Any benefit to having your Bachelor's and Master's from different schools?

[Jolie717]

I've heard several classmates mention in passing that they didn't want their degrees (undergrad and grad) to come from the same institution/university. Is there any reason that those of you who are more seasoned might agree with this viewpoint?

I'm guessing that this manner of thinking might be attributed to wanderlust (working on those GRE words lol) rather than actual merit, especially as my perspective is that of an older student with a family.

Thoughts?

[Chandru1]

I have heard that academics need their bachelor's and PhD from different schools in order to show that they have worked with a diverse range of people and ideas. For pure clinical work, it likely would not matter one bit.

[twinguy7]

Chandra brought up a very good point about working with different people and cultures when you attend different universities for undergrad and graduate school.  I also think you gain a perspective of how good ro bad your undergraduate school was as far as teaching, being personable, structure of the 2 programs, etc.  And as an undergraduate you kind of have to think you undergrad school is the best and that they are doing everything thats the best for you, but when you get to a new university you start to realize things and also hear things about your undergrad school that you would not of considered or listened to if you had stayed and believed they did everything right and had the best professors, etc. So I think it is good.  

[MangoSmoothie]

I think the points above are largely the reason, but also you learn a lot by working with different faculty, which I do think would end up mattering for clinical work. When you're an undergrad at a school, you will have had a lot of the faculty that teaches the graduate coursework (if not all of them). By going to a different school, you can meet professors with different ideas and different focuses and interests. Even now I have professors who disagree with work being done by professors at other unis, or published materials, and it's good to get both points of view or different points of view. Our undergrad professors are great, but their points of view aren't the only ones, and people in the field do disagree with each other on a range of issues.

 

It's a different field and from the oppposite perspective, but at my undergradaute school, I was a lingusitics major, and it was very difficult for linguistics majors at my school to enter my uni's graduate program. The logic was that the faculty wanted the students to go elsewhere and experience other professor's view points and interests. Quite a few of the faculty at my school were interested in and did field work on the same, regional Native American language, and so as undergrads we got a lot of exposure to that langauge by way of examples in the coursework. If you went somewhere else in the country though, for grad or undergrad, the professors are going to focus on different languages. The same is true for this field, since there's so many different areas faculty can focus on. At my current undergrad university, there's actually not really any faculty that self-reports on their bio that they do research wtih or have an interest in an area that I am highly intersted in, so I might (and did) seek out graduate schools with a faculty member or two who do have the same interest I do.

Edited February 18, 2015 by MangoSmoothie

[lisa19]

I'm currently enrolled in the masters program where I did my undergrad, so I can speak to the other side of things. It's probably true that I'm not as exposed to other points of view, but I would say that's the only disadvantage. All of my pre-reqs transferred over with no problem. While my classmates were stressing about making friends, moving to a new city, finding where their classrooms were, etc., I was just focused on doing well in my classes. I've had the opportunity to continue the research lab I participated in during undergrad. I already have strong relationships with faculty.

 

However, I didn't always want to stay at my undergrad and I applied to other schools as well. When it came down to deciding where to go, this was one in a few factors to consider. I also picked this school because of costs, location, electives, clinical placements, etc. Unless you really don't want to attend your alma mater, I think applying to your undergrad as an option would be smart. And then you can weigh your options more carefully when you have the offers in front of you.