snowies

If you wouldn't go to the PhD program if you got accepted, it would not be risky or dumb to make a decision without waiting. I can't say that much to the master's vs. PhD thing, but I imagine that having a master's would make you more competitive for future PhD programs. The funding part is definitely helpful, and if you would choose the master's program anyways, go for it. If you're still unsure until you hear their package, you might as well wait.

So I'm deciding between two schools for my PhD. One is a computational biology program at a pretty good, but not top, school. I visited and I loved it there. The research is what I'd enjoy doing for five years, but it's not EXACTLY the area I'd want to be in (which is somewhere between computational biology and epidemiology). The second is a public health program at a top-ranked school which is very close to my field of interest (not entirely, but would help me better than the first school). The problem is, I haven't visited. They didn't give me any assistance towards visiting them and plane tickets were too expensive to cover it on my own. While this would probably be the top choice if I had visited, it's hard for me to decide to go to a program that I haven't seen in person and to live in a place I've never been. Basically, my questions are: Should it make a difference whether a school invites people out for interviews/recruitment? Is this an indicator of program funding, or is this typical in public health? And how risky is it to decide to go to a school I haven't visited? Thank you!