Does undergrad reputation affect grad admissions

xraymancs
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 20:04:33 +0000

Actually, many students from liberal arts colleges, where faculty are not expected to have a competitive, funded research program are highly sought after for graduate school. Nowadays, with the large number of REU programs available to students, many can get meaningful research experiences outside their own university.

Indeed, there are graduate programs who may not scrutinize at all their graduate applicants individually because they have too many. However, any graduate admissions committee which excludes applicants based solely on their undergraduate institution is not serving its own best interests and they know it. They might exclude them based on GRE scores or GPA but once the cut is made, there is a very thorough process of evaluation. I have seen this from both sides as a faculty member writing reference letters for my advisees and as the director of graduate admissions for my department. My university is not one that everyone knows about and my department is small and therefore not highly ranked in the USNWR popularity contest rankings, however, our students have been accepted to many top physics programs over the years and that is because of their accomplishments.