Synappy

Hello, I went to undergrad in detroit right by wayne state (an art school) and lived by wayne state campus and I loved it. There are certainly parts of detroit that one should be cautious of but midtown especially woodbridge is a great place to live. I knew my neighbors and cost of living was incredibly cheap. Also wayne state wants the area to be safe so if you live right around campus (not on campus) and something happens their security will respond much faster than the police. They work hard to keep the area around campus safe. I love detroit and I've always had a bad reaction when I tell people I live here. Yes there is a high crime rate but having spent 6 years here (as a white girl who walks by herself at night) I still feel safe and I am confident that if you are aware of your surroundings there is nothing to fear. Please at least visit and give detroit a chance. There is a wonderful young and supportive community here (especially in the arts) if you have any specific questions I will answer them to the best of my ability. I still live here (although now in Hamtramck which is a small city within the city of detroit) and spend almost all my time in mid town and downtown.

Those are vastly different, I'm not sure if I can provide any insight to help you decide :/ I guess if you are interested in both fields you can decide by who provides better funding, which area would you rather live in, how well known are the professors you would be working under, which program would allow you more opportunities to be published and/or first author. As for me, my interests are in serious mental illness and degenerative diseases. The etiology of these diseases, psychopathology, neurobiological underpinnings, epigenetics. 

Go for the lab that will best support your future career goals.

I'd go do the research I want to be doing.

I would also add that if research fit is really important to you this can be really important to students sticking to their research and completing tasks in a timely manner. I personally find its a lot easier to be motivated to get work done on research I'm really interested and excited in vs. research I view as 'take it or leave it.' So with that being said if the research is getting done at the lab with out-dated equipment and you're really excited about the research there it might be a really good fit for you. But if you find that out-dated facilities will impede your motivation you need to take that into consideration.

I made a thread for people to talk about the programs they decided attend! 

hey there - I've heard great things from Miami, if you're torn, then maybe look at which program is stronger in the field you want to study.

Pros and cons both to both. Early = more productive and ambitious because they need to secure tenure, but less known in the field. Late = more well known, but may be less intrinsically productive because they’ve been tenured for a while. 

I felt like I had asked most of the questions I had for the faculty during the interview process, so after the offer I focused on talking more to current students. Both of my offers were at programs where I felt like I had good interpersonal connections/research fit to my potential advisor. So although that's obviously extremely important and factored into my decision, I really wanted to consider general culture and the student experience.
What jobs have recent graduates taken? Are faculty members supportive of people who are considering going into industry? Last one is obviously only relevant if you're considering industry positions What do you do for fun? Kind of an indirect way of asking about the work-life balance. Plus it's a good way to get ideas of what type of things are fun to do in the area and you might find someone with shared interests/hobbies. How many hours a week do you ACTUALLY spend on your assistantship? Most people will be very upfront about this. In my case I was glad I asked because it reassured me that the program is fairly strict about keeping it contained to 20 hours a week and that TA duties etc. don't take away from research or classes. Is it realistic to live on the stipend?  Obviously no one's living in luxury on a PhD stipend, but being able to get a better idea of the financial side of things is important before accepting an offer. You don't want to move to a new city and then realize the COL is higher than you thought it'd be. This is something you could probably also find out online, but it never hurts to get firsthand opinions from someone who's doing it right now. Do people in your cohort ever hang out together outside of work? Again this is personal preference, but I wanted to be in a program where students are actually friends. Granted you should have friends outside grad school as well, but I wouldn't want to spend five years working with people I couldn't hang out with at least occasionally. Honestly, the current students I talked to were all very candid. If you want to know something, ask them! I didn't get the sense that they were trying to hide anything, and I think that that's something you can just kind of pick up on. The general atmosphere at a campus visit is very telling to me. Are these people happy to be spending their day with prospective students? Do they seem genuinely excited about you being a potential new member of the program? Do they seem to get along easily with their advisors (a good hint of how that professor might treat you in a year)? Overall, do you feel like this is somewhere you'd be happy? I think that's probably the question I asked myself at the end of the day.
The best advice I got from someone during one of my visits was this: Go somewhere where you like the people. Good colleagues and advisors will get you through times where you don't like the work, but a passion for your subject matter rarely makes up for people that make you miserable.
Hope this helps! Best of luck choosing your program, and feel free to PM me if you want to chat more.

I wanted to crowd-source some reasons for how people are making their final decisions. I realize this is a convenient spot for a lot of us to be in, but it is also a very difficult one. I know my pre-submission impressions were that I would not be in this predicament; I wholeheartedly expected to be accepted at just one place. But, here we are. Any advice helps! 


All the best,