blogging questions

[PhD applicant]

I currently have a blog through google's blogger.com, and it's nice and ad-free for a free blog. I like it, it's easy to use and keeps good stats. Recently I fiddled around with tumblr, Yahoo's blogging site. It also looked nice but didn't seem as versatile as blogger. I'm thinking about starting up a new blog if/when I get accepted to grad school to help with my online visibility. I just looked at some of the themes at wordpress (because of ianfaircloud's blog) and they seem really nice, so I was just wondering if anyone has any input about ad-free platforms, good visibility, etc. I know blogger puts all posts directly into google, which is nice, but sometimes other blog sites have nicer themes, like some of the nice themes at wordpress. So if ianfaircloud could mention if those themes are also ad-free, added to google/etc search engines free, etc. and any other comments about nice blogging platforms. I think I want to try something other than blogger for my personal blog (my current one is more of a cyber-business type which makes google convenient, but if I make a personal blog I want to make a personal choice about what fits and doesn't irk my moral sensibilities).