eetiandao

It seems there are two points in your writing. First you seem to be considering money. The more established programs may provide you less fund, but according to my knowledge, higher ranked programs have lots of opportunities of offering more fund to students later during their studies (it may be a bit difficult in one’s first year if the fund is insufficient for basic living). So I think if several programs can all provide us with some funds to meet basic living, the amount of money should not be a big concern in evaluating them. Second, I totally agree with you that placement is a big concern for us. If we want to continue a tenure-track career upon graduation, perhaps the ranking of a program is of great significance. In any subfield of social science, indeed we have a small community and people know each other’s works or at least the strength (and weakness) of a program. In this sense, the more established ones may be better. And ranking is also closely related to placement. In addition, in more established programs you may obtain more opportunities of publishing articles and use their networks in seeking a job in the future. Certainly the state school has its name recognition, but I guess what you need most is the best academic support in your subfield to prepare for future career option.

I think a lot of people have such a difficult time of making a decision. You cannot have all the advantages of each program, and it is hard to "balance" our preferences. But fundamentally we do a Ph.D for academic life, so the strength of and fit with the program are vital. The life in one place may be not easy as we do not obtain generous stipend, we are far away from our families and friends, or we just do not like the climate here, but we are not aiming at living like a princess in Ph.D life. If we look at the future, it will be much clearer : the program that provides us the best academic resources (not the university reputation in general) would be the ideal one. Others may think the next five years, but we need to think the whole life. If we cannot overcome some difficulties such as simple living condition or loneliness in five years, how could we be expected to overcome obstacles in our research and enjoy the delight of solving them, and become leading scholars in tackling the most difficult problems faced by human beings in our whole life? And certainly future placement opportunity is important as market competition for social science in general is intense, and maybe ranking to some extent can help us a bit in making decision.

Try to publish something, even if in some not that outstanding academic papers. The content of the published paper may not be of high quality, but at least it shows your ability and interests of enngaging academically. And it may help you a bit among candidates who do not.