Electrical Engineering Ph.D - Difficult decisions

[fluffybread]

Acceptances: Harvard SEAS, CMU ECE, UT Austin ECE, UCSD ECE

Waitlist: MIT EECS

Rejections: Stanford EE, Princeton EE

Waiting for decision (no interviews so far..): Caltech EE, UCLA ECE, UIUC ECE, UC Berkeley EECS 

 

I know I should probably wait until the end of March until making my final decision, but some PIs are softly urging me to decide, so I still want to sketch my decision in advance. Currently, amongst the acceptances, I would say CMU and Harvard are my top 2 choices but the two are very different in character. Both PI professors are great people (I had interviews with each of them multiple times), but the research area is quite different. I would say in terms of research, CMU fits me better. Also CMU is a more research-focused institution which also fits me better. However, in terms of living environment, I would say Harvard is better (just my opinion). Also, the research at Harvard also seems exciting and is not that much a far-fetched research area from what I did during my masters. It is really a difficult decision.. perhaps CMU is better in EE research, because a lot of people say Harvard still has a long way to go as an engineering school.

Everyone is different, so I know I'm the one who should be deciding in the end, but I still want to hear some opinions from diverse, perhaps more experienced people than myself. Which school would you say is better to do Ph. D in EE?

Also, around when would you guys make the final decision given that some decisions are not out yet??

 

Edited February 28, 2019 by fluffybread

[DiscoTech]

22 hours ago, fluffybread said:

Acceptances: Harvard SEAS, CMU ECE, UT Austin ECE, UCSD ECE

Waitlist: MIT EECS

Rejections: Stanford EE, Princeton EE

Waiting for decision (no interviews so far..): Caltech EE, UCLA ECE, UIUC ECE, UC Berkeley EECS 

 

I know I should probably wait until the end of March until making my final decision, but some PIs are softly urging me to decide, so I still want to sketch my decision in advance. Currently, amongst the acceptances, I would say CMU and Harvard are my top 2 choices but the two are very different in character. Both PI professors are great people (I had interviews with each of them multiple times), but the research area is quite different. I would say in terms of research, CMU fits me better. Also CMU is a more research-focused institution which also fits me better. However, in terms of living environment, I would say Harvard is better (just my opinion). Also, the research at Harvard also seems exciting and is not that much a far-fetched research area from what I did during my masters. It is really a difficult decision.. perhaps CMU is better in EE research, because a lot of people say Harvard still has a long way to go as an engineering school.

Everyone is different, so I know I'm the one who should be deciding in the end, but I still want to hear some opinions from diverse, perhaps more experienced people than myself. Which school would you say is better to do Ph. D in EE?

Also, around when would you guys make the final decision given that some decisions are not out yet??

 

Doubt you are going to get much feedback without specifying a sub-field. Electrical engineering encompasses a lot of work.

[fluffybread]

On 3/1/2019 at 10:02 AM, DiscoTech said:

Doubt you are going to get much feedback without specifying a sub-field. Electrical engineering encompasses a lot of work.

My sub-field is signal processing/machine learning.