idic5

My daughter is going through the the admissions process to undergrad school now and she has expressed an interest or goal to go to grad school or law school afterwards. So we wanted to get a sense of what they looked for.

We discovered that *undergrad* schools look at and place a great deal of emphasis on

*grades
*class rank
*extracurriculars
*standardized tests


Do grad schools also place the same importance on these items during the NEXT fours years? That is, do they look at how well rounded the student is and the things the student did during undergrad - besides grades and stadnardized tests?

My question is for two kinds of grad schools:

*academic (english or psychology)
*law schools

a related question: do all undergrad colleges rank students? I found one college that said that they did not (I had just assumed undergrad colleges did not rank - I thought this was a HS thing; thus my bigger question now).

barrons

Law is pretty numbers driven--GPA and LSAT rule. UG school quality also counts.

Grad schools are lloking for potential scholars in the field. EC's outside the major count little. UG research and such count more. Plus grades and tests. Some are very competitive--5% accept rates. Others 50% or more. Dept reputation matters more than school overall.

Scipio

I agree with Barrons. Also, grad school admissions are driven much more by the various academic departments. They do the real picking of the new grad students. The central graduate admissions office pretty much just compiles your file and processes your admissions fee.

jessiehl

Grad schools, at least at the PhD level, put huge emphasis on research experience. They don't care much about ECs unless the ECs are field-related (teaching experience is also helpful, and gives you an advantage for TAships at some schools). Other criteria vary by field and by program quality.

leejwwc

To add:
-Both JD and PhD programs will consider the quality of the undergrad school. This is more in the context of having LORs from influential people, who tend to be clustered at quality schools in general.
-Class ranking depends on the school. The school I attend provides a rank but it only for the students' information and is not put on transcripts. Class rank is only really important in the context of graduating with latin honors which is based on falling within a certain % (e.g. top 10%) at some schools.

curiouser

I concur with all the good insight posted above.

A real-life experience....D applied to several schools as an undergraduate...and the only 2 she didn't get into were Duke and Columbia.

Fast forward four years. She's still the same type of candidate...great grades, interesting EC's, and excellent LORs. This time, she WAS accepted to grad school at both Duke and Columbia. She picked Northwestern
(I think she rather enjoyed turning THEM down this time.)

I'm sure it depends on the program you're applying to, but her experience is that it's easier to get into the uber-selective as a grad student.

idic5

thanks for the insights.

My gut feeling might be on target: the ug school you select might impact where you can go at the next level. Would the oft referred to surveys in this forum of top ug producers of phd's be a relevant measurement or assessment of ug colleges which might have good names or reputations amongst the grad committees or the grad depts? If not, where would be a good assessment of good ug colleges in this regard?


also, this last stmt sounds like an apparent conflict

"it's easier to get into the uber-selective as a grad student"

I see from curiouser's experience this supports that stmt, but beyond this experience, please expand or clarify - how it is *easier* to get into a *more selective* school.