I was accepted to both the Ohio State University and Lehigh University, funded for a PhD in physics (cosmology).
I was supposed to visit Lehigh last weekend but the storm canceled my flights. Now I don't think I'm going to have the time to visit Lehigh, their alternate visit day is during the Ohio state visit and I won't have enough time off from work to fit in another trip before the decision deadline.
Can someone give me some advice for how I can make the best decision? My goal after graduating is academic physics.
On paper I match well with Ohio state, my research interests are in theoretical cosmology and astroparticle physics and they have several people doing that work. Lehigh doesn't have many doing cosmology and only one doing theory.
Lehigh is offering slightly more money but Ohio pays for more of the insurance so financially it comes out as kind of a wash.
Ohio is a huge program, while Lehigh is smaller. My undergraduate was from a very small department (20 undergrads, no graduate program), so that's what I'm used to but I don't know that I have anything against a big department.
