juilletmercredi

I'm currently working my way through the Semenza book (I'm not in the humanities, but I have my reasons) and I think it's a pretty useful book although I disagree with part of what he says. But that's probably because I am not a humanist. BTW, for scientists/social scientists the equivalent is Getting What You Came For by Robert L. Peters. I love this book. I have the Bolker book and it's really, really useful. I definitely recommend it, and I recommend reading it before you get to the dissertation phase. The project management skills are just useful for any large project. I've also read Booth et al. and it's useful, but it kind of assumes you know basically nothing about putting together a research paper so I found myself skimming it mostly. It's still pretty useful, though. Hmm, maybe I'll assign portions of it for my students this summer. I've read the Silvia book and I like that one a lot. Very accessible and practica suggestions. I think I might have started that Zinser book but never finished it. Eigen, thanks for the Ridley book recommendation - I think maybe I'll investigate it for the possibility of trying to help my summer students (they have to write a lit review and some of them don't seem to understand what it is.)

I, too, am confused. I have a Mac and I am also a writer, and I have never had a problem with hidden/"ghost" files impeding my organization. They are, after all, hidden. Windows and Macs organize files in exactly the same way - in folders. In fact, I have found it easier to find things on my Mac when I can't remember where the f I put them with Spotlight search, but ymmv because I think newer Windows machines have ways of doing that too. Honestly, it's really just about preference. Mac OS X and Windows 8 do exactly the same thing for 95% of computer users. It's really just about which aesthetic and operating system you prefer (and whether you are using a program, like SAS, that exclusively runs on Windows. Sure, you can use Parallels, but that ish is slow with statistical programs). Personally I use Stata almost exclusively now for my analyses - and I'm learning R - both are available on Mac OS X. I tend to prefer Apple's products, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Windows operating system. It's just that there's variability in the hardware that you can get Windows on. Personally, I think I would miss having a laptop. I would definitely want a tablet for portability (mostly for taking notes in class and reading on the subway), but I can't be one of those people who replaces my laptop with a tablet and just buzzes away with a desktop and a tablet. That would be especially so when I take trips. On the other hand, I have never used the Surface Pro. My personal choice would be to have a desktop (Mac mini - $700), an ultraportable (MacBook Air - $1400) and a tablet (iPad mini - $500). Of course, that's ridiculously expensive ($2600! not including taxes and AppleCare), so if I had to cut out one thing it'd be the Mac mini because I can always hook up my Air to an external monitor (and that would total out to ~$2000, not including taxes and AppleCare).

If you don't have a particular route in mind yet, then try not to be too anxious about this yet. Some routes don't require work experience (like a JD). If you want a professional degree (MPP, MBA, MPA) you will need professional experience, but once you figure out what you want to do you can worry about it then. Really, what you should worry about now is trying to get a position that fulfills you and that provides some upward mobility within your professional career.

I am a social science PhD student who has been advised by an assistant professor. He was in his third year when I began and is up for tenure this year. It has been a phenomenal relationship for me. He's an excellent mentor; he cares about me and makes time for me; our personalities are a great match and his advising style meshes really well with the way I work (I'm extremely independent and he does not micromanage me - indeed, he doesn't have the time to micromanage me). Moreover, he's been well-funded in the past few years since he has to get grants in order to get tenure, so he always has money for equipment here or a trip there. Plus he's hungry, you know? He needs publications and grants to get tenure, so there's always work to be done and data to be analyzed. Here are my tips: -Try to see if you can figure out when your assistant professor arrived at your department and at what point you will be in your program should he get denied tenure. For example, assuming a 6-year clock I figured out that my adviser would be beginning his third year when I began my first year, and thus if he got denied tenure he would have to leave following my fifth year (assuming a terminal year). That's not actually the way it worked out at all - I don't know whether he got his clock delayed or whether this university just has an abnormally long cloock - but given what I knew about academia it wasn't a bad estimate. I figured him leaving after my fifth year wasn't so bad, because I would be either done or so close to done that it wouldn't matter where he was. -If an assistant professor is the best person to advise you, choose a department in which there are tenured professors who could also advise you in the event that your assistant professor leaves. Likely, if you are far enough along your assistant professor can still advise you from wherever he goes, but you will need someone to formally serve as your dissertation sponsor. -Adopt a tenured/senior professor who can be your secondary or informal mentor. I am lucky in that my hybrid PhD program actually has that as a formal setup, so my secondary mentor is an esteemed senior full professor in my secondary department. Full professors/senior people can offer you things (connections, networking, clout) that junior people cannot. Example 1: I overslept through a take-home exam once and a word from my adviser to the professor teaching the class fixed that problem. (He laughed and said it wasn't a big deal.) Example 2: A word from my full professor adviser turned a long fight with financial aid into a non-issue. Example 3: I visited a postdoc that my Full Professor just happens to teach summer classes at...and was offered it without formally applying. See? But, on the other hand, Full Professor does not always have data to be analyzed or extra grant money lying around for equipment or trips. Full Professor also served as chair for a while during my time here and was in a different administrative position before that, and had copious sabbaticals, so Full Professor was a bit distracted (although still completely excellent). I definitely agree, though, that sometimes tenured professors have more time for you. While I can always meet with Junior Professor adviser when I need to, I have to get myself on his calendar a week ahead of time at least (and 2 weeks is best). JPs in their mid-tenure-track years (years 3 to 5) tend to be particularly unavailable because they are off trying to establish a national reputation so that people outside the university can say good things about them. Full Professor is generally around, in town (when not on sabbatical, lol) and held open a weekly slot for me to wander in if I needed it, and I could generally ask him for a meeting the day before if necessary.

gr8pumpkin, I was responding to the OP, but yes we do have dueling Peanuts characters. (Linus is my favorite after Snoopy, TBH.) Not necessarily. If you're in a field where you need to work directly with a professor/advisor, it's better to directly ask that adviser whether he's planning on taking on additional students for the fall, because it's hard to predict those things just by looking at current students. For example, my primary lab website lists me as a graduate student but it doesn't list my cohort year, and I am graduating this year, so my adviser actually needs someone to replace me. It also hasn't been updated in ages so a recently graduated doctoral student is still on there - so it looks like my adviser has 3 doctoral students when really, come fall, he will have just 1 plus whoever they admit this year. Also, neither my primary nor my secondary lab funds me (I have external funding), so my presence doesn't take up a funding slot. Also, some labs are just really big. One lab may only have 2 students but the PI didn't the the funding he wants so can't add anymore; another lab may have 5 students, but he also has 3 postdocs and tons of money so he's looking to take on 2 more.

This is an excellent post, OP, and you should feel awesome about it I'm not in the humanities (I'm in the social sciences/health sciences) but I will add. Most of these tips are broadly applicable to my fields as well. -Don't rule yourself out of PhD programs. Let THEM rule you out. While you shouldn't apply to programs that you are obviously not a good fit for, if your GPA is a little lower than you'd like it or your GRE scores are a little low (but not below stated minimums), still apply. Many programs don't give minimums for a good reason - they truly don't have any, and consider applicants holistically, and may let in a student with a 3.3 uGPA who has 3 years of post-college experience or has an excellent fit that Professor U got really excited about. -Number of programs: It's hard to say how many programs, exactly, you should apply to. It depends on your field and the competitiveness of programs in your field. In one of my fields (social psychology), 7-10 seems to be the norm, with 12 being the high and 5 being the low. Social psych is ridiculously competitive. Cognitive and experimental psychologists tend to apply to fewer programs because their programs get fewer applicants. But my general comment on this is to think of applying to graduate school as an investment. The program you attend can determine a lot of future aspects: what kind of research you do in grad school, what kinds of opportunities to which you have access, and what kinds of postdocs and faculty positions you are ultimately competitive for (or non-academic positions, if that interests you). So it's best not to constrain yourself based upon money. If you don't have enough money to launch of a full application season, I personally think it's best to wait until you do (and work for a year or two). -WRT to the SoP part, my application to Columbia explicitly asked me to come up with a freaking dissertation topic. I was 21 years old at the time. Of course I don't know WTF I want to do for my dissertation yet. I did, indeed, make something up. Okay, maybe you're not 100% sure which of your 4 interests you want to pursue; pick the one that sounds the most compelling and put something together. I LOVE LOVE LOVE OP's idea about writing an SoP, then printing it out and writing in the margins what you were thinking. I think I'm gonna start doing that on my journal articles in the lit reviews, because I usually hate the way they sound. -Contacting professors: FWIW, I didn't contact professors ahead of time anywhere I was admitted. I think this varies a lot by field and what you have to say. OP's template is a good one to use if you want to. In some fields, you need to do this because you need to have a PI to take you into their lab/group/mentorship before you can be admitted. In others, it's not important. However, unless you come across as disrespectful or clueless I don't think this can ever *hurt* you, so if you're unsure I would err on the side of emailing professors.

One other thing, TeaOverCoffee - unless you have a specific reason for your geographic constraints beyond preference (like small children in the area, elderly parents you need to care for) you should really consider looking outside of the Northeast. The best program(s) in your field for you may be outside of the Northeast, and if you give yourself more locational flexibility earlier in your career (PhD program) then you may have more choice in the latter part of your career. I'm sure there are a myriad of great programs in the Northeast, too, but there's also places like Stanford, Michigan, Vanderbilt, Arizona State, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, a couple of UCs, Emory... (I don't know, I'm just listing places that are well-reputed per the NRC, lol.)

This is false. I always tell the story of the philosophy major I supervised in res life who is currently managing a business. I also know a history major who ended up working at Merrill Lynch directly out of college. The truth is, most corporate/business jobs don't care about your major so much as they care about your skills and abilities. Humanities graduates tend to be strong writers who are able to synthesize and analyze large amounts of information and communicate well - all things businesses value. A humanities major who has a little internship experience could be a potentially strong candidate for a number of fields, and it's patently false that humanities majors always end up working retail or fast food with their BAs. It is true, though, that PhD holders have overall lower unemployment than BA holders (I think it's currently at 1.2%, vs. something like 5 or 6 percent for BA holders). So it may end up being a smart move to get a PhD if you really love your field, want to study it for 8 years, and don't mind the fact that you probably won't get a tenure-track job at the end. Most people, however, are likely going to the PhD because they want a specific job: specifically, they want to be a tenure-track professor. They probably want to be a tenure-track professor at a school where they can work with smart undergraduates (like themselves) and do some scholarship on a particular area in which they are really interested. I think the OP's post is directed at those folks. Quite frankly, the TT professor of yore is going the way of the dodo and is largely being replaced by contingent faculty (adjuncts, NTT permanent faculty members, faculty contracts, and graduate students). Ironically, we grad students are inadvertently contributing to the demise of the very jobs we want - if the university can just use cheap grad student labor to teach freshman composition and intro psych or whatever to 150 bored undergrads, why the heck should they hire someone at 2-4+ times the salary and full benefits with an office and all the overhead that requires? But I think anyone contemplating a PhD should be faced with the ugly truth and then make a well-informed decision about whether they want to continue. Personally, I read all the articles and decided to go anyway, partially because my field is one of the less-impacted ones and partially because I am totally and 100% okay with getting a non-academic job or, indeed, a job that never required a PhD in any case. Sometimes in moments of frustration I wonder why the eff I did this, but if I think about this more generally (and with the rosiness of being nearly finished), I'm really glad I did the PhD. I learned a tremendous amount and picked up a large amount of both hard and soft skills that I will take into whatever job I do end up doing.

I go to Columbia; I'm not in sociology, but I wouldn't recommending doing a one-year master's here. Chances of funding are slim because the free-standing MA programs at Columbia are money-generators for the university. You'll basically end up taking on $60,000 of debt. But if you are planning a PhD in sociology, you can't expect to make much more than that, so you may be in more debt than you can afford. (Also, I'm not sure that Cambridge is a "backup" for Columbia.) Personally, I think the best course of action is to get an MA at a Canadian university. It's likely to be far cheaper for you.

To be frank, the "why" doesn't matter at all on the back end. Let field A be a heavily impacted academic field, where approximately 20% of PhD holders actually get tenure-track positions. If professors in field A believe that School X is significantly better than School Y, and they would rather hire people from School X, it doesn't matter whether School Y is objectively better than School X, right? The students from School X are still getting the jobs regardless. For that reason, I do mostly agree with Algernon's assessment - spending a few extra thousand dollars in the ~6-8 years you're hopefully in the English PhD program may end up being financially and professionally worth it. (Of course, it depends on how much "a few extra thousand") is. However, if you've already asked about placement rates and the two universities/programs have similar placement rates in your field (and subfield), then it shouldn't matter and you should go where you feel more comfortable.

Is there someone else you can talk to first, to devise a strategy to talk to your advisor? Many a reasonable advisor will try to work with a student who absolutely needs to finish for some reason (no more money, a job offer, etc). But some advisors are insistent that the dissertation needs to be a magnum opus. There's also the option of you switching advisors and working with someone else who will help you finish by next spring. Also, if you know right now that you will need funding for an additional year (2014-2015), then you could always begin to write applications for dissertation fellowships and grants and see if you can win one that will fund you. I also thought that my funding would run out after my 5th year but I managed to find funding for a 6th year. Also, you say 4.5 years. I'm not sure how you are counting (did you begin in the spring?) but if you started in September 2010 or even January 2010 do realize that 4-4.5 academic years is very short for a PhD and the vast majority of people take at least 5 academic years to finish (and very commonly 6), even in the sciences. In fact, the field with the shortest median time to degree is the physical sciences, and it's 7.9 years. (Note that that is median, so it's not skewed by the deadwood who stayed in for 14 years!) First, think about how realistic finishing in the spring is given your interests and your project, if your advisor were to actually okay it. Have you begun already? If you haven't already begun, is it realistic for you to plan, execute, and write up a dissertation-sized project in a year? (Probably not, btw.) Then think about whether there are other options for you - is there anyone else who would support your research work? Can you get funded for an additional year? There are the NSF dissertation grants, for example. You may want to have a discussion with your director of graduate studies about the problem. Make sure that you approach them in a calm and cool way. It may be that your advisor is right about the project he wants you to pursue and that your understanding of it is limited; it may be that he understands that you need to do two related but different projects for a successful dissertation here. If you already have selected a dissertation committee, talking to another member of the committee is a good option too.

Yup. I selected 2 professors for my oral exams and although they definitely asked me rigorous questions (one of them basically asked me "So what does our entire field mean?" WTF?), the exam was more like a comfortable conversation between scholars about the direction of our field than an EXAM exam. (They also kicked me out a little bit early, lol, to 'deliberate'. They decided that I had passed with honors.) It's not that they didn't actually examine me; it's that they had been working with me for the previous 4 years and had discussed my entire lists with me already, so they knew that I knew my stuff, and they weren't as concerned. My proposal was kind of the same way - along with my adviser I selected my own committee, and I chose great people who would contribute to my dissertation and help me shape it for publication but ALSO who would actually read my drafts and treat the defense as less an opportunity to haze a soon-to-be-PhD and more as an opportunity really test me and see what I knew, as well as help me revise the thing for publication (which is the real reason to write a dissertation!) So although I was nervous at my proposal defense, I also knew that my committee wouldn't have let me defend it if it sucked and if they had comments and revisions, they were going to give it to me straight. This is going to sound crazy but thinking back, studying for my methods comprehensive exam was probably my favorite academic part of the program. I'm a quantitative researcher and I love stats and methods, so it was basically 3 months of me reading books and articles on methods and learning a whole bunch of new stuff about that. It was pretty awesome and I had zero anxiety at the exam because I had read soooo much and practiced so many essays that I wrote about 3 times as much as I actually needed to. Also I was getting paid basically to read books for 3 months, which is a dream job if there ever was one. So comps doesn't have to be horrible guys! Don't be afraid.

I'm glad that post is still helping people I didn't set out to write a treatise when I wrote it, but it just all spilled out. 2012 was a bad time for me, lol.

^My cons for HDFS were going to be the above. A developmental psychologist can get jobs in psychology departments (which are everywhere!) as well as jobs in HDFS departments and other related places (schools of public health, schools of education, etc.). A person with a PhD in HDFS can't get jobs in psychology departments very easily, if at all. There are a wide range of other kinds of jobs available to them especially if they are willing to go non-academic (interdisciplinary departments like HDFS; professional schools like, potentially, social work or SPH; government, think tank, NGO, or research institute work). So if you always dreamed of teaching undergraduates and working in an academic department as a professor, a developmental psychology degree *may* be the better way to go. It may depend on the department, though. For example, I considered Penn State's HDFS department when I was thinking about PhD programs (my research is in adolescent health) and I actually will be doing a postdoc at Penn State working with an HDFS professor, so I'm familiar with the program. THe faculty there is just phenomenal and they have great resources and lots of money, lol. They also track their alumni (http://www.hhdev.psu.edu/hdfs/graduate/alumni). Most of their recent graduates have gotten academic postdocs, but if you scroll down to like 2011 and earlier, you'll see that there are quite a few professors. A few are in psychology departments, but mostly they are in other HDFS departments and other interdisciplinary fields. Many of them have also gone on to semi-academic and non-academic positionas as research scientists/analysts, either at universities or at research institutes/nonprofits/corporations. (It's also not updated - I know one of the alumni on the list and she's not at the position that's listed; I think that was her first job out of PSU.) I have to say, though, that the interdisciplinary nature of an HDFS program is a big pro. I myself am in an interdisciplinary program (in public health) and I absolutely love it. I think I may have gone a little crazy in a traditional psychology department - I was an undergrad psych major myself and I use social psychological principles in my work, but my work is very applied and I don't do experimental research. All of my research is with community samples and is survey-based. My interdisciplinary program allowed me to take courses in psychology and apply psychological theories and methods to my work, but I also steal some from sociology and anthropology as well, and I work and learn alongside anthropologists and sociologists and historians and political scientists and economists (and epidemiologists, biostatisticians, environmental health scientists, management scientists and policy analysts) who are are working on health problems. I learn so much from their different approaches and it makes life interesting, plus there's lots of opportunities for collaboration!

I think the effect of this is 1) greatly overblown and 2) varies by field. In some fields it is pretty common for people get all three at the same place, whereas in others it isn't. I think generally speaking, if your university is one of the best programs in the field (top 10-20 or so) then nobody would look at you strangely for staying in the same place. Most places will barely pay attention to your undergraduate university when evaluating your CV; they want to see where you got your PhD and what your productivity is like so this is unlikely to have a very impact on your job prospects, if any at all. Also, if your university is well-known and also the best place in your subfield, nobody would question why you stayed. For example, in my field if you studied stigma and its effect on health, there's a very famous professor at the #15 ranked program in the field and it would probably be better to work with her than it would be to go to the #1 ranked school in the field (not known for this subfield), even if you went there for undergrad. I think that this is primarily a problem for people who stay at low-ranked departments or stay at a department with any reputation but where their research is not a good fit. So if your alma mater's PhD program is very very highly ranked in the field and is a good fit for you, and your professors want you in the program, I think you should definitely at least consider it!

Neither one is objectively better, and I would not make my decision based primarily on this unless it's common for students at University B to be let go by their advisors. Usually an offer being renewed based on performance means that as long as you don't totally screw up and earn mostly As in your courses, you will be continuously funded. But at some universities the doctoral program admits more students than they can fund and you are in competition with others for 3rd year and beyond slots. So before you accept University B's offer, find out (discreetly) whether this program is one of those. On the other hand, see how often students at University A get funded after their 2 years. Are they usually picked up by an advisor? Is there plenty of funding and GRAships to go around? If students at both A and B are very likely to be funded in years 3 and beyond, then you have pretty much equivalent choices. Even if you are on fellowship your first year and TAship on second year, you will still be expected to do research very early, the second semester of your first year at the latest. So you really won't be delaying research - a fellowship is only supposed to give you the flexibility to choose your advisor without teaching responsibilities, not absolve you from research at all. (In fact, B might have a very slight advantage if students are usually funded in years 2+, because you don't have to teach.) ASsuming that students at both departments are usually funded for 5 or 6 years, I think you should choose which department is the better overall fit for you. Where is the research more aligned with your interests? Where are there more people who could mentor you should you need to switch or need more people on your committee or want to do collaborative work? Which place has better placement rates?

I have to disagree with you - I'm glad that you got into your programs, but I think that's because you followed standard guidelines for applying to graduate school rather than followed some protocol for safety programs. You got into a school that was an excellent research fit for you and where you were above the minimum standards for admission. That's not a safety school. That's good application season planning - we always recommend that applicants apply to a range of schools, including some outside of the top 10-20, to maximize their chances of getting admitted somewhere. I also said there are no guarantees but careful calculation can give you the closest thing to a safety, defined here, as somewhere where the likelihood of getting in is much higher than not getting in. This isn't a safety school. A safety school is a school that unless something very weird happens you KNOW you will get admitted. That's why it's a safety - it's 'safe,' it rules out the option of having to take a gap year because you didn't get in anywhere. There's no such thing as that in grad admissions. I dislike the idea for two reasons, and the second one is bigger than the first. The first reason is the same as everyone else - that even mid- to low-ranked doctoral programs are competitive in many fields. For example, your post seems to suggest that someone - on the basis of very high stats and excellent fit - can pick a top 30 PhD program as a safety. This, IMO, is folly; some of these programs are getting 300-500 applications for 5-10 slots. There are bound to be many other people in the application pool who have good research fit (since all the professors' research areas are public) and who have excellent stats as well. My second reason is that most people tend to use "safety school" to mean the school that they will go to even if it's not their favorite or preferred option, just to be in graduate school next year, and I fundamentally disagree with that idea. I see graduate school as a means to an end - a process, yes, but one that eventually leads to a degree that's needed to have a certain career. If you don't get into a degree program that perfectly suits your needs, there's no point in going to grad school. By this I mean - let's say that you're in a highly impacted field in which no one who attends a PhD program outside the top 20 gets an academic job.* I mean like, 0% of the graduates from the #21 program and down got academic jobs; they all went on to do fabulous and interesting non-academic things. You want to be a professor. You may consider a top 50 program to be your safety school, but you want to be a professor. Why go there if it's not going to get you to your goal? *I don't believe in rankings essentialism like this; I'm just using it for the purpose of the example.

If the average time to completion in the program is about 2 years, then 2 years is long enough to do the research plus a thesis. Your thesis can be based upon the research you do as an RA for someone. I am in a department that requires a thesis for the 2-year master's and pretty much everyone finishes in just 2 years. I will say that it really depends on the field, but it appears that you are in engineering (a field with lots of academic and non-academic opportunities for a PhD). In engineering a top 30 PhD is very good - I mean, it's good in every field - AND you will be working with an amazing adviser who basically invented your field of research. This is a great example of how ranking isn't everything and your adviser also matters a lot, too. I'd take the funded PhD program.

I don't know if you have children and that's why you want the 2-bedroom, but if you don't, you really should consider a 1-bedroom. I will say that the kinds of things you can expect in an apartment in Atlanta (or at least in the metro area; not sure about downtown) are far different than you can in other cities, like decent closet space, large bedrooms, updated appliances (including gas stoves, usually!), a washer & dryer in the unit, and central air and heating. Out in the suburbs many are swim/tennis communities. They're much bigger, too. I'm from the suburbs of Atlanta. If you want to live in the suburbs, you could find a two-bedroom apartment in that price range. Lithonia and Stone Mountain are the next towns over from Decatur so it'd be about a 20-30 minute drive into the city (in perfect traffic, of course) but they're nice suburban towns with an affordable cost of living. There's also Snellville which is teensy bit further out. To the north a bit are Dunwoody, Doraville and Chamblee, which are nice suburban areas too. If you want to be closer to the city I definitely recommend Decatur. Druid Hills is very pricy but also closer and pretty nice. I LOVE Virginia Highlands and a lot of young professionals live out there (nice area). Check this out: http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwphi/8383.html

Is there money involved? I go to Columbia and the School of Continuing Ed is just the administrative house of the bioethics program. The professors are all from other units at Columbia (med school, Mailman, law school, nursing, SIPA, so on and so forth). The enrollment in your core courses is likely to be mixed - mostly bioethics students but also students from other biomedical sciences and possibly the med school, and also some advanced undergrads since they're listed at the 4000-level. So basically the fact that it's in SCE doesn't affect it at all. On the other hand, though, don't get starstruck by the Columbia name. NYU is also a very well-respected school and you need to go somewhere that will support what you want. The bioethics program here is very much medical, and more administered by professors in applied/professional units and a lot of professors from the medical center campus. Only one of the full-time faculty members associated with the program are philosophers. If you want a more philosophy-based bioethics program you may want to go to NYU (although you could certainly take relevant courses in philosophy as a bioethics student at Columbia). NYU also has some more buy-in, it seems, from professors from more traditional departments like psychology and anthropology. Also, you may want to ask what placement is like from these programs, depending on what you want to do.

The potential awesomeness of working with Professor X cannot be denied. However, I think it would be at least a little nerve-racking to be mentored by a telepath, lmao. Could you imagine? There's no hard and fast rule. Rankings aren't the most important thing here (unless we're talking about an unranked or low-ranked program vs. a top program); what's important is fit. If they are both doing the same research (which is unlikely - they are probably doing similar work, but not exactly the same), pick the one with which you click the most. Personality fit is just as important as research fit. Also consider their relative positions in the field. Well-connected senior mentors can do things for you that relatively new, although brilliant, junior faculty members cannot. A) Yes. Follow the money. No. Shouldn't be different. C) Again, doesn't matter unless one school is unranked or has a bad reputation. D) This does matter. If Professor A is the only one at University B, what will you do if he dies, leaves, quits, or changes fields significantly, or hates you? This is especially important if Professor A is untenured. You need other people who could potentially mentor you. If University A has several scholars in the same-ish field that means that if you accidentally insult Professor X's cat and he hates you, Prof Y or Z may be able to take you on instead. Also consider that schools with several scholars in a particular area may have more resources in that area. I got lucky and am currently working with Professor X and Professor A at the same university, lol. (Seriously, one of my advisers was on my other adviser's dissertation committee.)

Considering the awful winter we've been having here in the Northeast, all other things equal I think I might go for Tulane or UF, lol. Seriously, it's already been said - consider research fit, placement rates, stipend levels, and the amount of work that you'd be expected to do. If you can, visit the departments and consider your colleagues and how congenial they are. But if it's really a three-way split and they are just equivalent in every way, pick the one where you'd most like to live. There are advantages to small college towns (Gainesville) over large cities (New Orleans), btw. They're generally far cheaper and you can get a nicer place for less money and potentially without roommates. I just visited the place where I will be a postdoc next academic year, a large state university in a small college town, and the town is really charming. There's plenty to do, drinks are super cheap ($3 happy hour?!) and the amenities are great (faculty and staff can join the state-of-the-art fitness center for $180/year, which is roughly $15/month and includes all of the fitness classes. It's $250 per semester at my current location, and that doesn't include breaks, the summer, or any classes). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed being a graduate student in a large city for the most part, but it would've been nice to not live in a box for 6 years.

HAHAHA ...it's amusing that there are so many people who took the OP's post (semi-)seriously. My thought is - if that's real talk and your research is SO good that you're synthesizing new materials and have been appointed as a research fellow at a top research institution - with the same salary and benefits as PhD-level scientists - and are supervising your own lab of doctoral students with a recent BA, what the heck do you need a PhD from Berkeley for? Write a grant and buy your own equipment. Or apply for a research fellow position at Berkeley. Since you already have one, transitioning shouldn't be difficult, especially with more first-authored publications than most graduate students have at graduation.

I find quite a few things in the original post difficult to believe, but I'm going to assume that the rare mathematical prodigy has found their way onto this board and treat your question seriously. Graduate school, quite frankly, is a means to an end. In general people go to get a graduate degree because they want to do something specific. People get a PhD because they want to become researchers and/or professors. People get an MBA because they want to go into business. People get an MA in statistics because they want to be professional statisticians and maybe get a PhD later. So on and so forth. Sure, you can get personal intellectual enrichment through the process of studying for an advanced degree, but I don't think that in and of itself is a good reason to go unless you're independently wealthy and don't mind sacrificing the 6-10 years of potential income and retirement savings you could be making. (I could maybe see doing an academic master's degree for that personal enrichment aspect - maybe, if it were totally free and I had a burning desire to be a full-time student - but most of them are not totally free, so I see no purpose in that either). So, to answer the question of whether it's worth it to you, ask yourself - do you want to be in a profession that requires a PhD? (For most fields, that means that you want to be a professor at some kind of tertiary educational institution. In some fields, it means you want to be a researcher at an institute that pays people to do research.) If you don't, then there's no need to go. *shrug* As usual I agree with TakeruK's entire post; in particular I agree with the comments that it's unclear what you're expecting the academic environment to be like. Graduate students will complain about going to class. Employees will complain about going to work. Professors will complain about many aspects of their jobs. One of the things we do as humans is complain, and that is regardless of what kind of work we do. And I'm just going to be completely frank, as you were: If you are that one person in the department who always wants to talk about academic work, thinks nobody should complain about work and class and are a general all-around keener, nobody will like you. Even the most dedicated person I know from my program - who just got hired to work in the #2 ranked department in my field, at a fantastic R1, and had 8 publications by the time she graduated - talks about social life and how much she hates coursework and was just a generally fun person to be around. One more thing: You may not want to be a professor at all (generally the job goal for people gunning for PhDs) if these are the attitudes you have about students. The vast majority of educational institutions in the U.S. are not research universities but teaching institutions focused on educating undergraduates, and most U.S institutions admit more than 50% of their applicants. That means that MOST PhD-level professors will be teaching 3-4 classes a semester at universities and colleges where the students are not super competitive geniuses and may not want to be there - or worse, are not well-prepared to be there because of failing K-12 education in this country. If you think you are annoyed by those students now, wait until you have to teach a class of 20-40 of them. And if your contempt for your students comes through (and despite what you say, you do sound very condescending), they will make things difficult for you and you won't enjoy your career.

Depends, I think. -What's the real difference between these two schools? I don't think there's much difference between a top 3 and top 10 program in most fields, so I would go to a perfect fit program that's in the top 10 over an okay fit in the top 3 any day. But if you're comparing an unranked program to a top 10 program, that's a completely different comparison. It also depends on the field. Some fields, like English or history, are competitive enough without coming from a program with a bad placement record or a mediocre reputation. In other fields, like accounting or nursing, a mid-ranked or even unranked program can still get you a decent faculty position because of shortages. -What does "less than stellar" mean? That could mean graduates only sometimes get academic jobs but go on to do other interesting non-academic things, or it could mean that one or two graduates end up at East Podunk State College and the rest are baristas. -I think it's dangerous to go to a program for one scholar in particular. It's different of it's this one scholar + other interesting scholars that you could work with, but scholars leave, die, quit, run out of money and all kinds of other things. In general, intellectual heaven is preferable to prestige - prestige doesn't keep you going when it's 2 am and you're exhausted but you have a paper due in the morning. But you do want to be practical and ensure that you can be employed coming out!