’s missing a lot of the articles you need for a paper and 20 libraries that have 99% of everything and can get pretty much anything in the remaining 1% to you within 48 hours. It’s a school that has a closet of Calvin Klein suits in different sizes for you to borrow to wear for interviews, that has rich donors on campus every day meeting with students, where your roommate’s dad might be an ambassador or your group project partner may be foreign royalty. (I am not making these up. These are all actual, real examples.)
But again, I think the schools that offer that mind-expanding kind of experiences are actually a much bigger group than you could imagine. UIUC would definitely have many/most elements of that (mind-boggling libraries, great career services, a mix of students of all levels of income, world-class research facilities, the best professors, etc.)
On the doctoral level, for physics, UIUC and Chicago are about equal. There’s not perfect overlap to the undergraduate departments, but there’s definitely some trickle-down (especially with the research you could get into and the professors that you will have). So really you can’t go wrong on that front.
If costs are a concern and you actually end up getting a physics PhD, it’s tough to justify paying a ton more for the U of C.
That depends a great deal on the cost differential and how much you like Chicago vis-à-vis Illinois. Have you run the financial aid calculators?
https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/costs/calculate
https://secure.osfa.illinois.edu/NPC/NPC.asp
FWIW I attended an expensive private university rather than my in-state public university, one of the best in the country. A scholarship and financial aid made the private university more affordable than going to the state flagship, and I got smaller classes and more personal attention than I would’ve otherwise. Private universities are not always the more expensive option.
As for physics in particular, keep two things in mind:
[ul][]PhD programs in physics are normally fully funded. Your tuition is covered, and usually you get health insurance and enough money to live on as well. If you’re fairly certain about going to graduate school in physics, you don’t need to save money for graduate school like you would if you were pre-med or pre-law.
[]Math and physics courses beyond the introductory level are rarely large even at the biggest universities. [/ul]
Probably only a small percentage of kids who start out thinking they will become physics PhDs actually do, however. Another variable.
Both UChicago and UIUC have solid academics. The important thing for grad school that will make you competitive for top schools is the quality of your research experiences. Both schools will give you access to great research - it’s just a matter of you reaching out to labs and professors and seeking those experiences and a compatible research mentor for yourself.
If finances are a big issue and you plan on going on to get your Ph.D., you may want to go to the cheaper option especially when they’re both good schools. I understand that you would maybe think that if you go to a prestigious undergraduate school, that may give you a better chance of getting into a more prestigious Ph.D. program, however, that isn’t always necessarily true.
You know that both UChicago and UIUC are tippy top physics schools… PhD programs aren’t going to distinguish students coming out of either program. Its going to be your grades, skills and what you bring to the table.
In physics, U. Chicago and U. Illinois are ranked equals at the graduate school level (both top 10). At the undergrad level, well, first you have to get into U. Chicago, which is one of the most selective undergrad institutions in the country with median SAT scores above 1500 and a single digit acceptable rate. Then there is the whole separate issue whether you can afford to go to U. Chicago. If you come from a low-income family, they have generous financial aid. But if you are upper middle class, U. Chicago is going to cost much, much more than U. Illinois.
The undergrad experiences are going to be vastly different, of course. Chicago has a reputation for having one of the most intense intellectual undergraduate experiences whereas U. Illinois is a typical midwest flagship public institution.
If you’re going to get a PhD in physics, the school will pay you to go. However, I agree that not everyone who thinks they will get one does. My daughter is one like that; she got her BS in Astrophysics (Yale) and now is a software engineer at this search company that starts with a G that you may have heard of.
So which college did you get into, that might resolve the question before you have to make a choice.
I’ll make it real simple.
Can I afford to go to this university? → Yes → Admitted? → Yes → Best school for my major? → Yes → Attend
If No at any point → attend your in-state public university that offers the best program for your major, then work your way down to community college (which usually takes all comers)
BTW, definition of affordability is very personal, and can/will involve more than the applicant. Millions of opinions on “what’s affordable” but it’s only yours (and parents) opinion that counts.
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“whereas U. Illinois is a typical midwest flagship public institution”
Yes, though note that at those schools that send a high number of grads in to STEM PhD programs (UIUC is among them), you will find the physics classes to be challenging enough.
Physics at Chicago is one of the most prestigious programs in the country. If you go there undergrad, you will have a much better chance of getting into a top Phd program because of the reputation of Chicago for physics. Especially if you can get a recommendation from a professor there. A recommendation from a Chicago professor for physics will carry a lot more weight than a recommendation from a professor at UIUC.
There are only two other programs as good as Chicago in physics, Harvard and Princeton. UIUC is good, it’s not Chicago. If you can afford Chicago for physics, go there.
And what’s your background, @theloniusmonk?
UChicago is definitely more prestigious in undergrad physics (top 10 worldwide) however you will have to do very well at either university to get into a top graduate physics program. All things being equal, one student from each university, the UChicago student is going to have a leg up just due to the professors reputations/connections.
Having said that if you attend UIUC and graduate at the top of the class (3.8 +) you will get into a top grad program.
@CU123, I’ve gotta ask you what your background is as well.
If two departments are almost identical in the grad rankings (which are really just prestigiousness opinion polls done by other academics), usually that means that the reputation/connections of the physics faculty at the two schools are roughly the same, on average, as well.
And yes, you’d have to be among the top students in physics to enter a PhD program anyway.
If you look at the top Physics PhD programs in the US, what percentage of these students are from the US? What percentage of foreign students went to prestigious undergraduate institutions in the US or prestigious universities outside of the US? My guess (and this is pure a conjecture on my path) is these programs are dominated by foreign students (>80%), most of whom attended universities outside of the US and universities you and I have never heard of (and if we do, they do not fall into the prestigious category). Would you agree?
@Jamrock411 No, you’re making wild assumptions. For example if you do a little research then you would know that Princeton is a 60/40 mix (60% coming from the U.S. for their PhD programs - straight from the Princeton website). Now if your talking about public universities with much less of a reputation than I think those numbers skew a little more toward foreign students.