auzmtz

I couldn't agree more. I certainly wouldn't feel confident making a recommendation about a decision I don't know as well as my own. Nevertheless, don't underestimate the importance of working with well-respected professors in your sub-field who are eager to oversee your research. If your top 50 can offer you that opportunity, you're far from crazy for considering it over your top 10s. I had a similar choice (top50 v. top10 in my sub-field) this year. And I did more than consider the top 50 program--I chose it.

I just declined UVA's offer of admission, so another funding spot should open up. Good luck!

I just sent a PM. Best of luck!

This echoes something I read earlier today on The Chronicle of Higher Ed: "The myth of the academic meritocracy powerfully affects students from families that believe in education, that may or may not have attained a few undergraduate degrees, but do not have a lot of experience with how access to the professions is controlled. Their daughter goes to graduate school, earns a doctorate in comparative literature from an Ivy League university, everyone is proud of her, and then they are shocked when she struggles for years to earn more than the minimum wage. (Meanwhile, her brother—who was never very good at school—makes a decent living fixing HVAC systems with a six-month certificate from a for-profit school near the Interstate.)Unable even to consider that something might be wrong with higher education, mom and dad begin to think there is something wrong with their daughter, and she begins to internalize that feeling. Everyone has told her that "there are always places for good people in academe." She begins to obsess about the possibility of some kind of fatal personal shortcoming. She goes through multiple mock interviews, and takes business classes, learning to present herself for nonacademic positions. But again and again, she is passed over in favor of undergraduates who are no different from people she has taught for years. Maybe, she wonders, there's something about me that makes me unfit for any kind of job." http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937/