Personally, I would say no it wouldn't be crazy to turn down MIT if you feel that Berekley has a better fit for you. However, it would be crazy to turn down MIT based upon the fact of "its the bay area" or "it seems nice" or "the people seem cool there" or "the weather is nice".
Lets face it, everyone in Engineering knows that Berekley is a top 5 school. No one will ever reject you from having a Berekely degree where another has an MIT degree. But all of Engineering constitutes maybe 5% of the total population. Who knows when there might be a time where having the recognition and prestige of an MIT degree will really hold numbers. MIT no doubt about it is the best known school across the world for Engineering, I don't think anyone can argue that.
Who knows if there ever will be a situation when your trying to move out of the Engineering side and will be speaking quite often with Lawyers, Medical Professions, or Business Executives. Many times in a company they want the bigger (more prestigous) name to make the ultimate decision and be the leader of the group just because no one will really question them and it makes them look good. If you CTO of some startup company, it doesn't look bad when your CEO/founder can say ya our Chief Technology Officer graduated from MIT to a few potential contractors when the company is looking to get signed for work. Again, this might be a rarity for you if your planning on just being in Academia, but it is something to consider.
Also, yea California might have more startups, however you can't discredit the fact that Boston/Cambridge does not. The two biggest known off the top of my head are Bose and iRobot, both MIT graduates. And let's not forget 5 minutes walking you have Harvard right there who graduated many Entrepeneurs. If you want to start a company, you'll start a company regardless of where you are.
To discredit the beautiful of the Charles river (the river sitting right there on MIT) and all that Boston has to offer as well is crazy. Boston is beautiful year round and even better you get a big city feel, with an actual small city atmopshere. Unlike in Cali, you don't have to go far in Boston to get what you want. Let's not forget that Boston is called the College City for a reason. From MIT there must be a good 20 schools that are all walking distance from each other, don't think you can say the same about the Bay area.
Then again maybe i'm biased cause I was born 30 mins away from MIT and performed my undergrad 10 mins walking from MIT.
Either way congrats! As an MIT PhD grad told me, "if your excellent at what you do, then you reflect your school, however if you make mistakes or not so good at what you do, then your schools relects you" So regardless, you can come from a small unranked school, and do extremely good work and people will be saying "Wow this school must have a strong program", but just the opposite can happen if you go to a top school.
I have recently been accepted into the Masters' program in IE dept at Gatech(GT) and Vatech(VT).
And now i have to decide which school to choose.please help..
my profile is listed in my account info. I dind not apply to really cool schools like Stanford, MIT and Cornell because the costs there would have been extremely high.
1. Both the schools have almost similar costs for the two yr program..on paper cost of attendance at GT(Atlanta) is ~65K and at VT (Blacksburg) is ~62K.
2. The respective locations are Atlanta(large town) and Blackburg(relatively smaller university town). Will this have a bearing on the kind of jobs offered? Where do I have better options for getting a good job?
3. My research interests are more into production systems and manufacturing rather than OR and stats(GT specialization). VT seems to have more faculty working in production systems and robotics. While GT IE program is more specific for OR and Logistics, VT offers a good bouquet.
4. The IE dept of GT is extremely LARGE while VT is modest in these terms. So if I do have a change of interest that I might have more options at GT than at VT. But this also means that GT is adamant not to fund masters' students in IE program by giving them RA's and TA's. while VT might have better options.
5. Further I am highly interested in PhD. I did not apply to PhD in these programs becuase I was misled into believing that getting into PhD is very tough for international students and then you might not even get the masters' spot. Hence I applied to the masters' program. Now first going ahead with masters' program, I will have to take some loans from my home country. And then I will not be able to go on to PhD straight after masters' since I need to repay.....
Is it possible to ask the graduate program cordinator at both the places to consider my application for PhD programs at this point of time. Will it be worth it?? Plus would I even get a consideration.
I have also applied to PURDUE, Penn State and Texas A&M in masters' I am hopeful of admits there as well. Since the decision in any of these places isnt made, should I inform these departments to consider me for PhD or dont consider me at all (Since IMO , speaking in terms of ranking, costs and return on investment-- GT=VT>PSU>PURDUE>TAMU)
6. I am an international student from India. and both the places have good numbers of familiar people. further i am open to meeting new people. I guess socializing scene is almost equivalent at both places.
