katie katie katie

Disclaimer: Although I posted this, I do NOT actually agree with it. But it was the most unique piece of advice I ever got on the subject - so I wanted to quote it here. I agree completely with dzk's two points in general, but I think it's a different way of looking at things that could be applicable in unique cases.

Hey! I got admitted, in CS, for HCI/data mining kind of stuff. Not sure if I will accept yet, though. What are your interested in for CS?

When I visited one of the universities I got in to, I was given a piece of friendly advice: If you really, really love somewhere, head over heels, completely smitten - consider not doing a PhD there. It is very rare that someone will get a faculy position i nthe same place where they did the PhD, so if you have two options for grad school that are both very good, but one you are in love with in terms of location and other things that may last a while, go to the other one. Also, here are some things I am considering (in addition to above, maybe, I'm not convinced), which were not mentioned: - who wants to go here? is this a name-brand school, where people may want to go because it's OMG, ___! ? i do not want this: many students there are there for the wrong reasons, and could have had a better match at a lower-ranked uni. of course there are also the brilliant students, but a fair number of brilliant students are just people who lucked out with undergrad research advisors and have grown an enormous ego. also not compelling to me. - who else lives here? for example, consider California. I'm not a resident, and I don't like the weather. But a lot of people want to be in california, and the cost of living is quite high. i am choosing to say no to all california schools simply because i don't like the prospect of high living expenses for being surrounded by people motivated by totally different reasons than me. - what about babies? i am planning to get married, and i don't want to rule out having/adopting children over the next half-decade. obviously, a reasonably family-friendly environment is good. since i am a female in cs, this means that i am looking for evidence in each school of successfully graduates students who had or adopted children when both they and their spouse were in school or working, and how long ago that was. These are a bit different. Obviously I am considering all the other factors listed in this thread.

A concern I didn't see expressed in other replies to this is about, well, what after grad school? From a family of academics in sciences, it's my understanding that the older the applicant for a faculty position, the less likely. Indeed, I have been told of the "postdoc limbo," a situation where basically older grads and folks with international phds have postdoc positions for decades, in some cases not moving on to faculty. This is just something I heard about, and have no first-hand experience with (except friends/family in the international phd case), but it seems like something that would be helpful to clarify before proceeding in this major thing. But I think you should go for it, regardless of the risks, if that is what you really want. Part of academia is that titles and positions aside, the idea is that you love to do what you do, and if that's the case, and you're willing to sacrifice (potentially) higher pay (postdocs get very little money, and if you get stuck in the limbo, it is not the happiest thing, but people get by and everything is fine), then everything will work out fine.

I think some school prefer non-masters students, and see masters and phd as two disjoint tracks. It may help to consider whether you are competitive for this schools, in terms of GRE scores, past publications and work, and so forth.

My SO and I applied, and in our personal statements, we basically said that we are getting married and we will give preference to schools that accepts us both. (We just applied Fall '09) So we don't know if it's working yet. I have gotten many admits (8 applied, 5 admit, 1 visit and we'll talk, 1 reject, 1 not making decisions yet), and there are so far no admits for both of us, but no rejections either. So it's a really scary time right now, but hopefully something will work out. There's also risk in that we are applying to the same programs, which admit ~10-15 people per year I realize it's a risky move. Any thoughts on what alternatives exist at this point (since we have a number of admits that are one-sided) to both going to school? I am definitely going to grad school, but what could he do as an alternative if this gamble does not work out? PS, we applied to comp sci phd programs