<p>Let's say a student applies to Dream College as a high school senior but is not accepted. So he attends the University of Somewhere Else instead.</p>
<p>Fast-forward several years. The student graduates from the University of Somewhere Else with a stellar record, strong GPA, awards, research, excellent recommendations, etc. He applies again to Dream College as a graduate student.</p>
<p>Will Dream College care that he previously applied and was rejected at the undergraduate level?</p>
<p>nope–my son accepted to grad school at those “dream” schools. Different admission committees, different criteria.</p>
<p>Just do well in college, find something that really excites you, and don’t worry about being the best. Grad school is not about ECs or being well-rounded</p>
<p>No, not at all. I doubt the people evaluating the application would even know the person had applied to the undergraduate division.</p>
<p>Totally different process, totally different people.</p>
<p>And also a totally different educational experience.</p>
<p>Please consider whether Dream School is a suitable place for graduate study in the particular field you want, as well as the fact that you love the place. What may have been a highly desirable school for your undergraduate years might not fit the bill for graduate school.</p>
<p>Absolutely not. And I’d agree with Marian too. If you get to that point in time and you still want to go, I’d ask myself deeply, why on earth do you want to go there for grad school? What makes a college a ‘dream school’ to a kid in HS applying for undergrad is entirely different from what makes a college a ‘dream school’ for graduate studies. Two very different experiences and purposes.</p>
<p>At the graduate level, all that is important is the field of study itself. The selection committee, which will be made up of profs from the department, rather than a college-wide admission committee, won’t care if the applicant can play the oboe or water polo or adds to geographical diversity. There will be some concern about gender and racial diversity, however, along with matching the applicant’s interests with those of the departmental faculty. In other words, someone interested in Middle Eastern studies should not apply to a department that has no Middle Eastern scholar. Profs may engage in a bit of horse-trading to add to the cohort of students doing graduate work under their own supervision.
GRE, courses taken in the relevant field,letters of recommendation,statement of purpose, writing sample (if required), evidence that the applicant has familiarized himself/herself with the interests of the faculty are all important.</p>
<p>Absolutely not. Marian’s right. It can be okay for MD, JD, or MBA… but other programs have certain strengths and weaknesses that your child will have to consider.</p>
<p>Stanford was my dream school when I was in HS. Didn’t get in for UG. Then when I went to look at it again for PhD in humanities and spoke with the professor there, I realized that Stanford was the wrong place for me.</p>
<p>I can still dream of Stanford for my next life but in this life? Not happening. And I’m actually graduating with my MA from an university that I NEVER, EVER considered when I was in HS because it was too big (and it still is :p).</p>
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<p>I do understand this, and right now the situation is totally hypothetical. The student doesn’t even have a solitary “dream school.” </p>
<p>I probably should have phrased the original question differently:</p>
<p>Let’s say a student applies to Schools A, B, C, D, and E - the nation’s top schools in his area of interest. All are highly selective, and he hopes that by putting his name in the hat at all of them, he might be chosen by one. However, they all need cellists that year and he plays the oboe, so he is not selected by any of them.</p>
<p>By applying to all of these top schools as an undergraduate, has he harmed his chances of being accepted to one of them as a graduate student?</p>
<p>If so, then he should use a different strategy in applying as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>Nope…</p>
<p>But the schools you like are as an undergrad are EXTREMELY unlikely to be the best schools for you as a grad student, particularly as you may be applying to specific faculty members as grad applicant, not a university or even necessarily a department.</p>
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<p>Unless the applicant is an aspiring musician, what has being a cellist or oboist to do with grad school applications?
To repeat: The people who select applicants for graduate programs are not the same people reading the folders of high school seniors. Even if the high school senior contacted some prof in, say, the biology department at Tippy Top School A but eventually decided to matriculate at Tippy Top School B or even not-so-tippy top School C, there is little reason to believe that the biology prof at Tippy top School A will remember the applicant. Profs teach hundreds of students every year; over four years, that’s a huge number of students to remember, let alone those whom one did not teach after all.
One thing to bear in mind: colleges often tell their students to pursue graduate studies elsewhere so that they may be exposed to different profs and different ways to thinking and teaching, and different types of research.</p>
<p>Thanks for your answers. The collective wisdom seems to be that rejection from a school at the undergraduate level does not harm one’s chances of acceptance to that same school as a graduate student.</p>
<p>I thought that was probably the case. It’s good to know that <em>if</em> a student eventually wants to apply for graduate study at a school where he wasn’t accepted as an undergraduate, he hasn’t already burned that bridge.</p>
<p>Seconding what others have already said – UG applications and results won’t make a difference. D was accepted to a school for a graduate degree where she didn’t get in for UG. She applied to that graduate program because it has one of the top concentrations in the country for her graduate degree; that it’s also at a school that she applied to for UG is a bonus, of sorts.</p>
<p>It sounds to me as if you might be trying to console child who may face rejection at undergrad level with the hope of getting in as a graduate student. Am I on the right track? If so, that’s a great way to waste 4 years. Better to put your efforts into finding great things about the college your child is in and making sure s/he doesn’t wish his time away.
If I’m wrong, well, then, no it doesn’t make a difference… JMHO.</p>
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<p>No, honestly, it’s a question about strategy. </p>
<p>If applying to multiple top schools as an undergrad is likely to decrease one’s chances of attending as a graduate, then one should probably apply to a smaller number of those schools as an undergrad.</p>
<p>If an undergrad is deciding between the full-ride at Lesser-Known University and the full-pay at Top University, it is pertinent to know whether grad school chances have been affected by undergraduate applications.</p>
<p>If a student is deciding where to apply for graduate study, and he knows his chances at some schools will be decreased because he was rejected there as an undergrad, then he might want to focus his energies on other schools.</p>
<p>I remember reading about Andison, who got multiple undergrad rejections, took a gap year, applied to a new slate of schools (including a few that had rejected him), and got phenomenal results. However, if I recall correctly, the schools that had previously rejected him did so again when he reapplied. Of course that’s just one individual’s experience, and it could have been an issue of “fit” for those schools. But I thought it might also indicate that schools tend to stick to that initial decision to deny admission. </p>
<p>Clearly, reapplying for undergraduate admission is very different from applying for graduate school. It just made me wonder whether the undergrad decision might also affect the graduate decision. I’m relieved to know that apparently it does not.</p>
<p>Your strategy will not have any bearing at the graduate level. I can say this from experience. Our son was rejected from one school as an undergraduate, but later accepted as at this same school at the graduate level. He decided to accept a different offer at another grad school because he liked their specific program better.</p>
<p>One thing that I will say is that some people assume that their chances of getting accepted into a grad program is better if they attend the same school for undergraduate studies.
Actually, many grad programs tend to be reluctant to accept students from their own undergraduate school.</p>
<p>Agreeing with nysmile. Academics should, and generally do, switch schools. It is better for profs not to have grad students who came from their own undergrad program, and it is better for a student to go to a different school for grad school than he or she went to as an undergrad.</p>
<p>I was accepted to graduate school at a Top 20 University, after having been rejected at the same school for undergrad. I didn’t end up picking a different grad school to go to, however. For undergrad, I attended a state flagship.</p>
<p>Grad schools look for very different things for admissions than undergrad schools. As has been mentioned upthread, the professors in a particular department select the grad students who will be admitted, which is very different from the undergrad admissions process.</p>
<p>What if one was accepted to his or her dream school as an undergrad however decided not to go whether it be financial reasons, family reasons, or just change of heart. Then could they look back and say if you did not want to come then (not really knowing the true reason of course), why would you come this time?</p>
<p>No. It really won’t matter at all.</p>