What Graduate Schools Think About Your College

This is an instance where statistics can be misleading.

For illustrative purposes, let’s just say Williams has 500 grads per year and Michigan has 7,500. It’s reasonable for a graduate program to suggest that their cohorts are composed of a diverse group representing many elite and non-elite undergrad institutions, but the individual likelihood of success from those schools is dramatically different. Williams may have 10 kids apply to HBS…Michigan might have 50? When each school has 5 admitted, the likelihood that a student from Williams gets into Harvard is 5X vs Michigan.

That example is a complete fabrication, but the probabilities for grad school acceptances at elite schools are (in my estimation) much higher than larger institutions.