[Do you feel lonely as a PhD student?]

I have a dog now, as a working person. I think a graduate student can definitely have a dog, but they have to plan carefully and the dog's care has to become part of your life. It is helpful if you want a dog to genuinely have a dog - as in, you see "having a dog" as a category of "doing stuff" that you enjoy. I love taking my dog on hikes, walks, to the dog park, etc., and I don't mind taking her out when she needs to go out. If taking the dog out is going to be a burden, then it's probably not the right choice.

I think it also depends on where you're doing your program. In New York, where I did my PhD, having a dog would've made it SO much harder and more expensive to find an apartment, so I decided against it. In State College, where I did my postdoc, having a dog was pretty easy (it was more expensive, but still pretty easy to find apartments that took dogs) and the lifestyle was slower. The town was also only about 20 minutes across, so it was easy for me to run home and let the dog out if I needed to in between escapades (and frankly, there wasn't a whole lot to do there anyway, so doing stuff with my dog was super fun).

Also, dogs are not cheap. There's the vet, toys, grooming (my dog won't let me touch her nails! I do bathe her at home though), food, treats, etc. You also have to be willing to pay to board the dog when you travel, and graduate students travel often (home for vacations but also remember conference travel). That was the main reason I didn't get a dog, because I knew I'd go visit my family during the holidays for a few weeks on end, usually visit them in the summer, and then also go to ~2 conferences a year. Around me (Seattle area) boarding a dog costs around $40/night. I now have friends that I trade doggie care with (their dog is currently curled up at my feet, along with my own) but it may take a while or you may not have that arrangement.

[Still Ambivalent About Staying in Academia]

I actually made the decision to leave academia and pursue only non-academic jobs during/after a postdoc. To be completely transparent, I went into grad school thinking I didn't want to be an academic, and graduate school made me consider becoming a professor. I was still unsure what I wanted to do by the time I was finishing up, so I decided that taking a postdoc would give me some time and experience to decide. I had a pretty great postdoc but I decided that academia was not for me. I currently work as a UX researcher at a technology company and I have zero regrets about leaving academia.

What helped me figure it out was actually my experience in my postdoc. There were a couple of red flags that I kept my eye on throughout my experience; the long and short is that I just didn't enjoy the tasks that academics spent a good deal of their time on, and the sacrifices one has to make for an academic career were dealbreakers for me. I hate writing scientific journal articles in the jargony language we're required to use; I wanted to spend more time communicating science to non-scientists. I hated the long lead times for pretty much everything in academia; I wanted a more fast-paced work style, and for my research and expertise to have more immediate impact on something that someone was going to use. I didn't like the solitary nature of the work; I wanted to work on a team where I got to interface with other people every day. I wanted a little more structure to my work days. And I wasn't really fond of writing grants. I didn't mind writing the justification and description of my research; what I hated was laboring over six pages of text for eight months. In my current job I might dash off six pages of text in a day.

I also wanted to have more control over where I lived geographically (I did my postdoc in a small college town to test out if I could do that for a career. I could not, or rather, I did not want to) and I wanted a better work/life balance (in academia, I felt like I had to spend most of my waking hours working in order to be good enough to get a TT job and grants and publications for tenure).

For me, how I figured out what were dealbreakers and what were minor annoyances was for me to be really introspective and think deeply about how I really felt about my work days as a postdoc, not what I was willing to get through for a paycheck or what I was tolerating for now because I had to. When I closed my eyes and imagined myself in a dream job, what was the first sort of image that came to mind? What were the things that frustrated me day in and day out about my job as a postdoc, and how many of those were things that I would only do more of an as academic? When I really, clearly imagined being a professor - because as a postdoc, other than being a VAP, I think that may be the closest you can approximate the role and get to observe what TT professors are doing - did I see myself enjoying the tasks I'd do every day, or dreading them? I realized as time went on that I was filled with a sense of dread when I thought about being on the tenure-track. To me, it looked like six more years of spinning my wheels waiting for something to happen, waiting for my life to finally be settled and to begin, and I hated that feeling.

*

The level of independence that you have in a non-academic job depends a lot on the job, but I think academics commonly imagine far less independence and autonomy than non-academics actually have. While my general area of work is assigned to me, I have some say in what I get assigned to, and I have pretty much complete autonomy to manage the priorities and research that I think needs to be executed in the area - provided it serves the business's goals. I can't go off and do some theoretical research that has no bearing on our business, but frankly I have no desire to do that anyway; I want my work to have product impact.

You will always learn and read more about your field. That doesn't stop because you're not in an academic position. I'm a researcher in my non-academic position, so I actually do end up reading a lot of (academic) research in my field (my company even has a library with subscriptions to Academic Search Premier and such). You're still constantly learning - it's just that sometimes the learning is less explicit and happens in different contexts. I also definitely conduct research on topics that I am interested in - they aren't the one I imagined doing research on when I started graduate school 10 years ago, but they are no less interesting. (Caveat: I work in video games research, so...)

I do miss teaching and mentoring undergraduate students, but I have found different ways to scratch that itch. My managers are pretty awesome and have helped place me in opportunities where I can mentor more junior peers. I have kept a toe in academia by serving on grant panels at the NSF that have to do with graduate education (and I get to meet some really interesting academics and tell them about my job, which is fun!) I also volunteer in my spare time to mentor college-bound high school students. Many non-academic jobs also offer you the ability to teach as an adjunct or work with college students, depending on the type of job. I could also adjunct a class, if I wanted to; I just have decided that I like the amount of free time I have.

And oh, my, the free time. I haven't had this much free time since college. GLORIOUS. Sometimes I actually have time to get bored.

[Tattoos in grad school]

It's definitely a place and campus culture thing. I currently live in the Pacific Northwest, and I also currently have brightly colored pink and purple hair. When I'm at home in the PNW, I feel completely at home and in place - lots of people here have piercings, tattoos, fantasy-colored hair and dress pretty casually (khakis and a button-down are dressed up, bro). But when I visit my family and friends on the East Coast...especially my family in the South...I feel like I stand out A LOT.

I got my PhD at an urban, progressive campus in the Northeast (New York, specifically) and professors teaching in flip flops or having visible tattoos or piercings wasn't very common there, at least not in my departments (psychology, public health) or any of the other departments in which I commonly interacted with professors (which was quite a few, since I did consulting for professors in grad school). In fact, professors tended to dress in business casual. The wildest-dressed professors wore jeans (gasp!) with their button downs instead of slacks or khakis.

[Laptop recommendation]

When people say that Macs last longer than PCs, I have found in the past that it's because they are comparing Macs (which are almost all premium machines) with lower-end PCs that cost a lot less and are made with inferior materials.

The cheapest MacBook Pro is $1300. It's a premium machine with top-quality materials that is engineered to last. A $300-400 PC is not in the same league, and is not designed to last. A comparable build is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon; this is my work computer, and I've had it for nearly 3 years and it runs pretty much the same as the day I got it. I also had a previous ThinkPad that lasted 5-6 years before its specs simply couldn't handle newer operating systems and programs. You can get a new one around $1350 with better specs than the MBP (i7 instead of i5; 16GB of RAM vs. 8GB; 256GB SSD vs. 128), or if you only need one with similar specs to a MacBook Pro, you can get one for slightly cheaper than the MBP.

You can also get a Microsoft Surface Laptop with the same specs as the entry-level MBP, including the premium materials and design, for about $1,000 (and they're also running a special where you can double the SSD to 256GB for the same price) A Dell XPS 13 with the same specs and a 256GB SSD is around $1250, and a comparable HP Spectre x360 is around $1150. I have an HP Spectre x360 as my personal computer; it's also almost 3 years old and runs perfectly and I have not treated it very well.

I'm saying this not to convince you to buy a PC (I've had Macs, and I like them; they're great machines) but to let you know that if you prefer PCs/the Windows operating system, you absolutely can get a machine that's going to last you 5-6 years if you want. You just have to go into the same price range as a comparable Mac (actually, perhaps a bit cheaper).

A touch screen is not necessarily any less durable than a non-touch screen; the overlay that you actually interact with is made of the same materials as a non-touch screen.

*

If you really are only going to use it for note-taking and occasionally writing papers in the library, then I'd recommend a Surface Pro with a Type Cover. Right now, a Surface Pro with the same specs as the MBP (Core i5, 128GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM) is $800. The Type cover will cost you $160, so the whole package will be $960. If you want the Surface Pen to take handwritten notes or make drawings, that's an extra $100, so total $1,060, which is less than most premium-level PCs. The pros are that it's super lightweight, so super portable, and runs full Windows 10, so you can get things like Microsoft Office and stuff to write papers and do other work. If you anticipate using it on your actual lap, though, it's not the most lap-able setup ever. There are other 2-in-1s with more solid/structured keyboards that would be better for that (like the Lenovo Yoga, 

A Chromebook could also be a good choice if you are connected to the Internet nearly 100% of the time. You can use Microsoft Office mobile apps on Chromebooks that have access to the Google Play store. I use them on my iPad and they're pretty good, especially for basic writing tasks.

(This is the part where I have to disclose that I work for Microsoft. I work in Gaming/Xbox, though, not hardware or office.)

[Mastering out of PhD]

First, I want to say that you have totally valid reasons for not wanting to complete your PhD. Wanting to be near your family, your husband, your friends, and your hometown are valid reasons. I think sometimes in academia, we are encouraged to believe that our personal desires and goals are beneath and should remain subservient to our professional careers. That may be true for some people, and there's nothing wrong with that. But most people don't want to make that choice. Not only do you have the personal concerns, but you also sound like you don't really want the kinds of jobs a PhD will qualify you for, so it makes sense to graduate with an MS.

When it is possible to get an MS depends entirely on your program. In my program, it was once you had completed all of your coursework and had written a master's thesis/paper; in my program a publishable paper satisfied (it was only 14 pages long, but it did become my first journal article). In my department, you didn't have to take your comprehensive exams to get your MA. I'm sure the Graduate School for your university has the requirements listed somewhere, either in a student handbook or on their website (or both). Look around and ask some current students - you can always couch it in the terms that you want to earn your MS on the way and just want to be sure that you are doing things correctly.

Should you leave now and go get a terminal MS? Depends. What field is your PhD in? If it's something that you could easily parlay into a biotech job, perhaps with an additional certificate or something...it may make more sense (financially and professionally) for you to stay where you are. You're getting built-in research experience and your degree is paid for. Obviously, I would not advise someone who wanted an MS to apply to a PhD program and do the master's, but you actually thought you wanted a PhD and only recently changed your mind. However, I will say that being in a department that assumes you want a PhD and an academic/research career is crazy-making. And sometimes, terminal master's programs give you more career development and networking exposure. That's a deeply personal choice to make (as it also depends on the costs of an MS in biotech back home; whether or not your husband can support you while you do an MS full-time; how much undergrad debt you have; etc.) But what I will say is that you should not feel bad should you decide to finish with your MS in your current department.

Now, as for telling your PI - well, first you need to find out about your MS requirements and decide what you want to do. My guess is that you'll need at least another school year before you earn your MS, so you can finish your coursework and write your paper or do whatever project is necessary. After you find out the requirements...personally, particularly if you decide to earn your master's in the department, I would advise you to wait until you're close to finishing up the MS and you want to leave. Whether or not you would automatically lose funding depends on your department, but many departments and PIs do become less interested and less involved in a student they know wants to finish with their MS. (It's not malicious; it's mostly out of self-interest.) In some departments, converting to an MS only may actually make you lose some or all of your funding. 

As for feeling like you're going to let your PI down - that's a common feeling, and your PI probably will be disappointed. However, think of it this way: you are the only person who has to work your career and job, whether it's struggling through a program for a degree you don't want, working in a research job you don't want, or leaving to go be with your friends and husband. The other thing is that you will deal with a temporary amount of discomfort (which will range from a single conversation to maybe a few weeks of awkwardness, depending on your PI) for something that will bring you longer-term happiness. That's a trade off that is almost certainly worth it.

After you have figured out what you want to do and have solidified your plans, and the time is right, schedule a meeting with your PI. It's easier (for you and them) if you sound decided and settled. "Dr. Black, I've enjoyed doing research in your lab, but I've decided not to finish the PhD program. After much thought and research, it doesn't really fit with my professional goals any more. My plan is to finish with my MS and leave in June 2019."  For a more senior graduate student or postdoctoral fellow, I would advise suggesting a succession plan with the papers and projects you're working on, but at your level you may not need to. You can leave out the personal reasons, unless you feel comfortable enough with your PI to discuss them.

Some may say that you should tell your PI early so that they can recruit new graduate students to fill your place in the lab. I say that's nice if it aligns with your own professional and personal timeline, but don't feel like you have to rush your process to help your PI perfect his timing for finding another graduate student. Let them figure out how to deal with that. (For example, if you were otherwise indisposed, they'd still have to replace you!)

[Tattoos in grad school]

There's nothing wrong with tattoos in academia. They're super common, and they don't necessarily read as unprofessional or off-putting. I think you should feel free to expose them if you want, even while teaching.

Your professor's comment was inappropriate and pretty creepy...but it's not your fault, and there's nothing you should do in reaction to it. The problem is with him. Commenting on people's bodies is always dicey, but even then there are still so many ways he could've given you a compliment on your tattoo without making it creepy (e.g., as you mentioned, without the wink and the 'on you.')

I know it's difficult not to be self-conscious, but try not to let this incident make you self-conscious about your tattoo or your body, much less make you cover it up.

 

[If I knew then what I know now (Officially Grads version)]

Form a study group! Even if study groups aren't normally your thing. I was super skeptical about forming a study group for my comps, but I joined one anyway and it was tremendously helpful. We were able to divide and conquer a lot of the reading and provide really good, detailed summaries of the key readings that made it easier to study. (Because let's face it...you probably can't actually do all of the reading.)

For tackling the reading - make a schedule for it and stick to it. You have to add your own structure to your comprehensive exam studying period. If they are orals, set up some meetings with your advisor where you can informally practice by spending part of those meetings talking about the readings.

[Question]

No. At some of the more elite law schools, it's slightly more common - for example, 9% of Columbia's JD class of 2020 had a graduate degree before entering, and I checked a couple others with similar numbers.

But at the top law schools, it is becoming more common for people to work for a few years (2-3) before attending. You can check out the class profiles of law schools to see the percentage of students who came straight from undergrad.

[PhD in Finance vs PhD in Accounting]

I once went to an interest meeting for a postdoctoral bridge-to-business program. It was designed to train PhD students in other fields (usually social sciences) to compete for jobs as business faculty, partially to stave a shortage of faculty in business.

Based on the information they passed along in that meeting, I think that finance and accounting are actually pretty close in terms of openings for faculty. I got the sense that accounting may have a slightly better picture, but both fields had more openings than they had qualified candidates to compete for them.

(I'm assuming that you're using this as only one factor and not the primary driving factor in selecting a program.)

[Classic campus feel, or office building campus? Does it matter?]

Is the offer at the office building school a good offer? Is it a great program in your field, with a good reputation? If it's a professional program, is there the potential for good professional connections?

Pretty campuses are nice, but they definitely shouldn't be a primary consideration for choosing a graduate program. If the other program is a great one, I wouldn't decline the offer on the hopes that you might get admitted to the other program.

[How early is early in moving to a new school and how late is late?]

I couldn't afford to go out to my graduate city a couple months before starting. I did meet a roommate online who was in my department and who lived within driving distance of the city, so she did go up to scout for apartments during the summer before grad school. But with the housing market we were moving to (New York), it all fell through and we ended up finding a place and signing a lease just a week before school started.

I also knew several grad students who found temporary housing for a few weeks or even months before finding a more permanent place to live. We housed a fellow graduate student in a different program in the same school for about 3 weeks. I don't remember all the details, but somehow his housing had fallen through and the apartment he was going to rent on the first floor of our building wouldn't come available for another 3 weeks. My  roommate offered him the couch in our living room. I thought she was crazy, but it turned out all right and the three of us became close friends!

[Furnishing an Apartment on a Budget?]

Mattress: I would STRONGLY suggest getting a new one, not used. You can get inexpensive but good new mattresses at Macy's and Sears. I highly recommend Sears; my husband and I got a great, comfortable queen-sized mattress + boxspring from them for ~$700. We still have it in our guest room! They do have cheaper models, but they tend to be more uncomfortable. (My first mattress + boxspring set was $250 from a mattress store in Manhattan; I think I lasted about 6 months before I broke down and bought a new one. I could feel the springs!)

Bed frame: I bought a metal bed frame from Amazon for $30. (I didn't want my mattress and boxspring on the floor. They last longer in a frame.)

I too thought about asking my parents to give me my old bedroom furniture including mattress, but when I looked into it it was cheaper for me to buy new stuff than it was for them to ship it to me (they are in Atlanta and I was in New York).

Other stuff: Mix of IKEA, Target, Wayfair, and Walmart. Target and Wayfair both have things that look nicer and quite frankly are sometimes better quality than IKEA and Walmart.

I would also recommend getting a new couch (bedbugs can live there, too) and you can get an inexpensive one from IKEA or Wayfair. Target sells nice accent chairs.

IKEAs in cities often contract with local delivery companies to get the delivery to you faster, but only if you order in person. So yeah, if you order online it may take weeks via UPS; if you go in person, often they will have same-day or next-day delivery for MUCH cheaper.

[Emotional Support Animals in Graduate Housing?]

rising_star makes a good point about single-occupancy apartments, but I want to add that based on my experiences at Columbia, it is not the case that single-occupancy apartments (studios or one-bedrooms) are less desirable. It is exactly the opposite: these apartments are in high demand, and the university chooses to award them first to married/domestically partnered couples and families. It is very difficult to get a single-occupancy apartment space unless you are partnered and/or have children. (However, an assistance animal may change things.)

From a more practical perspective, pets are prohibited in UAH apartments but I knew lots of students who had dogs and cats. They were not supposed to, but *shrug* they did. My building was completely owned by UAH and we had tons of dogs and cats in the building. I lived there part-time after I graduated (my husband was still finishing and i was splitting my time between PA and NY) and brought the dog we adopted in PA there a lot; the doormen loved her and never said anything.

You should definitely register with disability services, though, because it is a reason that someone could kick you out. You can find the liaison for your program here: https://health.columbia.edu/content/disability-services-liaisons

[When Did You Find Housing?]

Yeah, it totally depends.

When I moved to New York for graduate school, I didn't find and secure an apartment until a week before classes started. That was pretty normal. There were lots of students who didn't find housing until several weeks after classes had begun. I was told that looking for an apartment before July was too early, because they go so quickly. Plus, landlords in New York would expect you to start paying rent from the time you secured the apartment; they don't hold apartments for people like that.

When I moved to a small college town (State College) for my postdoc, I started looking for an apartment the February before I moved there (in August) and that was late. Most of the students rented apartments for the following year between November and January of the year prior. The saving grace, though, is because there isn't a lot of overlap between what the undergrads wanted and what the postdocs and professors wanted, and I was able to find an apartment that was mostly populated by grad students, postdocs, and professionals. (It was a little more expensive and a little farther from campus, but "farther" meant it was 4 minutes driving rather than walking distance.)

One thing you can try is subletting for a while. Lots of students find out over the summer that a roommate is leaving or they have secured an apartment but need to find a roommate. Also, sometimes apartments free up when students graduate in December. Sometimes professors on sabbatical or graduate students on fieldwork sublet their apartments for a semester or a year. They often list these on Craigslist. Sometimes the university has an internal source.

I wouldn't wait on university housing unless you know for certain that spots usually open up over the summer and that students tend to get in. I'd pursue other avenues and try to find somewhere to borrow money for deposits, if you need to.

[Cost of Living for Morningside Heights (NYC)?]

Yes, if you live with roommates and live frugally. Apply early for the university housing at Columbia (UAH) by the Morningside campus. Most graduate students get into that, and all of those units will be within 20 minutes walking distance to Columbia's campus (most of them less - I lived in a unit that was directly behind the campus, and it took me about 3 minutes to cross the street and get into my department's building). Since you are leaving in December 2020 you'll really want to find a university apartment, because the lease terms will be more flexible. You don't want to deal with trying to sublet a market-rate apartment while trying to graduate. (Not that the market-rate apartments in Morningside Heights are affordable anyway.)

Morningside Heights is a pricey neighborhood, not just in terms of apartments but also in terms of amenities. The restaurants are expensive; the grocery stores are expensive; the bars are a mix. Luckily, you're not too far a walk from Harlem where you can walk and get some cheaper food and groceries if you want.

[Prestige vs Location?]

Northwestern is 14 miles north of Chicago and the distance is easily traversed by train, as I understand it. Google Maps tells me trains leave every 12-20 minutes. Chicago is the third-largest city in the United States, with an GDP that surpasses Switzerland's and Belgium's. I think there are tons of opportunities in the health/medical sector of Chicago. Northwestern also has great health/medical resources itself as a university.

By your own admission, Northwestern has more pros and BU's only draw has little to do with the program itself. For a 12-month program, I agree that I'd choose Northwestern.

[Between an Ivy and a Hard Place]

tl;dr this is a HARD problem. Before I started grad school, I would've told you Great School, no question. Now that I'm done and did a postdoc in a small college town that was OK at best and work in industry in a city I love...I don't know, man. Location and quality of life, IMO, is so important. I'm a big fan of treating a PhD program as a phase of your life - not some temporary, supra-existential chunk of Limbo time, but as an actual period of your life in which you deserve to be happy and develop yourself as a person and not just a professional. Balancing the two of them is really important.

I'm tempted to say that if you really believe "it's hard to go wrong with either," then why not go with the place where you really want to live and where you are pretty sure you can be happy?

*

The long version:

1. Fit is king. If Great School has research interests that are closer to yours, then it seems like it's probably a better fit for you.

2. I went to an Ivy in a very, very expensive city (Columbia, in New York). You get by, and can even thrive. I lived with roommates and/or in small apartments the entire time I was there, but there are unparalleled opportunities for work and play in large cities. It just kind of depends on what you value, what makes you tick. If you like lots of space and wide-open vistas, a tiny apartment in Boston or Philly or New York may drive you nuts. If you want to eat greasy pizza at a hole in the wall at 3:12 am or get Sri Lankan food delivered to your door or take in world-renowned ballet or opera in your downtime, then a big city is kind of the only place you can do that.

3. I will always appreciate and never regret the seven years I spent in New York. Life-defining opportunity, even while broke. Location in grad school is far more important than I gave it credit for before I was applying.

4. Doing research that you would kill to do is one of the only ways to maintain your sanity in graduate school. When you wake up in a cold sweat early one morning during your third year wondering why you are doing this to yourself, remembering that you are asking and answering the questions you are passionate about is what soothes you back to sleep (or, more likely, eases you out of bed to get a coffee and start reading). I'm half-joking, but seriously, there's something really special and joyful about digging into something you LOVE for five years straight. You want to be at a place where you can really do that. It sounds like Great School is. Is Ivy?

5. I went to an Ivy that also had a reputation for neglecting its students, which in my opinion was mostly true (it depended a lot on the department). In my opinion, this also wasn't so bad...but that depended a lot on the student and the professor. I had mentors who were pretty good to really great, and they would make time for me if I was proactive about seeking it out (but wouldn't necessarily come find me on their own, which I don't see as a problem). I had excellent research mentorship from people at the top of their field. And I would say in my case, it pushed me to be more independent: to come to meetings with mentors prepared with agendas and notes; to seek out multiple mentors from different institutions to give me what I needed when my main ones were missing in action; to think deeply about what I wanted and what my research interests were (and not my mentors'); to gently push back against things I did not want to do. Is this a pro over having a more nurturing mentor? I don't know. I have some friends who had super nurturing labs and mentors and that experience sounds lovely. It also sounds smothering, to someone who never had that. I kind of liked the fact that my mentors didn't really care where I was or what I was doing at specific hours of the day as long as I was turning in good work consistently. I'd also say that the 'friction' required to get stuff done has helped me in my professional career afterwards - I'm much better at pushing things forward and taking a proactive approach (and bringing attention to myself and the stuff I'm doing) than I would've been otherwise, and it's been noticed.

The advice I always give students looking at my program is that if you're already a person who's got well-defined ideas about what you want to do and a sense of self-assured independence, attending a department with somewhat-neglectful (I say that sort-of-affectionately) faculty isn't necessarily something that will destroy you.

6. Citations, or publications? Do the professors at Great School publish more prolifically than the faculty at Ivy? take note of that. You need publications, and one of the best ways to get them early on is to jump onto a publication a professor or PI is doing.

7. Is the Ivy actually a more prestigious program in your field, or are you just attending to overall prestige?

 

[E-mail Security]

You could turn on BitLocker for your machine and use a complex password. I don't think you need to change it weekly; I work for a tech company with highly confidential information and we only change our passwords every 90 days. You can set a reminder for yourself to change your password routinely. You can try a password manager like LastPass to manage them, if you'd like.

The IT department at your new university can help you figure out good security practices, too.

[Finishing undergrad research during first year of PhD]

Eek.

I think it depends on how related to your doctoral research this project is, and your own personal motivations for finishing it. You will be very busy with classes and with getting settled into your new lab as well. How much work is left on it? Are you mostly finished with analyzing results and are proceeding to the write-up phase?

Having a publication in your first or second year of grad school would be an excellent thing, especially if it's in your field, so you should strongly consider it. Have a frank discussion with your current advisor about their expectations and timelines for the project and paper, including authorship and division of labor. Also, talk with your PI at your graduate university about the situation and see what they say.

[Have I been rude/impolite to my advisors?]

I'm glad to hear that this generally worked out, OP.

Generally speaking, I think it's better to be upfront, and I think this is where you could've improved your approach to to Andy and Cecilia's request. You knew from the get-go that you didn't want to do this experiment - it seems like money was a big factor, but it also seems like you just didn't want to work with Andy because he's kind of toxic. That's okay, but it would've been good to find a way to gracefully say no to this project.

Given the context, it makes sense that Andy and Cecilia would be upset that you agreed to do the experiment and then turned around and backed out. The mistake you made was not not wanting to work with them, but that you strung them along when they could've been finding someone else to do the work. It does make sense that they wouldn't be happy for you, because it's very natural for postdocs to get tied up in the primary work they are doing for a PI and not have time left over for an additional experiment that's not in that primary area. It does not make sense that they would bombard you with emails of anger and disappointment, because that's not an adult reaction, but...understandable, I suppose.

One area I do disagree with is that I don't think you used Andy and Cecilia to graduate. If this experiment was not part of your dissertation and they simply needed it done because they wanted a publication out of it, it's not really appropriate for them to consider you completing it as a requirement of your PhD. (It'd be a different story if they wanted it as part of your PhD proposal or thought it was necessary to your development or program or research.) You promising to do the experiment under pressure - when you thought you'd be paid for it - is not, in my eyes, manipulating them or Ben. If anything, I think they were manipulating you by threatening to hold your dissertation hostage unless you completed this project for them for free.

But your family and friends are right. This is water under the bridge. Andy and Cecilia, from your first post, seemed like difficult (and, in Andy's case, unreasonable) personalities to work with anyway.

[Living in student housing as a grad student]

I'm not sure exactly what city you are looking in, but in many cities the university is in a nice neighborhood where finding an affordable one-bedroom apartment to live in alone with a 15-minute commute radius is nigh impossible on a grad student budget. I went to grad school in New York and looking for that kind of set-up would be unrealistic; I'd imagine a lot of other large expensive cities (LA, Boston, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) would have similar barriers. Is it possible that what you're looking for doesn't exist?

Would you consider...

1) Extending your commute? 15 minutes is rather short. What about 30 minutes? If you're traveling on public transit, in many cities it's common for those commutes to be longer. You can read or listen to podcasts or music on the bus.

2) Living with roommates? It's very common for grad students to live with roommates, especially in big expensive cities. Even one roommate can significantly reduce the cost of rent. More-or-less random roommates aren't necessarily bad; I've lived with lots of different randomly-placed/found roommates between the ages of 18 and 28, and I've never had a horrible experience and I've had some really positive ones! You can actually find someone in your department - the roommates I had in grad school were all other grad students who went to my university, and my first roommate was in my department. Some schools release a directory of students who are all looking for housing so you can pair up and look together (that's how I found my first one). Believe it or not, I found a couple of my roommates on Craigslist, and it worked out fine. You just have to be sure to meet them beforehand.

I've lived in all of these kinds of setups. For two years I was a graduate hall director and I lived in all-upperclass, undergraduate buildings, where I was the only grad student. I've lived in university-owned apartments for graduate and non-traditional students, and I've also lived in regular open-market apartments not owned by the university. It honestly doesn't matter - these options are going to vary widely in the kinds of amenities and atmospheres they offer.

Undergraduates do, on average, tend to throw more parties. But I have also lived in some open-market apartments that were pretty loud; in fact, the loudest place I ever lived was an open-market apartment in a neighborhood in which the teenagers and young adults had frequent summer jams on the stoop outside my window, sometimes until 5 am Some undergrads in my building when I was a hall director threw a party every (other?) Thursday, but they typically wrapped it up before 12-1 am, and I could only really hear them when they opened the door of their dorm room. Graduate students, in general, tend to be very quiet...the grad student apartments I lived in were the quietest place I lived, I think.

Also, I gotta ask: What is your threshold/definition of crime issues? Everybody has to have their own personal threshold of safety, but I've found that a lot of neighborhoods people perceive as unsafe or crime-ridden actually...aren't. I lived in a neighborhood that a lot of people might feel uncomfortable with, at first blush, because of who lived there. But I felt super comfortable because I knew a lot of people on my block and there were always people outside - even at 5 am (the aforementioned teenagers!) - and I'd see them and talk to them when I was on my way back from a late night/early morning.

Crime data on alcohol-related offenses is not really going to tell you what areas have a lot of parties - for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that universities often shield students who get into alcohol trouble from ever interacting with the actual police much less being charged with a crime (and also because a lot of these get called in as noise complaints, not alcohol-related offenses anyway).

[Prestige for PhD Programs/Job Outlook?]

That's UW is right there - it's less than 20 minutes away from us Bonus points because it has very good computer science and engineering departments, but that's actually partially because it's so close - Microsoft (and other tech companies) pour lots of money into supporting research and education at UW because we need a constant source of engineers to work here!

But, particularly at the graduate level, I wouldn't choose UW-Seattle solely or even primarily for that reason. I mean, if you knew you absolutely wanted to work at Microsoft and UW was otherwise a good fit, then sure, it's a good choice. But we hire PhDs (and undergrads) from LOTS of other places. And if you wanted to work at Microsoft Research, we have MSR locations all over the country and in international locations as well - and in that we're not more likely to hire PhDs from UW.

[Pros and Cons of going into a "new" PhD program]

I think whether or not program title matters, and how PhD grads introduce themselves, depends on the context. I have a PhD in Sociomedical Sciences, and nobody ever knows what that is, so I alternately introduce myself as having a PhD in social psychology and/or public health depending on the context. I never talk about my thesis topic unless someone asks me, and usually they're asking me out of curiosity. I work in industry, where your dissertation topic really doesn't matter, but my sense is that even in academia once you are more than 1-2 years out of grad school nobody cares about your dissertation topic anymore.

Program title can matter for academic jobs - for example, someone with a PhD in sociology may be more likely to get hired in a sociology department than someone with a PhD in American studies, even if they did research on the same things. But it doesn't always matter.

[UChicago's Computational Social Science vs Columbia's QMSS]

One big difference is Chicago's program is two years, whereas QMSS is one year. If you don't have full funding that's something to take into account.

I am a little bit familiar with QMSS (I considered it myself, and I got my PhD at Columbia where we had QMSS students in our lab and in a lot of my classes). Chicago's program I am not familiar with. My impression, based solely on the Chicago website, is that their emphasis is on getting students into PhD programs - they say specifically that they anticipate most graduates to go to funded PhD programs. QMSS placements seem relatively balanced between PhD programs and jobs in industry...but they seemed to lean slightly more on the side of employment in a quantitative social scientist role outside of academia (if you look at their placement page - that's where most of their students are placed). That may be because of the motivations of most of the students when they enter, and I know that if you want to get into a PhD program from QMSS you certainly can.

I know that Columbia is a great place to be a student in the quantitative social sciences. There are so many prominent quantitative social scientists who are actively doing research and teaching courses at Columbia. Andrew Gelman, the founder of the program, is a bigwig in the statistics and social sciences community. The university has several centers and research institutes that revolve around quantitative analysis and statistics. This was the first place I'd ever been that used social science examples in a calculus class, for example. You can take quantitative classes in specific fields, too. There are lots of courses and lots of different ways to customize your degree. If you're interested in exploring some computer science and data science to supplement your education there are classes and expertise in those areas as well.

Columbia also has a top-notch political science program, and lots of political science professors actively participate in the QMSS program since the poli sci department at Columbia tends to be quite quantitative.

Oh, also, when researching this answer I found two articles from students in the MA program in QMSS at Columbia:

Review on Columbia QMSS Program

Things You Should Know

[HCI / Informatics PhD Decision]

Hmm, this is hard. 7-10 years ago, when I had just finished selecting and was in the thick of beginning my own doctoral program, I'd have said that location should be a secondary consideration and that the fit with the program and your future career prospects should take precedence over that altogether. Now that I'm actually finished with my PhD and reflect back on it, and have discussed this with other folks who've gotten one, I don't know...location is pretty important. It can affect your motivation while you're in the program and your motivation to actually stay in the program when you feel like you want to quit; being happy with your atmosphere, the social networks you've created, your personal life outside of the department - those things can all influence your happiness and connection with your program as well.

@rising_star also made a good point to me once - she said that if you are headed for academia, your graduate program may actually be the last time you can choose where you live.

Program fit, I would still say, is the most important factor. If you feel that Michigan is overall a better fit, then I'd choose that program.

But if they're an equally good fit for you and you have a level of confidence in the research expertise of your potential professors and advisor(s) at Boulder, then it sounds like CU's the choice for you.

You can also ask for more information before deciding. Talk to your potential advisor at CU-Boulder about your concerns - you can be polite but frank about your concern that the info sci program is brand new and doesn't have much of a placement record yet, so you're interesting in hearing where they think graduates might head after finishing and where graduates from the HCI concentration in CS and from other affiliated departments (media studies, journalism, communication) have ended up when they have an HCI emphasis.