OOS with EFC of zero?

CFB53B
Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:31:15 +0000

You’re backing your argument up with data that doesn’t support it. If you could find the stats of those admitted from elite undergrads and those from lower ranked schools I promise you’ll find that their scores and GPAs are very close.



Obviously the information for those admitted (rather than enrolled) isn’t available. What you instead have is a cross section from the class. If people from low tier schools had such an even chance at admission as people from higher tier schools, they would go to Tech in greater numbers. Why? Many companies recruit GT BSCS majors, far fewer actively recruit Florida Atlantic BSCS majors. So those FAU students would be coming to GT in droves.

The data shows that you don’t necessarily need to attend a very top school, but the class is heavily weighted towards people who attend large flagship schools where research is abundant. There are only a few students on that entire list from undergraduate schools that match UCF, and I’m sure most of those had work experience or MS degrees from other schools before Tech.



Students at better schools would generally be more ambitious and accomplished and continue to better schools for grad school. That does not say anything about peoples’ chances of admission from lower tier schools.



So your argument is that people who apply to Tech for graduate CS degrees primarily come from other top ranked schools and a disproportionate number of people try to “reach” up to the next level of school? That’s a very, weak argument.



Think for a second about the numbers you just posted. 15 went to GT for undergrad. Hmmmm. Do you think GT was the best school each of them could have gone to?



That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who was admitted where, it matters who the school accepted.

And since we’re discussing students that stayed at the same school for BS and MS, that’s another advantage to going to a top BS school. You can work with faculty over your undergraduate years and have a fairly easy time getting into the MS program. One CV I saw listed his GT BSCS GPA as below 3.0. And yet he got into the MS program and continued his undergraduate research with the same professor.

At the point, I think you’re just trying to argue to argue, and I’m not going to engage the argument anymore. I’m going to clearly state my point and move on:


Going to a higher ranked school helps you in grad school admissions because:



There tends to be more and better research at higher ranked school, and research is the key to graduate school.
Faculty at research intensive schools know each other and trust each other more than people they don’t know. So a reference from a top ranked school professor is usually more favorable at top schools.
Faculty trust the academic rigor at top schools more. If you’re made it through MIT’s undergraduate program, that says more to faculty than if you made it through UCF’s undergraduate program because of the perceived rigor difference.


Going to a lower tier school doesn’t exclude you from top graduate programs, but you’ll need to work harder to find good research, prove yourself more, and graduate much higher in your class as a result.