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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Grad school is much more important than undergraduate school.[/quote]

And yet, if you leave bumble fxk Alabama with a low ranking degree in biology you're less likely to get a spot in med school than if you did well at Harvard College as an undergrad.

And if you took an arts / humanities degree at Harvard you may get your PhD paid for. whereas coming from Alabama (or other similar place) not likely at all.[/quote]

This is not true at all.[/quote]

Why do you say that? (I’m not the PP you’re responding to, but I think what s/he has said is accurate.). Where/whether you go to grad school is largely a function of where you were an undergrad and how well you did as an undergrad. Middle of-the-pack Harvard undergrads will get into better grad programs than all but the most exceptional students at schools that aren’t considered academic powerhouses. And the middle-of-the-pack Harvard undergrads are likely to have higher GPAs than the top 25% at larger schools. (You can see that as fair or unfair — I’m not opining on that issue — just saying GPAs skew higher.)

While it would not be accurate to say* you can’t get there (top grad or professional school) from here (college with no prestige), the odds of that happening are a helluva lot lower than they would have been had you came from one of the most prestigious colleges and that's true even in primarily stats-driven processes like law & med school admissions.

So, yes, if your grad program is much more prestigious than your undergrad school, your undergrad degree probably ceases to matter.  And lots of people may go up a notch prestige-wise (e.g. only go to grad school if it enhances their resumé). But top grad programs (and good but not great ones) tend to favor undergrads from a handful of very prestigious colleges.

*and quoted PP did not say[/quote]

Can you cite where you are pulling your stats from? Thanks.[/quote]

If you want to turn this is into a research paper, I’ll eagerly await your findings.  I’m reflecting on 40 years of observation, mostly in law and academia, of people from both sides of the prestige divide navigating college (generally) and grad school admissions.[/quote]

Law is pretty much prestige driven.  Which field in academia?  [/quote]

Primarily, one soc sci (not ec) and one STEM field (not CS/math/engineering), with some exposure to other adjacent soc sci & humanities disciplines).  And, again, PhD admissions — not outcomes.

Also, FWIW, I don’t think people should be obsessed with/driven by prestige. I just think it’s worth understanding when, where, and how it matters.  To me, the “grad school prestige is what really matters” mantra is just kicking that can even further down the road. Also, for most people/jobs none of this stuff matters. Sure you might not get a Supreme Court clerkship or a tenure-track job at Yale. But there are countless other reasons why that’s true and it doesn’t mean you can’t have a successful and/or rewarding career in law or academia or whatever it is you want to do.  (Though there are lots of other reasons why that dream might not come true either.  It’s not as if we live in a society wherein every talented, hard-working, well-educated person thrives/is appreciated/is amply rewarded for their efforts or abilities).[/quote]

How many data samples did you have? Are you a parent of children applying to these fields?

BTW,  graduate schools tend to admit lots of the students who did the under in the same universities.  In many foreign countries, there are very good research institutes that do not have undergraduate programs, and for these institutes, the graduate students admissions are evenly distributed between elite and non-elite universities.[/quote]

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