<p>It’s a lot early to start narrowing down potential graduate programs. You should decide whether or not to attend graduate school after you’ve gotten enough experience in your major to decide what your academic interests are, and which professors and programs fit your research interests best.</p>
<p>You can certainly choose a graduate program in the end based on location and cultural factors, but you should absolutely not start your search there. You should start your search by determining which professors are doing research that you’d like to involve yourself with at a very intense level.</p>
<p>Graduate school is very different from undergrad, and it’s not an automatic choice. You should very carefully decide whether you’d like to apply for graduate school, probably not before your junior year of college or so. It’s a big decision, and it shouldn’t be made lightly.</p>
<p>Finally, you shouldn’t be thinking of graduate programs in terms of schools. It won’t matter for your education or your career if your graduate program is based at a “top” undergrad school or not – what matters is whether the program itself is of high quality and has high-quality faculty members. Think in terms of programs rather than in terms of schools.</p>
<p>Check out the [grad</a> school admissions 101](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/348756-graduate-school-admissions-101-a.html]grad”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/348756-graduate-school-admissions-101-a.html) thread if you want to learn more, but this isn’t something you need to be thinking about now.</p>