Planners/Future Planners! How are you deciding?

[chuckles]

What factors are you taking into account into making your decisions? Are you visiting everywhere? Are you setting up phone conversations? Something else? What have you learned?

 

I got into Penn, Cornell, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and as of today, I have no direction on where to go. All seem like great academic programs and offer flexibility in taking classes across the universities. Funding is completely different at each institution, but so are the career prospects after graduating.

 

I visited Wisconsin a few weeks ago and a prof  there told me I should probably go to Penn instead of Wisconsin!

[med latte]

 

I visited Wisconsin a few weeks ago and a prof  there told me I should probably go to Penn instead of Wisconsin!

 

Did he or she explain why? Does it better fit your interests? Or are there changes pending at Wisconsin? 

Congrats on all your acceptances! Have you been able to visit each program? Perhaps anohter skype interview with each will help you decide?

[chuckles]

The prof talked about how Penn was just on a different level than Wisconsin. Some of the faculty at Penn can call up the HUD Secretary and get him to listen. This prof also used to teach planning at Temple (also in Philadelphia) and came to be familiar with Penn. The prof talked about joking with colleagues about at Temple that they were focused on planning in South Philadelphia and at Penn, they were planning Bogota.

 

I haven't visited each one. I visited Wisconsin and will visit Minnesota in a few weeks. I'm thinking that the costs (both $ and carbon) of travelling to Penn and Cornell aren't justified by the insights I would gain. So I am thinking of just trying a few phone calls.

[VLog]

What are the career prospects of planning? Is the market ridiculously slow?

I got into GSD and need to decide if its worth it. Id ideally like to work directly with urban revitalisation projects more on the conceptual/research/policy design side.

[peterpadams]

Not at all. Planning will always remain in demand. When you cannot plan good, how can you work good. Yes, the courses are not that effective but the becming a planner will always give you business. Ask your architect, how good he work as a planner. You can say that further branches of development are not that effective like work for roof inspection, alterations and repairs but planners are the starters. They will never remain idle.