Prestige of undergrad school?

[christina_bme]

Maybe some current grad students can help me out with this line of speculation. I got my B.S. in bioengineering from a small state school that isn't well-recognized nationally. I had a 3.76 GPA, which I always considered to be not too shabby, until I applied to grad school. The rule of thumb I had always heard was that anything above a 3.5 is fine, but higher is better. Now I worry that my 3.76 from Nowhere State isn't comparing well to similar GPAs from Stanford and MIT. Do you think the perceived prestige/difficulty of your undergraduate school matters in graduate admissions?

Not that I can really do anything about my GPA now...just curious to see what others think.

[123456789]

Since most schools grade on a curve, prestige does play some role since it indicates what kind of students you were up against. But a 3.76 from anywhere is great and I'm sure that isn't going to count against you. One thing I seem to be hearing from schools is that it has far less to do with numbers (except maybe as a filtering method) and more to do with how your interests and abilities fit into their department, or a specific professor. So it's really a crap shoot.

[red_dragone]

I have a 2.9 and I got into Cornell, so I think that's not a deal breaker for most schools. *Shrug* I think as long as the rest of your app is strong, you fit a faculty member and that member has money for you, being from a small uni isn't a big deal.

[campingisintense]

I think it does, but not in the "name brand" way that you are implying.

I got a 3.6 from a top 20 school. But I think the most important thing was that my school offered me a lot of opportunities to do research with really excellent PIs. In my mind, that access to good researchers is what helped out the most, not the "school name" + "3.6" statistic.

[Scratchawl]

I'm in the same boat as you- small state school of "unknown" :wink: prestige. Just to ease your mind (and stroke my ego) I have had no trouble getting in to top schools (ranked 1-5) with very nice funding packages. I'm guessing that my well-defined research interests and experience really helped (as did the near-4.0 GPA and very good GRE, if I say so myself).

But my point is we can make it to the big leagues, too! Best of luck, us state schoolers have to stick together.

[grae313]

The prestige of your undergrad institution is going to be noticed. Some schools weight it more heavily than others. However, if you are trying to show that you belong at a top 10 institution, I think you would want to show that you easily outclass your peers at your current institution. I come from a nowhere state school that is absolutely unheard of, but I got a near 4.0 gpa, good test scores, and publications and now I have fellowship offers from top 5 universities. If you are really aiming for the top, I think you need to have an excellent application all around. A gpa of 3.7 look OK at a top program, but less and less OK at less prestigious programs.

[crossedfingers]

This is what I got from a person who served on an admissions comittee:

Each school has a fixed scale that measures their applicant pool. Their is a scale for GPA, a scale for GRE, a scale for prior research, a scale for interests and believe it or not a scale for the prestige of your undergraduate school. Based on this scale, each applicant is given a score. If your GPA stinks, you get a lower number on the GPA scoreboard, but if you happened to graduate from an elite school, you get a higher score on your ' prestige school' . These scores are all added up to get a total score. Then starts the ranking.

I thought the process was completely random, but this does make sense to me in some way. It sounded random, but fair. you could cram all you want and get a perfect GRE, but if your GPA stinks, ha u just got served!

i want the gamble to end.