jacobsch

Hi I'm about two and a half years into my chemistry PhD program, and I just found out how low my school's ranking is. My adviser told me that given my undergraduate success I could have easily gotten into Berkeley, but I was very naive about graduate school when I was applying. Anyways, after looking online about the importance of going to an ivy-league school in terms of job placement I'm starting to get a little nervous. Some people suggest that the quality of the school is extremely important, while others say that publications are most important. I'm already a co-author of three papers (the highest impact factor of the three is about 4.8) and am currently writing three more papers we hope to have published in similar journals by the end of this summer. My adviser wants me to have 15 publications before I graduate which I don't think is unrealistic given the amount of data we've already taken and analyzed. So I guess my question is: will I be able to get into a good job like at a national lab or a good research oriented university? or are my job options really as limited as some people say because of the name of the school I'm attending? and if the prestige of my university does turn out to be super important, what can I do in my remaining years to be as strong of a candidate as possible?