<p>this is not true at all. i went to a nothing undergrad and was accepted across the board at top schools- including ucsd.</p>
<p>I think it depends. I don’t think it is the school as much as what MosSysBio said, networking.</p>
<p>I feel compelled to post here since I don’t quite agree with the professor quoted above in this thread. I am, of course, speaking from my own perspective, but I do think that we can extrapolate a bit from my humanities field to graduate admissions across the board.</p>
<p>Graduate admission committees do favor applicants from schools they know to have strong undergraduate preparation in their fields. There are several elite LACs, for example, that have fantastic programs in my field, and I always look closely at applicants from those schools. When their letters of rec rank them in respect to other students in their programs, I know exactly what I would be getting if I were to admit them.</p>
<p>I also have colleagues who teach at off-the-beaten-path colleges and universities, with undergrad programs in my field that are not really well-known at all. However, sometimes excellent students come out of those programs, and get into great grad programs. How?</p>
<p>Their professors have connections beyond their subfields, and can steer their students to excellent programs because they have established relationships with certain faculty in certain graduate programs. And after one student from that college is accepted to one of those grad programs, that entire undergraduate department begins to become a “known quantity” in some sense. If that first student does well, other applications from that school are also likely to be examined closely. </p>
<p>In some cases, even if the faculty at Nowhere College do not have connections to faculty in top PhD programs, they may have connections with faculty in great MA programs that place students into top PhD programs. So keep that in mind as well.</p>
<p>My advice:
Find out where your professors have steered their students in the past. If there aren’t any alums who have gone on to graduate study in recent memory, ask your professors if they know any graduate faculty with whom they think you should work. In some cases, it may be entirely appropriate to ask if you can email your professor’s colleagues to inquire about those programs, and with permission, you may wish to mention your professor’s name. Take advantage of whatever connections exist. </p>
<p>And remember, if you are one of those students coming from Nowhere College, when you are admitted to a graduate program, you are paving the way for other students from your alma mater.</p>
<p>it really depends on your GPA and GRE. Since your school is lesser known you need a high GPA and GRE scores to make up for it</p>
<p>um, it’s not nearly as cut and dried as the above poster makes it seem.</p>
<p>it’s pretty cut and dried. Good GPA, good GRE score, good LORs showing you’re fit for advanced study in the field and you’re in</p>
<p>fine, perhaps GPA and GRE scores are more relevant for people coming from lower ranked institutions or people who are applying to lower ranked schools.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice Professor X. I appreciate it. Just out of curiosity, have you ever heard of the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire before? It does pretty well in the rankings. Perhaps you could make your advice specific to my situation…</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>What is a “good” GRE score?</p>
<p>sconsindude: Sorry to break your bubble, but UW-Eau Claire has essentially no prestige. It is ranked highly as a Master’s U, but would be unlikely to break the top 100 as a National U. So calibrate your expectations to “unknown undergrad”–which isn’t necessarily a death knell.</p>
<p>In the world of grad school admissions elite status is an earned not a perceptual distinction- I dislike the implied slur about elitism in a post. Different colleges/universities have different missions. This means that public flagship U’s generally will have more courses and an outlook that prepares a student for grad school than other state schools. I assume the UWEC student has stellar grades and has gotten to know his/her professors. OP- keep in mind that your professors went to grad school and will be good resources. Pay attention to Professor X"s comments. Good luck.</p>
<p>^As I said, it isn’t necessarily a death knell–I would reiterate the importance of Professor X’s advice. But the OP seems to be laboring under the delusion that UWEC does offer him some marginal boost from prestige, which is simply not the case.</p>
<p>OP does not seem to have any delusions- please don’t put him/her down. He wants to know chances from an unknown school which he, and others in/from Wisconsin, know is one of the better state schools. He, like many from every state, wants to know how to approach grad school when you don’t go to the state flagship. Thank you Professor X for some good information.</p>
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<p>My point is that the OP really does come from “Nowhere College,” as Professor X put it. I have actually heard of UWEC before, but only in the context of a not-particularly-rigorous public LAC. Which doesn’t mean that you can’t get an excellent education there, but it does mean that being well-ranked as a master’s university means very little in this case.</p>
<p>Keilex, I think you are misinterpreting the OP’s intent. He wasn’t saying that he believed he could ride upon the prestige of UWEC’s name; he was saying simply that Eau Claire is a college that admissions committees (particularly ones in the Midwest) would know of and might be familiar with some of the faculty there and the programs offered. Being well-ranked as a master’s university doesn’t mean “very little” in this case; what it means will vary across committees and faculty. As Professor X said, it will matter a lot based upon whether they’ve received students from UWEC before and how they have performed. A top program that has admitted two well-prepared students from UWEC in the past that graduated in a timely matter may look closely at the application of a new UWEC candidate.</p>
<p>“Hearing of” schools occurs in a different context for graduate professors that serve on ACs than they work for the general public. You may have only heard of UWEC in that context, but you’re also in high school if I remember correctly. A graduate professor who does admissions for their department likely has a different perspective and a different level of experience with the university.</p>
<p>
This is exactly what Professor X said, and I agree with him entirely. But I disagree with you in interpreting the OP’s intent; he refers repeatedly to UWEC being “pretty well ranked” (paraphrase) with no context as to academic department or scope of ranking. Without knowing anything about UWEC, I would have assumed that he meant well-ranked among national Us or national LACs, neither of which is the case. I don’t subscribe much to USNWR rankings except in the aggregate–i.e. there is a measurable difference between LAC #1 and LAC #50, though not necessarily between LAC#40 and #50. Any renown of UWEC’s English department will hinge upon previous graduates and specific professors, not upon the university’s overall ranking; I doubt that most graduate professors care about overall rankings in the least.</p>
<p>One datum point from this thread, post 10:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/761104-illinois-state-school.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/761104-illinois-state-school.html</a>
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<p>It looks like I need to clarify my earlier posts. I am not claiming that an Eau Claire degree would give me a huge boost (or any boost). Eau Claire is just an “O.K.” school. It is a solid working class program. Its mid-50 ACT range is 23-26; the h.s. rank of incoming freshman is at 78 percent. I am worried that (as a small state school) Eau Claire will function as a detractor for my applications. </p>
<p>In case you wanted to know, here are some relevent rankings for UW-Eau Claire</p>
<ol>
<li>USNWR master university category: 29th out of about 170 schools</li>
<li>Kiplinger’s: 67 best value in American higher education</li>
</ol>
<p>For those who are unfamilier with UW-Eau Claire, it is academically similar to the following institutions: Hunter College, Brooklyn College, Iona College, Baruch College, Harding University.</p>
<p>Well, obviously getting into a grad school isn’t a mission impossible if you did well at an accredited institution.</p>
<p>The question is, what tier of grad schools are you aiming for?</p>
<p>As for the name recognition of UWEC, I’ve never heard of it, but I know UW-Madison is a top 10 university in my fields (computer science / mathematics).</p>
<p>Sconsindude,</p>
<p>I am answering the question you directed to me because I think my answer will be relevant to others in similar situations, not because I am trying to discourage your desire to pursue graduate study.</p>
<p>I had never heard of your university, because in my humanities field, Religion, UWEC does not have a strong department. I went to the departmental website, and none of its faculty are known to me, since they do not have perceptible research profiles. In fact, many do not even hold the PhD. The Religion department is not even an independent department, but is instead combined with Philosophy.</p>
<p>The Religion faculty at UWEC does not normally send students to grad programs, because their program is not designed to do so. If students wish to major in Religion at a Wisconsin state school, they should do so at UW or at Stevens Point. The faculty there do send their students to grad schools.</p>
<p>I have gone into such detail here even though you are interested in a completely different field because the point I am making should be illustrative. The point is this:</p>
<p>Undergraduate institutional rankings for any college or university are often meaningless when a student wishes to pursue graduate study. A university’s rankings (as determined by a non-academic mass-market magazine, no less!) will normally have nothing to do with a student’s success in graduate admissions, or in graduate study as a whole. The specific faculty with whom a student has studied will, on the other hand, be a significant factor. </p>
<p>In short, it is the department that prepares a student for study in a particular field, not the university.</p>