<p>While we wait for April 1st decisions, I'm having an argument with my son... well, we keep ourselves amused, I guess... Anyway, he is telling me that it's much easier to be accepted into grad school if your undergrad degree is from a "name" school. Background: He has applied to several "better" schools, but I doubt they'll fork over enough aid to make it affordable for us. His safety is a small, but respected, state school. I feel it's more about how well you do with your undergrad experience (e.g. grades, internships, possible research, etc). I know absolutely nothing about grad school, though. What do you think?</p>
<p>Does your son have any idea as to how many people have gone to graduate school from "unnamed" schools? It is most likely a large majority of people who hold post-bac degrees by the plain and simple fact that a large majority of college grads do not attend "named schools" to begin with.</p>
<p>That's true, and that's my feeling, too. He has this idea that "unnamed" schools aren't as good, and is probably looking for reasons to back up his belief. I, personally, feel he'll get a better education at the smaller state school - Less likely to fall through the cracks, more prof accessibility, etc. In my opinion, it's better to not go into debt for undergrad, if possible.</p>
<p>This question has been covered on many threads. The bottom line seems to be that for professional schools, especially law and business, better ranked undergrad schools give you an advantage. For PhD programs, it does not seem to matter and many lesser know schools feed.</p>
<p>Thanks, Zagat. Forgive the redundancy of my questions - I'm new to CC and didn't search back far enough in the posts, apparently.</p>
<p>people - I can't claim expertise on this either. But another thing that has come up is that it is much easier to "fund" grad school by way of TA/RA positions, grants etc. than it is undergrad.</p>
<p>In most fields, there are better undergrad schools to go to if one desires to go on to graduate school. The list of favored undergraduate schools in a particular field does not always correspond well with the prestige ranking of undergraduate schools. Mathematics Professor Steven G. Krantz of Washington University in St. Louis describes how the math world works in his book A</a> Mathematician's Survival Guide: Graduate School and Early Career Development. Where you get your undergraduate degree DOES matter, in part because it influences opportunities to do the things that you correctly think matter. </p>
<p>For professional schools (e.g. law school, medical school, etc.) undergraduate degrees matter more. I have seen help-wanted ads for lawyers that specified "the successful candidate for this position will have an Ivy League undergraduate degree." For every one ad that says that explicitly, there are probably a hundred hiring decisions that impose that requirement implicitly. </p>
<p>You are correct, and healthy in your emphasis, that the learner's initiative will make the major difference in the learner's future. But I would suggest that some settings are more frustrating of initiative than others, and that is worth considering when choosing schools and programs at each level of education.</p>
<p>Token, I think your reply strikes a very good balance - thanks for the insight!</p>
<p>I will give you a bit of a different perspective. Hubby is the first person to review applications for the graduate program at the school where he works. This graduate program is consistently ranked in the top 10 nationally and is a science field. Approximately half of the admitted American students come from public schools, half from privates. They look at overall undergrad GPA, GRE scores and TOEFL if needed. Students are given an initial score based on these things. If they make the initial cut, their applications are sent on to the next level regardless of the school attended. After that, the committees are looking for demonstrated research interest, a strong desire to pursue the field at the research level, etc. Yes, a student from a better known school might get a bit of a bump from the committee, but if a student from a lesser known school has demonstrated research ability and stellar recommendations, then where they attended is not going to matter much.</p>
<p>Finally, he states that many people get caught up in name recognition. What may be well known to the academic community may not be well known to the general public. Academic communities tend to be fairly small communities. People tend to know other's work from a wide variety of schools. It is possible that the professor at unknown college X was a classmate at some point of a professor at major grad school Y. Or major grad school Y has had several students from college X over the years with whom they have been very pleased. These connections are all over the place in academics but not always recognized by the general public.</p>
<p>Perspective from MBA world. For a recent part of my job I had to read through websites listing top management in high tech. I swear I looked at over 500 sites. Many but by no means the majority of the people did go to top business schools. Many of those who went to top graduate programs went to top undergraduate programs. But many did not. Business schools like to take people who have work experience, so recommendations from management and progress in career have a real impact beyond just where you went to school. </p>
<p>Also, in business (not service firms like law, IB, VC but actual industry), top schools is not the overriding factor in success. Just as many people from the put-state-here school become CEOs. Small cheerful reminder from life after applications.</p>
<p>Thanks very much, Shennie and Alumother - I think advice and perpective from folks "on the front lines" is invaluable. From the insightful replies I've received, I think as long as the school he attends has solid academics and enrichment opportunities in his major, the majority of his success will depend on his own initiative. I'm feeling more relaxed about the probability of the state school in his future - If the $$$$$ schools would put a lot of financial stress on the family, sounds like it just isn't worth it. I really appreciate you all taking the time to offer advice!</p>
<p>
[quote]
Hubby is the first person to review applications for the graduate program at the school where he works. This graduate program is consistently ranked in the top 10 nationally and is a science field. Approximately half of the admitted American students come from public schools, half from privates.
[/quote]
I think it is fine to go to a public school..... but, if half the admitted students come from private schools and half from public schools, there is a greater percentage of private school students per capita than public school students. Look at the HUGE, HUGE, HUGE number of public university undergrads, and compare it to the small number of private school undergrads. If all else was equal (and obviously, desire to go onto grad school is not equal at all schools!), the ratio should not be 50/50, but 90/10 public to private. (Sorry, I'm just making up these numbers. I don't have a real figure for number of public undergrads to private, and obviously many issues are involved in this.) There may be some bias towards the elite privates.</p>
<p>The main bias toward elite schools would be the simple fact that they enroll top students who will tend to get good grades and good GRE scores,do research, etc.. It's pretty easy to make a silk purse out of silk. State schools have a broad range of students and have some silk and some pig's ears to work with. Sometimes they even manage to turn the poor students around and they go on to great things.</p>
<p>Just tell him to worry about Undergrad college. Grad school will be there when you get out of undergrad school</p>
<p>What I've noticed in looking at graduate school websites is that most programs take students from everywhere. However, they seem to take larger numbers of students from the top schools. So they may take one student from an small unknown school, but they'll take over 50 kids from HYP. This makes sense given that you have to be an outstanding student to get admitted to these schools in the first place.</p>
<p>"Anyway, he is telling me that it's much easier to be accepted into grad school if your undergrad degree is from a "name" school."</p>
<p>It's much easier to be accepted into grad school if you had the academic caliber (or football skills) to get into a "name school" as an undergraduate. The school itself may or may not have contributed very much. At any rate, over the next four years there is a re-sorting, with the top students at the "unnamed" schools doing much better in graduate admissions than the lesser students at the named ones. This holds much less true in professional schools, as the ability to imagine paying for it consistently trumps academic quality.</p>
<p>With the exception of Yale in the humanities, and Princeton in some of the the sciences, none of the Ivies (just to use them as an example) figure in the top 10 in ANY of the rates of future Ph.D. productivity. Cornell, Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn, Harvard, and Brown do not appear even once. I'm not saying they couldn't be higher, but the fact is they aren't. On the list you will find Kalamazoo, Wooster, Wabash, Tougaloo, Bennington, Texas Lutheran, Earlham, Grinnell, Beloit, Goucher, Rice, St. John's, and, multiple times, Bryn Mawr. But in the professional schools, where students are expected to pay their own way, it is a totally different story.</p>
<p>Mini, I'm surprised you don't draw the obvious conclusion. The reason the ivies do not produce many PhDs is because the same students who seek prestige in colleges later seek prestige in life-aka money. This leads them to business, law and med schools, not PhD programs. Or perhaps it's that rubbing shoulders with the rich overtakes them and makes them money hungry. Do shools with more Pell Grant recipients produce more PhDs? They must!</p>
<p>The first part of your post is a reasonable hypothesis, and it is one with with which I happen to agree (though I would note, for example, that Yale sent 17% of its graduates onto med. school in 1975, and only 6% in 2002, even as the academic quality of their students probably improved. The gap between the schools is likely less than it was in 1975, and med. school may have become less attractive to Yale grads. I am NOT suggesting that they aren't smart enough to go to med. school; only that they didn't.)</p>
<p>The second part of your hypothesis is problematic, and the data doesn't support it. Tthe schools with the very highest Pell Grant percentages among the top universities and LACs - the UCs, USC, Occidental, Smith, Macalester, Mount Holyoke, etc. don't generally speaking have the highest Ph.D. rates. For me, the reason for that is obvious, too. Regardless of the size of scholarships, many may already be saddled with more debt than they feel comfortable with, and may want to go out into the work world to help their families or younger siblings. Years of slogging as a low-income graduate student may just not look that attractive. </p>
<p>Putting all of that aside, having spent lots of time at two of the best grad schools (Oxford and Chicago), I think I know what it takes to get in, regardless of the school you come from: 1) Do well - the school you come from isn't going to make up for a marginal academic record; 2) Know what it is you wish to study - not just the department you hope to become a part of - Admissions committees are looking for future colleagues with well-developed interests; 3) Make personal connections, both with faculty at your undergraduate school and, where possible, in the graduate program you wish to attend - having someone in your corner will make a huge difference; 4) Know how to write - all kinds of materials: formal application letters, breezy e-mails, informal inquiries, serious academic writing. Of the four, in my experience this last (writing) is by far the most important, and can take you to places you wouldn't have a prayer at otherwise.</p>
<p>As noted in another thread, salaries of average doctors have been going down for some time. That with explain the Yale stats.</p>
<p>I'm copying/pasting what I wrote in another thread:</p>
<p>Many of my friends and I are finishing up the grad school application process. Most of us are applying to physics and physics related programs, so I'm not sure if this applies to humanities disciplines.</p>
<p>Arguably the most important factor in grad school admissions is undergraduate research. At strong research universities, there will be more ugrad research opportunities available to students. The quality of the department also makes a huge difference. Big-name schools with big-name departments will have big research going on and if you happen to work there, it would be a great experience. Grad school admissions are very informal. It's not a numbers game like undergrad admission. Having a good connection and getting a rec from a well-known prof can often be a make or break deal. A problem with going to a prestigious school is GPA. It will be harder and more competitive to succeed in terms of grade, but if you do it would look that much more impressive. </p>
<p>What I'm trying to say is that coming from a "name" school will offer a lot of opportunities. Oftentimes the benefits are intagible. This doesn't mean that small or lesser-known schools are worthless. There are as many (if not more) equally capable grad students from smaller schools as there are from name schools. In the end, it's best to choose an undergrad school where you would best thrive at. In terms of grad school, that's far far more important than anything else.</p>