phdcandidate022014

My 10,000 ft observation suggests there may not be great cohesion within the department. If you look at the faculty profiles, a large fraction are dual appointments. It is unclear about the support that the department itself is getting. The website is a bit stale and appears to (at least superficially) reflect a department that maybe lacking a bit in identity. It comes off as if the department is a bit neglected, so it is comprised of excellent component parts (leading researchers) but it's largely something being that's a side project of sorts. Despite these observations, I applied to ESD because the coursework looked interesting and because it is such a broad discipline that I would have great flexibility in developing my dissertation research (I can't think of another department where you could study under a leading healthcare policy expert or a leading product development expert). So the appeal of "I'm interested in many things, so entry into this program will give me flexibility to choose one of many interesting paths" was one of the keys to my application. I'm a civil/environmental engineer by training. I mainly want the opportunity to enter ESD to become part of the MIT ecosystem. The goal would be to leverage the opportunity to go into some Boston-based industry, perhaps a start-up. The chance to take multiple courses in the business school is particularly appealing. To be honest, I'm ambivalent about whether or not I get accepted as pertains to the program itself (but I would be disappointed if I don't get in because then I don't have the chance to be part of the MIT ecosystem). I haven't gotten an invite to the visit weekend, so I may have been rejected already for all I know. I spoke with a few current ESD students that were late in the program (3-4th year) and very interestingly none of them knew what they were going to be doing post-graduation. It's almost like ESD is the perfect program if you're indecisive about your future direction. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation based on a very small sample size. Finally, if you're looking to go into academia, there are only a few equivalent programs out there (Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, and I think a school in Singapore). I'm not sure if having an ESD PhD would hurt your chances of going into academia in your BS/MS discipline, like yours which is Mechanical Engineering. Depends on the individual, I suppose. You can check out alumni profiles here http://esd.mit.edu/people/alumni.html It is a giant pain to evaluate lots of profiles since you have to click in each individual link for each individual last name letter. Ugh.

OK so a couple of notes to pass along. First, my colleague that also applied to the PhD program (Healthcare focus) called the department last week and asked for a decision over the phone. The decision was a rejection (I don't think he's posted results to GC yet). I haven't heard my decision yet (I also applied to PhD, Energy/Environment focus). What is strange is that someone just posted an acceptance to the TPP Master's program on GC and claimed that MIT's acceptance e-mail said that the ESD committee evaluating PhD applicants had not yet made their decisions. I'm inclined to think MIT did not erroneously give my colleague a rejection, so it's likely true that at least some decisions for PhD applicants have been made.

Well, MIT rejection just came in. This is a tough nut to crack. The rejection stings, mostly because I want to get up and be part of the MIT ecosystem, the department itself was a poor fit for my research background and interests. One more application still outstanding to a different MIT department, we'll see how this one goes.

I recommend looking at other lists, too. There are a few grad school lists out there, each of which uses a slightly different methodology. http://www.phds.org/graduate-school/graduate-school-listings-and-rankings I would recommend the one above. It accounts for subjective things like reputation, but also has metrics that are (in my opinion) more critical that aren't accounted for in US News. For example, the rankings in the link above can include the National Research Council's quality ranking (which is a mix of objective/subjective rankings of schools based on assessments by 50 faculty members), research productivity (which includes number of publications per faculty, number of citations per publication, amount of grant funding, and grant awards per faculty), student outcomes (how successful are students that graduate from the program), and diversity. What's neat about the tool above is you can create your own custom ranking based on what's important to you. So if you're only concerned with the subjective ranking and research productivity, you can create the ranking based on those metrics alone. Interestingly, at least in my field, the more data-driven rankings differ fairly substantially from US News. One thing the ranking does is level the playing field in terms of program size. One of my targeted engineering programs is very small compared to others. It has an excellent reputation but because of the measures used in US News, it ranks somewhat low on that list (still top 20), but in the data-driven ranking it comes out to 1 or 2.

Hockey - sorry to hear it. What was the specific domain within Environmental that you targeted, out of curiosity? Did you get an e-mail or was it on the website (or did you get an e-mail to go to the website)?

OK the logjam appears to be clearing. Two people just posted results, one was a reject for MIT Civil (Transportation) and one was a reject for Environmental. Somehow this makes me relieved that I'll be hearing something soon, even though this is consistent with the announcement that someone posted more than a week ago!

Another consideration is timing. You'll be in school for about four years +/-. You will be in your career for 50+ (or whatever). It would seem to be a very short-sighted decision to base your choice on what will amount to a handful of thousand of dollars over a four-year period (think about it: You're in school for about four years, you're in your career for 50+...a difference of 20 spots could have very substantial impact on your long-term career earnings). I'll qualify this by saying I have no clue what the cost is to manage lupus, but based on your description my wild, uneducated guess would be that it would cost you a couple-few thousand dollars per year. Another thought is to go back to the top school and convey your thoughts on the healthcare to see if there would be room to provide you with some sort of healthcare supplement. There is no harm in asking for a better offer, especially when you have a very specific reason.

Well, it's Thursday, and it appears MIT is going to use every last minute for their decisions. I'm just going to assume we won't hear anything until 11:59 Saturday night. Interestingly, this week has been very quiet for all MIT departments except for a rash of Master of Architecture rejects that came in the last day or so.

Hah! Awesome. I've come to loathe the number "3,591". That's the number of new e-mail I've retained in my Gmail account since a couple months ago when decision season began. So at any second I can look up in my Firefox tab and see "Inbox (3,591)" and realize that I have no new e-mail. People had it easy 10-20 years ago when all you had to do was wait for the mail to arrive in a given day. If you got nothing, you could rest assured that nothing would change in the following 24 hours.

I personally enjoy the frequent checking. It's been a little maddening because I got a couple of my acceptances very early on (which sounds kind of crummy to say, because on the flipside it was great getting acceptances to excellent programs right off the bat), so my expectations for the other programs have been very high, which has led to some frustration. I'm at peace knowing that in about two weeks I won't be waiting for any more decisions and can move on to the next phase.

My favorite is the "sour grapes response": "I didn't want to go there anyway". I have my e-mail open continuously and tend to check it shortly after a new one comes in. I've developed quite a distaste for any e-mail that comes in that isn't associated with a decision, particularly in this last week when I've been expecting decisions from a couple schools.

My guess is that the open day of March 14 is for everyone. A colleague of mine that also applied to ESD PhD program called the admissions office up last week and found out that they are "not close" to finishing their evaluations of the PhD applications, and that they "hope" to finish by mid-March. They also indicated it could be possible that people receive admission AFTER the open date. So I see what you're saying, koo, but according to my buddy it is wholly possible (and perhaps likely) that admits will be notified up to and following the visit day. I'll get in touch with you if I get accepted and make the trip up for the visit date.

Try to think about it in a cost-benefit way. Schools typically have an established number or range that applies to all graduate students - so "officially" there is often only so much flexibility they can have. One example is found here: https://gsc.mit.edu/programs-initiatives/col/. Depending on your specific school and department, you will typically have flexibility to "officially" do work outside of your TA/RA. In this case, you will have to be up front with your advisor about what outside activities you're doing (and you may even need to fill out paperwork with the school depending on what the activity is), but the bottom line is that in terms of the officail money that the school can pay you in the form of a stipend, they can have some flexibility but there is usually a firm cap. There may be other ways to stack other money on top of your stipend through the school, but again most schools have limits on what that can be. Your best bet, if you truly are unable to 'make ends meet', may be to do some side consulting or teaching/tutoring. You'll have to weigh the time and effort you put into that outside activity with the opportunity cost associated with taking your mind and time away from doing additional research towards your masters/PhD. In that case, you may feel like a loan would give you the needed financial support while not providing you the mental taxation associated with hustling outside of the school to get more money.

Is there a visitation day or weekend? In that case, yeah, you need to reply. If not, figure out if visiting the school ahead of time is important. If so, again you'll be replying to them. Otherwise, unless there's something in the letter suggesting that you should reply (to at least acknowledge the offer), you don't have to respond. Not sure if you applied for a master or PhD, but it may be a good idea to touch base with any professor(s) you corresponded with ahead of time (or mentioned in your SOP) just to let them know you were accepted.

I'd recommend going an extra step - rather than blindly e-mailing profs and asking for a TA/RA, make a direct pitch and mention specific skills or experience you have and how that would be an asset to them in their lab/group. You may even browse the prof's CV or google around to see if you can figure out what funding they currently have. That way, when you do make contact, you can impress them with the little bit of legwork you did and they may look upon you more favorably. Make the contact short and sweet, don't write a paper for them in your e-mail. If I'm a professor, I'm much more likely to look at someone for an RA that says "Hey, I saw you have NSF-GRP-1000420 Grant, I wanted to let you know I've been offered admission and am strongly considering. My decision is contingent on securing an RA or TA. Based on my background with XXX, I feel like I can contribute XX, YY, or ZZ to the referenced research project. My experience in these areas would be more broadly applicable to your other work in XX." than "Do you have any RA or TA available, here is my resume".