<p>@FantomBassoon</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. Yes, I plan to take Ch 10 as well as Bi 2 to explore research opportunities in pure biology as well. I have heard from a friend who’s also at Caltech that many of his freshman friends “volunteer” in labs before the summer of their freshman year, which he said essentially meant they became involved in projects. Have you not had the same experience?</p>
<p>@ seadog.overseas</p>
<p>I think what you’re thinking of is a program for prefrosh called FSRI. I believe that they work in a lab for 5 weeks on some sort of project without pay (I’m not sure, but they may pay for the program or at least housing?) as well as taking an introductory proof math class (this sums up one person’s experiences: [Research</a> at Caltech - Caltech Admitted Students](<a href=“http://admitted.caltech.edu/connections/InsideOut/March10b]Research”>http://admitted.caltech.edu/connections/InsideOut/March10b)). However, in general, I’d say it’s pretty rare to work at Caltech before your freshman year and after your freshman year, most people have SURFs (which is paid, not volunteer). As I said earlier, some freshman will work in the lab during the year, but it is (in my experience) as a way to start their SURF project and get adjusted to the lab to avoid having the first week of their SURF doing these things. You may want to look at the SURF website (surf.caltech.edu) to get more acquainted with the program. Enjoy your summer and don’t worry too much about these things yet!</p>
<p>“Enjoy your summer and don’t worry too much about these things yet!”</p>
<p>haha that’s what everyone seems to tell me, which is a bit daunting, “like have fun while you still can.”</p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for the input!</p>
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<p>My third-tier undergraduate degree in mathematics got me into Michigan in engineering. (I ended up elsewhere.) They seemed a lot more interested in my enthusiasm, grades, test scores, and recommendations than the name of my undergraduate school. Remember, a lot of people who go to grad school, especially in the sciences and engineering, are boring. Plenty of professors would rather have interesting students from no-name schools than Ivy-League wet blankets.</p>
<p>Which brings me to another point: If you connect with a professor who likes you personally and in whose work you are genuinely interested, your undergraduate school becomes all but irrelevant. I was admitted to three top graduate schools after making two visits to each and having face-to-face contact with the professor at each school whose work I was most interested in. I made no such effort at my “backup” graduate school and was rejected. I really doubt these results were coincidental.</p>
<p>My mother went to a 4th-tier school for undergraduate and finished with research experience with around a 3.98. She had a family-contact at a top 10 school and ended up backdooring her way in, and her parents paid for her Ph.D. program–she got no funding. But, she did earn her Ph.D. in 3 years. (This was in a major department, by the way)</p>
<p>Of course, this was back in the late 70’s or early 80’s.</p>
<p>Although some might say that what Undergraduate school you went does not effect what Graduate school you go to, it does. Here’s a scenario, someone from let’s say, The University of Texas at Austin is applying to Wharton, or UPenn’s med school. They graduated in the top 5% and they were excellent students. Now, another student, from let’s say, Tufts, Northwestern, or even Brown, applies to this same school. They graduated in the top 12%, but not the top 10%. The person from any of the three aforementioned schools above will have the edge of the person who went to UT, simply because they are “better quality students” for going to a top 20 school.</p>
<p>The fact that someone attended UT and not those schools does not equate to “they could not get into the other schools.” In math terms, it is not “if and only if.”</p>
<p>In fact, I will argue that being the top in a strong state school like UVA, UT, Georgia Tech, etc is just as hard as being the top in any other top 20 school. How should I know this? I don’t, but I know plenty of hard working and capable people who turned down Ivy League schools for better engineering schools like CMU or because of money.</p>
<p>Whew. Since I’m an engineering major, for a second, I was like “How in the WORLD are Northwestern and Brown better than UT Austin?”. But then I realized you were talking about medical school and not engineering.</p>
<p>So I guess, it depends more on how your school is for a particular department than the overall “name” or presitge. For example, UT Austin might not be much for medical school or biomedical-related stuff. But I’d say that if you had an electrical/chemical/mechanical engineering student from a public-Ivy school like UT Austin or UW Wisconsin (both ranked in the top 10), that’s better than having an engineering degree from Harvard (because Harvard isn’t really known for engineering).</p>
<p>I truly believe that when the term “top school” comes up, it has very little to do with the overall “name” and more to do with how known a school is for a particular department.</p>
<p>Now, another student, from let’s say, Tufts, Northwestern, or even Brown, applies to this same school. They graduated in the top 12%, but not the top 10%. The person from any of the three aforementioned schools above will have the edge of the person who went to UT, simply because they are “better quality students” for going to a top 20 school.</p>
<p>From where do you derive this observation? Do you work in graduate admissions, are you a professor on an admissions committee? Even if you are, how do you know your observation extends to other schools and programs? Do you discuss this with other graduate school committees?</p>
<p>Like Sephiroth said, it doesn’t make sense to turn down a top 10% applicant for a top 12% simply based on where they chose to go to undergrad, especially since applicants are rarely equal in every other category besides school choice. Going to a less highly-ranked undergraduate does not mean that a particular candidate couldn’t <em>get in</em> to a more highly ranked school, nor does it mean that he or she wouldn’t have been just as successful at a top school. Maybe he or she could not afford the more expensive school, got an offer they couldn’t pass up, or just didn’t like the atmosphere.</p>
<p>Furthermore, you say it like it’s a general blanket truth when really graduate admissions are complicated than that. If the UT-Austin kid has 5 years of experience in a managerial position at a great firm and the Brown kid is applying straight from undergrad, he or she will almost certainly get admitted. Besides, percentages are school-based, and they are rarely used in admissions - most college graduates don’t even know where they rank in their college’s class. Perhaps that top 10% at UT-Austin means a 3.85 whereas the top 12% at Brown means a 3.65 or something.</p>
<p>The way you talk about percentages and make blanket statements about a complex process makes me think that you are a high schooler, and given that you’re listed as being 16 years old, I’m going to say that’s a solid assumption.</p>
<p>^very solid assumption</p>
<p>Graduate school admissions is indeed more complex than “class rank” – something that isn’t even possible to know if the student is applying right out of undergrad. And even afterward, it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>However, there are feeder schools to certain programs. For instance, my D was told at one program that they loved to accept students from her LAC. She was invited for an interview over others in part because of her undergraduate institution. And she was advised to apply to other specific prestigious programs because of her department’s track record with them (she didn’t, because the programs weren’t quite right for her.) Of course, other programs don’t have the same experience/feeling for the same LAC, so while the college name had a small effect with some grad programs, it had little or no impact on others.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I would name them “feeder schools” so much as programs that are highly regarded by admissions officers. A “feeder school” implies a school or program that routinely sends a lot of people to the next level - like a middle school that feeds into a high school, or even an elite private high school that’s considered a “feeder” for Yale or Harvard.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I think that colleges really work like “feeders”, but like others have commented on other pages, certain departments really are held in high esteem. Like my undergraduate alma mater is known for it’s pre-med program, so medical schools perk their ears when they see that they’ve come from our pre-med programs. Or like I think it’s Swarthmore that has a great classics department, so classics graduate programs may perk their ears more when they see that you have a classics degree from Swarthmore. That’s how name brand works in graduate admissions - it’s not just “ooh he went to Harvard,” but “wow he went to Harvard and Harvard has a really great anthropology department, I think Dr. Bigname is over there, and he worked with Dr. Bigname’s lab…he probably has really great anthro training.”</p>
<p>So yeah, it matters, but not in the way that it matters to management consulting firms or Wall Street hedge funds.</p>
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<p>Well, yes, except that grad programs in the same field may not equally value a specific undergraduate education, even if those grad programs are similarly prestigious. And they won’t equally value a specific colleague’s LOR, unless that colleague happens to be a real super star in the field. </p>
<p>I consider an undergraduate department to be a “feeder” if a significant number of students from it attend the graduate program, or if a significant percentage of applicants gain admission to it.</p>
<p>You know, although people tend to disregard this subject, location of your undergraduate institution really does matter when it comes to graduate school/ professional school entrance. I’ve heard this experience from many upperclassmen, that graduate programs more readily accept students whose undergraduate program is closer to their institution. Just as an example, a friend of mine graduated from Caltech a few years ago-I knew her brother who is a year older than me- and was admitted to the physics programs at Stanford and UC-Berkeley, but rejected from Princeton, Harvard, and UChicago. I mean, this one example certainly isn’t representative of much, but can anyone else back this up?</p>
<p>Nope… Second Tier UC student here who was admitted to all the programs you just mentioned in Physical Chem.</p>
<p>I don’t think distance between schools has any impact beyond maybe recommend writers interacting with adcom faculty more often.</p>
<p>Yes, undergraduate DOES matter:
<a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights;
<p>Want to know what the trouble with that report is? No engineering focus. Getting into MBA is all about contacts, numbers and prestige–no doubt there. Medical school and Law school are mostly GPA LSAT and MCAT, and the fact is that the most of the Ivies, especially Harvard, have heavy inflation. </p>
<p>Look at PhD programs for sciences and engineering and you will see that this is not the case. </p>
<p>There is no way that Harvard is 3 times better than MIT, and, in the fashion that the article is presented, it suggests just that.</p>
<p>Lastly, of course undergraduate matters but the extent of the importance is what is being debated and that article is absolute trash at depicting the minor difference between a 4.0 at UT and a 4.0 at Cornell.</p>
<p>I said TOP grad programs. Engineers don’t get paid that much compared to graduates from other programs.</p>
<p>^ iCalculus, no one takes that WSJ survey seriously. It has too many flaws.</p>
<p>Since when was top grad program defined by average salary. Also, engineers when they aren’t some underling, get more pay than doctors and lawyers and mba’s, except those crazy finance sectors money freaks.</p>