Hi all,
Many people talk about the so-called "intellectual incest", so I wanted to ask a question on it. A year ago, I accepted an offer for a Ph.D. program at a Top20 school, but the school was where I also went to undergrad for. In retrospect, and to be quite frank, I was quite lazy with my GREs, my GPA wasn't good, so I only relied on my extensive research experience for admission. Competition was extremely fierce, and out of ~10 schools I applied to, I only got into my undergrad school hence I accepted the offer (I knew I wanted to do a PhD). However, whenever the topic of "where you went for undergrad" comes up when talking to other grad students, almost all of them came from schools that were below the rank of my school. This makes me feel unaccomplished because I feel like I am the only one in the entering class who could not go to a better school. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? No doubt that I love the research here and atmosphere, but sometimes I tell myself that I could've went to a better school if I took some gap years (which, for personal circumstances, was very not preferred).