Is a degree from a small school a handicap?

[Chris11]

Hi, I'm about to enter my 3rd year at a relativitly small school. I'm majoring in mathematics, minoring in physics. As I'm passionate about math, I would like to pursue it further at the graduate level; however, I'm not sure if a graduate program would reject me based upon the fact that I attended a small school. It is a 'university,' but is no where near the size of 'city type' universities such as UBC, CALTECH, MIT, UA, eccetera. What do you think?

 

[twofish-quant]

Hi, I'm about to enter my 3rd year at a relativitly small school. I'm majoring in mathematics, minoring in physics. As I'm passionate about math, I would like to pursue it further at the graduate level; however, I'm not sure if a graduate program would reject me based upon the fact that I attended a small school. It is a 'university,' but is no where near the size of 'city type' universities such as UBC, CALTECH, MIT, UA, eccetera. What do you think?

As long as you have the standard "good things" (i.e. recommendations, grades, undergraduate research), then no one is going to care.

 

[jtbell]

I'm not sure if a graduate program would reject me based upon the fact that I attended a small school.

No. I went to a small private liberal-arts college that had about 900-1000 students. I got into grad school at Michigan. The other three physics majors in my graduating class also got into grad school, IIRC at Ohio State, Tufts, and Washington (St. Louis). One of them actually went on in math, not physics, because she was a double major who leaned more towards math than physics.

This was 35 years ago, but I can't imagine that things have changed dramatically since then.

 

[Chris11]

Thanks for your responses guys.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Caltech is not big. Fewer than 1000 undergraduate students.