mosman

Are you going to be looking at jobs within academia or outside of it? Because if it's the latter, HR isn't going to care about the impact of your work, just where you got your PhD from. On top of that, by going to a prestigious institution you're gaining an alumni network that can help you find top positions.

This topic is now the #2 result on google for 'UW MCB', awesome.

I did my undergrad at WUSTL and am currently a technician at the Medical School. I may be attending in the fall, so I can also answer any questions about the University. Good places to live: - UCity: West of Big Bend, this is a great place to live. East of there, make sure to stay south of Delmar. Things get worse as you head north (don't even think about living north of Olive). - Skinker/DeBaliviere Neighborhood: I lived here during my undergrad and there's a good mix between families and students here, and you can be within walking distance of the Forest Park, Delmar, and Skinker metro stations. I'd advise living closer to the Forest Park side of the neighborhood. - Dogtown: A great little neighborhood southeast of main campus, rent is cheap and it's quite safe. It's not within walking distance of campus or a metro station, so you'll need to bike or drive to school. Unfortunately, all the good school districts aren't within walking distance of WashU (unless you're out at the west campus, then Clayton is a good option). WashU itself is within the city, and the St Louis School District is not in good shape. Most of the people I know who went to school in the city and 'turned out well' went to private school. Public transport as a whole is in limbo right now, because of a big budget shortfall. Buses can be iffy at times, but the metro is awesome, you can live near any metro station and get to WashU in 40 minutes. I've been taking it to and from work every day and the only problems I've run into were during Cardinals games when the trains are packed.

I'm having a hard time choosing a school, I have it down to the University of Washington at Seattle and Washington University in St. Louis. Both programs have excellent reputations and have faculty members I'd be willing to work with. Initially I was dead set on UW, as I liked the coursework better and I love Seattle-- I'm close to family, lots of my friends live there, and the social scene is better. Then, I found out that faculty salaries are frozen for the next year, prohibiting UW from giving raises to retain faculty members. I know some institutions of a similar caliber have instituted faculty salary freezes (Harvard, Yale, JHU, Stanford, etc...), but as far as I'm aware of, none of them have explicitly prohibited salary negotiation. The Institute for Systems Biology and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are exempt, but all but one of the people I'm interested in are at UW. I don't want to go, only to have all the faculty I'm interested in working with leave. UW has already lost a chunk of its neuro group over the last couple of years. So now it looks like WashU is the better program, as they're better funded and have faculty members I want to work with. Essentially, the program at WashU is 'better', but everything else is... ugh. tl;dr: I like University of Washington a lot. But the state salary freeze and prohibition of salary negotiation has me worried about faculty retention. Internet, are my fears justified?