<p>D wants to study math/ physics/ chemistry. She’s HS senior, responsible, well-rounded, strong grades and NMF. </p>
<p>Do these majors typically land funding for graduate school for strong students?</p>
<p>Yes, I would say all good PhD programs in STEM fields are fully funded. There are also many external fellowships which can be found with some searching. Any school that doesn’t fund will be losing good students to other schools.</p>
<p>Yes - I think so. If you already know that you want to go to grad school, you should try to get some idea of what the admissions criteria are for the grad schools that interest you. It would make some sense to at least try to attend an undergrad school that has demonstrated success getting their students into the grad schools in which you have interest.</p>
<p>I agree with the prior posters. Whereafter your DD attends UG, it is important that she gets involved with some research projects.It is fine to shift her interests and explore options during UG years.</p>
<p>For students with strong demonstrated research experience it is possible to get into a funded PhD program right out of undergraduate school. You may get various offers as far as $$ and X many years depending on the school. STEM is usually paid for, but it is increasing that some impacted schools can’t make offers to everyone like they used to. Masters funding is much harder to obtain. You get yourself ready by being involved with profs, research, REU’s, projects and your good grades. You pick your grad school when you figure out what it is you want to study in depth and what departments and profs are aligned with your interests. It’s prematures, but you can read a bit in the grad school forums.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking about it from a budgeting perspective, remember that the vast majority of doctors, dentists and lawyers pay their own way through med/dent/law school, full freight or close to it.</p>
<p>Students of your D’s caliber should definitely go to a school at least as good as their state flagship where they would be in the honors program/college. Do not choose a school because it offers the most money/scholarships in lieu of top academics. She needs to be with academic peers and the stepping stone to grad school is good opportunities in an undergrad setting. For STEM majors this is likely a large, research school. Sometimes grad level courses can be taken as an undergrad- watch out for limited math/science options at LACs.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the advice. Gives us something to contemplate as she waits for April decisions.</p>
<p>My son is a PhD student…he was offered fully-funded assistantships with large stipends with every offer. His acceptances came in while he was still a senior in college.</p>
<p>The student’s undergrad seemed less important that his grades, coursework, GRE scores, research, and LORs. His PhD classmates are from a variety of schools ranging from elite schools to regional directional publics. </p>
<p>However, as mentioned above…med school and law school are usually student-funded.</p>
<p>PhD programs in STEM are “fully-funded.” However, most grad students have to TA, sometimes during their entire career as a grad students.</p>
<p>For STEM, you want to make sure you go to a school that is top 10-15 in your field, so that your research recs will have weight and the academics are decent. The only reason not to choose a top 10-15 school would be to go to a prestigious LAC/ivy which has a strong record of sending their students to top grad schools. Dartmouth, for instance, has a top 30-40 department in chemistry, but you would have no problem getting into a top 5 grad school if you did well. Other less obviously prestigious schools have good track record, so grad schools trust the caliber of their students. You would have to check that out if you are considering some less-known LAC (e.g., <em>not</em> Swarthmore/Amherst/Williams). I’ve heard Knox College and Hope College both have good reputations in chem, for instance.</p>
<p>The OP should list the colleges her D applied to if she wants more specific advice.</p>
<p>swarthmore physics graduates tend to go to great grad programs</p>
<p>And the vast majority of HS kids who think they’re getting a PhD in something end up not doing that. Even highly directed ones.</p>
<p>Kids get to college thinking the world is divided into English, Social Studies, Math, Chem and Bio because that’s what they know (I’m oversimplifying but you catch my drift). Then they go to a place and meet cool linguists and anthropologists and ethno-musicologists or study with an Econ professor who just finished creating the monetary system in a developing nation which has moved to a market economy for the first time, or taking a course on “conflict and resolution” from a professor who came back from the Hague where she was giving expert testimony on genocide in the prosecution of a notorious war criminal… and voila. There goes Plan A in favor of something else.</p>
<p>18 year olds can’t possibly know that they want a PhD in Nanotechnology or even just plain old vanilla chemical engineering. It’s enough to know that they want to explore a couple of fields that interest them, to be in an environment which has a lot of support for kids who like those fields, and which employ lots of professors who study those topics. To plan for anything more than that is really, really hard.</p>
<p>One of my kids is almost 30. Exactly one of his friends ended up getting a PhD in Physics out of his entire AP Physics class- virtually all of them (my kid included) had planned on doing that while HS seniors. Life intervenes. These kids are doing such interesting and exciting things (the physicist included) but the outcome is usually not per Plan A.</p>
<p>^ Excellent post blossom (as usual). I think it helps kids in HS and their parents, to answer ‘and what would you do with that?’ anxiety but the reality is the majority of students probably do not end up with any of their HS plans (either because they changed their mind or doors closed on them). Interestingly, neither kids nor adults seem able to imagine the 1000 careers people go into that do not neatly fit into a few basic professions (doctor, lawyer, investment banker, professor…) nor recognize that the vast majority of students change majors and the vast majority of adults do not work in an area directly related to their major. </p>
<p>It is really impossible for kids in HS to know whether they would be good at and love doing research full time. Both are important and necessary criteria but until you are immersed in your major and doing research in your area, you can’t answer those two questions.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure if this is in response to my post, but I said “not Swarthmore/Amherst/Williams” because I was talking about LACs which weren’t as prestigious.</p>
<p>Even the above mentioned LACs won’t have the numbers of serious science students as the public flagship research U’s. Nor will they have the diversity of science (and other) fields and professors in each science field. Those schools are off the radar for many of us not in their geographic region, just as our regional schools are for them. Absolute numbers can be better than percentages- a small percent of many yields more peers than a high percent of a few who all take the same courses because tha’t is all that is offered. Grad courses taken as an undergrad can’t be done at a college without a top grad dept in a field…</p>
<p>“Should grad school be factored into undergrad decision?”<br>
-Depends…If you have unlimited resources, why bother, go whichever place feels the most attractive. Most of us consider it heavily. But again, some Grad. programs are paid, while others require heavy family contributions (like Med./Law schools), so UG is better to be free or close to it in cases lke these.</p>
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<p>This is an interesting look into what, it seems, most of CC sees as “basic professions.” ;)</p>
<p>I don’t think the absolute number of serious science students matters as much as the department culture around research and grad school. A small LAC can have stellar results for grad school acceptances if the department is known for its quality, so students are both well-prepared and well-advised. My D goes to one of the above-mentioned LAC’s, and I think all the applicants from her department are admitted to top grad programs.</p>
<p>“18 year olds can’t possibly know that they want a PhD in Nanotechnology or even just plain old vanilla chemical engineering. It’s enough to know that they want to explore a couple of fields that interest them, to be in an environment which has a lot of support for kids who like those fields, and which employ lots of professors who study those topics. To plan for anything more than that is really, really hard.”</p>
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<p>Very true. All of these high school kids that are insisting that they will be doing X after undergrad really have no idea. 75% of pre-med students never apply to med school. Of the remaining students who do apply to med school, half don’t get accepted. </p>
<p>The same goes for those who are pre-law or whatever. </p>
<p>And, many of these demanding majors have “weeder courses” which quickly cause kids to change their career goals. A student with SAT section scores in the 400s (and a low GPA) recently posted that he’s going to get a chemistry degree from a good school. The chances this kid will actually get a BS in Chemistry is very low.</p>