Anonymous wrote:My child is a junior and I'm wondering how much your undergrad school matters if you are planning to go on to get a Ph.D. - If so, what specifically does matter in college selection?

Here are the top 3 things:

- pedigree: is the school one that's known to the average faculty at a PhD granting institution. This typically means a top-50 to top-100 schools in the field (an Ivy, well-known privates, all state flagships/landgrants, a few select SLAC).

- strength of undergrad major: is the program one that's comparable to the undergrad program (or better) than what they have at their institution. Has the applicants at GPA that's within the top cohort of their institution.

- faculty: did the applicant work with faculty (and get strong recommendations from then) during the undergrad years. Typically, you can gauge the chance of that happening by looking at the pedigree of the teaching faculty itself: did they get their PhD from a top-50 school in their field?

Keep in mind that unlike undergrad admissions, grad school admissions are done by faculty, not university administrators.

Anonymous wrote:
Tenured prof at an R2. 'Research experience' as an undergrad can be pretty useless in some fields. We look for very high grades ... Prior teaching experience is a plus.

Note that R2 universities have a balance of research and teaching. The Ph.D. is a research degree. If you want to stay in the field and get a tenure track position at a research university, then you should choose the best R1 Ph.D. program available. You can move from research to teaching or administration, but it is almost impossible to move in the opposite direction.

If you want to become a top chef, get a low-paying job chopping onions after midnight next to Jose Andreas. Then you see him fuse different cuisines into new recipes. You need the analogous experience in your field, working with the masters and thought leaders.

It depends on the type of program. I have a PhD in psychology and I went to a SLAC that sends a relatively high % of grads onto PhD programs. I think some of my alma mater's placement, though, has to do with what SLAC students desire to do after graduation. When you're someone who likes school and who doesn't have a major that lends itself to an obvious career path, a PhD starts to look more attractive. That's not really a knock on PhDs--I am glad that I have one because my career would not have been possible without it! But at the time, some of my decision making was influenced by not knowing what I could do without a graduate degree.

I was able to get research experience in a lab at a larger, research-focused school over the summer when I was an undergrad. That experience was very helpful for my grad applications. There were research opportunities in psychology at my SLAC, but it wasn't the same as what I got to experience at a more research-focused school. But also, I was able to fund that summer research opportunity through a grant program that my SLAC had that was specifically intended to give SLAC students big-school lab experience. So I ultimately felt like I got the best of both worlds: I got to go to a smaller school where the teachers liked teaching, but I also got to experience a "real" lab in a psychology research area that would not be taken on by a SLAC professor.

Anonymous wrote:^^^^ I should have also added that one reason undergraduate institution does not matter in many programs is because you can see the coursework and research experience but most of all because of the GRE. If a student from Northwest Alabama State gets a 96th percentile GRE, in my opinion they are more worthy for admission than a person with a 90th percentile GRE from Harvard. Pedigree simply means nothing to us (not speaking for all programs as other Profs here have said it matters for them). That is also a reason why it is very very sad that so many schools no longer require GRE or other standardized test. It is very very hard to know if someone has the requisite intellectual horsepower without it, especially in today's universities where the median grade at many elite schools is now an A-

Eh, the GRE doesn't even correlate well with IQ. This cut-off approach to the GRE is out of step with the top PhD programs I'm familiar with in several different disciplines in sciences and social sciences. It just is kind of a fluffy test--and kind of odd to think that the same test that doesn't even correlate well with general IQ is going to be an important predictor of who is going to be a great PhD in Literature, Chemistry or Anthropology etc. Now for professional schools and the MCAT or the LSAT--yeah, it's all numbers driven--and maybe being more discipline-specific those are more relevant tests.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on field. I can't believe nobody mentioned GRE or other relevant exam. At my "very good" state school we immediately delete any applicant who scores below the 97th or so percentile. Also, math and stats grades are extremely important if the area is at all quantitative (even psychology does a lot of data-heavy work these days). Communication ability also important. Prior research experience a plus. Rec letters come next. Undergrad school least important of all factors, at least for our program. We barely look at it.

Except many schools are still not requiring GRE’s.

Which is why this PP’s response is suspect and the other two researchers ring true. Even in their heyday, standardized test scores didn’t have this much impact.

You can call my post suspect but I am indeed a tenured professor at an R1 university who is in charge of PhD admissions in our department and we do NOT have test optional admissions. There is no way to standardize intelligence across applicants without *ahem* STANDARDIZED tests. It is the most critical weed out tool that we have when trying to get from 100 applicants down to 2-3 admits

I'm the STEM prof who said GRE wasn't highly important in our admissions--we are not test optional though. The GRE just isn't that great of an indicator --the math on it is high school math--it's much more telling how someone did in differential equations--and what their work says about their ability to apply relevant math knowledge-- than how well they remember their high school geometry.
Most of our students do score very high on the test, but some of our best students did not. I think a cut off would waste a lot of great potential in favor of some people who are too focused on the map, and not enough on the territory so to speak. Now a low score would be one of the "alarm bells" I mentioned--and that for us is the main function of the GRE. If someone is acing standardized math courses like CalcIII/Diff-Eq/ and quant heavy chem courses but has a low quant score, I worry about cheating/fraud in the application and investigate more closely. If someone has a low verbal score, it's usually because they are a non-native speaker and the GRE is catching gaps the TOEFL/other language tests don't. That can matter since you it can take nuanced verbal skills to understand and communicate scientific research.

We are a larger inter-disciplinary department and have funding for more than 2-3 PhD candidates a year though so we don't need to cull the applications quite the same automatic way.

^^^^ I should have also added that one reason undergraduate institution does not matter in many programs is because you can see the coursework and research experience but most of all because of the GRE. If a student from Northwest Alabama State gets a 96th percentile GRE, in my opinion they are more worthy for admission than a person with a 90th percentile GRE from Harvard. Pedigree simply means nothing to us (not speaking for all programs as other Profs here have said it matters for them). That is also a reason why it is very very sad that so many schools no longer require GRE or other standardized test. It is very very hard to know if someone has the requisite intellectual horsepower without it, especially in today's universities where the median grade at many elite schools is now an A-

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on field. I can't believe nobody mentioned GRE or other relevant exam. At my "very good" state school we immediately delete any applicant who scores below the 97th or so percentile. Also, math and stats grades are extremely important if the area is at all quantitative (even psychology does a lot of data-heavy work these days). Communication ability also important. Prior research experience a plus. Rec letters come next. Undergrad school least important of all factors, at least for our program. We barely look at it.

Except many schools are still not requiring GRE’s.

Which is why this PP’s response is suspect and the other two researchers ring true. Even in their heyday, standardized test scores didn’t have this much impact.

You can call my post suspect but I am indeed a tenured professor at an R1 university who is in charge of PhD admissions in our department and we do NOT have test optional admissions. There is no way to standardize intelligence across applicants without *ahem* STANDARDIZED tests. It is the most critical weed out tool that we have when trying to get from 100 applicants down to 2-3 admits

Anonymous wrote:What about commitment to activities outside major? My kid is doing well in STEM major but two clubs are music based. Would that eve be considered?

No, it's just not relevant. In fact, _too_ much outside interest can distract students (I've seen it happen). Sometimes they also try to cling to their undergraduate habits ("I always work out before dinner") even when that's simply not possible anymore.