a classic decision deadlock

[onetwofive]

Hi everyone,

I need to decide between two schools for an engineering MS/PhD program, and I am completely deadlocked. So let's put it up for a vote, tell me where I should go!!

School A:

- top ranked

- plenty of relevant research, but so far i haven't fallen in love with anything specific there

- bigger program

- average funding

- great weather, great city, great campus

- far away

School B:

- ranked around #15-20

- great professor/advisor and very appealing research group

- great fellowship/funding

- smaller program

- great city but very urban setting, which is ok but not my favorite

- closer to "home"

[greenpapaya]

Rankings aren't everything if you aren't happy there! Do you think you will work as effectively if you are unhappy? For me, the answer would be no. I have a post-doc friend and she says your advisor is everything---if they have a great attitude, then life will be better for you.

[firecolon]

I strongly recommend School B.

• 
  (1) A higher ranked school is better, but a slightly lower ranked school is packaged with a fellowship, and that may actually look stronger on a resume. A top 20 program is still very good, it's not like you are choosing between Austin Peay State or Yale (no offense to Peay students). This is a much smaller difference, especially when you consider a fellowship at the "lesser" school. I would accept a fellowship at Dartmouth over an average offer at Stanford, even if Stanford is slightly better --- The fellowship-Dartmouth package will look stronger on a CV/resume.
  
  (2) It appears that you have a better chance to succeed at School B since it appears to be a better fit for you in research.
  
  (3) If the urban setting is a problem, you are more likely to afford to leave the city with a fellowship whenever you want, or commute from much farther away. I am not an urban person either, but if I had an extra $10,000 then I would commute two hours if I really liked another neighborhood better.
  
  (4) A smaller program is not necessarily a bad thing. In some ways in can actually be a good thing.
  
  (5) Who cares if a school is closer to home? With a great fellowship, you can afford to visit "home" much more often.
  

It is quite possible that I may have read this differently based on your information. If the "great fellowship" only offers slightly more funding, if the program is ranked 20th out of 21 programs, and if the school is in a horrible neighborhood with a cost of living that is twice as high, then that would be different. Is the cost of living very different? Are the people much nicer in one program? By "small program," how small? It really depends. But based on the information I have so far, School B wins by a landslide.

[onetwofive]

Thanks firecolon. (Also, thanks for choosing the name 'firecolon'...)

To clarify, I'd have tuition+stipend at either school. The A stipend is average, and the B stipend is quite nice, but the cost of living is also higher at B. And in any case I've been working for a couple of years, so I have a hard time getting excited about any of these stipend levels. For funding I'd call it a wash.

The size difference is also a wash, that's not particularly important either way.

The #20-ish is out of a large number of programs, I'm in a pretty big field.

I think I'd have a clearer choice for B if it weren't *so* urban. We're talking smack in the middle of a humongous city. High-rises, subways, honking taxis, the whole deal. (I won't give the school name, but I'll let you extrapolate.) It's not somewhere I would voluntarily move to unless there was a major reason driving it. But of course now there might be...

Hence the deadlock.

[onetwofive]

Final Answer: B.

I'm glad the votes weren't unanimous, at least that justifies my indecision. But I agree with the outcome, and in the last week I could feel myself finding extra ways to prop up B, so there I go!