How much harm is it to aim too low?

[intparent]

Agree, don't think it has been hijacked at all. They are discussing whether it matters to attend a prestigious program or not. Although an analogy was made to another field (law), the discussion is still relevant.

Did you live at home or very near to home during your undergrad? Your mention of autism probably puts this in a different light, too. It gives a reason why your parents have some concerns about you going further away. But I do think you are getting some good advice to apply to more than a couple of schools, and to work with your undergrad faculty to determine what is an appropriate list.

[cobrat]

Also, I think parents are often far less involved in graduate school admissions.

Up until very recently, grad school choice/application process was considered the sole domain of the aspiring grad student him/herself and no one else.

Moreover, any hint that a parent was coaching or was even involved in the grad admission process would be taken by grad adcoms/department admission committees that the applicant concerned isn't mature enough yet for grad school.

While this has changed recently, just take a look at some threads in TLS or some other grad school forums about how the increasingly common practice of newly arrived first-year grad students/1Ls bringing their parents to orientation events that were supposed to be reserved solely/mostly for the students themselves is still perceived by other grad/professional students as a sign of immaturity and an invasion into what was once considered exclusively student/faculty space.

[blossom]

OP- your professors should be part of your thought process on where to apply, how many is too many/too few, where you are likely to be admitted, and whether you need to take the GRE. You can discuss all of this with your parents once you have your professors perspective, but the opinions of people who love you (and a bunch of strangers on the internet) don't mean a hill of beans when it comes to grad school admissions.

There are programs at otherwise tier 2 schools which are so competitive at the Master's and PhD level that they rival the tier 1 programs. There are Master's programs at colleges that will elicit and "ooh" or "ah" from someone at the grocery store which admit a very high percentage of their applicants.

So your professors know three things that your parents don't: 1- how you've performed academically in their classes. 2- Where students like you have been admitted in the past few years and what their interests are, who they are studying with 3- how you stack up to other grad school students whose profiles they read (whether they've been admitted or not) and how you can bolster your application regardless of which schools you end up applying to.

So I'd start there. You can be respectful to your parents while still getting down to business and figuring out (with the help of the experts) where you are likely to be admitted.

I can't imagine NOT taking the GRE. It's not like an invasive medical procedure where you need a second opinion. Sign up online, take it, be done with it. You don't know where you'll end up wanting to go once you've had a sit down with your professors- don't let a simple standardized test get in the way of your future. That seems silly to me. Of all the hurdles you will need to jump through to assemble a grad school application, that's the easiest!

[Catria]

Did you live at home or very near to home during your undergrad? Your mention of autism probably puts this in a different light, too. It gives a reason why your parents have some concerns about you going further away. But I do think you are getting some good advice to apply to more than a couple of schools, and to work with your undergrad faculty to determine what is an appropriate list.

I lived at home during my undergrad.

There has to be... a reason as to why Tufts showed up in talks with my undergrad faculty about my list of schools! U Toronto I could inderstand since some of my faculty went there for a MSc, and my profs say that I have a chance at U Toronto.

All the places on my list have showed up in talks with my undergrad faculty. And, as far as McGill is concerned, there's not one but two profs at that school that told me that I had a chance for a MSc, recs pending. My recommenders and the other faculty I asked all told me that I had a chance if I decide to apply at my undergraduate school for grad school as well.

And, for Polytechnique being a safety, it wasn't my own assessment of the situation but how my prospective supervisor at Poly saw it.

P.S.: Only Tufts requires the GRE and the TOEFL (even U Toronto does not) so not taking either will only cross Tufts off my list.

[Erin's Dad]

Both DDs applied to one reach, neither a reach based on stats but for admission %age. It was up to them. We felt they would make it into multiple schools based on their packages. They each made it into all but their one reach. Is this a problem with your graduate program apps?

[Catria]

What killed my dream of going to American grad schools is, simply put, the PGRE; the earliest date was like 3-4 months past the deadline.

[charlieschm]

I knew one person who went to a low-end public college for an athletic scholarship and regretted it. He was a smart guy, and he was incredibly bored and not challenged academically.

[Catria]

I'm lucky my undergraduate school is a top-100 (worldwide) and I don't regret attending it as an undergrad; my other undergraduate physics option, McGill, a worldwide top-20 school which, alongside U Toronto, were the only top-20s I could attend without either ECs or SAT scores. But, as faculty at my school realized, and dealt with, McGill physics alumni (they are now graduate students at my school, while ~50% of the graduating physics class at my school stays there for grad school) that the McGill undergraduate physics program wasn't exactly the best.

So, really, I ride on field-specific prestige, with my school having the best physics department in Canada with respect to citations and publications per faculty, which usually counts for a lot in university rankings for a given field.

[blossom]

So I'm confused... why not stay at your own university for grad school?

[Catria]

What could hint to a graduate adcom that parents were involved in the grad school selection process, other than showing up at open houses or calling the profs in the kid's stead?

Why not stay at my own university for grad school?

It's not that simple; even as I acknowledge that my current university is pretty high up there in physics, either the profs that do what I want to do are not taking any more grad students (one of those profs would have taken me if he had the grants to fund me), or there isn't anyone doing it.

[juillet]

What could hint to a graduate adcom that parents were involved in the grad school selection process, other than showing up at open houses or calling the profs in the kid's stead?

Parents writing the student's recommendation letters (heard of it), student mentioning parents' involvement in their statement of purpose, student discussing parents' role either during formal interviews or informal interactions with current students. (And yes, during those informal interactions with current students in the lab, you are still being evaluated. I participate in my department's selection of students and we hang out with them during the day and take them to dinner - my PI asks his grad students about the students later, and what we thought of them. It's more of a personality thing at that point, though.)


I didn't apply to any reach schools in high school - a match (perhaps a high match), a low match, and a bunch of safeties. I did this because I needed substantial merit-based aid to go to college.

I went to one of my safety schools. I had a fantastic experience there - I was intellectually challenged in multiple ways, surrounded by great people and felt wonderfully prepared for my top 10 graduate school. My school had a large emphasis on giving back to communities through service and devoting one's life and work to helping others, and that stuck with me. I give to my alma mater every year and am preparing to return for my fifth year reunion this coming May. I wouldn't change my decision, even though I got admitted to every other school I applied to, including that high match. (My alma mater is a top 100 LAC, so it's not like I went to an unranked school, but still.)

FWIW, I don't think being in the bottom 25% as far as high school grades and test scores go mean being in the bottom "as far as talent and ability," nor do I think that's where you'll be for the next four years. Some people loathe the highly structured, spoon-fed curriculum of high school but thrive in the more unstructured environment of college. Some people are just lazy and get their act together in college. And talent and ability can be measured in many different ways, not all of which are through high school grades and test scores.

[Catria]

As far as Quebecer students are concerned, reaching is usually not an undergraduate issue for most fields, where most people tend to stay in-province, since the difference between any two Quebec school is not nearly as great as the difference between, say, Berkeley and a "bottom-of-the-barrel" CSU. On the other hand, the Quebecer equivalent to a "reach-for-anyone" is law school, dental school or med school, since they are all "first-tiers" when compared to American programs.

I knew one person who went to a low-end public college for an athletic scholarship and regretted it. He was a smart guy, and he was incredibly bored and not challenged academically.

1. What major was he pursuing?
2. What school did he attend?

[mythmom]

The value of "reach" schools is that many of them are need-blind, meets full- need schools. I encouraged my kids to apply to them, and truth be told, they both did better with those schools than with the next tier need sensitive schools. They each attended a "reach" school with generous FA. They are both in grad school, and I know that their "pedigree" helped in acceptance.

[Catria]

Sometimes I feel that I might get shut out completely for grad school. no matter how low I aim.

Grad school admission is an entirely different thing from undergrad admission. Ask your professors for their advice on your list, and go get some pointers from the people in the Grad School Forum. Your list depends on your career goals. An MSc so you can get a job doing X and a PhD program where you can prepare for a research career working on Y will result in completely different college lists.

Except that, if attending Canadian schools for graduate school, there is some overlap between school lists for MSc and PhD, since a MSc is often a prerequisite for a PhD in Canadian schools and leads to both a job and research, now that I completely gave up on American grad schools.

My reachiest grad school is McGill now...