Please guide me if there are discussions on this topic. I didn’t have much luck;
If you plan graduate study, why aim for the top undergraduate school?
By aiming a slightly less competitive but still decent school, wouldn’t you be able to;
Focus on only what you want during high school by forgoing EC, leadership stuffs, volunteer, sports, aka all the hoops to jump unless you genuinely want and also have time and energy for them.
Get better ug gpa, stand out more in your class, get better professor relationship and research opportunities.
There for better graduate school admission chance
Graduate faster as less competitive schools usually give more credit for AP and concurrent enrollment.
You need three good references for a PhD program. If you skip too much college due to APs, it can be hard to get 3 great references. Those profs can also provide good guidance in the grad school admissions process, which is quite different from undergrad admissions and can be quite opaque.
More research experience is better for grad school admissions. Not all undergrad schools are equal in what is avail to undergrads for research. Again, a student who rushed through may have less experience than other grad school applicants.
Some areas of graduate study require subject test GREs. You want to go to a rigorous enough school to prepare you well for those tests.
You might not get a better undergrad GPA. If teaching quality is poor or lots of sections are taught by TAs that don’t have great English skills or class sizes are really large, it can be harder to master the material for good grades.
@intparent. Those are all great points. But what if you go to only slightly less competitive and still decent college and take more upper division courses or even some graduate level courses, instead of graduating early? Wouldn’t that pretty much compensate all those concerns?
If by graduate school, you mean PhD program, you do want to go to a college with good undergraduate preparation for that PhD program, which is not necessarily the most admissions-competitive college you can get into.
Good undergraduate preparation includes the expected course work (particularly relevant upper division courses of the expected depth and rigor) and undergraduate research opportunities.
Pathways to professional schools (e.g. law and medical) are somewhat different.
@ucbalumnus, Thanks for the input. That’s exactly what I meant by “still decent”. So, for example, if you are pretty set for Ph.D., would you recommend an academically strong enough for UC Berkeley student to aim for UC Santa Cruz, and not worry about those 14 holistic review points of UC Berkeley during high school? Especially if a student just want to take more community college math and science courses during Summer instead of internship, volunteer, art portfolio, etc, etc?
What if you are just set for M.S.? Would it be very different?
By the way, why would law and medical schools be different? Don’t they even more focus on GPA regardless which ug school you got it?
Law and med school admissions are quite different from PhD admissions. Great MCAT or LSAT scores are critical. However, MDs from any accredited med school will get a job. Lawyers have a harder time if they didn’t go to a top law school. There are a lot of nuances to grad school admissions.
Master’s programs are generally easier to get into, but not funded like PhD programs are. A PhD student will take 5-7 years to finish, but be paid by the school to teach and/or research, and get free tuition. Most master’s students pay to attend their programs.
UCSC uses a similar admissions review as UCB, but it sets the admission threshold lower. Indeed, at one time (possibly still), UCSC took the admissions reading scores from UCB and UCLA for students who applied to at least one of those other campuses.
Whether UCSC is as suitable as (or more suitable than) UCB for preparation for PhD study depends on what particular subjects are of interest.
That UCB and other UCs consider various factors in admissions readings does not mean that an applicant needs all of them to be admitted.
@intparent Isn’t that all the more reason to opt for more grade-inflated less competitive undergraduate school, if you plan for a top law school?
Master is not funded. But what if you are set for it regardless. Then prestige of ug school means much less, and even lower ranking ug may work better? Especially if you can save some tuition by it and use it to pay master’s degree?
I even heard of getting into funded Ph.D. and dropping out with Masters when one find Ph.D. isn’t really for her, although it’s morally wrong and shouldn’t be planned.
I am not necessarily arguing that one should choose UCSC over UCB if she gets admitted to both. Rather I am contemplating not spending time and effort to jump unwanted hoops to increase chance to pass holistic reviews that top colleges focus. Lower ranking colleges do holistic as well, but one with above average academics may get in with below average ECs, right?
“Leadership experience” is pretty easy to “get” if your kid joins a club and they give everyone a title. That’s what happens at some grad school clubs, for example. “Career Secretary” “Co-treasurer” “Head of Fundraising”
Yeah. . . . it happens.
IMHO for grad school these are the keys – law and med – GPA + test scores + some credible relevant experience
Ph.D. is more loose depending on your area of study AND the school and program you wish to complete. This is because you’re applying to be mentored by an individual professor, often, and so you’re subject to that person’s needs at the time and his/her evaluation of your abilities. It’s more idiosyncratic. Not all Ph.D. programs are funded by the school. It depends often on how much grant money has come in (GOP tends to cut that budget for science and research grants and is currently attempting to tax grad students on their waived tuition benefits–a potential cost to each student of $8K to $10K per year. The student doesn’t see this money but the GOP bill as passed by the House would still charge them taxes on it. They are broke and they will need to pay taxes on money they never see.)
Masters – many masters programs are money-raisers (tuition-getters) for even top schools – Ivies included. They may or may not lead to a job. They may or may not lead to a Ph.D. program. And they usually cost a lot of money.
There have also been a proliferation of certificate and “executive” programs and concentrations – or whatever the schools decide to call them. I call them “educational products.” Even top schools are creating programs like this to bring in cash. This can be expensive for a student. So choose wisely.
Schools are businesses. They bring in cash and they produce educated people holding pieces of paper printed in Latin.
Prestige of an undergraduate degree is not meaningless, but how much meaning it will have in your life varies wildly based upon your profession and if you pursue additional schooling.
If you become a lawyer, people will ask where you went to law school all the time, and sometimes form opinions about you on that. People tend to ask where you attended undergrad only when discussing college sports or something similar—it comes up now and then, but usually not in ways that have much if anything to do with your career or social prospects.
If you become a doctor, hardly anyone other than other doctors and related people will ever know where you went undergrad unless it comes up when talking about college sports or taking your kids for college visits. Actually, even the medical school itself often does not come up—people ask what sort of doctor you are, not where you went to medical school or where you got your undergrad degree. There are such fewer medical school graduates out there that the achievement is GOING to medical school, not attending one ranked #10 versus #27. Specialization and residencies matter as much or more than medical school, so your undergrad degree gets pushed further and further down the priority list. Very few people will care that your Biology degree came from X versus Y by the time you become a surgeon, for example.
I think that your basic idea is good, OP. Lower-tier schools can provide the training you need for grad schools, often better than the more supposedly prestigious schools. Smaller schools often have one-on-one mentorship that larger schools reserve for their Ph.D. students.
I can’t link here to the following site because linkage to blogs are not allowed, but google the words “Ph.D. feeder schools” and “college solution” and you should come up with a set of graphs that show some surprising undergrad names of schools that produce a lot of Ph.D. candidates and the fields they specialized in.
Also–
going to Princeton or the like to become a doctor can backfire. You're competing against the top of the top. Only some of you will get into med school. If those same students, with their smarts and work ethic, went to a mid-range school, they'd get the best grades, esp. if not in California because that state is oversaturated with MD-wannabees.
For fun, check the list of schools that Harvard Law School accepted students from. The list is long and varied, from top-tier schools to state flagships, and small colleges that you've probably never heard of.
To be guaranteed a job practicing law AND one that can pay for school loans, people tend to choose a top 10 or 15 school. That means high GPA and high LSAT. You can major in anything for law.
For grad school, again, you have to have some sort of background that adds credence to your being able to do research and formulate new ideas in your given field, under a particular person's tutelage. Still: High GREs will smooth your path for most schools--esp those that have grant money to pay for the Ph.D. program.
Thanks for the inputs! I am glad to hear that my basic idea might not be very flawed as it often is. I feel better for dd just wanting to improve m*th cooking skill and learn stats at community college instead of filling up her sorely lacking EC. Her rather decent early visual art achievement might go waste by not adding anything during high school, which will leave only dull academics on her application even without some academic Olympiad participation.
Collecting more college courses won’t help much in admission since she already has enough, but the knowledge will help her getting better ug grade later, and might even land a research opportunity for developing the elusive blue m*th in college lab, even though she won’t have time for doing it on her own for some high school research competitions. Beside, what good would unwanted volunteer do for character building, or everyone-gets-some,1-hour-per-week club’s co-treasury position for actual leadership experience? Adcoms are supposed to be able to see the shallowness anyway right?