omg what do i do

Thanks for the reply! I hadn't thought about the connections aspect, but I'll ask around; I think my professors are familiar with both departments and I can see what they think. As for the campus visit, I'm looking forward to that, as I think it will help clarify some of these issues: are the negatives as negative as they look, and are the positives as positive as they look? I'll try not to go completely crazy in the meantime.

Note: this is an exceptionally long post! You’ve all been warned. I used school “A” and school “B” to talk about the schools because I’ve posted a lot on my actual account and didn’t want to accidentally offend anyone. I’m applying to graduate school in the humanities. On Wednesday, I’d been accepted to three schools and I was gearing up to accept an offer from school A (assuming all goes well at the campus visit). I thought school A, a well-respected public university (not Michigan or Texas, where it’s so selective it might as well be private, but probably one tier down from that), offered me the best mix of research fit, reputation, and quality of life. Because I would like to work outside academia, I felt that the program offered me some opportunities to get experience in the non-academic field I’d like to enter. It’s in a large city with a lot going on, and I have family nearby. The major cons of school A are thus: it’s a very good program, but not top-tier (I think it’s “ranked” around ~24, if you put any stock in rankings); the funding is a fellowship from the graduate school + 4 years of TA, and I'm not that enthused about teaching. I was okay with this, because I liked school A better than schools C and D. Then, school B (another large, state university) decided to accept me. In my subfield, school B is probably the most well-known and certainly the “top-ranked” — school B graduates are teaching at school A, not the other way around. So, not only is the research at this school top-notch, but they also offered me a killer funding package that vastly outstrips what school A offered me (and is still better than the offers I received from schools C and D). The problem is that this school has some really serious cons. First: I obviously haven’t met the department (their visit day is next month, and I’m planning to go and keep an open mind), but I don’t have a great feeling about it. I felt that they were jerking my chain throughout the applications process, and wanting to know if I was a “serious” candidate before they wasted a fellowship on me. One of my POIs used to teach at my current institution, and I’ve heard that she is not a great adviser — doesn’t get stuff back on time, isn’t interested in her advisees, etc. She wouldn’t be my primary adviser, but she would definitely be on any exam committees — I work on X in region Y, and she works on X in region Z. This comes on the heels of the fact that one of my POIs at school A (who also used to teach at my current institution) is supposed to be a wonderful adviser. Second: the university, on the whole, is not as well-respected as school A. I don’t honestly know if this matters or not. Some people have told me it does, and some people have told me it doesn’t. School B suffers from the fact that it is near some very prestigious schools, so the state’s best and brightest go there and everyone else ends up at school B. I also don’t know if this matters given the fact that I am interested in a non-academic job. The school I’m currently at is somewhere between school A and school B — top research, reputation as a party school. Considering how much the party school reputation has followed me, I was really eager to jump on school A and have a degree that people take seriously. Third: school B is in a terrible location, and its campus is something straight out of the 1970s. It’s far from my family, and though it’s close to some bigger cities, the town itself doesn’t have a lot to do and is not that nice — it’s made a resurgence, but it isn’t great. The campus is not that nice either. I am sure that judging a school based on its campus is slightly shallow and short-sighted, but I also know that the quality of the campus matters a lot to me; my current school is on a beautiful campus, and I really do like walking across campus and seeing how pretty the town is, how the buildings are, etc. So knowing that at school B I’m giving that up for a campus that hasn’t been updated since 1974 hurts a little bit. Especially because school A is downright gorgeous. So I feel like I can’t win either way. If I pick school A (or schools C and D, which are similar), I’m turning my back on the prestige, the money, and the departmental reputation of school B, and possibly permanently damaging my professional career. If I pick school B, I feel like I’m giving up some of my personal happiness (and I’m giving up the school-wide reputation and amenities of A). Also, if I pick school A because I don’t want to sacrifice some of my personal happiness, then I feel like a gigantic failure who wasn’t ambitious enough to stay on the fast track -- I can't shake this feeling that if I were really serious about my field, I would just jump on this offer and suck it up for however long. So, yeah. I have no idea what to do. Thoughts?