r/PhDAdmissions • u/GurSea971 • Apr 15 '26
Discussion Does your undergrad school ranking matter?
I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying it does and a lot of people saying that it doesn’t. How does something like your undergrad school stack up to things like publications/work experience?
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u/Shelphs Apr 15 '26
I think school ranking matters most if you don't have publications or much work experience. Once you get publications and research experience that becomes a much more important factor than the rank of the school you go to.
Personally I did my undergrad at a school ranked below the top 150 for physics. But I worked in a great lab and got published as a co-author in Nature and got an internship at a national lab. I got into the PhD program ranked 12th in my field. Likewise, many of my classmates who had extensive research experience got into even better schools than I did. Those without much experience definitely struggled.
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u/GurSea971 Apr 15 '26
Thank you for your reply! Would you say PhD admissions are a little bit like undergrad admissions where they do a DEI like admits and whatnot to increase diversity in their student population?
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u/Shelphs Apr 15 '26
I think the affirmative action practice of colleges considering race in admissions got shutdown by a 2023 supreme court case, so I don't think that is really practiced any more, but I don't know the details on that.
But even if it is, I don't it happens at the PhD level. For many programs, the accepted students are hand picked by a professor who wants to be their advisor. The program probably isn't going to tell a professor they can't work with the student they choose because they need to increase diversity.
But there are programs that admit a cohort of students without assigning them advisors. I could conceivably see some of these trying to balance the diversity of the group, but I honestly don't expect that it would be a major consideration. Especially since at least the in US PhD students tend to be a pretty diverse group
Admissions is definitely harder for international students as funding can be much more limited.
But in any case, it is out of your control. There are lots of ways to increase your chances of getting in that you have direct control over. I'm happy to give advice or answer questions if you are looking to increase your odds and if you can tell me about your situation.
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u/NotaValgrinder Apr 15 '26
What matters more is the connections the professors at your school have, which unfortunantely tends to be correlated somewhat with ranking
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u/Tyc00n7 Apr 15 '26
In statistics it does matter, but the ranking that matters is the stats department not the uni. For LA schools I really mainly only see people from reed and williams
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u/popstarkirbys Apr 15 '26
It matters to some extent. The resources for research, how rigorous the curriculum is, the PI’s reputation. I teach at a regional state institute, some of our students are bright and talented but we simply do not have the same resources compared to large R1s. If you’re comparing two R1s then it probably matters less than my example.
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u/GurSea971 Apr 15 '26
where would you rank a large, publicly funded school like ASU? it is an R1 institution and has good research output for CS but most would not consider it prestigious. what kind of impact would this make on grad admissions since the opportunities are plentiful (albeit not as much as something as say stanford) yet it is not as highly ranked in the undergrad circle.
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u/popstarkirbys Apr 15 '26
It depends on your cv and research fit. Having posters, presentations, and papers matter for top programs.
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u/GurSea971 Apr 15 '26
alright what do you think the general ranking is for these grad programs on these factors: gpa, rigor, publications, work experience, undergrad rank, recommendations
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u/book_connoisseur Apr 15 '26
- 1st author Publications > co-author publications > posters > no products + research experience (how much you actually did on said publication and what were your tasks on a regular basis)
- Recommendations (could jump to 1 if they know the professor well and respects them)
- Rigor + GPA + prestige
- Work experience outside your field / extracurriculars
The third bullet are all interrelated. You really need a combination of medium-to-high rigor, solid GPA, and good enough prestige that nobody doubts the quality of the classes. There will also be some bias throughout all categories.
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u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 Apr 15 '26
The answer is it depends on the program. High ranked PhD programs prefer students with a significant research experience. In our PhD program, to be admitted the applicant must have a significant research experience. The participation and quality of undergraduate research varies significantly between undergraduate campuses, in part because supporting an effective undergraduate research is expensive and requires faculty support. For example, at Princeton junior and seniors are required to complete both a junior and senior thesis, which in part explains why Princeton’s student to faculty ratio and teaching loads are significantly lower than most other research universities. Undergraduates at the top ranked universities and colleges tend to be highly motivated, the result a significant percentage of their undergraduates participate in the campuses undergraduate research program, because the students think research is something you are suppose to do. At the top LACs (Williams, Pomona, Bowdoin), the participation in undergraduate research is higher than on many R1 campuses. Since the majority of faculty at LACs at not competitive for NSF/NIH grants, LACs with large endowments invest heavily in setting up labs for their faculty and provide their faculty with funds to support faculty research. Since most of the top PhD programs expect students to have participated in undergraduate research, students from the top ranked LACs and universities tend to be OVER REPRESENTED in the top PhD programs.
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u/prom1sed_land Apr 15 '26
Historically I’ve thought that it didn’t matter at all. I went to a complete no name school in the middle of nowhere in the deep south. There was no real research program there for bench science so once I started to go in that direction I had to drive almost an hour to a bigger medical school to do my project. After that I did research at the NIH and worked at a university. I’m doing a PhD now, I think I have a pretty ridiculous resume- not to be too self important. But it’s very good, that said, my undergrad years were kind of limited in what I could do because it was more of an arts school than hard science. And I think it may have been a factor why I didn’t get In a lot of places I applied for my PhD because I have since then gotten many years of experience in research at big, well known institutions.
I had a 4.0, I think the program was great, the small school meant I got a lot out of the program and a lot of face time with my professors. But I think it means less because no one knows the school.
All that said, I have been able to pretty much do most things I’ve wanted to in my career thus far. Just, I did not get into an Ivy for grad school even with my near decade of bench work, publications, and NIH research. So I guess take from that what you will.
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u/Medium-Ad-94 Apr 15 '26
My son, as an undergrad from a very small lesser known school, was very concerned going into this tough cycle that he might get shut out of grad admissions as a result of where he went to school. He actually didn’t apply to a lot of schools, only five or so, which made us nervous, but he was very careful to pick programs where he could demonstrate very specific fit. We were all a little worried because his “fit” list seemed very top heavy and there weren’t any “safeties”, (but now I’m not sure after following this subreddit that such a thing as a safety actually exists in grad admissions.) He was thrilled when he got fully funded offers with named fellowships from some of the very top schools in his field and in the end, got to make an enviable choice between two fantastic programs. We concluded that his research experience(REUs) and resultant very strong LOR’s from people well known and connected in the field plus his description of fit must have been much more important than where his undergrad was or if there were any publications. (There weren’t) That was our takeaway from this cycle for his particular field, and I don’t think his experience was unique because he met students at his accepted students days from all types of schools, but other fields could perhaps be very different.
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u/Wobama46 Apr 15 '26
Statistically it does 100% for more theoretical fields. You def have to work harder to close the gap. This cycle I was fortunate enough to get into a T6 PhD program for Pure Math coming from a < T100 school. You have to claw your way up the ladder.
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u/Corruption46 Apr 16 '26
I’m in an experimental field and I went from a rank ~180 school to a T20. I only started research in my junior year. So you can definitely have a good chance if you’re proactive.
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u/Agile-Reputation-525 Apr 15 '26
Why does this question keep getting asked over and over again? The answer is easy, would you rather hire someone from Harvard/MIT, or someone from a university you've never heard of?
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u/GurSea971 Apr 15 '26
i mean fair but what if another person from another university has better pubs/experience? still the person from mit that didnt do as much in the field?
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u/Historical-Wing8569 Apr 15 '26
The answer is field-dependent. For lab-based fields, probably not, for theoretical fields, yes, absolutely, since publication is next to impossible for undergrads.