Preparing for Graduate School as a High Schooler

Graduate School
1

Hello,

As many of you know, the admission decision dates for those who met the regular decision deadlines are approaching quickly for many seniors in high school. I am one person in this position, and I foresee myself in quite the predicament in regards to where I should send my admissions deposit. This decision is already hard enough for many future college students, but I think it might be even more so for those who want to go to subsequently pursue studies in graduate school and eventually seek tenured professorship.
I have been told that the job market for professors even for non-prestigious universities (especially those with long-term positions) is extremely tight, and so most positions are filled by people with Ivy-League graduate educations. This is my first point of interest. I want to know whether or not this is true, and if so, to what extent. If it helps, I am going to pursue my career in one of three fields: neuroscience (in particular, cognitive science), mathematics, or philosophy. (Note: Some of you will likely tell me something along the lines of “If you are not sure enough about even the subject of your interest at the moment, then you probably are not willing to commit to graduate school.” This is not the post to tell met this. Possibly, you can rest assured in the fact that many others have also told me this. However, if you think I am making an extremely big mistake, then feel free to message me.)
If professorship positions are mainly held by those with graduate level educations, I want to ensure that I remain competitive by matching their educations. Consequently, I am wondering: How much will the prestige of the university I receive my undergraduate matter? On one hand, I won a full-ride merit scholarship to Regis University, which will free me from the burden of student loans, allow me to easily seek assistance for research and publishing from the professors, and allow me to stay in my hometown. On the other, Regis will not provide me with the prestige of an Ivy League bachelor’s degree that will help admit me into a similarly prestigious graduate program. How should I weigh the easy access of professors and in turn the quality of my research projects with the prestige of the program I go to?

In short, I want to know
(1) To what extent does the place of graduate education matter for tenured professor jobs, and how should it be weighed against the quality and quantity of research I will perform as an graduate student that would be better at the less prestigious place?
(2) To what extent does the place of undergraduate education matter for admission to top graduate programs, and how should it be weighed against the quality and quantity of research I will perform as an undergraduate that would be better at the less prestigious place?

2

  1. Yuuuuugggeeee. Take a look at Harvard or Stanford for example, and search for the CV’s of the faculty of the department of interest: history, chem, psychology, whatever. A quick survey will show that the vast majority of their tenured/tenure-track faculty (excluding adjuncts) attended top grad programs.

  2. Somewhat helpful to attend a more prestigious place, all other things being equal.

Were you actually admitted to an Ivy?

3

“To what extent does the place of undergraduate education matter for admission to top graduate programs,”

When I was a graduate student at Stanford, there were other graduate students there who had done their undergrad all over the place. It didn’t seem to make all that much difference. I suspect that the several students who had done undergrad at Rutgers might have had a higher GPA as an undergrad compared to the one guy who had done undergrad at MIT, but not necessarily any higher than he would have gotten had he also gone to Rutgers. Not going too far into debt for their Bachelor’s degree was probably a good thing however. Someone I know who did their MD at McGill said the same thing, that MD students there had done undergrad at a wide range of universities.

“I am going to pursue my career in one of three fields: neuroscience (in particular, cognitive science), mathematics, or philosophy.”

I am not concerned at all about the fact that you haven’t picked one. You are in high school. To me these are all very interesting fields and I can certainly see you being interested in all. You will have plenty of time to pick one.

“Were you actually admitted to an Ivy?”

I was wondering this also. If not, then I wouldn’t worry about it. Try to do very well as an undergrad, and see where it takes you.

Good luck with this.

4

Thanks! No, I have not been admitted to an Ivy League school yet or any of the universities that are on par with them. I am still waiting on their decision.
I just have one quick question about your answer to the first question. Suppose I did not find it absolutely necessary to seek a professor position at Harvard, Stanford, or any of these top tier schools, and would be content with some more or less average state school, would it be necessary that I have an Ivy League graduate education? Or would the amount of publications/citations/whatever matter more than this?

5

Also, thank you @DadTwoGirls for the helpful feedback!

6

“…would it be necessary that I have an Ivy League graduate education?”

Many schools have their faculty listed on-line, with bios. You can find the educational background of the professors at many universities by searching for it. I looked at a couple of good but not Ivy League schools. What I found was that many faculty did have a PhD from an Ivy League or equivalent (such as MIT), but that the majority did not.

7

I can say about mathematics. Where you go as an undergrad isn’t as important as grad school. But you obviously need to go to a college with pretty good math department which has advanced courses and get yourself noticed in order to get to a good graduate school. Many state flagships qualify. I don’t know much about Regis.
Landing a tenure-track position is extremely hard and depends more on your advisor and the quality of your research. Many very well-known professors teach outside of the Ivies. It’s of course generally easier to find a good dissertation advisor in a larger and more prestigious department.

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@cmahlen I am the mom of a child who told me in 8th grade he wanted to earn his PhD and work as a professor. He is currently a college sr who is deciding amg grad programs, so I know that desire is a very real thing. :slight_smile:

I can share his experience. He currently attends a U not ranked in the top 100. He attended that school bc he was offered multiple scholarships from the U and could attend on full merit. He has utilized every opportunity on campus. He started UG research his freshman yr and has held leadership roles in multiple groups. He has taken challenging coursework (including grad level classes), etc. His grad school admissions’ offers have not been negatively impacted by his UG school not being highly ranked. He has been accepted into some of the top programs in the country.

I know nothing about Regis, but I would meet with the dept and ask a lot of questions. What research can you get involved in? Are there poster presentations and/or publication opportunities? Where have grads from their dept gone? Grad program admissions? Do students have a history of major awards? Etc. Just make sure that you as anUG will receive the attention and have access to the opportunities you want.

9

back when my D was applying to grad schools, I killed some time by searching the bios at at the top 10 schools in her field (per NCR rankings). The results were not surprising at the top end, at least to me. The faculty members earned that Grad degrees from dozens of schools, but hiring/placement is still concentrated on the usual suspects. (Of course, it partly depends on the size of the program at the Uni. If top school x does not have a large grad program in xx field…)

(Grad of tenure track faculty of Top 10 Unis in descending order)
Harvard
Stanford
Michigan
Yale’
UCLA
Cal-Berkeley
Penn
MIT
Princeton
Columbia
Arizona State
Cornell

Besides the possible outlier, ASU (really large program in her field), what I did find surprising was that top schools like Chicago and Emory were way down the list. And sure, while there was a faculty member who did their work at Vermont or UMass, the numbers were like 25-30/1.

Prestige matters in academia.

10

I’ll answer Question #2 first, as I think it’s easier.

What you do matters far more than where you go - and students go to top grad schools from all kinds of places. So if you chose to go to Regis, you could still go to a top grad program.

Your undergrad degree matters more indirectly than directly. Some colleges offer better opportunities to get the kinds of experiences that make you more competitive for grad school. For an extreme example, community colleges and small commuter regional schools often don’t offer great opportunities to get involved in research, as a lot of times their professors don’t have time to do research. Conversely, large prestigious places will offer lots of different, diverse ways to do research; some have things that are difficult to get elsewhere (like a large observatory or time to work with primates or whatever else).

But generally speaking as an undergrad you don’t have to worry about doing “cutting-edge” research or even exactly what you think you want to do as a grad student. You just need to learn the basics of research in your field and have a mentor who is willing to teach you. You can get that at many places.

As for question #1 - it matters a lot, but how much depends on your field.

The top schools in a field vary a lot by the field itself. But my advice is definitely to get out of the “Ivy League” mindset and realize that the top schools on the graduate/research level are much, more broader. For example, in math, top programs include Ivy League schools Princeton and Harvard; other elite private universities, like NYU, Stanford, and MIT; and top public universities, like Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Penn State. The same is true in philosophy and neuroscience. So when you are looking for programs, don’t use your knowledge of what universities are prestigious in the undergrad sense to decide - look at rankings designed for grad programs, ask your professors, and pay attention to who’s publishing research in the fields you’re interested in.

In some fields - particularly the humanities, including philosophy - there aren’t many options for doctoral degree holders to do scholarship in the field outside of academia, and so competition for tenure-track academic jobs is fierce. In those fields, going to a prestigious place is very important when it comes to getting jobs. (But again, prestige is relative; Rutgers has one of the top programs in philosophy.)

In other fields - like engineering, and applied math - PhD holders can make a lot more money outside of the academy, and there are lots of options for someone who wants to do research in their field to do it in jobs that aren’t professorships. So competition for professor positions in those fields is less fierce. While going to a prestigious program does definitely make a difference, it’s also easier for people who have gone to more mid-tier programs to get tenure-track positions.

11

I feel I should point out that, while competition in these fields is less fierce, it’s still important to take not of the word “less” and realize that it is still quite fierce. A given tenure-track opening will still likely get well over 100 applicants, and sometimes many times that. One should never bet their entire life and happiness on getting a tenure-track faculty position in any field. Work your tail off to try for it if that’s your goal, but have a solid backup option.

You apparently don’t want to hear this, but I am going to say it anyway. If you don’t even know yet what you wish to study, it is premature to make plans for graduate school. Sure, keep up your grades, get some research experience, and just generally do what you can to avoid losing it as an option, but you shouldn’t be betting your future on it at this point. You don’t even know if you will pass smoothly through your undergraduate studies yet, let alone doing so without a change of heart.

12

Lots of good points made here already, but I’ll just add that not all tenure-track faculty jobs are created equal. Just like how attending Harvard is different from attending SFSU, is different from Smith college. But professors at all those schools got their PhDs and postdoctoral training at the top 5 schools.

At some schools, professors mostly teach. At others, they mostly supervise the research of their graduate students. The resources and missions of different schools make it so that the experience of being a professor varies widely. If you do want to be a professor, why? Yes, there is more intellectual freedom in this job than most, but what you can do with that freedom depends on circumstances.

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  1. Probably the single most important thing. It's very rare to work at a school higher than the one you graduated from.
  2. Doesn't matter a whole lot. What you did there is generally the most important thing. Research, teaching, publications, grades, test scores really matter the most. You want to go to the best school you can, but if you end up at a well known private school or big state school/flagship, you can go anywhere. A commuter campus, maybe not.