I am a rising senior from Kansas, and I started looking at the University of Oklahoma (OU) because of its awesome National Merit Scholarship Package. I’ve come to believe that OU could offer me a really positive undergraduate experience if I make it so. I do, however, have one trepidation: I have ambitions of applying to graduate school (either for physics or economics) and would like to work either in academia or in government policy making, and from what I’ve heard, where you get you graduate degree really matters a lot to these potential employers. That said, does OU have a good history of getting kids into elite graduate schools? In a more general sense, do kids from less-prestigious undergraduate backgrounds stand much of a chance at getting into elite graduate schools? Or, would I be better served to focus on getting into an elite undergraduate school (even if it means significantly more student debt) if I want a good chance at admission into an elite graduate school? Or, am I totally wrong, and do neither of the above sectors really care where you do your graduate studies? I apologize for the extent of my inquiry, but any advice you could give would be helpful and appreciated.
You are partially wrong. In physics graduate programs don’t realy care where you get your Bachelors degree as long as you have taken a solid program and done well, have strong GRE scores and been involved in research. OU is perfectly fine for getting into a good physics program. i suspect that it is the same with economics. It really depends on what you do with your undergraduate education, not where you study.
Where you get your Ph.D., however, is more important in physics (my field), but not in the way that you might expect. In my opinion it is your advisor who is the most important for where you are able to go on to get a good position. You can find good advisors in all sorts of universities but there is likely to be more of them in the well-known big programs.
Where you go to undergrad doesn’t really matter that much; you can absolutely go to a top graduate school from OU.
xraymancs and juillet -
Thank you both for the informative responses. They were both very comforting.