Choosing a school: Adviser vs Program

[JungWild&Free]

I have been accepted to 2 Social Psych PhD programs and am having a difficult time deciding between the offers.  I could see myself at both schools and got good fellowships to both.  One school has a more prestigious reputation but isn't really that much higher ranked than the other (although reactions from friends, family and laypeople who are not in the know have been much more enthusiastic for the "better" school).  The less prestigious school has a great adviser that I have a wonderful research and personality fit with, however she is a new professor (first year).  My fit with the adviser at the more prestigious school is less ideal.  Our personality fit is less good and our research interests are only somewhat similar, although we have talked about specific projects and he would be on board with those.  My fit with the more prestigious program is better.  I would have more faculty to work with and be able to pursue interests in marketing easily.  My fit the the less prestigious program is less good, but the fit with the adviser is better.  Research ideas would be easy to come up with and our personal connection would be very smooth.  My question is: what should hold more weight in the decision, the adviser or the program?  What do you think would carry more weight in the job market?  How much should you prioritize happiness in a program vs opportunity?

[ak48]

I'm having a similar choice to make, and i'm not sure if our fields of study lead to different answers (I'm engineering, it looks like you are psychology). Could you get the same set of skills from either place?

 

I'm leaning towards the prestigious choice because at the end of the day, it's the school that shows up on your CV/resume, not the professor. Unless your less-prestigious professor is a VERY well known name in your field, I'd figure you'd be more marketable from the better name place. (Also, does one professor have better connections to industry/academia where you want to work?)

 

That said, you still need to FINISH your PhD, which means if your adviser is a poor match you may quit the PhD midway. If you can envision yourself getting along with Prestigous-school prof, I'd figure it's the better long term choice.

[selecttext]

People tend to write off programs but you need to also consider the caliber of graduate students around you. For example, it is unmotivating to attend departmental seminars where your peers ask an endless stream of preposterous questions.

[claisen]

I'm applying for chemistry program, but I think that the discipline is not so important in that case. I would definitely opt for the school with a better advisor. This is the person which (apart from you) has the biggest impact on your success in graduate school. I've been doing research for some time and I know what I'm saying. Bad advisor can take away all the joy of research. So I would chose the school with less reputation:)

[ThousandsHardships]

I'd go for the more prestigious school unless you are VERY set on having that specific professor. If you get into a program with a good match, you have all the options open and a motivating environment. If you pick a school solely based on the adviser, your paths will be closed if something happens to this person (e.g. sudden death, job change, change in research directions). You will also have a lot more resources if you have more people to turn to for advice since you feel that the prestigious program is a better fit for your career interests.

[PaperTowels]

I think it's definitely advisor. I'm not in the social sciences, but imagine you finished the PhD and applied for post-doc positions, they call you up and say they're interested, but want you to make a presentation about your work first.

 

How prominent will your school be in this presentation? It will be one small photo or logo filling up a quarter of the screen on the last slide, and maybe a single line in a big "my background" slide.

 

What about your advisor? 95% of what you talk about will be direct consequence of your relationship with the advisor.

 

However, in your case the good advisor is not *unequivocally* better: She is in her first year, can you be sure that she won't have problems getting funding? Can you be sure she'll stick around long enough for you to finish? Can you be sure her word will hold enough weight in departmental politics? You must decide these for yourself.

 

If something goes wrong and you need to find a new advisor, this might be easier to do in a fancier program.

 

As for your closing thought: That's a false dichotomy. The best opportunity lies where you are happiest, and fit best. Dysfunction and unhappiness does not engender success.

Edited March 17, 2013 by PaperTowels

[Janie M.]

Hi. I actually have a very similar problem as well. I'm trying to decide between two grad schools that have the same program in name, but are vastly different in terms of curriculum and also in academic ranking. One is more difficult to get into than the average college and has a very reputable name. The other is a larger university in the Midwest that has a recognizable name, but isn't as respected as the other college.

 

Like you, I'm trying to decide if happiness and a better fit are more important than a prestigious name on my diploma (but an education received in a curriculum that I am not completely sure is the right fit for me). However, I'm not necessarily deciding between advisors, but rather between which program I like better. I like the program at the less prestigious university better. It also so happens that I think I would work better with the advisor at this college as well. But, I feel like friends and family will think I am crazy for turning down the more reputable school.

 

I guess I am inclined to tell you to that perhaps the program is more important than the advisor. I realize that you are going for your PhD and I am only entering a master's program, so maybe there are issues at play here that I may not understand. However, I think the program fit is more important, unless you will only ever be working with one particular advisor and no one else. Since you said your fit with the more prestigious program is better, I would say go with this option. I am sure you will have opportunities to interact and work with others besides the advisor who you said you don't quite mesh with. Also, you never know if something could come up and for some bizarre reason this faculty member will not be your advisor any longer (unlikely, I know).

 

If you thought that BOTH the program and advisor at the less prestigious school were a better fit for you, I would say choose this option. However, you said you like the general program better at the more reputable school. I'd say the more "prestigious" is the safer option of the two; I'm not saying this because it's a more respected school, but because of the factors you explained. I think you would find you would be happy in the program that fits better, even if you and the advisor are not exactly one the same page.

 

I understand how excruciatingly difficult this decision must be for you. Good luck to you!!

[Tall Chai Latte]

I would go for the program with overall better fit, rather than the program with only one advisor fits well. Given your POI at the less prestigious school is the only one with a good match with you, and she's just starting out as a brand new faculty, there are uncertainties between the time you join the program til the time you graduate. Like PaperTowels mentioned, you are going for a PhD, so you'd want her to stick around for 5+ years. Long term funding and network are also factors to consider. 

 

That said, if the program with overall better fit has more than one POI for you, I'd say it's a good choice. You probably don't want to get stuck with one POI, who started out as an awesome fit, but for whatever reason not working out as you are much deeper in. That way, you can have some wiggle room. 

[Shelley Burian]

I would say it depends on how closely you need to work with your adviser/ how much control they have over your overall success in the program. For my field, your adviser pretty much governs your graduate life from the year dot to your defense, so if you don't have a good personality fit with that person then it gets very difficult. On the other hand if you only start to work closely with your adviser later in your program and you have to work closely with other faculty and graduate students, then looking at overall atmosphere might be better. I would say that the more prestigious school sounds better in that there are other faculty members it sounds like you could switch to if your relationship with the person you enter with as your adviser starts to slide.

[VBD]

I'm leaning toward the program over the one advisor in this case, especially with the advisor being relatively new. If she were a more established name that may be a different story. Furthermore, what happens if she doesn't get tenure, your last year is in jeopardy. What happens if she loses funding after your fellowships are done but you're still finishing your studies, who else in the program can you go to? However if you feel like you cannot be happy at the more prestigious program then you should go with the advisor even with all these extra worries that I listed about. Your happiness can depend on the feel of the program and its students (cooperative vs. competitive?), how "less of a personality fit" that other adivisor is, etc. By the way, that little blurb you mentioned about the less personality fit should be clarified -- you don't want to have an advisor that is a micromanager when you are a more laid back student, and vice versa, but we can't know how s/he is a less of a fit.

 

[zabius]

I agree with everyone who said that they would choose the overall program over the advisor. Your relationship with your advisor is an important one, but [like others have mentioned], what happens if she switches to another school? Or what happens if you find that you don't like working with her after all (you won't know until you actually start)? Then you'd be stuck in a program that you don't really like with no viable Plan B.

For what it's worth, I did my master's at a school that I really didn't like (in a department that was pretty mediocre and a geographical area that I couldn't stand)… and did so because I thought it would be worth it to work with my advisor, who's well known in my field. Well, it turns out that the advisor (however brilliant he may be) was a terrible mentor who basically just didn't care at all about my project. I finished the project on my own, but was pretty miserable. If I had chosen a school with an overall better program, I could have just switched labs or at least found support from another faculty member, but that wasn't available to me at this school.

Basically, I chose advisor over program and regretted it. Your results may vary, but it's something to think about.

[kaputzing]

As for your closing thought: That's a false dichotomy. The best opportunity lies where you are happiest, and fit best. Dysfunction and unhappiness does not engender success.

 

Interesting phenomenon in my field: The two schools who beat all the rest in terms of job placement are (coincidentally) the two schools known for the unhappiest, stressed students. Wondering if this is because the students who go to these schools are just hard-core (and therefore are willing to take on a load of stress for the prestige/job boost) or if the schools do actually contribute a large amount to helping the students get a leg up over their competition ...

[JungWild&Free]

Thanks for the advice everyone!  I did ultimately decide to commit to the program with the better overall fit rather than choose for the adviser.  There were other factors that also made the more prestigious program a better option like summer funding, program resources, smaller teaching load, more engaging fellow students and a wider network.  After weeks of contemplating, it finally seemed clear that the only real pro to the other program was the adviser. 

 

Advisers and students do work together closely in my discipline as well, but the personality fit doesn't affect my ability to work with this POI and be productive.  Many people indicated that they thought it would be a better choice specifically due to my ability to get a broader training from the POI, in addition to the program.  Now, if I had really fiercely disliked the POI at the better program, I think I would have chosen the other school regardless.