onetwofive

Final Answer: B. I'm glad the votes weren't unanimous, at least that justifies my indecision. But I agree with the outcome, and in the last week I could feel myself finding extra ways to prop up B, so there I go!

Thanks firecolon. (Also, thanks for choosing the name 'firecolon'...) To clarify, I'd have tuition+stipend at either school. The A stipend is average, and the B stipend is quite nice, but the cost of living is also higher at B. And in any case I've been working for a couple of years, so I have a hard time getting excited about any of these stipend levels. For funding I'd call it a wash. The size difference is also a wash, that's not particularly important either way. The #20-ish is out of a large number of programs, I'm in a pretty big field. I think I'd have a clearer choice for B if it weren't *so* urban. We're talking smack in the middle of a humongous city. High-rises, subways, honking taxis, the whole deal. (I won't give the school name, but I'll let you extrapolate.) It's not somewhere I would voluntarily move to unless there was a major reason driving it. But of course now there might be... Hence the deadlock.

A general observation and question about living in NYC: In my limited experience as an outsider, it seems like everyone who moves to Manhattan is head-over-heels in love with the idea of living there. And then after a while, either they still love it or they have come to hate it. (Or they still love the city but hate living there.) Where does that leave people who are a little lukewarm about living in manhattan to begin with? Is that a bad sign? Does living in NYC ever *exceed* expectations?

Hi everyone, I need to decide between two schools for an engineering MS/PhD program, and I am completely deadlocked. So let's put it up for a vote, tell me where I should go!! School A: - top ranked - plenty of relevant research, but so far i haven't fallen in love with anything specific there - bigger program - average funding - great weather, great city, great campus - far away School B: - ranked around #15-20 - great professor/advisor and very appealing research group - great fellowship/funding - smaller program - great city but very urban setting, which is ok but not my favorite - closer to "home"