jamesbond1

UChicago, Columbia, Williams, Amherst, HYP.
In terms of prestige, I don't think there is anything that beats HYP, but what about the other 4? Which one is more/less prestigious?
What about landing students at top grad school (law or business) programs? Which ones have been traditionally more successful?
I am really looking for a liberal arts education as an undergrad, so I will most likely go to law or business school for grad school. I've heard a Williams/Amherst degree is equivalent to a HYP degree in the eyes of employers/grad schools, is that true? Are Williams and Amherst better at landing kids at top grad school programs than Columbia and UChicago or even HYP?
Thanks everyone.

swingtime

You can get into top notch graduate programs from each and every one of these exceptional institutions, if your undergraduate career is stellar. You should be picking your undergraduate institution based on "fit" rather than basing it on whatever edge you believe one or the other of these colleges can supply for grad school admissions. Not a single one of these schools has the one and only magic key to the graduate school kingdom. If you are fortunate enough to be admitted to any single one of these schools, and do well at that school, you will get into top notch graduate programs in your chosen field. The real determinate is the quality of your ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE as an undergrad.

In other words, this is kind of a meaningless question since each of these schools is top-tier.

Seahawks506

I would wait until I got into one of those schools before asking this question if I were you. All of them are at or near single-digit acceptance rates...

mom2collegekids

Undergrad schools do not "place" students into grad schools. The student applies and the grad school determines acceptance after reviewing GPA, GRE scores, LORs, etc. The undergrad is not "placing" the student.

And...any top student from virtually any school can get into a great grad school. My son is in a PhD program at an elite university. He went to a flagship. His classmates went to a variety of undergrads...some elite, some state schools, some LACs, and a couple of rather unknown schools.

Zonlicht

While, it is true that you can attend an "elite" PhD program from any school, a letter of recommendation from a top professor in your field can easily get you in other peer programs. In every field, there are only a handful of departments with professors doing groundbreaking research. Most of the other couple thousands of universities in the US are primarily teaching universities.

Top undergrad math -> top grad math, top undergrad BME -> top grad BME, etc.

ucbalumnus

Since you asked about law and business...

Law schools look first at LSAT and GPA. Your undergraduate school and major affects that to the extent that you get high grades while practicing the type of thinking found in LSAT questions.

Highly selective MBA programs look for strong work experience; your undergraduate school and major affects that to the extent that it affects getting the strong work experience.

annasdad

There is a small, yet statistically significant, advantage to attending a high-prestige undergraduate program when it comes to admittance to law, medicine, and MBA programs. This is about the only exception to the empirically sustained rule that there are no advantages to attending a higher prestige college (unless, of course, prestige itself is important to you).

But even so, this would be way down on my list of reasons to pick a college - if for no other reason that undergraduates often change their career goals while in college.

~~~

Which is the better odds; beening the best few students in a huge univerity or beeing the top 40% in the elite univ/college?

Haystack

Amherst enrolls about 450 students per class. 80% of them that reported ACT scores, scored a 30+. Let's say then that 400 new Amherst students scored the equivalent of 30+ on the ACT.

U Iowa enrolls about 4500 students per freshman class. 15% scored a 30+. Somewhere around 650 students.

Pure numbers wise, U Iowa probably has just as many top students as Amherst. If you out perform most of the top students at U Iowa, you can get into any grad program you want.

barrons

While I would love to believe all is fair in such things I have come to the conclusion that the path to the most elite professional schools is smoother if you attend a very elite UG college. But whether that matters much in the longer run is also up to debate. While many CEOs do have a Harvard MBA, many many more do not.

bclintonk

Friends of mine at our local public flagship law school tell me that the influence of the US News law school rankings is now so pervasive that all that matters for law school admissions anymore is undergrad GPA and LSAT scores, and that this is true at every law school except Yale (which can afford to be quirkier in its admissions because it has the luxury of choosing among students with near-perfect GPAs and near-perfect LSAT scores) and Stanford (similar, though it's not quite at the YLS level). Even Harvard Law, I'm told, is pretty much by-the-numbers these days, because it has a much larger class to fill (roughly 3 times the size of either Yale or Stanford).

That being the case, your prospects for getting into an elite law school are probably enhanced by going to a school with a high average GPA, and majoring in something that will get you a high GPA. I don't think where you go to school will have much influence on your LSAT score, but what you study might.

Here are the average undergrad GPAs for some of the schools you mention:
Yale 3.51 (2008)
Amherst 3.48 (2008)
Harvard 3.45 (2005)
Columbia 3.42 (2006)
Chicago 3.35 (2006)
Williams 3.38 (2008)
Princeton 3.28 (2008)

Princeton is notorious for grade deflation, which dampens the prospects of Princeton grads for getting into top law schools. Williams also has a reputation for pretty tough grading. Note that the Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago figures are older than the others and are probably higher by now as they've been on a steady upward trajectory.

Also note that the average student at any of these schools is probably not going to get into any top law school. The median undergrad GPA for students attending Yale Law School is 3.90; at Harvard 3.89; at Chicago 3.87; at Penn 3.86; at UVA 3.86; at Stanford 3.85; at Northwestern 3.80; at Berkeley 3.79; at Michigan 3.76; at Duke 3.75; at Columbia 3.72; at NYU 3.71; at Northwestern 3.71; at Cornell 3.63. Even at #19 Minnesota it's 3.80. They're not going to take an applicant with a 3.28 from Princeton because they don't need to, and they won't be so blown away by the Princeton nameplate that they'll give you special dispensation.

Now once you get beyond this level--or even in the lower end of some of these law schools--they will flip-flop LSAT scores and GPAs, so they may take some applicants with lower GPAs and stellar LSAT scores and balance them off with some with lower LSAT scores and stellar GPAs, and in that way keep up their medians on both. But there's only so low they'll go. So basically, you've got to be at the top of your class, even at HYP, to be competitive for admission to a top law school, and you'll need a darned good LSAT score to boot.

jamesbond1

Thanks everyone for the input.
What about pure prestige and how employers would look at the diplomas? Can someone rank these schools for me? (Assume the same GPA/major)
Also, if princeton has a lot of grade deflation, wouldn't it make sense for grad schools to lower their GPA standard for princeton students? Basing admission purely on a GPA number doesn't make any sense to me, just like a 4.0 at a local high school is not the same as a 4.0 at an elite prep school

annasdad

Yes, it would make sense to normalize GPAs based on averages - except that, as bclintonk implies, accepting a student with a lower GPA would lower a law school's USNWR ranking, which is in this day and age unacceptable. I would think there would be a rare exception, especially for a hooked candidate, since one or two low scores aren't going to affect the ranking. But on the whole, the Princeton grad with the 3.4 is going to be at a disadvantage compared to the Yale with a 3.5, even though the Princeton grad is more accomplished in relation to her peer group than is the Yalie in relation to hers.

USNWR is evil, and people who make decisions based on the rankings are foolish. But that's the playing field that colleges and universities have to play on, and it's understandable (though not defensible, IMO) when they decide they have to play by those rules.

swingtime

I really think you are asking the wrong question here about "pure prestige." At this level it is MEANINGLESS! You need to first get INTO these schools, and then weigh the "pure prestige" issue as you are deciding amongst acceptances. First get in! THEN weigh other factors.

bclintonk

Not so very many years ago, law school admissions was much more holistic, more like undergrad---you needed strong "objective" credentials but a lot of other factors, like quality of the undergraduate school, difficulty of the undergrad program, quality of letters of reference, and essays mattered, too. But I've talked to a number of law school administrators about this and they all say the same thing; it's now entirely numbers-driven, and it's entirely because of US News. And they hate it. They feel--well, enslaved would not be too strong a word.

But the thing is, whether they want to play the game or not, their school is going to be ranked by US News, and if they don't play the game--and let's say they start admitting Princeton grads with 3.30s because that's better than Yale grads with 3.50s--their US News ranking will go down. Then the quality of their applicant pool will go down because all the top applicants want to attend highly-ranked schools, and their yield will go down as they lose more cross-admits to higher-ranked schools, so they'll need to reach deeper into a weaker applicant pool to fill up their class, further depressing the ranking, etc. Current students who thought they enrolled in a top 20 law school will now be up in arms because they're graduating from a top 35 law school which, accurately or not, they believe will adversely affect their career prospects. Alums who graduated from a top 20 law school will be miffed that they now hold a degree from a top 35 law school, and will see that the deterioration happened on the current dean's watch, and will be less likely to give when said dean comes hat in hand seeking annual contributions. The university president who once proudly boasted of the law school's stellar standing as one of the university's greatest strengths will be getting complaints from all quarters and eventually will fire the dean and bring in someone who will play the game; except that it's much harder to climb back once you've taken the fall. So they feel they have no choice.

So no, even if the admissions committee thinks the applicant with a 3.30 from Princeton is a stronger candidate than the applicant with a 3.90 from Middletown State, there's no way they can bend the rules to benefit the 3.30 from Princeton. Unless the 3.30 from Princeton has a clearly superior LSAT score, since the LSAT counts a little more heavily in the US News ranking than GPA. But it will be the LSAT score, not the Princeton nameplate, that does the work.