Hi, I am a junior at Florida Atlantic University majoring in electrical engineering, I want to get into a phd program for biomedical engineering. I am worried that FAU is not a good enough school and that I wont get accepted into a good phd program.
I’m wondering if I should try and switch to a school like University of Florida, not talking about the Ivy Leagues, just a better school.
My GPA is 3.77/4.00 and ive been involve in ASCE (I used to be a CivE major) and am being inducted into the Tau Beta Pi honors society
Idk if it matters but I’m a florida resident, I pay in-state tuition
Does anyone think it would be a good idea to try and switch? assuming I could get in? or will the phd programs not care that much what school I went to?
I don’t know much about Florida Atlantic University and University of Florida so I can’t say much whether any is “good enough.”
Just some general ideas: Besides GPA and GRE, two things are equally important when it comes to PhD program admissions are (1) research experience and (2) letters of recommendation.
PhD is a research-intensive process, ad coms want to make sure people they admit can do research, and no proof is better than track records: research experience and letters from someone with authority about the candidate’s ability to do research.
If transferring to another school gives you better chance of doing research and better chance of getting recommendations from professors, do transfer.
BTW, extra-curriculum activities and honor societies don’t really count.
I agree with @Pentaprism that the important parts of your application will be your GPA, GRE scores, research experience, and letters of reference. You can certainly get into a good graduate program if you have all of these and they are typically available at all universities. However, you have to be smart about what you do. Take the most challenging curriculum possible. If there are graduate courses you can qualify for, take them because that signals your ability to do well at the graduate level. Get involved in research so that you not only have the experience but also the personal letter of reference from your mentor. There is probably no need to transfer to UF and possibly lose a semester or a full year if you can do these things at FAU.
You don’t need to worry about this - you can get into a good graduate school from Florida Atlantic if you do the things suggested above (get good grades, do research with professors, get good letters of recommendation, etc.)
I’d say that staying where you’re at would probably help you do these things more easily since you’ve already been there for a while and presumably already know professors in your department.
From my understanding, undergrad ranking isn’t the biggest impact on grad school admissions (though it can have some sort of sway). What you DO at college is more important than WHERE you do it. The biggest thing is to get experience in your field and show grad schools why you’d be a good match and asset to their program.
Like the previous posters have said, your performance and research are more important than the school itself. That said, if a different school will offer you better opportunties to do some of those things, it might be worth thinking about transferring.
This is purely anecdotal, but in my graduate program (a high-ranked mechanical engineering program), a disproportionate number of my fellow classmates had gone to UF for their undergrad. Who knows, maybe UF is doing something right.