<p>So I didn’t do too well in high school, I just didn’t try, and ended up at a state school in california. I tried to transfer to uc berkeley and uc santa cruz for my junior year but was denied by both, so I thought if I couldn’t even get into santa cruz, how would I possibly get into yale? My work ethic totally changed from who I was my freshman year of college. I went from a 2.0 my freshman year to now a 3.675 gpa my sophomore year. My work ethic used to be oh I’ll just to the homework once in a while and try to pass. Now my work ethic is get an A. Period. I really want to attend either columbia, brown, or yale, but not limited to. I will be a junior this fall, so I have two more years to go. Basically I just want to know, is it possible?</p>
<p>getting into HPY for law/mba/grad school is harder than freshman, just so you know. the grad school admissions tests are much harder than the sats…</p>
<p>I realize it is hard, but I just don’t want to give up. I’ll meet with a counselor this year and get more involved on campus. Honestly, if there is a way, I will put my all into it.</p>
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<p>Uh, what? I can personally tell you the GMAT is * not * harder than the SATs. In fact, it is much easier.</p>
<p>Also, I’d double check about grad school admission rates for HPY. I doubt they are lower than 5-6%.</p>
<p>The admission rates for HBS are about 10-12% every year. Wharton has a 14-20% admission rate for their class. I couldn’t find this information for Yale, but I’m assuming it’s similar. However, I’m also going to guess that the business school classes to these schools are somewhat self-selecting - Wharton states that 75-80% of their applicants are qualified to attend the school. So that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily easier to get in, just that people who don’t actually have the credentials don’t apply (whereas they do in undergrad).</p>
<p>Yale Law has a 6-7% admissions rate, Harvard law has a 13% admissions rate, and Penn’s is 14%.</p>
<p>Grad school is a huge range; it depends on the program. Some very small PhD programs may have rates similar to undergrad - especially in popular fields like English and history - whereas some programs like pure math or physics may have higher rates of admission, but again, because the pool is self-selecting.</p>
<p>However, I will say that it’s strange that you have an aim to go to three specific Ivies. Do you even know what you want to study in graduate school yet? Those places may not even have what you eventually want to study, or they may not be the best programs in your field. There are other great graduate schools that may be non-Ivy private (MIT, Caltech, and Carnegie Mellon are great for tech and science degrees, for example) and there are many publics that have great programs in many fields (Wisconsin and Michigan come to mind, as do Washington, UCLA, and Berkeley). I think you should focus on figuring out what you want to do first, and then find out where the top programs in the field are.</p>
<p>True, well, I know these schools have good humanities programs, and well I guess, the name of course. I just really want to go to a reputable school, and the appeal that comes with having to work hard to get into these schools is just appealing to me. I’m a political science major who has no idea what he wants to do with his life. I’m seeing a career counselor, and well, I just know that I’d probably want a masters in something. Plus I want to live on the east coast. I just want to go to a school I can be proud of, and I’m still going to continue researching these schools and possibly visit them, and well, if I find them suitable, why not try and reach for it?</p>
<p>If you have no idea what you want to do with your life, you have no business in graduate school.</p>
<p>OK, that’s somewhat harsh, but it’s not really untrue. Graduate school is advanced-level training in a very specific field or subfield, and if you undertake a program, complete it and then realize you have no interest in working with that field… well, you’ve just wasted a whole bunch of time, money and opportunities forgone.</p>
<p>It does seem like a good number of people don’t stay in their field after their PhD though… sometimes the skills you get can be transferable to something else (like some math/science/engineering people go to finance). People from these “brand name” schools may use the name to help find a job outside their industry.</p>
<p>People sometimes do not stay in their field after getting a PhD, but that’s typically because they either don’t find a job in their field or find better prospects outside the field after they’ve already made the decision to get one. It’s generally not a good idea to decide to get a PhD with an eye towards leaving to get an industry job that you don’t need a PhD for. That’s a waste of time.</p>
<p>For example, if you want to do finance, you could easily do finance with a BA and then possibly go back for an MS or MBA. You certainly don’t need a PhD to do finance, and you won’t get paid more for having one. That’s fine if you thought you wanted to be a math professor and then realized you hated math research when you were near finishing your PhD, so you go to do finance instead. But if you already know a priori that you want to do finance, why get the PhD? It’d be so much more useful to get the work experience or the degree that leads directly to the job.</p>