Hi, I am an international student who received PhD offers from Northwestern IEMS and Georgia Tech ISyE (Operations Research) and I wish to know your thoughts about these 2 p rograms.
I think these are the only choices I am considering right now.
My research interests would include optimizaiton, especially distributed optimization with applications in machine learning, high-dimensional probability and applied praobability stuff including reinforcement learning and online optimization. I come from a math and statistics backgrond, so I would prefer projects related to data, unceratainty, or probability.
For industrial jobs, I assume both can give me a good shot for opporutnies in sillicon valley or commercial banks as either a software engineer, data scientist or research scientist. I think Northwestern could better help me land a quantitative researcher job in a hedge fund in Chicago or NYC as well, as compared to Georgia Tech, mainly due to the reputation of Kellogg.
As for placemment in academia, I have heard rumors that in general, the variance of placement of Georgia Tech ISyE is very large due to large cohort size. I was told that IEMS students can easily find advisors from Kellogg, which should be great.
I prefer to go to academia, but if it does not work, I will probably find a job in industry in the US.
The main pro for Georgia Tech is its reputation in engineering and computer science, but I do not know how important it is.
I would love to hear more advice from your side. Many thanks!