# Grad School Admissions - How important is my undergrad institution?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grad-school-admissions-how-important-is-my-undergrad-institution/732183>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 22, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grad-school-admissions-how-important-is-my-undergrad-institution/732183 "2015-09-22T04:38:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 10

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**Author:** ![2ManyTacos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/3da27b/32.png) [@2ManyTacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2ManyTacos)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grad-school-admissions-how-important-is-my-undergrad-institution/732183/10 "2015-09-23T00:53:17Z")

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> [@Emiliana](#):
>
> It seems unlikely that the discipline is heavily quantitative but what do I know? OP, as you will have gathered, the process is somewhat field dependent.
> 
> More to the point, why a PhD? In many fields, and I suspect Communications is among them, the job market is not nearly promising enough to invest so many years in a doctorate.

Yes, I would like to become a college professor, whether at a community college (which is the most likely option, and is also where my own college career started) or at a four-year school. The [outlook for such occupations](https://www.natcom.org/academicjobmarket/) is actually pretty promising, too, though I wouldn’t actually secure the requisite degree myself until sometime in 2021 or 2022.

But I’ve been told by some of my own professors the exact same thing you said in your earlier post: don’t do it unless I’m _paid_ to do it. It’s a tricky situation within the broader discipline because far more _fully funded_ PhD’s are available to Communications students who have already attained the Master’s degree, yet virtually _no_ MA programs (aside from the one at Ohio State University, which is the ONLY fully-funded Master’s program I’ve hitherto encountered) come with funding.

I should point out that my school HAS sent at least one student (that I know of) to Penn. State’s Annenberg School of Communication (arguably the most prestigious Comm. school in the US), though that student completed both her BA AND MA at my university before going to her PhD program. I, meanwhile, am basically relegating myself strictly to the doctoral landscape post-undergrad, at least for now.

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