<p>People that major in liberal arts usually go to grad school, cause lets face it, you cant find a serious job with just a liberal arts degree.
From what i read Grad school admissions are based on your major’s grades and they dont really look where you attended, meaning that someone who graduated from Columbia with (lets say) a 3.5GPA will be treated the same with someone that graduated from Arizona State University with a 3.5 GPA. So my question is:
Is it better to go to a top ranked school , to get some serious education, and get a decent grade, and then go to Grad School?
Or is it better to go to a midcore university, get excellent grades and then go to grad school?</p>
<p>To make an example : Lets say i want to get my B.A. in psychology and then apply for an M.B.A.
Is it better to study Psychology in a tough well ranked university, stuggle and study alot so i can get a decent grade and then apply to Grad School?
or to attend lets say University of Florida get a good grade and then attend to Grad School?</p>
<p>Depends on the liberal art that is one’s major. Physics, statistics, (applied) math, and economics majors tend to have better job and career prospects at graduation than biology, chemistry, English, and history majors.</p>
<p>Also, most of those graduating with bachelor’s degrees do not go to graduate school.</p>
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<p>Perhaps you are referring specifically to medical and law schools (as opposed to PhD programs in academic subjects) with this assumption? In any case, note that the more selective schools tend to have higher [grade</a> inflation](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5Dgrade”>http://www.gradeinflation.com), so it is not necessarily true that going to a more selective school will result in a lower GPA (though there are a few not very selective schools with high grade inflation that may be attractive to those trying to game the medical and law school admissions practices).</p>
<p>There is little point trying to get into an expensive, highly selective school for liberal arts if you are mainly just trying to jump hoops to get a job. Students who get into highly selective schools are likely to be rather driven people who want the best possible academic experience as something valuable in its own right, not just for the job prospects at the end of 4 years. If you don’t see yourself as that kind of person, just go to the best in-state public school you can get into, then choose a marketable major such as Computer Science. You don’t need an Ivy League CS degree to get a decent, well-paying job in this field straight out of college. You do, however, need some aptitude for and interest in the subject. </p>
<p>Liberal arts have little value if they are taught in big classes by disinterested professors straight from a text book to bored or reluctant students. So at some schools, you might be better off just getting an undergraduate business degree. If you do want a liberal arts major, then your “midcore” university + MBA plan could work, too. Look for schools with good internship opportunities.</p>
<p>Well, since psychology is the only so far undergraduate major that intrests me, my plan is to go to a good university. When i say “good” i mean that it wont be an ivy league, but neither a bad school. Get my B.A. in psychology and then:
Plan A - If still after 4 years psychology fascinates me alot I ll get my master’s and PHD in psychology
Plan B - go to graduate school for an MBA in marketing
The universities i have in mind for my psych major are : Penn State, Boston U, Northeastern U, U Illinois, UNorth Carolina, UMiami, NYU, UCSB, UCDavis, MCGill, UToronto</p>
<p>Note i’m an international student and i’m able to pay full freight. (all these universities I listed are acredited in my country)</p>
<p>"People that major in liberal arts usually go to grad school, cause lets face it, you cant find a serious job with just a liberal arts degree. "</p>
<p>I agree that many folks go on to graduate school after a liberal arts ungrad program. I think they usually set out with this goal (ie. History or English major intending to go to law school). If you are a smart, interesting, and accomplished person you will be able to find meaningful work.
Many of the elite liberal arts schools (think little Ivy) are need blind and work to keep their graduates debt load low so that they can go forth and make the world a better place and not have to worry about large student loan payments when making their employment decisions.
Also, if you plan to major in psychology and want to do something significant in that field you will have to go on to graduate school.</p>
<p>Possibilities:
U of California - San Diego (NRC S-Rank High #5, USNWR #35)
University of Wisconsin - Madison (NRC S-Rank High #3, USNWR #45)
University of Colorado - Boulder (NRC S-Rank High #6, USNWR #86)</p>
<ol>
<li>Now research each school on the resulting, initial list for quality of life characteristics that appeal to you. UC-Boulder, for example, is located in a lively college town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains (great social life, world-class skiing).</li>
</ol>
<p>If those USNWR ranks look low, remember that the USA has >3000 institutions of higher learning spread across 50 states. </p>
<p>One excellent smaller, private university is the University of Rochester (NRC S-Rank High #4, USNWR #37, ~4600 undergrads).</p>
While I find it hard to believe this apparently is pretty much true for law and med school … I’m not so sure it is for other grad schools. I have two graduate degrees from top schools … one in engineering and one in business management. In both cases the demographics of the students somewhat similar … a large proportion of international sudents … then among the US undergrads they came from a schools up and down the USNEWS rankings … however there definately was a pattern … probably 80% came from top 20 universities or LACs … and among the 20% from non-elite schools the students had much higher GPAs overall; virtually all the non-elite school students had undergrad GPAs of 4.0 or darn close to it … while undergrads from elite schools had much more variance in their grades (including my 3.0 undergrad GPA).</p>
<p>The most selective, most prestigious universities generally do not exist for the purpose of career training. They are knowledge factories. They exist to discover and transmit knowledge about everything under the sun from art history to zoology. Placing their undergraduates into top law schools or MBA programs is an incidental, collateral effect.</p>
<p>It is true that, in the student bodies of top professional and grad schools, there is an unequal distribution of students from various undergraduate institutions. Generally, students from more selective undergraduate institutions are over-represented on a per capita basis at these graduate institutions. However, there is not enough good data, or transparency into the graduate admission processes, to know for sure why these patterns occur. Do students from certain colleges earn PhDs at a relatively high rate because (a) their courses prepare students relatively well to succeed in grad school, or (b) their admission processes cherry-pick applicants who are smart, academically motivated, and more frequently inclined to enroll in PhD programs? We don’t exactly know. We really don’t know, either, how perceptions of undergraduate programs play out in the grad school admission process. </p>
<p>In my opinion, if you have the choice, you should choose a more selective more prestigious college only if you are keen to experience (and actively engage in) academic and extracurricular life there, on its own terms. If you want to do the least amount of work necessary to get a job (or get into grad school), or if you have a hard time getting interested in more than one potential major, then you probably are not a good candidate for these schools. Choose someplace cheaper and less demanding.</p>
<p>I agree with this … with one caveat … if you go to the less demanding school you need to hit the road running and get great grades from the get-go … that was the implied point to my previous point … at a top grad school the expectations for applicants from less challenging schools is that the applicant has terrific grades; there appears to be less less slack for a ramp up of grades over time compared to students who attended tougher undergrad schools.</p>
<p>“i’m an international student and i’m able to pay full freight.”</p>
<p>There are many mid-range places that will be delighted to have you because you can pay full freight. You are in a truly fortunate position.</p>
<p>You should be looking for places that have a good history for placing students in jobs/internships for their OPT time. Even better will be those that have a history of placing students with companies that are successful at getting those students an H-1B (work) visa when the OPT runs out.</p>
<p>If your longer-term goal is a good MBA program, you need to know that the better programs will expect at least two years of increasingly responsible work history when you apply for admissions. The top programs will expect about five years of work. In your case, it may make more sense to complete your undergraduate degree in your home country, work there for 2-5 years, and then apply to MBA programs in the US.</p>
<p>You also can get into an M.S. or Ph.D. program in psychology in the US with a foreign degree. You don’t have to come here to study right away.</p>
GPA and test scores are probably the LEAST important factors of a graduate application, though they can be important for funding. This is exactly the opposite of a professional school application, where they are by far the most important factors. Odds are, once you get to a certain level (say, 3.0 overall and 3.3+ in one’s major), your GPA really isn’t that important. </p>
<p>A successful application is more likely to have these:</p>
<ul>
<li>Well defined research interests that mesh well with those of the faculty at that school</li>
<li>A strong research background</li>
<li>Glowing letters of recommendation from experts in the field</li>
<li>Strong preparation in the field (including all necessary languages, if relevant)</li>
</ul>
<p>I don’t doubt in the slightest that students at top schools have a leg up in the process. Such schools typically have more funding for undergraduate research, have more well-known faculty members, have better advising, etc.</p>