Entangled Phantoms

What on Earth are you talking about? What do you think happens when someone gets off a waitlist? Moreover, OP's offer doesn't even come with funding. So even if the fuzzy rationale behind your advice was the CGS resolution, it doesn't apply. Even if it did one can obtain a release from the institution committed to. 
And Jesus, stop with melodrama about professional relationships down the line and being seen as unreliable. Waitlists are thing. Schools know about them.
OP - please talk to some mentors or advisors at your current school. Take anything from randos on the interwebs (including me) with a grain of salt.

Well, the question was not whether reputation correlates with program quality. It was whether one could get an academic job without a shiny name on the diploma. 
Shot (link)
Chaser (link)
 
Sounds like what OP really wants to do is work in academia.

"A PhD is a PhD." This attitude is why there are so many unemployed PhD graduates out there. Nobody thinks a PhD is a PhD. Not applicants (who almost always pick the best program they get into), not academia (who hire almost exclusively from elite institutions), not even your average person on the street.  

For whatever reason, a non-trivial number of people seem to wait right up to the 4/15 deadline before choosing one offer from two or more competing ones. Graduate programs don't automatically call the next stiff off the waitlist. I know because I got my offer on 4/26. Guess what? More than likely, someone on a waitlist that the school I committed to was made an offer after that. 
 
I am sorry that you work in a field with such petty and vindictive people. You should probably add that caveat in your advice. Faculty and admissions staff in the science and engineering must be real sweeties. Personally, I think all it takes is a basic sense of decency and understanding to not hold a grudge against someone because of waitlist movement after the deadline.
FWIW, I called the prospective advisor at the school I originally committed to and let him know I got into my top choice. He wished me well and told me to notify he admissions staff and I did. A year later, I  invited said prospective advisor to my current school to give a talk to the student chapter of our professional society. He was happy to come and did.
 
Read the first sentence of the link you posted.
 
Advice on these forums can have big real life consequences. Please recognize that before spooking prospective students by talking about torching one's professional network and whatnot. This might be a problem in your field. If so, I am very sorry that you have to deal with this. Most of us do not.

What on Earth are you talking about? What do you think happens when someone gets off a waitlist? Moreover, OP's offer doesn't even come with funding. So even if the fuzzy rationale behind your advice was the CGS resolution, it doesn't apply. Even if it did one can obtain a release from the institution committed to. 
And Jesus, stop with melodrama about professional relationships down the line and being seen as unreliable. Waitlists are thing. Schools know about them.
OP - please talk to some mentors or advisors at your current school. Take anything from randos on the interwebs (including me) with a grain of salt.

In general, I would be wary about people making predictions on which department will be where 5 years down the road. It is not only a prediction about how researchers will develop but also a prediction on how the field will develop.

I doubt anyone has any idea what STI-TEC has in store this year. This is their second time doing this and the first time was ... well .... not smooth. Just for fun, here is a recap of last year.
1. 69 fellowships awarded and on April 12-13 acceptances go out.

2. Folks in the top 200 but not selected got this message:
"As you know, your application was chosen to move forward to the final step in the process: the DoD Panel Review. We regret to inform you that you were not selected as part of the 2018 class. This year we planned to award roughly 200 fellowships and only 69 were selected due to the budget. You were in the top 200 and have been placed on the alternates selection list for the fellowship. This does not guarantee that you will be awarded the fellowship but serves as notice of  your ranking and your potential in the unlikely event that the DoD will select additional awardees." 3. Folks were naturally like, "WTF?" I mean, DoD has just gotten a big budget increase. Some grad cafers called their representatives in Congress:
"I called my congressional representative + senators, and they sent me an email of a congressional staffer Jain Thapa who supposedly works with budgeting on DoD matters. He responded to my email saying he would follow up next week." 4. Grad cafers also know how to do their research.
"Reached out to the government affairs office at my university. Very odd they cut number of fellowships awarded given that NDSEG specifically is a subprogram funded through the AF University Research Initiative account, which had a $12M increase over FY17." 5. STI-TEC apparently hears from Congressional staffers that there are a lot of pissed off people out there. Puts out a tweet (which they later deleted) suggesting that negative comments might lead to NDSEG getting shut down.
Archived tweet - https://mobile.twitter.com/Andrew_S_Rosen/status/986273914019106818/photo/ 6. Guess what? There were no budget cuts! STI-TEC was forced to send us this:
Dear 2018 NDSEG Fellowship Applicants,
 We are writing to you today to retract a part of our statement regarding the selection of the 2018 Fellowship class. In our email, we reported budget cuts as the basis for the number of fellowships awarded. We would like to provide clarification on the allocation of funding for the program.
We incorrectly reported that the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) program has experienced budget cuts; however, the Department of Defense (DoD) increased the spending on the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship program compared to the previous fiscal year. In an effort to ensure that the program remains competitive with similar fellowships, the Department made programmatic changes to the FY17 NDSEG program that increased the cost per student.  This increase in costs per fellow has, in turn, reduced the number of fellowships available. Moving forward, the Department intends to review the programmatic changes instituted during the FY17 fellowship class to properly balance the competitiveness of the program against the overall number of students that are trained in areas of defense relevance
We apologize for any confusion that our statement may have caused. We appreciate your understanding and your support of the program.

-The NDSEG Fellowship Team
As it turns out, the cost per student increased soooo much that they went from 200 fellowship to 69!

7. Meanwhile, a lot of students outside the top 200 heard nothing. 
8. Professors at Caltech and UCLA went to town on STI-TEC on twitter because their students heard nothing.
https://mobile.twitter.com/sarah_reisman/status/985645455051665408 https://mobile.twitter.com/ArmaniLab/status/985630862631780352  
 
 
Moral of the story - until STI-TEC establishes a track record of doing things in a professional manner, do not count on things working like they would at most other fellowship programs. Good luck to folks waiting on results. May you all have better luck than I did last year. 

What on Earth are you talking about? What do you think happens when someone gets off a waitlist? Moreover, OP's offer doesn't even come with funding. So even if the fuzzy rationale behind your advice was the CGS resolution, it doesn't apply. Even if it did one can obtain a release from the institution committed to. 
And Jesus, stop with melodrama about professional relationships down the line and being seen as unreliable. Waitlists are thing. Schools know about them.
OP - please talk to some mentors or advisors at your current school. Take anything from randos on the interwebs (including me) with a grain of salt.

For whatever reason, a non-trivial number of people seem to wait right up to the 4/15 deadline before choosing one offer from two or more competing ones. Graduate programs don't automatically call the next stiff off the waitlist. I know because I got my offer on 4/26. Guess what? More than likely, someone on a waitlist that the school I committed to was made an offer after that. 
 
I am sorry that you work in a field with such petty and vindictive people. You should probably add that caveat in your advice. Faculty and admissions staff in the science and engineering must be real sweeties. Personally, I think all it takes is a basic sense of decency and understanding to not hold a grudge against someone because of waitlist movement after the deadline.
FWIW, I called the prospective advisor at the school I originally committed to and let him know I got into my top choice. He wished me well and told me to notify he admissions staff and I did. A year later, I  invited said prospective advisor to my current school to give a talk to the student chapter of our professional society. He was happy to come and did.
 
Read the first sentence of the link you posted.
 
Advice on these forums can have big real life consequences. Please recognize that before spooking prospective students by talking about torching one's professional network and whatnot. This might be a problem in your field. If so, I am very sorry that you have to deal with this. Most of us do not.

I decided not to bother with NDSEG this year, but it seems like things were smoother on the website since there isn't a post complaining about an unsecure website (unless I missed it). Given all the problems last year, I expect they will play it safe and just announce winners in April.
While we are on the topic a website, boy are we giving STI-TEC some benefit of the doubt. Going from 170 fellowships to 70 is a huge drop! Support per fellow is at least $39k (stipend plus health insurance) but you also have coverage for tuition/fees/university overhead. So we're looking at $50-70k per fellow. That is $5-7M! I would have expected a much better website for that kind of money.  
If they keep the number of fellows at a reduced level for all three fellowship classes, that is $15-21M in their pocket relative to ASEE. I mean, this is a for-profit contractor and a lot of them pull this crap with DoD contracts. The trick is to not make the grift less obvious.
 
 

LOL. The new contracter cracks me up. I see this year that they are hiding the number of 2018 fellowships awarded (69 after the new contractor took over) but still publish the number of 2017 fellowships awarded (~170 when ASEE was in charge). Almost as smooth as last year when they claimed that the NDSEG budget was cut and then recanted after angry applicants called members of Congress and the DoD and found out funding was actually increased for the program.  Curious to see what shenanigans they pull in year 2. Last year's mistake was skimming too much off the top (100 fewer fellowships is probably a cool $5-7M in STI-TEC's pocket). Feel they need to scale down the grift a tad. 

Remember, anecdote =/= data.
The surest sign of a "cash cow" program (professional degree programs notwithstanding) is that less than 50% of the enrolling students have full funding (tuition waiver + stipend). 
An equally good sign is getting into a brand name school with subpar credentials and experience.
 

Remember, anecdote =/= data.
The surest sign of a "cash cow" program (professional degree programs notwithstanding) is that less than 50% of the enrolling students have full funding (tuition waiver + stipend). 
An equally good sign is getting into a brand name school with subpar credentials and experience.
 

Does "background in law" suggest that you already have a JD? If so, people will pay much more attention to your law school performance than your performance in a cash cow MA.

Unless it's a master's in science (particularly techy stuff), it's essentially the humanities. (And even those tech programs are cash-cow programs.) Some humanities programs probably have 80% acceptance rate or above.. like Chicago's MAPH. If I were you, I wouldn't attend this program. Columbia is NOTORIOUS for its terminal MA programs.

At least in engineering, Columbia is notorious for being an MS diploma mill. Great PhD program, but their MS program is meant to run as a cash cow. I would check to make sure your terminal MA isn't run the same way. % of MA students with assistantships and % of MA students doing a thesis are good barometers for whether the departments view you as more than $$$ signs.

The folks at top-law-schools.com should be able to answer that question.

I love how the cost per student went up so much that the number of awarded fellowships fell by close to a factor of 3. STI-TEC probably found create ways to line their pocket when raising the cost per student on DoD. New outreach programs? Social media department for $5M? If DoD ever audits these guys, I would love to read the report.

It is easy to clog BBs with silly enough threads that other users feel that their Qs would get lost in the sea of spam. 

Um, I really doubt your temporary academic advisor is expected to become your research advisor. My department purposely assigns us an academic advisor who we are unlikely to work with so that the incentives are well aligned. For example, a research advisor could push you to spend more time in the lab without caring too much about how you are doing as far coursework, quals, and career development. You want your academic advisor to be a neutral sounding board until you are sure you jave found a research advisor you are willing to trust your career with.
 
You made the right choice. Relax.

Um, I really doubt your temporary academic advisor is expected to become your research advisor. My department purposely assigns us an academic advisor who we are unlikely to work with so that the incentives are well aligned. For example, a research advisor could push you to spend more time in the lab without caring too much about how you are doing as far coursework, quals, and career development. You want your academic advisor to be a neutral sounding board until you are sure you jave found a research advisor you are willing to trust your career with.
 
You made the right choice. Relax.

Um, I really doubt your temporary academic advisor is expected to become your research advisor. My department purposely assigns us an academic advisor who we are unlikely to work with so that the incentives are well aligned. For example, a research advisor could push you to spend more time in the lab without caring too much about how you are doing as far coursework, quals, and career development. You want your academic advisor to be a neutral sounding board until you are sure you jave found a research advisor you are willing to trust your career with.
 
You made the right choice. Relax.

Can't you just turn down Middling U offer now and reapply to Prestige U this fall? 

This is a very odd first comment for a new user.

This is a very odd first comment for a new user.

I would not count on the clowns who put together this second rate website to notify ALL applicants.