Importance of undergrad

TaciturnType
Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:04:38 +0000

I have no idea what Graduate schools look for. I would think gpa and gre scores are weighted pretty heavily. The third thing would be undergrad research, which is tough to get no matter where you are, and probably doubly so at highly competitive schools.



Remember that graduate committees are evaluating primarily your ability to do independent research when they admit students. A PhD is after all a research based degree. GPA is significant because it offers a standardized form of academic interest, but the GRE is less important once you’re past a certain score (~780Q on the old system), which many of the top applicants have. Therefore your research interests and experience have a greater impact because of how they affect your LoRs and how you might fit the needs of the department you’re applying to.

In terms of just being able to do research, you’ll be able to do that at every school. Professors are hired primarily to do research, and they will inevitably need some assistants, which may lead to a more independent role in their lab. It’s actually less competitive at prestigious schools, however. The lower student to faculty ratio at private universities (ie 3 to 1 at CalTech) or the sheer quantity of research at public institutions (UIUC, GaTech) means there will be more opportunities, even if the students are more competitive.



I have an update. If her interest is going to be more academic/research based, I’ve been told that going to a more prestigious undergrad program would be best. If she’s interested in business after undergrad, stay in-state and go to UT or T A&M.



This depends. If you’re talking about just being a professor in general, no. Whatever you do in graduate school will trump your undergraduate. Many professors don’t even advertise where they got their undergraduate degrees because after 4-5 years working on a PhD and perhaps 3+ more at a post-doc, it doesn’t really matter where you went to undergrad. That being said, a prestigious undergrad might offer more research opportunities and keep you more focused on research (more competitive school, more emphasis on future ambition than you might encounter at a state school). You could try checking some faculty websites to see where professors got their degrees. Only at a top universities did the majority of the faculty attend a prestigious undergraduate/graduate school. There are always some that came from a lesser known school (or an international university, from which it’s even harder to get into top American universities) too, though.