how important is location to you?

[socioholic]

Anyone else not consider applying to "top" schools because you did not want to live there? I'm a life long Floridian and would stay if possible. I've also considered cost of living as a factor.

[TaewooBurns]

I currently live in South Korea and I want to go back home for grad school.  Home is Michigan.  I haven't looked much outside of the midwest at all.  Sure some schools have to be considered because of quality but I don't want to move back home and not be "back home."  

[socioholic]

I can understand that; some of these places I'm kinda scared of. Is Chicago, Baltimore, etc. And I'm not sure how anyone could live on a stipend in San Fran or one of these more expensive college towns.

[moda]

This seems to be a huge topic for myself and my fiancee. I am currently living in China, and he does not want to do additional years apart. For me, it is not so much location, but the cost of living. I grew up in the mid-west, and like the cost of living there much better than the east coast (where I have lived most recently).

 

For example, I have a friend at Indiana University who is paying around $550 a month for a nice apartment (and she even has a dog!). Contrastly, my friends in Boston are paying $1500+ per month in rent. I know that there's variability concerning stipends, but the cost of living in different locations is definitely something to consider.

[gilbertrollins]

If you are confident you want to make long-run professional sacrifices in favor of your locational preferences, then go for it.  Otherwise I would make rank and fit your first through fifth selection criteria, followed by stipend per cost of living, department culture, campus resources, and finally location.

[Darth.Vegan]

This seems extremely short sighted for anyone hoping to get a tenure-track position. You won't be able to have any geographical preference in the job search so why have one now? 

[fuzzylogician]

This seems extremely short sighted for anyone hoping to get a tenure-track position. You won't be able to have any geographical preference in the job search so why have one now? 

 

I had clear geographical preferences when applying to grad school precisely because I knew that I would have little or no freedom in choosing my preferred location when applying for academic positions. Even so, some position that are on the market this year absolutely do not seem like places that I could live in, and I'm not applying for them. I don't want to make a life choice that I know would make me very unhappy just for the sake of having a (bad) job, there are other solutions here. I think quality of life is very important and there are reasons to make it a priority -- perhaps not the top one, but still an important one. If you can apply to a good selection of schools in places you also want to live in, why not do it?

[MsDarjeeling]

Location is extremely important to me and I have opted to select programs to apply to that are a good fit and in places that I would be comfortable living in.  Cost of living is also a huge factor and as much as I love my home state it will be better for me financially (and academically) to go out of state.  I am not leaning toward the tenure track when I'm done with my studies, but regardless I have no intention of just going anywhere that will take me in terms of a job.  As fuzzy said, quality of life is extremely important.  I think have geographic preferences limits your options sure, but it doesn't make it impossible to find the right job for you.

[TakeruK]

This seems extremely short sighted for anyone hoping to get a tenure-track position. You won't be able to have any geographical preference in the job search so why have one now? 

 

My spouse and I made geographic preference a big deal in our PhD search (we didn't in the MSc search) even though we knew that jobs in specific geographic locations are rare! However, I think a tenure track position is even harder to get so like fuzzy, we decided that why suffer through a PhD in a horrible location without any real guarantee that there will be a tenure-track position at the end, regardless of location!

 

In the end, we decided that location is more important than anything else so starting with the PhD, we're only going to move to places we both want to live. I'd rather leave academia than live somewhere I hate, since we both feel confident in our abilities to get decent work in our geographic location of choice. Although it is hard to say how we will feel in a few years when it's actually time to job hunt, during the PhD search, I weighted location/quality of life/personal motivations on equal footing with academic fit / quality of research and other academic reasons.

 

Before applying, I made a list of all the schools that interested me academically and personally and showed that to my spouse. She then removed all of the places she did not want to live (considering both personal preferences and the potential for her to find work) and then I applied to all of the remaining programs. After the results came in and it was time to visit, I told all of the schools my 50-50 personal/academic weighting and my spouse even visited a few programs with me. We then both independently made our final list and showed them to each other. Fortunately, the top 3 rankings were exactly the same on both our lists so it was an easy choice! But if they were not, I would like to think that we would have been able to sit down, discuss the options and figure something out (one alternative would be to not do a PhD at all). When it is time to apply for jobs and postdocs, I think we will be following the same strategy.

[socioholic]

Cup o'joe, you make a good point. I'm also married and I had to include my husband in the decision. He said he'd go whereever I went and he has been very supportive. I did something similar with him. 5-6 years is a long time. I have opened up my options though to consider some places I immediately rejected. In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter until I get an acceptance letter.

[amlobo]

I applied geographically, in that I only applied to schools within cities of a decent size, for my husband's job prospects.  But, I was very fortunate in the fact that most of the schools that fit my interests were also in places where he could work without real issues.  There were a few schools where I did not apply because of location (ie Penn State, Indiana), but I would say to apply to a few Florida schools if you want to stay, but also expand a bit to give yourself some options.  You never know how you will feel when you actually get in and start weighing schools.  

 

I definitely wouldn't apply anywhere that you "couldn't" move to... but in the same vein, I wouldn't apply somewhere "solely" for location that didn't fit your research interests.  Best of luck!

[Karl32]

What is good location? Do u think Ann Arbor is a good location?

[socioholic]

What is good location? Do u think Ann Arbor is a good location?

For me, a good location is warm, safe weather, medium sized city or near larger sized cities, low or mid-range cost of living, relatively safe. Ann Arbor misses one of those but I applied anyway because its one of the best. Initially I hastily ruled out basically everything in the west and north, LOL