Please help me decide!!!

[cluelessgrad]

Ok I have to decide between two admits and I have no idea right now.

So I have the following two admits:

ADMIT A

prestigious, large state university consistently ranked in top 20s in chemistry( and I am not talking about USnews, its stuff like NSF funding etc) but it has only 3 faculty in my area of interest and Professor A1's work interests me. Professor A1 is a very well known professor but nearing retirement. On emailing him he said that he might take new students this year but wasnot sure. So its like a 50/50. But the other two prof I would definitely not like working at all.

ADMIT B

Upcoming private univ ranked in 50-70 in chemistry(again excluding USnews). It has about 5-7 professors in my field but again there is only one professor B1 that I would like to work with. But Professor B1 is definitely taking new students this year. Also Professor B1 is a superstar of his field.

I am an international student so I havenot visited either of the places so I cannot say anything about the environments.

So I am torn between which one to go for. I am definitely going to pursue a career in academia and I would like to go to a place/advisor which would be beneficial for my future career.

I would love to hear everyone's opinions. Also I hope there is enough information in the post to give an opinion. If not please let me know.

Thanks!

P.S please ignore mistakes in grammar and spelling

[so47]

Honestly, it's hard to give advice without knowing the schools, especially since you have not been able to visit them to give you a feel for the environment. If you named the schools, people could tell you what their visits there were like, might be able to tell you about specific faculty, the town it's in, etc.

Aside from that, I am concerned that you are saying there is only 1 prof at either school you could see yourself working for. What happens if when you meet these 1 profs in person, that you just don't get along personality wise, or you hear from their groups that they are miserable to work for? Or if they are taking students, often times they are only allowed to take a certain amount each year due to department rules, so you may be competing with other students. You don't wanna go to a school for one prof then not get into their group! For that reason, I was advised to make sure there are at least 3 profs you could see yourself working for at whatever school you choose. So, that being said, I would either look through all the profs again and see if there are any others that may not be your #1 research choice, but have a project you find interesting and could work with.

If the answer is still no, and without any other information, I would probably have to say go with school B, since at least you know that prof is taking students and there are more faculty members in your field to choose from.

[Shiryatsya]

From his (her?) previous posts my guess is the latter is Boston college? But seriously neither seem that great for you, but the first one sounds even worse: The only prof you like might not take students.

[Ziegler1988]

If the second school is BC and the superstar is Hoveyda then I wouldn't go to BC just for him. The grad students outside of his group said he's the hardest one there and you need to get along with his personality to work well with him. That being said, I still think BC is a good place for synthetic organic outside of him: Snapper and Morken were both really nice and publish a good amount. The facilities there are really good and there is a lot of collaboration between professors which creates a good atmosphere with everyone working together.

[cluelessgrad]

If the second school is BC and the superstar is Hoveyda then I wouldn't go to BC just for him. The grad students outside of his group said he's the hardest one there and you need to get along with his personality to work well with him. That being said, I still think BC is a good place for synthetic organic outside of him: Snapper and Morken were both really nice and publish a good amount. The facilities there are really good and there is a lot of collaboration between professors which creates a good atmosphere with everyone working together.

[/quot

Yes it is BC and as far as hoyveda is concerned I have heard all the rumours about him being very hard n etc but I met him at a conference a year back and i think we got along well. As far as being hard is concerned I donot mid that.......if I can survive my present supervisor I can survive anyone. As far as morken and snapper are concerned, I have emailed Prof. morken( actually one of his students) related to a poster I saw at a conference and I was very disappointed by the fact that there was no reply. I am pretty vary of working with someone. I donot know anything about Prof. Snapper.

The other univ is Penn State and again I donot know anything about Prof. Weinreb or Prof. feldman (as far as meeting them is concerned) while I have met Prof. Funk and know that I would like to work with him.