Does undergrad reputation affect grad admissions

saskij
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 17:59:52 +0000

I’m afraid that I must disagree with the sentiment of the answers mooted in this thread for while I agree with the specific text of juilliet’s response, I would place a different spin upon the issue. I agree with her statement that “it’s about the level of familiarity with the program and college in preparing students for graduate study”, the truth of the matter is that many graduate adcoms will not be familiar with many lower-ranked programs. For example, to use her example of Cal-State Northridge that may very well have a stellar psychology undergrad program - I admit that I don’t know, for I’m not a psychologist - the unfortunate fact is that many top psychology PhD axioms may not be aware of that fact.

I also agree that what you do as an undergrad can indeed outweigh the brand-name power of other applicants. But the problem is that what you can realistically accomplish within your undergrad program is indeed heavily constrained by said program. To wit: while I agree with juilliet that if you can conduct and publish excellent research as an undergrad at, say, UMass Boston, you will certainly be on par or perhaps even superior to - competitors from name-brand programs, the sad fact is that that’s a huge if. The fact is that UMass Boston undergrads probably won’t be publishing research that is considered ‘excellent’. The assessment of research is a strong function of where one publishes, which is itself a function of one’s coauthors. The unfortunate truth is that many (probably most) faculty at Umass Boston are not routinely publishing in top journals. Their research is not heavily cited. Indeed, if such faculty were indeed publishing in top journals and/or were heavily cited, they would be leveraging that as the means to transfer to a higher-ranked university. Hence, given that the faculty themselves at such lower-ranked schools themselves are unlikely to be conducting ‘excellent’ research (in the manner that ‘excellence’ is defined by academia in terms of journal prestige and/or citation count), and given the importance of prestige of authorship collaboration regarding academia publishing, it frankly is unlikely for any particular undergrad at a school such as UMass Boston to be publishing research that is deemed to be ‘excellent’. One might disagree with that particular definition of ‘excellence’, but - whether we like it or not - that is the definition of excellence that prevails within academia. {Academic publishing is unfortunately an elitist enterprise, as much as we might wish otherwise.}