Reply to Looking back, do you wish your child attended the least expensive college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]College prof here again, grad admissions look at 1. Gpa 2. Board scores 3. Letters of recommendation 4. Outstanding achievement as an undergrad either in reasearch, leadership, interning, community service 5. Whether the applicant's propsed graduate research agenda aligns with the university's offerings. The actual school your undergraduate degree is from means very little. [/quote]

I'm a college prof too and mainly agree with this, but not 100%.  We do think of GPA in relation to quality of undergrad institution.  This is more at the edges than fine-grained distinctions though.  If someone is coming from a school outside the top 80 or so national liberal arts colleges or top 150 or so colleges and universities, the evidence besides GPA needs to be particularly compelling and the GPA needs to be very high.  And if someone is coming from a very strong school (say T30 in either category or a school known for being particularly rigorous in our major), that can outweigh a mediocre GPA.

This is in part due to our perception of the school and its rigor, but also goes into the letters of recommendation--the faculty at the very weak schools are not likely to be particularly active in the field and also may be less versed in what would constitute a very strong student so their letters carry less weight.  Conversely the faculty at top schools are people whose work I am more likely to know and I know the caliber of students who have worked with them in the past, so their letters carry more weight.[/quote]

Another college prof here who just did PhD admissions for a top program.  Immediate PP is spot on.   My advice to students who want to do a PhD in STEM is to make sure that you need to choose a school where get top-notch research experiences that lead to strong letters and ideally that also have research that will give you opportunity for poster sessions or maybe even a conference visit.  That could be through a summer program but it's hard to really do enough to reach that level in one summer.  You can save money though by going to state schools, flagships generally have strong programs with serious classes and you can find a strong research lab there.

The reality is that smaller , lower ranked schools with less "World class" research don't prepare students for PhD programs as well.  I personally have seen these students struggle because they don't understand what the expectations are.  Not all, but some.  Not saying to go the expensive place (Ivies are also a waste for engineering often over flagship states for sure, and I say this as a prof at an elite private), but it's not like every school will be the same as long as they offer the same courses in this sense. 
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