International reputation of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics?

[curvature]

Hello fellow Grad Cafe readers,

First of all, congratulations to all the people who got into all the awesome programs over the last few days!

Now, here is my situation. I recently applied to do my PhD with a prof in the graphics group at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. We chatted over the phone for a while, and he has invited me to Germany for an in-person interview and to give a talk. I'm currently living in the U.S. and he agreed to pay for my trip, so I think it's safe to say that he is seriously interested in working together. Of course, I am extremely excited about this opportunity because our research interests overlap significantly and he seemed like a genuinely cool guy.

I'm trying to assess the reputation of MPII versus the only other admit I have right now, which is a large public school in the US (roughly in the top 50 according to US News and ARWU).

How do you think the international reputation of MPII compares to other universities in Europe and North America? In my opinion, MPII is a bit of a wildcard simply because it doesn't really show up on international university ranking websites. That being said, there always seem to be lots of SIGGRAPH papers that come from MPII, which is a good indicator of the quality of their graphics research.

So what do you guys think about MPII?

[Amogh]

I'v always been lead to believe that mpii is a very good institute. I think that for a prospective phd student it's the poi who matters not the ranking of the place. If MPII has a lot of siggraph papers then i guess you can let your worries rest as that indicates the quality of research going on there. In the end, it isn't rankings thats going to matter to recruitment committees at academia or at a company but the amount of research you have done. Rankings are only a rough indicator of quality not the absolute.

Hello fellow Grad Cafe readers,

First of all, congratulations to all the people who got into all the awesome programs over the last few days!

Now, here is my situation. I recently applied to do my PhD with a prof in the graphics group at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. We chatted over the phone for a while, and he has invited me to Germany for an in-person interview and to give a talk. I'm currently living in the U.S. and he agreed to pay for my trip, so I think it's safe to say that he is seriously interested in working together. Of course, I am extremely excited about this opportunity because our research interests overlap significantly and he seemed like a genuinely cool guy.

I'm trying to assess the reputation of MPII versus the only other admit I have right now, which is a large public school in the US (roughly in the top 50 according to US News and ARWU).

How do you think the international reputation of MPII compares to other universities in Europe and North America? In my opinion, MPII is a bit of a wildcard simply because it doesn't really show up on international university ranking websites. That being said, there always seem to be lots of SIGGRAPH papers that come from MPII, which is a good indicator of the quality of their graphics research.

So what do you guys think about MPII?

[alexpap]

Max Planck is considered a very strong institute in Europe. If I were you I would give it a try. Is MPII the only option that you have?

[curvature]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies

My other option right now is a roughly top-50 public research university in the U.S. Fortunately, this school would also be a great fit in terms of research.

The only reason I care about reputation here is because I because I believe that it can play an important role in determining where one can become a professor after graduating. There is some experimental data to support this view. “The Small Worlds of Academic Hiring Networks” by Wiggins et al. (2006) looks specifically at the PhD exchange network of computer science departments and finds that top departments only hire from a small number of other top departments. In fact, this study also finds that you can largely predict US News rankings of computer science departments based on centrality measures of the underlying PhD exchange network.

Anyway thanks again for the replies

Edited February 12, 2011 by curvature