Hothead wondering whether university faculty or reputation.
April 26, 2011 8:24 PM   Subscribe

Should an incipient PhD student shoot for the adviser or the program?

I'm a current sophomore thinking extensively about where I will do my PhD program. The current front page post about PhDs got me thinking: should I shoot for the adviser or the school?

I'll start by saying that I'm a science undergraduate specializing in a relatively niche-y (but relevant) field of agricultural research.

I made this anonymous because I'm going to share some bashfully arrogant personal information, but it's true & that's why I want the advice.

I *really* don't think I will be in the same boat as most of the people who are "languishing for faculty positions." At my state university, I am in a research scholarship which consists only the top 0.003% of the class, I will have multiple published or under-review papers in my subject, I've won (and plan to keep winning) a handful of major research awards, ~3.9gpa, etc. I suppose I could bomb the GRE or have a nervous breakdown, but otherwise I'm set to kick grad school's ass. I'm in love with what I'm doing and I'm good at it. Suffice to say, I have plenty of choices when it comes to where I will do my program (which is far off enough that I want to optimize it as much as possible).

I have a tradeoff. I could work with people who are at the top of my field, but potentially at somewhat typical state schools. I could also work with less big names in the subject but get my degree from an ivy league or other highly reputable school. How much does the name matter, especially given that it might be accompanied by subpar advising (and therefore experience)?

Unless I burn out, I will be highly productive throughout grad school and emerge with a number of publications & well directed experience. So when I come out on the other side, will the name of my alma mater really matter that much? Outside academics saying "I got my PhD at Cornell" may mean a lot more than "I worked with the ___ expert of the world at Hawaii State" - I get that. When it comes to real hiring and firing in the ultra-competitive world of research, does the name matter as much as the work you've done?

I know the real answer is to get the best of both, but supposing I can't (or there is someone I really love at a less respected university) - is it worth it to choose the person over the school? Will it bite me in the long run? In my heart of hearts, I just want to go to a kind place and continue to do what I love. I'm afraid that if I got into a really competitive program, I wouldn't enjoy it and the person I worked with wouldn't care about me.

The professor I work with thinks I should just go with one of a few of his highly productive colleagues (who would be fantastic), but I'm just not sure how biased in that he is. Plus, he did *his* PhD at an ivy league.

(Also, I made this post because the of specific "I'm a stellar student at the moment" information, so nothing past was relevant.)

(Also also please don't hate me for being so arrogant. It's shameful to brag, I know, but my slightly unique experience is why I wanted to pose the question. I'm humble in person, I promise.)

(Also also also be honest. If I sound like a precocious kid who doesn't know shit, then give me some perspective. Maybe everyone who gets into a PhD program thinks they are as good as I think I am.)
posted by anonymous to Education (28 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's not shameful to brag. However, you should know that many of the people languishing on the job market could brag these same things.

I'll let others tell you about the sciences and how if you're in a science where work is done in labs, advisors really matter. I'll tell you instead what schools matter for: They matter a little for the name, both on the job market and at conferences. With an awesome school on your name badge people at conferences presume your competence, which frees you from having to constantly prove it (at least in my experience). That''s a nice thing. The other thing it gets you is professional socialization: Being at a school where every prof and grad student (or close) is top of their field makes you better. The peer effects are enormous, again, IMO. It's not just about learning the subject matter, but about developing into the kind of professional who really understands your discipline's culture, has good instincts (about what important problems are, how to frame your research, where and how to attract funding etc.), is all stuff you will pick up by osmosis. Going somewhere where everyone does this well is a huge advantage.

That said, "awesome school" means awesome in your field. Really, it means awesome department. The University of Hawaii could very well be the bestest in your field and be much better than an Ivy not known in your field (ok, yeah Cornell does agriculture, I know). Remember that the rankings you use as an undergraduate mean nothing for graduate school.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:34 PM on April 26, 2011 [4 favorites]


Just to clarify: I'm not saying best department is more important than best advisor. I'm merely pointing out some advantages of best department that you may not have thought of. I'm sure others will come along to point out the advantages of best advisor. It will be up to you to weigh and balance.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:37 PM on April 26, 2011


Advisor over prestigious school. No question, at least from what I've seen. Your publication rate & journals you land in, and thus, your success in the field, will piggyback on your advisor's credentials for at least the first couple years. It'll be his/her name landing in the top journals more than yours, but you'll be along for the ride, and thus padding your CV. After a bit, you'll be making the big journals yourself.

If you were under a less-productive advisor, you would have to claw for the big-name journals entirely by yourself, so you wouldn't land there for some time later, and it would take more work on your part.

For grad school, only people outside the field are impressed by a big name school. The people who matter (for getting a postdoc and junior faculty positions) will be looking at your advisor's reputation and recommendation, as well as your publication record.
posted by supercres at 8:44 PM on April 26, 2011 [3 favorites]


Advisor.

The 'best' school is more likely a research state school in a cornfield than an Ivy. Google National Doctoral Rankings and pick a few random disiciplines.

Talk talk talk to your undergrad profs. They are the keys to guiding you, helping you find a good match, and writing you lettters. Letters > GRE and GPA

IAAPhD
posted by k8t at 8:47 PM on April 26, 2011


What a great problem to have, anon! I work in research (medical/health) at a university in Canada. We are a so-so university (though in Canada the universities are all on a fairly level playing field), I wouldn't say the grad programs in my area are all that hot, but (some of) the leaders/researchers who are here are stellar, world-renowned, highly published, sought-after, etc. So the students - at least the ones who are up for some serious work - get great guidance and advice from the mentor superstars. The downside of seeking out a superstar, however, is that with research 'fame' comes commitments, committees, directorships, etc and therefore less time to spend with a grad student. So sometimes working with a big name might mean you are left to sort out a lot on your own, whereas, say, going with a relatively new researcher you are likely to get much much more of their time, guidance, mentorship, etc.
posted by lulu68 at 8:51 PM on April 26, 2011


A great school with a shitty advisor is a bad way to spend grad school. Your personal relationship with your advisor is way more important to your career than what school you went to. And there are some damn good people at non-big name schools.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:59 PM on April 26, 2011


Another vote for advisor. At least in my field, no one cares about what school you went to. It's about who you worked with and the work you did with them while you were getting your PhD. A big-name advisor will open doors to incredible professional experiences and opportunities for you.
posted by puritycontrol at 9:00 PM on April 26, 2011


Also: it sounds like you're doing everything right for a promising career in academia. But there are many many steps left to go, and plans have a tendency to go awry, sometimes for the better. I know you want to put yourself on the most solid footing you can, but don't set anything in stone at this point or you could miss a lot of great opportunities, or even a calling in another field altogether.

If you're only a sophomore, you have all of your upper-level major classes to go, then a possible RAship, then grad school, then post-doc. At each of those transition points, people have been known to switch their research focus, their subfield, or even their overall field of research. It's way too early to box yourself in, even by citing your existing credentials. Take things one step at a time.

It sounds like you're a big fish in a small pond right now; having the opposite experience (which WILL happen to you at some point) has a way of changing your perspective.
posted by supercres at 9:01 PM on April 26, 2011


Based on my own experience as a ABD PhD: Advisor. They will tell you more than any department, and will get you in touch with more people than any department. Your PhD is about how you become an academic, and the only person that will show you the way is your advisor.
posted by ddaavviidd at 9:02 PM on April 26, 2011


My feeling is that whatever you think is great about your 'nich-y' field will be have aged out a little bit by the decade or so it will take to do your PhD and postdoc (this happened to me, to a certain extent). I'd say go to the most powerhouse place you can get into, learn or develop some new cutting edge technology and maybe if you still feel like it apply your new skills to that (now) old field.

Also, I think the most common advice I hear is to go to the best possible school for your PhD, and the most famous lab possible for your postdoc. IOIHAP was right about the cohort/peer effects of being in a great program. He didn't mention that going to a school like that gets you an automatic network that turns out to be pretty useful once you become a PI. Also, at my high powered PhD institution I made important connections to students and PIs in a lot of different departments besides the one I was in, connections which continue to help a lot. So maybe even the bit about going to an OK school as long as that one department is great needs some consideration.

Of course, at said high powered institution, you'll have your pick if a lot of great PIs as well.
posted by overhauser at 9:05 PM on April 26, 2011


In my field, advisors are the ones whose connections help get you jobs. They also will set the tone for most of your graduate school experience.

But I would be careful to make sure that there's more than one person you would want to work with at your chosen institution. Not every advisor-advisee relationship works out, and it's helpful to have something to fall back on. Also, you'll probably need to assemble a thesis committee, and ideally you want them to be interested in your project, because that increases the odds of getting useful outside advice.
posted by en forme de poire at 9:07 PM on April 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


The professor I work with thinks I should just go with one of a few of his highly productive colleagues (who would be fantastic), but I'm just not sure how biased in that he is. Plus, he did *his* PhD at an ivy league.

I would think that the fact that he did his PhD at an Ivy League and is encouraging you NOT to do the same would be even more reason to listen to him, not to use as a counterpoint.
posted by kro at 9:28 PM on April 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


Your happiness and your success will depend almost completely on your advisor, BUT they won't depend as much on your advisor's reputation as his or her personality and skill as a mentor. You want to work for someone doing good science, obviously, but you really really don't want to work for a jackass who doesn't care about his or her students, won't put time and effort into teaching you how to choose problems, speak well, make connections, etc. etc. Ideally, this person should be your mentor, and you should be doing an apprenticeship under someone you respect and trust. Whenever you start to think about who to work for - before or after you accept a school - make sure that you talk to their current grad students when they're not around. I don't know how big your field is (mine is big), but in my case I chose a good school that's also home to many - not just one - great scientists, and then picked the one who was the best personality match. I would really, really, really suggest picking an advisor over a specific research subfield, because it turns out that almost everything is interesting, but a bad match with a mentor will be useless at best and abjectly miserable at worst.
posted by you're a kitty! at 9:28 PM on April 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


If you think you might ever deviate even slightly from your chosen niche-y field, you should go for the name over the advisor. Within your field, people well know that U of Nowhere is the BEST there is, but outside the field, no one cares that it was the best. Let's assume math is not your specific field, but you're good at it, for example. Now let's say you get your degree but then down the line decide you're done with Nicheology and you want to teach math at U of Somewhere. Well, at U of Somewhere, you're way more likely to be an interesting candidate to them if your degree is from a name brand ivy. That's just how it is.

I went to a name brand school for my PhD, and for the first two years cried every day, and that place still has a not small part of my soul. But it didn't kill me, and as others have pointed out above, you also get an amazing network of classmates that you might not necessarily get somewhere else. My advisors may not have been the best mentors, but when I can tell people that I had famous Dr. X on my committee, it actually opens doors that were previously not very open.
posted by gubenuj at 9:41 PM on April 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


To reiterate some of the above advice, you might "kick grad school's ass", but this would still be no guarantee of employment in academia (doing research). Even if you go to the most prestigious school, have a famous adviser, and publish a gazillion papers, there is still a chance that you won't get a job of the sort you want. Who gets hired depends not just on personal accomplishments, but also on things like departmental politics, connections, luck, etc. Plus, in any given year there may only be a handful of open positions and dozens of well-qualified applicants.

More to the point, ultimately your success in grad school will depend on your relationship with your adviser, and having one who's well-connected makes getting jobs much easier. But, unless you've worked with Professor X before, and know that she's exactly what you want in an adviser, it's dangerous to decide to go to a specific place just because Professor X is there. Once you get there, you might find that Professor X has decided to take another job, or she has too many students already, or has a hard time working with you. A wiser decision would be to go to a department that is strong in your field (meaning, it has several strong researchers), and if possible is strong in other fields as well, in case you'll decide you want to change focus.

Also, while the qualities of your adviser may be more important than the reputation of the department, the latter should not be discounted either. Even within academic circles people get impressed by the fact that someone got a PhD from a top-notch department. (But, as mentioned above, depending on the field, a degree from, say UCLA, could look much more impressive than a degree from Princeton.)

I was recently involved in the hiring process of an academic department, and a conversation between two professors went something like this:
"Bob has lots of papers, excellent letters of recommendation, and is in exactly the field we want."
"Yeah, but he got his PhD from some podunk place, and I don't know his adviser."
(And unless your adviser is Einstein, chances are very good that you'll be applying to places that have never heard of him or her.)
posted by epimorph at 9:54 PM on April 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


Advisor all the way. I nearly dropped out of grad school because of my first advisor, and I am not someone who quits anything, even when it would be advisable to do so. Which is probably why I stuck it out, cried most evenings after I came home for the better part of two years, and ultimately got a new advisor.

From the tone of your post, I suspect you will surmise that what I just said doesn't apply to you. And maybe that is true. But from my experience at a very good school with one of the strongest programs in my field out there, it is the advisor that makes - or breaks - a graduate school experience. Find someone who cares about you and your research and is genuinely interested in your success. Who you work with isn't just a line on your resume. Good advisors help you plot a career and help you network (and network on your behalf) to help you achieve those goals.

Also, unsolicited advise: take a year or two off between undergrad and grad school WOOF in New Zealand, crew a sailboat in the Bay of Bengal, to something other than school. The folks in my program (roughly 15%) who went straight from undergrad seemed to have the toughest experiences with a much higher rate of attrition than other populations.
posted by arnicae at 9:59 PM on April 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


Program and advisor win over school. If State U has the best microchemology program, then everyone hiring for microchemology will know that--and they'll wonder why you went to Ivy U when they more interested in biophysiography.

(And this is something you'll figure out when you get older -- sorry if that smarts a bit. But it's true that with grad school, prestige doesn't always go hand in hand with traditional undergraduate rankings. Even amongst top programs, it may be that everyone knows that Emory is better than Yale at X, no matter their reputation for undergraduate education.)

But make sure to choose a good program, not just a good advisor. Because... advisors leave. And you probably won't be able to go with them. Superstars get lured away by other institutions. If you're at a top program, then you'll be able to find another advisor.

Also, while your advisor went to an Ivy, presumably that was many years ago. It may have been a top program back then.

If you are chasing prestige and want the fanciest degree, go after the program and try to get past Ivy reputation.

Now, when you talk to those top programs, ask them where their recent grads have gone. If they don't know or won't tell you, that's a huge red flag. And also ask this of current students you meet at the program. The best grads from the best schools may still be getting jobs only at smaller, less research-intensive institutions. If you don't want to end up at a place like that, tread carefully.

Finally, a great resource isn't just your current advisor but the grad students around you now. Trust what they say about the job market. You don't sound arrogant to me, but maybe a tad naive. Because lots of really amazing folks aren't finding jobs right now.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:35 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


i'd suggest choosing a school based on the faculty; that said, be extremely cautious about choosing a school based on a single faculty member. There are many PIs who look great on paper - publications, funding, research topics - but are not good to work for for multiple reasons - they treat their students poorly, are only interested in their postdocs, issues of sexual harassment, and so on. If you select a school that has a single person with whom you'd like to work, you could end up hating that person's lab environment and have no place to go but another institution. Most programs in the sciences have you do at least three rotations. You'll spend a couple of months in three labs learning techniques and the feel of the lab. I've known more than a few people who came into grad school thinking that they knew who they'd do their PhD with who ended up in a completely different lab doing completely different research. Don't chain yourself to one lab when you're looking at schools.

As many have mentioned above, a school where you'll be surrounded by a group of intellectually challenging peers is great. For personal reasons, I attended two graduate schools in the sciences, transferring after my first year. One was a top ten kind of place and the other a top fifty kind of place. The first had great classes and great classmates; my fellow grad students were the type to go out to a bar and talk science with late into the night. The second had barely adequate poorly coordinated team taught classes and my fellow classmates were the type to go out to a bar and talk about sports and television shows.

You want to be someplace where you have smart people to talk to. Later in your career, you want to have friends and colleagues to talk to and to network.
posted by sciencegeek at 3:46 AM on April 27, 2011


Advisor. But:

I *really* don't think I will be in the same boat as most of the people who are "languishing for faculty positions."

EVERYBODY who goes into grad school thinks this. It doesn't change the fact that there are very, very, very few jobs to go around and many, many, many PhDs with which to fill them.
posted by synecdoche at 5:09 AM on April 27, 2011 [4 favorites]


I think your advisor is the most important factor, followed by the department, and then followed by the school as a whole. (Sorry, I seem to have accidentally written you a book...)

Advisor: You want the advisor who you think will be the best at helping you succeed. The fame/prestige of that advisor is one thing that can help you, yes, but also consider their advising style, their track record with past students, and so on. Because you have research experience and continue to work in research now, you probably have some idea of what advising style works best for you. In some cases it may be better for you to work under a relatively new professor who has excellent research potential and is also dedicated to their students, than under an established, well-known professor who is more interested in writing their latest textbook than advising you. (n.b. I'm not in any way suggesting that all famous professors ignore their students or that all new professors are super-dedicated to their graduate students - I'm just saying to consider their advising style as well as their prestige.)

Department: Consider whether there are faculty members in this department, other than your prospective advisor, whose research interests overlap with yours in some way. This is helpful if for some reason you need to switch advisors, but also helpful in forming your committee. Secondly, the reputation of the department within your field does play a role. It can be hard to get a sense of this, because we're used to thinking in terms of reputations of undergraduate institutions (prestige of the Ivy League, etc.), which don't necessarily map well to the reputations of graduate programs within a field. Look at the National Doctoral Rankings to get some idea of this - but also talk to as many professors as you can, to get their opinion of which programs have the best reputations in your field.

School: I think this the least important factor, which is not to say unimportant. Even though (for instance) Harvard's department in Field X may not be one of the best graduate programs in that field, I think people can't help but be a little impressed that you have a PhD from Harvard. So, don't discount it entirely, but it shouldn't carry the most weight.

Misc: An important factor that applies at all of these levels is funding. This kind of thing differs from field to field, so you'll have to look into it yourself. But generally - the basic graduate stipend (for being a TA or whatnot) will differ from school to school. Some departments may have more money than others. Some advisors will be able to support you on their research grants, and some won't. So this is something to think about both when you're comparing potential advisors (do they have grants?) and when you're comparing schools (what's the standard stipend?)

tl;dr: Go somewhere where you can do the best research you can, and build the best track record (publications, awards, grants) that you can. This is likely to depend more on the quality of your advisor (not just prestige, but also their ability to advise you well) than on the name of the school. All other things equal, the name of the school can help, but don't pick a terrible advisor at an Ivy League over someone you'd love to work with at Miscellaneous State U!


Oh, and...

I just want to go to a kind place and continue to do what I love. I'm afraid that if I got into a really competitive program, I wouldn't enjoy it and the person I worked with wouldn't care about me.


Yes yes yes! Grad school is hard. Even when you are completely in love with your research, it is not always fun. Don't make it harder on yourself by going into a program where it seems like you will be miserable.
posted by pemberkins at 5:42 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Pick a school based on the faculty. You're not trying to impress laypeople, you're trying to impress and network with people in your field. And yeah, the idea that an ivy league school is more impressive re: graduate research than a state university seems pretty naive.
posted by J. Wilson at 6:18 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Since Pemberkins has said everything, it's not surprising (s)he hit the point I wanted to make - I chose my grad school because there were three profs I was potentially interested in working with, and the other schools I was looking at had exactly one. Changing advisors is easy compared to changing schools, and I didn't want to crash and burn if personalities or funding didn't work out. And since the department had a strong presence in my field, it made picking a disseration committee easy, as well as good collaboration with other students. I also noticed that students who graduated on the half-term (in January) often would pick up a half-year post-doc with one of the other profs while getting ready for the job market.
posted by aimedwander at 7:36 AM on April 27, 2011


Cornell's ag school is a state school, get an Ivy degree at a state school.
posted by mareli at 8:38 AM on April 27, 2011


Lots of good advice here. Pick the best faculty you can find at the the most prestigious university that will take you.

If you pick a grad school whose ass you can kick you will be short changing yourself. Pick the most rigorous program you can find and take the ass kicking yourself. The people who washed out of my top tier Ph.D. program first were the ones who clearly believed they were the ass kickers. It was oh so satisfying to watch them fall!
posted by txmon at 9:03 AM on April 27, 2011


If you pick a grad school whose ass you can kick you will be short changing yourself.

This is a good point, and prompts me to clarify something I said above regarding competitive programs. A competitive program, as in "competitive in the field because it is awesome; will make you a good competitor for jobs," is an awesome thing. But a competitive program, as in "The grad students all hate each other because there is lots of internal competition," is a not-so-awesome thing, at least from my perspective.

At the end of the day you need to choose a program which will help you succeed. A department that is "competitive"/well-placed in the field will certainly help you do that. A department full of internal bickering, competition and general unfriendliness might push some people to do really good research, but it wouldn't work for me. Only you know what kind of departmental atmosphere will work for you. You won't be doing yourself any favors by picking an "easy" program, if there is such a thing, but I think you have to know your personal needs and pick the kind of department where you'll get your best work done.
posted by pemberkins at 10:46 AM on April 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Lots of good advice here. One little mantra that I found helpful when I was considering grad schools, and which rings mostly true to me in retrospect, was "don't go somewhere where you will be the smartest student; also, think hard before you go somewhere where you will be the dumbest." This is a pithy, oversimplified way of saying that the personal interactions you have with your classmates are a big part of grad school, and you'll learn a lot more if you are surrounded by people who are sort of on the same wavelength as you.

Anyway, my general advice would be to go with the great advisor, as long as a) he/she really is a great advisor (as judged not just by the quality of their papers and their reputation in the field, but by talking to current/former students), and b) his/her institution is at least "decent," the precise definition of which depends on your field. There really are some advantages to going to a top place, both in terms of doors it opens later, peer interactions while you're there, visits by top people in your field, access to resources of all types, etc. A great advisor at a less-great school can outweigh those advantages, but recognize that you are putting many of your eggs in one basket -- if you choose to switch specialties, or decide you can't get along with the advisor you thought would be great, you might be SOL at a not-so-great place. Also, part of grad school (at least in my field) is learning to build new collaborations and projects with colleagues -- if there's only one person around you who is interesting to talk to, you might miss out on this part of your education.

And, okay, one last piece of advice. It's great that you're enthusiastic and confident -- you will need these traits later! Your record sounds impressive. But please do not go into grad school with the notion that it is just a hoop you have to jump through before the world can acknowledge your brilliance and grant you the faculty position (or whatever it is you want) that is rightfully yours. (Not saying you feel this way.) You have things to learn from your peers and your professors; seek those things out, every day. Right now it sounds to me like you are a gifted academic; ultimately you need to become a very accomplished academic (with accomplishment defined along a few different mostly-orthogonal axes), and those are somewhat different things. I wish you the best of luck.
posted by chalkbored at 12:32 PM on April 27, 2011


In the humanities, so it's a bit different, but.. I've been on a lot of search committees and Ivy grads often don't make the cut. It's the advisor and the program that counts, and those big state schools can be the real powerhouses when it comes to research (in fact, they're usually our top choices). "Name brand" is completely different at the graduate level.

Having said that, I'll repeat what others have mentioned: don't go to a school to work with *one* person. Academics, especially prominent ones, move around a lot. And you want to look at what other graduates of the program are doing now.
posted by media_itoku at 1:36 PM on April 27, 2011


If the potential advisor who is the "best" is at a program that hasn't come to be considered extremely prestigious because of that person's presence on the faculty, I'd see it as a potential red flag. Why are they the lone shiny-impressive-awesome aspect of that department? What's wrong with the department that having a world-class faculty member isn't attracting major funding/top students/other impressive faculty members? Or worse, what's wrong with that particular researcher that they're hanging out in an unstimulating or unsupportive academic environment when presumably their fame and accomplishments mean they could go anywhere?

Of course, by "extremely prestigious" I mean "extremely prestigious within your field," not "Harvard-Princeton-Yale." Because as others have said, the name-brand stuff is about impressing folks outside of academia and is basically irrelevant to your planned superstar academic career. Yes, if it doesn't pan out the way you hoped, you might wish you had picked Harvard. But if it doesn't pan out the way you hoped, you'll be wishing lots of things had gone differently and I'm guessing the lack of ivy in your life will not be at the top of the list.

I'd say identify the absolute-top-tier programs within your field, with reference to the representation of your niche subfield. Then identify your top choices of advisors. Then apply only to the options in the intersection of these two sets. This was my strategy and resulted in me applying to just two Ph.D. programs. Sometimes it felt terrifying to have given myself so few chances! I got into both programs and am very happy where I ended up. If I hadn't gotten in to either, though, my plan was to delay grad school by a year to improve my application and then try again. A delay of a year or two is nothing compared to the difference doing your Ph.D. at the right place could make. When you were in high school, did your counselor tell you about "reach" schools, "match" schools, and "safety" schools? That scheme is no longer valid -- you shouldn't have any safety grad schools on your application list.

If you're so good, there's no reason you shouldn't have the best of both worlds. Don't settle. You're worried you wouldn't enjoy being part of a very competitive program? If you're a top student, I suspect you'd find yourself not enjoying anything but being part of a very competitive program (I mean top-ranked, not cutthroat). Most of what I learn on any given day, I learn from my peers. This is invaluable and I wouldn't dream of trading them for a kinder, gentler, easier crowd just so I could be left alone to do my thing. If you go to grad school and you're not being challenged, if it doesn't sometimes make you despair with how little you know in the face of all the possible knowledge, if it never keeps you up late at night or gets you so frustrated you want to cry or makes you feel like everyone is smarter than you... then I would suggest you're doing it wrong.
posted by ootandaboot at 10:17 PM on April 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


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