<p>Let’s say that you ended up applying to graduate schools. Do you think it would really make a difference if you attended an HYPSM school vs a regular ivy like U of Penn? Do they give you a superstar boost or does it not really matter in the end?</p>
<p>Heh, Stanford isn’t an Ivy, nor is MIT. But if you mean a “holy Trinity” good school vs. a regular good school…really, it all depends. Obviously “Harvard” is going to get more gasps than “Cornell”, but will it send you farther in life? I think that all depends, really.</p>
<p>^ Amen.</p>
<p>Unless of course, your prospective employer is a whore for prestige. Then it might help to have gone to Harvard.</p>
<p>Applicants from Harvard and Penn would be treated the exact same. The absurd separation between HYP and the “regular” Ivies and other top universities exists primarily on CC alone. </p>
<p>
Graduate school admission would depend on:</p>
<ul>
<li>Academic preparation (coursework and grades)</li>
<li>GRE scores</li>
<li>Letters of recommendation</li>
<li>Research experience</li>
<li>Languages or skills acquired</li>
<li>Personal statement and demonstrated fit</li>
</ul>
<p>Ones undergraduate institution is only important insofar as it affects the above factors.</p>
<p>I really do hope that there is no difference between HYPSM schools and other top universities, but it seems like all the Presidents come from Yale and Harvard, the Supreme Court Justices from Stanford and Harvard, and other top leadership positions generally take a disproportionate amount of talent from the HYPSM schools. </p>
<p>Is this because there was a huge difference in the past but now that difference is negligible? Or has the culture changed such that people from non-HYPSM schools are seen to be on equal footing with the top five?</p>
<p>ok I never say this but furious, you are an idiot.</p>
<p>You need proper capitalization and punctuation before calling someone an “idiot” anonymously: just etiquette, you know?</p>
<p>It just so happens that many of our presidents and supreme court justices either came from powerful, wealthy families or were intensely motivated and talented. One way or the other, or both ways, these types tend to gravitate toward the best schools.</p>
<p>How is Furious an idiot? What he/she said makes sense to me. :</p>
<p>@Furious:</p>
<p>Empirically, yeah, a disproportionate amount of the nation’s elite go to schools like Yale and Harvard. </p>
<p>At the same time, at a certain level of social strata, merit and nepotism (justified and otherwise) become very, very difficult to separate, let alone the chicken and egg problem of “did the candidate’s merit cause him to be selected by school X, or did school X make him what he is?”</p>
<p>However, saying “All A are the set of B” doesn’t justify saying “If someone is in set B, they are A”.</p>
<p>I’m sure not every single person in government went to Yale/Harvard, and I’m sure many that do go to Yale and Harvard don’t go into government.</p>
<p>If you want go to grad school, work ur a$$ off. no matter where you go for under-grad thats the most important thing.</p>
<p>Don’t confuse law school and undergraduate. All but one of the current Supreme Court justices went to Harvard or Yale for law school, but their undergraduate institutions are a little more diverse. (There are 2 Harvards, 2 Stanfords, and one each of Princeton, Cornell, Northwestern, Holy Cross, and Georgetown. And, while there are no public-university graduates there right now, there have been plenty in the past, including the last Chief Justice.)</p>
<p>Three decades of research on the outcomes of college on students indicates that the single greatest predictor of students’ goals and aspirations is their college peer group (“How College Affects Students,” (Pascarella & Terenzini). H and Y are at the top of the food chain and get very ambitious entering classes, who then role model ambition for one another. And high-powered faculty are attracted to those schools, go to Washington with new administrations, then return to campus to further fuel the ambition fire. (Obviously, similar processes should be true for ambition in other fields as well as politics.)</p>
<p>Lets assume there are two students, A and B. </p>
<p>A goes to Harvard, obtains a good GPA of 3.3, scores decently on the GRE, and has some field experience. </p>
<p>Student B goes to a public university, has a great 4.0 gpa, scores extremely well on the GRE, and has extensive in-field experience. </p>
<p>Who do you think the grad school is going to admit? Its B every time. The reason that a lot of grad students come from HYPSM is that these schools attract and motivate students that are already extremely gifted and ambitious and are willing to put the effort in to be like student B.</p>
<p>A lot of those H and Y graduates also had degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. I am wondering if Pascarella & Terenzini did any research on them or not. Thank God they did not say Syracuse was the best university within 20 miles of Syracuse (where they had their Ph.Ds, and not so surprised to see they were also graduates of P and H)</p>
<p>As a person who has a snowball’s chance in hell in attending an HYPSM school, I am more inclined to agree with Poisonous that college performance means more than college prestige. </p>
<p>But say that you have a 3.7 GPA student from Stanford who scored a 38 on the MCAT. Then you compare him to a 4.0 GPA student from a local state school like the University of Florida who also scored a 38. Would the guy from UF get a boost in admissions? Because if that were the case, I would say that going to a top HYPSM school might actually screw you over in terms of professional schools. Getting a 4.0 at a really easy school where your peers party all day is a lot easier than getting a 3.7 at Stanford where your peers consist of valedictorians, veritable geniuses, and academic superstars. </p>
<p>If college performance is the most important factor, does it pay to go to a really easy no-name school? Even if admissions people give a GPA boost to the Stanford guy, I doubt the boost would be a whopping 0.3 points.</p>
<p>Pascarella and Terenzini didn’t research outcomes of any particular universities. Their works are meta-analyses of all the relevant research conducted in the field over a period of time - in other words, researching research.</p>
<p>
That’s medical school, which is more numbers-driven than graduate admissions. Law school is almost entirely numbers-driven (GPA + LSAT).</p>
<p>For graduate school, they’re a bit more flexible in admissions. Numbers take something of a backseat to other factors. Graduate programs are also more likely to take the difficulty of an applicant’s school into account (i.e. a lack of grade inflation).</p>
<p>
College should NOT be considered a mere stepping stone to medical or law school, and that should not be ones primary consideration when choosing a college. The important thing is to consider where you can learn and fit in best. Most people would have a much better academic experience at Stanford than a “really easy no-name school.”</p>
<p>I agree with you IB that college should not be relegated to being a mere stepping stone to professional school and that there is value to be had in a good college experience. </p>
<p>That being said, many people myself included feel that being able to attend a great professional school is very important. If you have to work day and night to get a 3.7 at Harvard, but could easily get 4.0 at a no-name school, then does the no-name school give you better value? Trust me, there are many schools out there where the exams look exactly like the homework and all you have to do is be a conscientious student to get an A. Harvard exams probably require novel thought processes, problem solving, and even some creativity. </p>
<p>For the above average but not stellar student, going to an HYPSM school has the potential to lower his or her chances of getting into a professional school of his choice. At face value, it seems unfair to me that something like this could go on. People complain of grade inflation at HYPS schools (M exempted), but in reality the real grade inflation goes on at the party schools.</p>
<p>I do not pretend to have any knowledge of the Ivy League and am not qualified to compare such an education to any other. However, in my years at university, I have encountered many teachers and profs and I can tell you that grade inflation is often teacher-specific rather than a conspiracy of a certain institution. I’ve had teachers who claim that an A is only for God, a B for teachers and C should satisfy any student (seriously). At the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve had teachers who awarded top grades for mediocre essays simply because they thought I was capable of performing at such a level (the teacher’s pet phenomenon). Some courses I took have been ridiculously easy; others have been inhumanly demanding (with a pass rate of less than 10%).</p>
<p>I wonder what FuriousTadpole’s experiences or arguments are to support his/her claim that grade inflation happens mainly at the party schools? In my experience top grades are usually awarded in small classes when the teacher expects the students to perform at a high level.</p>
<p>
To an extent, I disagree. Wake Forest (“Work Forest”) has made it a policy not to inflate grades, and the college normally includes a letter with transcripts explaining this. Princeton is another example, as it has capped the number of A’s given to 30% (a hefty chunk, but reduced from before).</p>
<p>I do agree that individual courses within a college can vary wildly in difficulty. Organic chemistry is difficult wherever one takes it!</p>