Getting into Grad School from a Lesser Known Program

Graduate School
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<p>Point taken Professor X. It really does come down to departmental strength.</p>

<p>I completely agree with your assessment of the religion/philosophy department at UWEC. I know that the strongest departments at Eau Claire are in the sciences. Eau Claire graduates in chemistry/geology/etc routinely go to top 10 PhD programs in their fields. Religion/Philosophy is at the other end of the spectrum – it is a blatantly dismal department. </p>

<p>However, the reputation of the English department at Eau Claire is very fuzzy. I know several English students go on to get PhD’s, but they usually go to places like the University of Kansas – not terrible, but not that great. A choice few have made it into prestigious programs. Also, the vast majority of Eau Claire English faculty do have their PhDs. They frequently publish in respected journals, and some edit (or have created their own) scholarly publications in which a wide variety of scholars from a wide variety of institutions contribute. (Feminist Teacher and The Pynchon Notes come to mind.)</p>

<p>Since you have expertise in the humanities -and I believe you once said that you had sat on admissions committees - I hope you could do me the favor of taking a peak at my department and telling me what you think. </p>

<p>In short, how would an English department admissions committee look at student from Eau Claire with decent grades (that got progressively better) and high GRE scores (Top 95th percentile on the verbal section)?</p>

<p>I appreciate your help!</p>

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<p>OP- regardless of what is said here you need to talk to the professors in your dept of interest at EC. They are the ones who will be writing letters of recommendation and you want to know where their word will carry any weight. They will also know best how your EC credentials stack up in the grad school admissions game- ie they will know if your particular courses and grades show that you are grad school material.</p>

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<p>Sconsindude, </p>

<p>If I were to read the CV of every single member of the English Department at UWEC, I would still have no way to judge the reputation of the department, or the quality of those scholars’ publications. </p>

<p>I don’t know if the department chair’s PhD from The University of South North Dakota at Hoople is a signal that she studied with the premier Jack London scholar in the US, or if she simply couldn’t get into a better program. In other words, I don’t know whose mentors were bigwigs and whose were hacks. Similarly, I have no idea whether “The Mark Twain Quarterly,” in which the department’s 19th c. Americanist regularly publishes, is a prestigious journal or just an irregularly-issued cluster of papers most suitable for bathroom use.</p>

<p>I can look at any department or any CV in my own field and provide an informed opinion about that department’s quality, or that person’s qualifications. I cannot do this outside my field.</p>

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<p>Honestly I don’t think it matters a whole lot. I attended Northern Illinois University and the program I’m in is not ranked. I applied to top 30 graduate school programs as ranked by US News and have received some acceptance letters.</p>

<p>I have a 3.64 science GPA so it’s how you do personally that’ll make you stand out.</p>

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<p>Honestly, the name brand does count – especially if you want to get to a position at a big- name school. BUT, that does not guarantee success. I can give you one example of a person who (teaching at a dept. I applied to) is world famous for his work, and he went to Univ. of Kentucky. But he is a full prof before age 40 at Harvard…</p>

<p>Check out his resume here:
[Harvard</a> Kennedy School - Amitabh Chandra](<a href=“Page not found | Harvard Kennedy School”>Page not found | Harvard Kennedy School)</p>

<p>Continued success it seems is based on your research and what impact that has ultimately. So I would worry less about brand, but more about what research you want to do and how you are going to make that into reality. Ask big questions, have elegant research, and surround yourself with smart people. Just my opinion…</p>

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<p>Adcoms in the sciences and certain departments in more quantitatively-based fields are going to be far less concerned with undergraduate prestige - more ‘objective’ data, ie GRE, GPA, Science/Quant grades, specific research and quality of research - is far easier to judge in a hierarchical way. That’s not to say that prestige of undergrad institution can’t have some influence for science graduate applicants, but it definitely figures in very differently. The work itself is quantitative, and therefore lends itself far better to comparative, ie admission-oriented, judgment. English departments - and for that matter, most humanities departments - have far more idiosyncratic methods for judging applicants. </p>

<p>I just felt like this had to be said, because so many random posters keep interjecting “I went to a nothing school for undergrad and got into a top ten science school”. Yes, that’s fine, but the admission process for science/quant, just like science/quant research, career options, and analytical approach, is QUITE different from what goes on in humanities departments. These programs are often just as much about the people as the research, if not more. I went to an Ivy for undergrad and was admitted to another Ivy for the Ph.D., and I had a 3.35 undergrad GPA. I applied to the second Ivy 3 weeks after all the other students, and was admitted the second my application reached the DGS’ desk. Overall, I was less prepared. Yet, the prestige of my undergraduate institution, my writing sample, and my recommendations, were far better than even the other admitted students, because my B’s and C’s in undergrad were ‘Earned’ by competing with wiz kids . . . not from slacking. </p>

<p>This is not true of everyone, but I can think of a number of Ivy League undergrads with below a 3.5 who went to top universities for the Ph.D. . . . partly because we were forced to take general requirements in which we received C’s (Calc, Stat, Physics, Astrophysics in my case) with students who had won Intel competitions, when we were majoring in humanities. </p>

<p>Just thought I would try and put a spin on this argument from someone who went through the process. On the other hand, I do know students from no-name undergrad who went to Ivy Ph.D. programs for humanities . . . but they almost always had some mitigating factor, such as a superstar recommender or a Master’s Degree (even an M.A. from a lesser-known school still helps a humanities student get a second look, if even just because that student will be assumed to understand what their responsibilities will be as a grad student, and that they now ‘know the trade’ better than a fresh undergrad).</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

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<p>PS I’m on here because I decided, after a year in my Ph.D. program, to apply to a couple of other departments in a related field (switching from Slavics to German with Slavics as a subfield) so I am, in fact, still waiting for an admission decision. We’ll see if I’m as lucky this time around.</p>