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How important is a prestigious undergrad school when applying to grad school for biology?
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it seems research experience and good letters of recommendation are more important than a super prestigious school.
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In general, your research experience, recommendation letters, and GPA will be more important than the prestige of your undergrad...up to a certain point. If you're aiming for top 5 or top 10 programs, you have a much smaller margin of error, because almost all their applicants will be from top programs. For example, about a third of the grad EE students at Stanford are from top 5 programs (including UIUC), and the overwhelming majority are from the top 15, with a handful from lesser institutions like UC Davis and Maryland. Admissions directors have been repeatedly quoted in articles saying that they consider the strength of the undergraduate institution. I can't say if that's worth the hassle of transferring and spending lots more money, but it's certainly not something they ignore. Also keep in mind that more prestigious universities will tend to have more well-known faculty (exceptions include undergraduate-focused schools like Brown and Dartmouth), and good recommendations from them will hold more weight. My advice would be if you could transfer to a much better place like an Ivy, MIT, Stanford, or Caltech, it may be worth considering, but not somewhere like Northwestern or University of Chicago.</p>