help me solve my two-body problem

[nbren12]

I hope you guys will be able to give some advice on where to go to school. A little bit of background: my girlfriend and I have been together for 6 years, and for 4 years we were doing the long distance thing between NYU and Hopkins. After graduation, we took the year off, and have been living together, which has been really great. She is deciding between med schools, and I am choosing PhD programs in applied math. Here are the places we both got in, and are seriously considering:

1. UCLA (great for me); USC (not so good for her) ;

2. NYU (great for me); Hopkins (great for her) ; really don't want to do another 4 years of this

3. UW (so so for me) ; UW (pretty good for her, and cheap $$$)

Basically, it's either a long distance relationship again, or a crappy tradeoff. I know these are all good options, and I am happy we have choices, but they all leave a sour taste in my mouth. What would you choose? Should we just man up and do the Hopkins-NYU thing again? It would be nice to know what other people with similar problems are doing.

[Karlito]

Maybe you could move to Baltimore and commute between then and NYC once you did all your coursework. If not, then maybe a small distance is better than bitterness in your couple due to one's having to sacrifice his dreams / ambitions. Weigh all this carefully with regards to the future.

[sabdo]

Wow that's a tough one. Hopkins is one of the holy grails of medical school so that's got to be a tough one to turn down. On the other hand though, UW is a still a top 10 school that many would kill to go to.

I would probably pick option #2 because both of you get to go to the top schools in your field.

[nbren12]

Thanks for your input. I think we will probably just go with the hopkins - NYU split. she talked to some people, and apparently hopkins is worth dealing with a long distance relationship. back to NY for me i guess.

Edited April 26, 2012 by nbren12

[TakeruK]

Sounds like you are in a really tough situation, because the only way to be in the same place is for one person to give up their best acceptance, which is never a fair thing to ask of another person. Even though it sounds like you are already leaning towards the long distance choice, which probably means you have considered these things below already, I'll mention them anyways (maybe it will help someone else making a similar decision):

Firstly, I think the real question is what are both of your goals for the next ~4-6 years. Do you both want to prioritize your career ahead of everything else, even relationships and family? I don't know how old you both are -- maybe you aren't planning on things like having kids or buying a place together etc. in the next ~5 years. But remember that ~5 years is a long way away, and this is kind of a "lock in" situation -- if you decide 2 years from now that you rather start a family sooner, it will be tough.

Next, although you are making a decision for the next 4-6 years, you might want to think about what happens next as well. If you want to do the academic career, this means post-docs at several different places. For your girlfriend, she will do residencies, I think? What happens then -- are you both going to pick the best location for yourself again and do long distance? When will this end? Eventually, unless you are both incredibly lucky, chances are, one of you will have to pick the less-than-ideal choice for yourself in order to be in the same place as the other person. Maybe it does make sense to continue picking your best choice until one of you "makes it big" and then the other person can compromise. But how long will it take?

Basically, I'm saying the reason the 2 body problem is so hard is that you will have to make choices like this again and again. So maybe your MD and PhD programs are only 4-5 more years, but you will be in the same position again at that time. And if by then you decide that you've had enough of the long distance and one of you chooses a less-than-optimal choice, would it have been better if that choice was made now?

My opinion is that if one of you is prepared to compromise on the best decision for themselves down the line, eventually, then you might as well do it now and be happy during grad/medical school. Going to a non-top-ranked program is not necessarily the end of your career. And if I may be frank, since I don't even know you at all, but being together 6 years is more than enough time to know whether you want to be committed to each other, so you probably don't have to worry that one of you will give up your dreams and the relationship doesn't work out.

I'm a family oriented person, and so is my wife, so I'm obviously biased towards a decision here. I'm not trying to say that it's better to be career oriented or to be family oriented, because it really really depends on you two. Just giving you some things to consider, since these were things my wife and I considered too. (Her decision was to stop going to school since she decided that a career would get in the way of what she really wants -- starting a family and raising kids).

Finally, I want to say that from visiting schools and talking to other prospectives, there seems to be a "shame" in picking a school based on non-academic reasons. Obviously, academic reasons are the driving force behind going to grad/med school but you need to be happy too. If the best school for you is in an area of the country you don't like (weather, culture, distance from family, size, whatever), then those other reasons are perfectly legitimate factors to consider as well. Since my wife was going to move with me, our final decision was an even weight to academic fit and how much we liked the city/area and our ability to raise children during my PhD.

[rose1]

My SO and I take turns compromising. He moved out to Texas when I got a job there, I moved back to Florida when he got into grad school, and now that he's graduating, we're moving this summer so I can go back to school. These are shorter term than a PhD or MD program though. In your case, I think I'd honestly take UW. That being said, I'll be starting at Hopkins this fall, so I am probably not the best person to tell her to turn them down!

[nbren12]

Interesting points TakeruK. I do agree that if we both want fancy careers, we will have to face at least two more decisions like this one (e.g. residency/postdoc, real job). As you say, that is definitely what makes the two-body problem so difficult. However, we are not thinking about having kids for at least another decade or so. If we go to the best possible places while we have the flexibility to do so, it will make the future decisions about postdoc/jobs/family easier down the line. For example, if she goes to Hopkins, she will likely be able to get a fancy residency wherever I choose to go for postdoc.

I guess if one of us is bound to fail, I agree with your assesment. But there are definitely examples of couples who have both gotten great jobs in the same place. My PI and his wife are both investigators at my current institution. Also, I have heard about spousal appointments being used as a recruiting tactic. I guess I am just not as pessimistic about our long term prospects. that said, I agree that 5 years of PhD is a pretty big chunk of one's life, so it is definitely worth considering one's happiness during that time.

Edited April 26, 2012 by nbren12

[rose1]

For example, if she goes to Hopkins, she will likely be able to get a fancy residency wherever I choose to go for postdoc.

As someone who works for a medical school, I feel the need to point out that this is incorrect information. No one, even students at JHU, get to choose where to go for a residency. Your girlfriend will participate in match like everyone else and she will be obligated to go wherever she is matched, whether there are postdoc opportunities for you or not.

[nbren12]

As someone who works for a medical school, I feel the need to point out that this is incorrect information. No one, even students at JHU, get to choose where to go for a residency. Your girlfriend will participate in match like everyone else and she will be obligated to go wherever she is matched, whether there are postdoc opportunities for you or not.

Oh man, I wish you wouldn't mention the Match. That process really scares the bejesus out of me. It sucks that we can't apply to several programs in multiple different cities the way we did for grad school. It seems like the only strategy to deal with match is for me to know where I will be going in advance. Say I get a postdoc in Boston before she goes through the match. Then, she applies to every residency program in Boston (gazillions). All else equal, I suspect she will get matched at a more prestigious program if she goes to hopkins. Not so?

[ANDS!]

I hope you guys will be able to give some advice on where to go to school. A little bit of background: my girlfriend and I have been together for 6 years, and for 4 years we were doing the long distance thing between NYU and Hopkins. After graduation, we took the year off, and have been living together, which has been really great. She is deciding between med schools, and I am choosing PhD programs in applied math. Here are the places we both got in, and are seriously considering:

1. UCLA (great for me); USC (not so good for her) ;

2. NYU (great for me); Hopkins (great for her) ; really don't want to do another 4 years of this

3. UW (so so for me) ; UW (pretty good for her, and cheap $$$)

Basically, it's either a long distance relationship again, or a crappy tradeoff. I know these are all good options, and I am happy we have choices, but they all leave a sour taste in my mouth. What would you choose? Should we just man up and do the Hopkins-NYU thing again? It would be nice to know what other people with similar problems are doing.

I have no idea about Med Schools, but if the goal is to bring you two closer together AND get a great graduate instruction UDubb seems like the best option. I would exactly count a top 20 school for your field "so-so". I would take the UDubb offer firmly confident that I have made a compromise that DIDNT compromise my long term academic/professional goals.

[TakeruK]

Interesting points TakeruK. I do agree that if we both want fancy careers, we will have to face at least two more decisions like this one (e.g. residency/postdoc, real job).

...

But there are definitely examples of couples who have both gotten great jobs in the same place. My PI and his wife are both investigators at my current institution. Also, I have heard about spousal appointments being used as a recruiting tactic. I guess I am just not as pessimistic about our long term prospects. that said, I agree that 5 years of PhD is a pretty big chunk of one's life, so it is definitely worth considering one's happiness during that time.

Upon rereading my post, I think I was expressing my opinion more strongly than I had intended! If both of you have the same goals for career and family, which it sounds like you do, then it does sound like you're making the best decision for yourselves! But to continue playing devil's advocate/being pessimistic.......(if you want me to stop, let me know; otherwise I hope it's helpful to think about these things?)

I don't think that "not getting into the best program" = "fail" (i.e. when you say "if one of us is bound to fail"), unless your goals really are to be the best you can be in your field. And the other thing to point out is that while we do see successful couples at the same school/department, this may be an observation bias, I think. That is, there may be any number of couples who don't end up in this position for every couple we do see -- but we don't observe the "unsuccessful" couples! I worked in a lab that hired two post-docs (who were about to be married) just as I was finishing though

Wikipedia informs me that senior med students apply for residencies at the beginning of year 4 and find out in March. I guess you are certain you can finish a NYU PhD in 4 years then? Even if you finish in 4, you will also be applying to post docs at the same time she applies for residencies. I don't know if this is true in all fields, but in physics/astro, the unofficial decision deadline for post docs is Feb 15. So she won't know where you got in when she is applying for residencies. However, if you take 5 years (intentionally or not) to complete, then she will start her residency first and you can then apply to all the post doc positions in that city. It would be a big constraint for you since in any given city, there's probably more resident positions than post-docs, I would imagine. But like you said, if you have a strong PhD, then you increase your chances to getting one of those few positions! Of course, you could also continue to do long distance.

Okay that's enough pessimism from me! I'm not usually this much of a downer, I promise But if you still feel good about your plans even after considering the most pessimistic outcomes, then it's probably a really good plan. And even though there is something negative about all three choices, there is also something positive about each of those three choices you have too, so GOOD LUCK!

[crazypork]

Well the other thing about residency is that it's not super difficult to transfer, so you can start one place and switch if needed.