slifty

I'm not sure that this is enough to counter what everyone else has said already. This sort of thing may vary from field to field, but frankly, in my field, studying for the GRE's and paying the application fees DOESN'T constitute thinking long and hard about what you want--and whether or not the PhD program can help you achieve (not to mention...at what cost, in what field/subfield, under which programs, etc, etc). This sounds like adequate preparation for choosing a college, but nowhere near sufficient for choosing a PhD program.

At the risk of being blunt, I would suspect (though again, I'm not in your field) that part of the reason that your field indeed has a 50% drop-out is because too many (admittedly intelligent) people enter without fully comprehending why they are there, or what they want to get out of it. Think through those questions first--especially if you may be giving up a great job in order to pursue this option.

Figure this out first.

First of all, congrats on just being awesome. Competitive for a 300K grant PRE Ph.D.? You are doing something right!

I would think MIT would be insane to hold this against you, considering if you get the grant they can brag about what a prestigious award one of their students received. But if they decide to be jerks, my inclination is go with the grant money...that's once in a lifetime thing and MIT will still be there in a year.

I second what Origin says. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I doubt MIT would have a problem with your situation, and you should tell them about it. Tell them you want to accept, but if you get it, you'd like to defer a year.

I can't believe I'm even in this situation, but I wound up here.

I found out last week that I got bumped up off of the wait list at the MIT Media Lab - thrilled about it! Full funding plus RA stipend. There is no question that this is the sort of opportunity that no person in their right mind with an interest in technology would even stop to think about before accepting flat out.

However back in December a friend and I applied to an innovation competition which is also very prestigious (for instance, last year Sir Tim Burner's Lee -- the man who invented the WWW -- was one of a few winners). One of our applications has a serious chance that it could win; but when I say serious chance I really do mean serious CHANCE. It appears to be in the top .01%, but they only select about .005% of the applicants to fund. If we got it, however, I would be up there getting to shake Tim's hand and we would receive $300k to work on a project that would hopefully bring transparency and information to local government and physical communities' civic issues.

I have absolutely no desire to turn down the Media Lab. I especially have no desire to turn it down based on a chance. However I want to try to set myself up so that if this grant does pan out I could have my cake and eat it to. For instance, I would be happy to defer my enrollment for a year, create this system, and then start up at MIT with some bonus experience under my belt. I don't know how that topic would (or even could) be broached - this is a very generous package and I don't want to appear at all ungrateful.

I owe MIT a response by April 15th. I won't know about the grant until well after that (i.e. not until late May/early June). I'm visiting Boston this weekend.

Does anyone have any suggestions? My current plan is to explain the situation to the folks at MIT with the understanding that I want to ultimately accept their offer, and hope that they will help me work something out if I ended up getting lucky with the grant... but there are a lot of different ways this could be accomplished.

I truly appreciate any thoughts you guys and gals have.