Need help on deciding between two PhD programs

[sleepyhead]

Admission decisions are out, and I'm trying to decide between two PhD programs in engineering as they are very different.

University of Michigan:

• Ranked top 5, large public state school, and I did my bachelor's and master's here a few years ago (I'm currently in industry). Strong ties to industry.

• I would work with the same advisor I had during my master's, very well known in the field, hands-off style, has multiple potential projects I could work on, and personally I get along with him very well

• Received a university level fellowship that covers 3 years and the rest would be with assistantship

• Some of my closest friends are still at the university and the familiarity with the campus and town would be a big plus

• On the flip side, I'm hesitant to spend another 5 years at the same university as things got old pretty quick and I was itching to leave when I was doing my master's. I get exhausted just thinking about spending that much time again at the same school, same department, same building, and the same people.

Cornell University:

• Ranked top 10, ivy-league, smaller department, and I love their campus as I've visited before. Less ties to industry, much more academic environment. 

• The department doesn't match students with professors until the second semester, so I don't know who'd be my advisor. There are a few I'm interested in, but there's no guarantee that I'll end up with somebody who's a good fit research wise and personality wise. However this opens up an opportunity to explore other research areas and I'd have some amount of choice in who I work with.

• Full funding, stipend package is a bit better than school 1 (~4k more a year), and university level fellowship covers the first semester while we look for advisors

• A new location and campus would be a very welcome change of pace with new people to meet, friends and memories to make.

Honestly I wish I could just combine the two schools and attend that, as there are pros and cons to both. Anyways, any advice or perspective would be appreciated, thanks for reading!

Edited March 4, 2015 by sleepyhead

[eeee1923]

 

Honestly I wish I could just combine the two schools and attend that, as there are pros and cons to both. Anyways, any advice or perspective would be appreciated, thanks for reading!

 

 

I am in a similar situation to you. What I am planning on doing is making a decision matrix where I assign a certain weighted value (0 < x < 1) to the various components that I feel contribute the most to my decision (research fit, location, stipend, etc). This will be a tough decision, but I also come from an engineering background and I tend to be more comfortable with quantitative data. Good luck with your decision. 

[jujubea]

I am in a similar situation to you. What I am planning on doing is making a decision matrix where I assign a certain weighted value (0 < x < 1) to the various components that I feel contribute the most to my decision (research fit, location, stipend, etc). This will be a tough decision, but I also come from an engineering background and I tend to be more comfortable with quantitative data. Good luck with your decision. 

 

Glad to hear I'm not the only one doing this...

[babybird]

Personally, I would advocate for a change in schools, just because I sorta get the tone from your post that do want to go to Cornell. Especially since you did both your BS and MA at Michigan. This isn't a career breaker anymore, but I do think it would be a plus to do your PhD work at a different school.

 

Maybe since you have done a Masters, you truly are certain that you want to continue to study the same thing - but I think expanding your research experiences at Cornell and with a new PI/project could be super valuable. I was told many, many times that people come to grad school knowing they want to study X, and end up studying Y and end up loving Y. I'm sure you've heard the same thing...

 

Something else to consider might be your goals post-PhD, since these schools do seem to differ in the industry/academia realms.

 

Just some $0.02 for thought. (:

[PH2015]

I am in a similar situation to you. What I am planning on doing is making a decision matrix where I assign a certain weighted value (0 < x < 1) to the various components that I feel contribute the most to my decision (research fit, location, stipend, etc). This will be a tough decision, but I also come from an engineering background and I tend to be more comfortable with quantitative data. Good luck with your decision. 

 

Ha.  I have one too.  

 

BUT…..I am having trouble deciding exactly how I want to assign my weights.  Would you be willing to share your weights/how you decided?

[eeee1923]

Ha.  I have one too.  

 

BUT…..I am having trouble deciding exactly how I want to assign my weights.  Would you be willing to share your weights/how you decided?

 

The way I'm doing it is semi-arbitrary. So for things such as stipend, I would calculate my minimum living expenses coupled with the cost of living in the area and see which funding package would allow me to meet this minimum value. If it does, then I would give it a 0.45-0.5, any excess over this would push that value closer to 1 (in my case one of my top choices is offering $8K more than my the lowest funding package which I could live off, therefore I assigned it a 0.9). For aspects such as research fit, I see if there are at least 3 PIs I could seriously see myself working with (0.5 = 3 PIs; >0.6 = 4+ PIs; <0.5 = 2 PI or less). I'm still working on it and will adjust it as I think of more aspects needed to make the most informed decision (talking to department, visiting, etc). Hopefully that will give you a good starting point.

[juilletmercredi]

I agree that it'd be good for your career to go to Cornell. You already have a network of people at Michigan based on your prior work there; going to Cornell expands your network significantly.

 

For me a decision matrix is not very useful for the reasons pointed out here - it's difficult to assign the weights, so they end up being arbitrary. I'm a quant person but this is kind of a qualitative decision to make.  For example, I don't like weighting the excess living stipend so much because that's kind of irrelevant - I'd rather go to a great department I loved that met my needs (but not much more) than a department I was lukewarm about but had a big stipend. The number of PIs...for me it would be more about number + desirability. 2 PIs that seem likely to stay and that I really, really want to work with is better, to me, than 4 PIs who I could work with but am not as enthusiastic about.

 

That's just me though.

Edited March 4, 2015 by juilletmercredi

[HBKss]

I would say, go to Cornell... you already know people in Michigan, so going to Cornell will increase your social circle with the professors. This will help you when you  go to industry/academia as you will have lots of people to vouch for you... moreover if you have strong ties with proff. at Michigan , you can always undertake projects with him even if you are not in his research group... also, believe me, once you are bored with one place/ city it starts effecting your work aswell... so make a fresh start at Cornell.. 

[Tez92]

I vote Columbia for basically the reasons everyone else said.

[jujubea]

Hmmm, I guess it depends on which of your own strengths you want to focus on.

Sometimes I like to just mull over the growing prospects or opportunities presented by each choice.

 

These are some examples, but you probably know much better than any stranger could how each choice would help or force you to grow and in what ways.

 

So for example, if you go to school 2, it sounds like you will be pushed more to possibly branch out into unknown territories. There are more uncertainties, but within a tolerable risk level (you can't go "wrong" .. you're already in the program). This would force you to take some chances and maybe grow a bit in that way.

 

At the first school, it sounds like you will be pushed more to find new things in an old/familiar environment. Since you already have such familiarity, you will be forced to find things you've skimmed over before, to be grateful about and to capitalize on.  You would also have a little bit more of a financial challenge, which can help you grow in that way, too.

[jujubea]

Ha.  I have one too.  

 

BUT…..I am having trouble deciding exactly how I want to assign my weights.  Would you be willing to share your weights/how you decided?

 

I weighted my own purely subjectively... which you might think defeats the purpose of trying to quantify the data... but it actually helped.

 

I did a weird thing: I assigned a rank-order value for each factor (1, 2, or 3, and allowed for ties), and then ALSO assigned a "score" of 1 through 10, with 10 being the absolute best possible situation in that factor. 

In my first calculations I included every factor, and got a rank "average" for each school, and then a score average for each school.

THEN, I isolated the things that are most important to me (how many faculty I could work with, whether there are foreign language learning options - as two examples of my "most importants"), and calculated the rank and score again, using only those most important factors.

 

It is of course terribly subjective, and I didn't actually weight anything properly, and all I used were simple mean averages ... but it still proved to be tremendously helpful. I think in part because I am considering SO MANY factors (over 30), and did so as honestly as possible. My results showed that a school I had thought was maybe my number two choice was actually a pretty distant third. The school I thought was easily third choice, actually came very close to tying with the first choice school (partly because of so many low scores/ranks on that first school for my family; that pulled it down a bunch).

 

What I made of all this after reflecting on it, is that despite having more negative factors against it, I was somehow, for some reason, subconsciously favoring what ended up being the "last" school ... And I was also subconsciously idealizing the first-choice school to be quite a bit better of a situation than it actually is.

 

Anyway, someone else said on here that although this type of subjective quantifying is just that: very subjective - it can still be quite useful because at the very least it will make your own subconscious (or semi-conscious) leanings more apparent. 

 

Good luck everybody Aren't we lucky to have such pain?

Edited March 5, 2015 by jujubea

[rising_star]

Flip a coin. Heads is Michigan, tails is Cornell. Do one flip only. (Note: the temptation to do "best of 3/5/7" will be there. That is a sign you should take note of.) Then, tell yourself you're going to that school. Sleep on it. Then, see how you feel about it when you wake up. If you're uncomfortable, unhappy, second-guessing yourself, etc., then you sorta have your decision.

 

For similar reasons to juliet, I think you should go to Cornell, FWIW.

[CoolZero]

Flip a coin. Heads is Michigan, tails is Cornell. Do one flip only. (Note: the temptation to do "best of 3/5/7" will be there. That is a sign you should take note of.) Then, tell yourself you're going to that school. Sleep on it. Then, see how you feel about it when you wake up. If you're uncomfortable, unhappy, second-guessing yourself, etc., then you sorta have your decision.

 

For similar reasons to juliet, I think you should go to Cornell, FWIW.

 

I love this sort of decision making. for me it has always paid off

 

I agree with juliet too and I think even your tone says you want to go to Cornell more and you are looking for some logic to support your preference. I would say go for what makes you more happy. It is 5 years of your life, you want to live it happily more than anything.

[HBKss]

I vote Columbia for basically the reasons everyone else said.

 

I don't understand, why is Columbia univ in New York and not District Columbia and why is Washington DC in district Columbia and not in Washington state. Also why is Cambridge univ not in Cambridge,MA... now that I am at it, I am not sure why I am writing about it in this thread..

[sleepyhead]

Thanks guys for the response! I guess my post came off as a bit more subjective than I would have liked, seeing how the wording makes it seem like I want to go to Cornell. And you guys are right, I definitely feel more comfortable at the thought of going there instead of Michigan at this point. I'm still waiting to hear back from two more schools (they're both long shots at this point), but I'm more certain of where I wanna go now. 

[fluttershy]

Hey! I saw you posted on my thread as well. We have eerily similar situations - BS and MS at Michigan and considering staying vs going to Cornell. I have not made my final decision yet but I am heavily leaning towards Cornell. It's really hard since I am so established where I am both academically and personally, and Michigan has so many great faculty members that even if I left my current advisor I know I'd find someone else great to work for. With that being said, I think its time for a change. I'm pretty burned out by Ann Arbor to where I can't even appreciate it anymore. I went back and visited Cornell again, and the campus is so gorgeous and I just felt inspired intellectually to start learning. I think it's important that we begin our PhD's excited, not burned out. So if thats the case for you, maybe its time to move on too. I'm hoping I can officially accept this week so I can get out of this terrible limbo period. Let me know what you ultimately decide, maybe we'll both be representing Umich in Ithaca this Fall!

[sleepyhead]

Hey! I saw you posted on my thread as well. We have eerily similar situations - BS and MS at Michigan and considering staying vs going to Cornell. I have not made my final decision yet but I am heavily leaning towards Cornell. It's really hard since I am so established where I am both academically and personally, and Michigan has so many great faculty members that even if I left my current advisor I know I'd find someone else great to work for. With that being said, I think its time for a change. I'm pretty burned out by Ann Arbor to where I can't even appreciate it anymore. I went back and visited Cornell again, and the campus is so gorgeous and I just felt inspired intellectually to start learning. I think it's important that we begin our PhD's excited, not burned out. So if thats the case for you, maybe its time to move on too. I'm hoping I can officially accept this week so I can get out of this terrible limbo period. Let me know what you ultimately decide, maybe we'll both be representing Umich in Ithaca this Fall!

 

Hey I'm glad you replied back. After over a month of mulling over the decision, I think I'm going back to Michigan for my PhD. I compared the most important aspects to me and Michigan beats out Cornell in most categories.

 

1. Department/Program ranking (multiple sources): Michigan (top 5) > Cornell (top 15)

 

Aero Eng department at Michigan is its own entity and is much larger than Cornell's combined school containing three programs. This means the scope of research, budget, lab resources, and number of relevant faculty and courses are much larger at Michigan.  

 

2. Research/Advisor Fits: Michigan > Cornell  

 

At Michigan I have two advisors who've offered to fund me in fields that I have the most interest in. One of them is my former Masters advisor who is very well known in his field and a publishing machine. My current job in industry is directly related to his field and so getting some real world experience before returning to the theory heavy side would be a nice career narrative. I also have the option to take on both advisors in a joint project that would combine the two fields. At Cornell we don't get to choose an advisor until after the first semester. Although this is nice in terms of exploration and trying out lab fits, there aren't any research fields that I have a direct interest or experience in. Going in with that uncertainty is a bit uneasy for me. 

 

3. Funding: Michigan > Cornell

 

Both schools offered full 5 year funding, but Michigan offered a 3 year fellowship on top and the two other years would be as an RA. At Cornell, PhDs are required to TA for at least a year and I prefer to avoid that so I can focus on research. Cornell has a slightly higher stipend (3k more a year), but the cost of living in Ithaca is also slightly higher than Ann Arbor.

 

4. Program duration: Michigan > Cornell

 

I'm in a special situation of having already completed a Master's in a program I'm intending to return to. This means I can count my grad coursework and research (including a published paper) towards the PhD requirement and take the quals a lot earlier. Technically, I've already fulfilled the PhD coursework requirement and do not have to take any more classes. This means I'll have a leg up at Michigan and hit the ground running while most likely finishing my PhD earlier as well. 

 

5. Location: Cornell > Michigan

 

This is the only category that Cornell beats out Michigan. Like you, I've visited Cornell and agree that it's beautiful (much more so than the depressing north campus). I also feel burnt out thinking about returning to Ann Arbor and spending another half a decade there. Thinking about a new school, new city, and new people is almost enough for me to ignore the four categories above and I realized my thought process was getting very emotional. I was focused on the here and now and not being logical about the comparison. I need to go a program that will maximize my chance for success during the PhD and afterwards as well. Michigan is very much top tier for aerospace engineering and sometimes I forget that cause I already spent 5 years there. I've talked to a bunch of people since my original post and it's crazy how most of my peers say go to Cornell while older folks (parents, professors, co-workers, etc) say go to Michigan.

 

In the end, I find excitement in being a student again and I think I can be happy in either location. College is very much what you make of it and as long as I find value in what I'm doing it should be alright. Hopefully this doesn't look like a bunch of rambling haha. If you do end up going to Cornell I wish you the best of luck.      

[nsds]

I am in a similar situation to you. What I am planning on doing is making a decision matrix where I assign a certain weighted value (0 < x < 1) to the various components that I feel contribute the most to my decision (research fit, location, stipend, etc). This will be a tough decision, but I also come from an engineering background and I tend to be more comfortable with quantitative data. Good luck with your decision. 

Actually you can also use the Analytic Hierarchy Process, which is more reasonable and consistent