Safety w/ Funding or Top Choice Waitlisted for Funding

[thesnout]

Please don't take on 200k in debt. I know Econ pays a lot of money but it's impossible to predict your future salary and/or job location. Your life circumstance could change. You could get married, have kids, get really sick (this happened to me), etc. On a 20 year debt plan you already know how much you'd be paying. I looked at the figure at it's insane. Not to mention the interest. Wowzers.

Everyone has a top school. But a PhD without funding isn't the best idea. Take the funded offer or try again next year. There are no guarantee's the top school will fund you this year or next. Good luck. Don't kill yourself with debt.

Edited March 26, 2011 by cherylsafina

[chaospaladin]

Can someone explain to me why UTK is classified as a tier 3 research school?

[polarscribe]

It's not, unless you listen to USNWR's bullshit rankings.

By the Carnegie Classification, it's a RU/VH (Research University/Very High Research Activity).

Edited March 26, 2011 by polarscribe

[chaospaladin]

Oh I see. Regarding safety schools (in my case in PhD in Chemistry), how should I go about in looking for these safety schools? Would NRC be reliable where I look at the lesser ranked schools and count that as my safety or is NRC pretty much unreliable like USNWR?

[wtncffts]

There are better and worse rankings but all rankings are to a great degree unreliable, especially overall rankings. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a recent piece on this which I thought was very informative:

https://media.scoopr...hool_061111.pdf

Also, there really is no such thing as a 'safety' school, if that suggests to you that you're all but assured of getting in. It really is about research fit. You can't just go by rankings; you have to do the legwork and look into as many programs as you can, their faculty interests, resources, etc.

EDIT: Sociologists' take on the NRC rankings: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/03/21/sociologists_blast_rankings_of_doctoral_programs

Edited March 26, 2011 by wtncffts

[runonsentence]

Thanks for sharing that Malcolm Gladwell piece. (My God, he's a beautiful man.)