The importance of undergraduate prestige

Question

Hello,

I understand I am quite young for a forum such as this one, but I have a question. How much does undergraduate prestige effect the chances of getting into a top B-School. I have a few options regarding college. The best being NYU and University of Michigan. However, these schools will cost me a significant amount of money to attend. I could go instate to University of San Francisco and I have good scholarships which would cover a lot of the tuition. Will this decision to go to a less prestigious school come to haunt me later in life when I try to get my MBA? Or is GPA the only factor that really matters coming out of college.

Thanks for your time!

bb · Answer

Welcome to GMAT Club and wow! Great job researching your next steps! It is fascinating that you already are planning to do an MBA. I would probably encourage you not to base your decision about the matriculation for a Bachelor's purely based on your MBA plans. I would definitely not get into severe debt just so that you can slightly improve your application chances for a degree you may or may not get. Who knows, may you will decide to become a lawyer or perhaps an entrepreneur. Bill Gates never graduated and many other successful people did not either. I would say this about prestige - it matters but to a degree and probably matters more indirectly. First of all, the positives of a pedigree. If you went to a well-recognized undergrad school, that's the first impression you make on your resume and your education section and basically speaks about your high school performance and your focus on self improvement that you went to the best place you could (with a caveat of financing obviously as some people cannot afford a non-state school). But more importantly, the higher-ranked national colleges/universities usually result in a more prestigious job offer, brand name employers, and potentially accelerated career growth - those things matter quite a bit for the MBA and that's what makes or a breaks a candidate. Their job, professional achievements, and their overall trajectory. At the same time, you need to consider this, if you are planning to go to Michigan for example but then you will have to work a job at the same time to pay for it and your grades will be terrible and your overall experience miserable, that is going to screw you up more than going to a community college. The main question that the AdCom asks is - what were you able to with the resources and opportunities you had and how did you compare to your peers. If you went to Michigan but did worse than average, then your brandname undergrad will not serve you great. At the same time, the U of San Francisco may not be as high ranking but if you thrive there and you really blossom and do a startup or you are able to somehow distinguish yourself in a quantifiable way, then that's a stronger play. However, here is the reality. Most people have a hard time distinguishing themselves in a quantifiable way above their peers during Undergrad. Their minds are elsewhere and they are not as worried about scoring points and distinguishing traits as grades and dates. Unless you win The Pebble beach golf tournament or do some other amazing thing at U of SF, you are really going to look average on paper. That's the reality that makes Michigan look better because likely there you will also look fairly average but with a much higher caliber of students and the average at UMich is not the same as at a state school average. You will have more opportunities to stand out, more plays, and will grow more (potentially as the caliber of students is potentially higher). As to your GPA, it matters which school you went to and if the AdCom knows that program. Some schools are well know and adcom knows that getting a 2.5 on the calculus class is a miaracle at Stanford while they may not be as forgiving of 2.5 at Santa Monica College. 3.5 at a small school is not the same as 3.5 at a national or famous private school. Just how it works unfortunately. You can play with the WAMC tool that we built and see how different undergrad projections affect your admission chances. I don't want to push you towards debt. Undergrad debt has been out of control lately and I am very sensitive about that. You don't want 200K of undergrad debt + another $150K of MBA debt.... but one of the very successful GMAT Club users felt that his no-name undergrad made his admissions and M7 application an uphill battle and set a ceiling he could never break. I don't know if it is true - there is no way to find out but that something that stuck in my memory. At the asme time, he was not thinking about getting an MBA while he was in undergrad, so you can be more successful as you have your sites on standing out and not just spending 4 years partying, getting passable grades, and trying to score a date

P.S. Also MBA is not a must have - people achieve career goals without an MBA often and in other times they get their employers to pay for PT or EMBA's that are not picky about undergrad degrees and not as competitive. These are my 2 cents. Would love to hear from other folks too, esp if you have a diff perspective!

Hatakekakashi · Answer

I'm going to keep it short

While undergrad prestige matters, it comes down to the GPA. A 3.9 from a normal college is better than 3.4 from NYU at least on paper. There are students from state schools attending top b-schools

Having said that the development you get from a top school is because of the peers, everyone around you is smart. I think you can make it to any school provided you have a good background and study well through your undergrad, have good ec's or leadership positions, strong gmat and work ex

The next factor as bb pointed out, don't get yourself into Debt. So attend the school where you can minimize debt, maximize peer learning and getting involved in clubs etc

Ask yourself do you want to be the big fish in the small pond or a small fish in the big pond

Regards,
HK

Admissionado · Answer

FuturePlanner2021 : The prestige of your undergraduate school unfortunately does make a big difference in the MBA admissions process. That's not to say you can't get into a top program from a lower-ranked public university, but it will be harder for many of the reasons mentioned by the other two posts and then some. I can't speak to your personal finances, but you should look at the long picture and the importance of the network coming from well-known schools with impressive networks. There is financial value that might outweigh some debt you might take on to put yourself in a different class of program. Take a look at the below article from a decade or so ago. I can't imagine that things have changed much since then. The trends and statistics have probably held fairly consistently over the years. https://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/15/t ... ss-school/ Good luck, Admissionado

FuturePlanner2021 · Answer

Thank you for the great replies.

I was accepted into UCLA this weekend and plan on attending with an ROTC Scholarship to deal with the high cost. I will have a manageable amount of debt coming out of a prestigious university and have the ability to serve my country. My goal is to maintain at least a 3.5 GPA but shoot for about a 3.7. Your responses definitely played a role in my decision making. The insight is greatly appreciated.

The importance of undergraduate prestige

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