How much does prestige of institution matter?

[caranciaest]

For a master's degree, how important is academic prestige of the institution if I want to go on to do a PhD afterwards? What are the key factors that determine whether I can get into a good US university for a PhD - proposal, references, grades, institution in that order or is it different?

[potential_phd]

I am not on a committee so I cannot say for sure, however I can tell you this - I did my undergrad at a state university that is only top 400 (not a bad school, but not super prestigious). The Master's students usually ended up at top schools with huge packages for their doctorates because the department worked so hard to make them look like good applicants. 

I attended a top 50 university for my Master's, ranked 2nd in its country. I cannot think of a single Master's student in my program that has graduated here and moved on to a good school with full funding - I know there have been some, but much less common. The department just does not prepare you for applications - perhaps since they are so prestigious it is just not a concern and they think the name will carry enough. 

[selecttext]

not a whole lot. if you have good grades, attend a conference or two and maybe even publish some place, you can get into pretty much any university for phd

[compiler_guy]

Probably references and research done at masters are the most important

[caranciaest]

not a whole lot. if you have good grades, attend a conference or two and maybe even publish some place, you can get into pretty much any university for phd

 

 

Probably references and research done at masters are the most important

 

So things like presenting papers at graduate conferences and getting papers published in graduate journals, etc. will be a big help? I assume it'll be quite hard to get papers published in the big academic journals as a master's student?

 

I was thinking of setting up a graduate research group with a reading group and seminar series etc. at my master's institution, maybe even a graduate journal. My uni has an in-house publishing house next door to our department so maybe could get it ISBN registered etc.

 

Will that sort of stuff be relevant at all for a PhD committee?

 

(this is for the humanities in case it differs between fields of study)

Edited April 1, 2013 by caranciaest

[student12345]

You want to publish in an established journal. You should get your master's from a department that has a lot of well-known and well-connected faculty in your field and make sure that they'll work with you when you're ready to begin research. This is far more important than prestige of your institution.

Edited April 1, 2013 by kimolas

[potential_phd]

You can sort of get your foot in the door with publications by attending conferences to start with, because usually they publish the works presented somehow. While this isn't a big academic journal, you then have publications on your resume that you can use to get published in a large academic journal.

[selecttext]

So things like presenting papers at graduate conferences and getting papers published in graduate journals, etc. will be a big help? I assume it'll be quite hard to get papers published in the big academic journals as a master's student?

 

I was thinking of setting up a graduate research group with a reading group and seminar series etc. at my master's institution, maybe even a graduate journal. My uni has an in-house publishing house next door to our department so maybe could get it ISBN registered etc.

 

Will that sort of stuff be relevant at all for a PhD committee?

 

(this is for the humanities in case it differs between fields of study)

 

You should set out with the intention of publishing your work - perhaps by doing a manuscript based thesis. Many masters students could easily publish their work but simply don't.