Money vs. Reputation

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

I'm sure that there are others in this situation... I have a very, very good offer from a school ranked about ~15 in the nation for what I want to do. I also have an "okay" offer from a place that is very expensive to live, but the school is #1 for what I do. I know who I'd be working with, and I like the professors and their research equally. 

Thoughts? 

[fuzzylogician]

I was in this situation, and I chose school #1. I did that only after I made sure (through talking to students and checking cost of living calculators) that I would be able to live reasonably well on the stipend the school was offering. It was clear that I'd have to have roommates, but noone I talked to seemed to have any problem making ends meet. I didn't have a family to consider, so this seemed ok to me. Would it have been nice to have the extra money and nicer lifestyle? I'm sure it would have been. Do I regret my decision? Not even for one minute. The school was the best fit for what I wanted to do, and my advisors were (and still are) amazing. 

[TakeruK]

I was also in a similar situation and like fuzzy, I also chose the school ranked #1 over a higher stipend in a lower cost of living area. Like fuzzy, I also checked to make sure that the lower stipend but higher ranked school still offered enough money to live a modest life. My current school does not pay enough for a student to live without roommates and my partner and I did not want roommates so we took a small risk by using up some of our savings in our first year in order to live in a 1 bedroom place while my partner went through the paperwork to get employment authorization (we're Canadians) and find a job. It worked out really well for us in the end. 

But, I'll be honest---that first year was very tough when we saw our savings that we had worked so hard in the previous years to save up slowly erode. Especially when we faced unexpected and expensive bills. It felt like we were going backwards and it was stressful. And it certainly didn't feel like the right decision at the time when we know that we turned down a higher paying offer that would have allowed us to buy a house in the other school's city. 

We made the choice based on the long game for both of us. The #1 ranked school would be better for my post-PhD earning prospects. The location of the #1 ranked school would be better for my partner to build their career and also improve their future earning prospects. 

I think we were also lucky that we were able to choose the "long game". If we didn't have savings, making this choice would not have been possible. It's a personal decision, but for us, the long term gains were worth the short term risks and we were able to absorb these risks.

[eeee1923]

The rule of thumb I've been told before is to go "with the highest ranked program you can actually see yourself being successful in". If you like the research at the number 1 school (and the PIs and culture) and you can make ends meet in terms of COL, then I say go for it. 

P.S. This is one of the best problems to have during the application cycle. Good luck!

Edited January 24, 2016 by eteshoe

[rising_star]

Honestly, I put less value in the school's ranking than I did in the track record of the person I'd be working with. You like the professors equally but, which has a better track record of getting their students the grants, fellowships, and postdoc positions that you want to have? To me, that's more important than money or ranking. FWIW, I went with the best overall PI (in terms of track record with PhD students) over the school that offered me more money and one that, on paper, had a higher ranking.

[Meglet]

On 1/25/2016 at 8:33 PM, rising_star said:

Honestly, I put less value in the school's ranking than I did in the track record of the person I'd be working with. You like the professors equally but, which has a better track record of getting their students the grants, fellowships, and postdoc positions that you want to have? To me, that's more important than money or ranking. FWIW, I went with the best overall PI (in terms of track record with PhD students) over the school that offered me more money and one that, on paper, had a higher ranking.

So, I've been wondering if there's a quick and easy resource for figuring out potential advisors' track record, citation statistics, etc..  Is there?  Or is it down to googling the professor and asking the program and current students questions?

[rising_star]

As far as I know, there's no quick and easy way of doing it. You can definitely ask directly but doing your own research might yield additional information.

[TakeruK]

Citation statistics is easier than track record. But this can be field dependent. In my field, for citation statistics, you can search basically any major abstract database. The big one in my field is NASA ADS---you can just search the advisor name and you can see all of their papers, the number of citations in total as well as per paper and per year.

Another one that isn't field specific is Google Scholar. Google indexes as many papers as it can find. But the citation estimate is determined algorithmically and it often overestimates (sometimes by a lot). I find it more useful to quickly see what papers a person has coauthored though.

For track record, this is a lot tougher. You need to create your own list of all the students the advisor has graduated and then find out where they are now etc. I would start with the advisor's official CV, which often lists all students they graduated. Then, I would use one of those databases above and find out all the people they wrote papers with. Look for patterns in your field---for example, some fields have the paper authorship order as student = first author, supervisor = last author. In my field, it's often student = first author and advisor = second author. Finally, if you really want to be complete, you should look up the Library website for the school. Almost all school libraries will index every student's thesis. Using the prof's CV to determine which years they were at the school, search the dissertation database for dissertations from your department in those years. My department graduates like 5 people per year, so it's not hard for me to just look at all of them, but if you have a bigger class, then you could also narrow down by subject matter. If you can do a text search, then search the text of all the dissertations for the advisor's name. Almost every student will thank their advisor by name in the acknowledgements section (or at least cite one of their papers).

[rising_star]

@TakeruK's advice is great for those in fields where papers are the main currency. But, in anthropology (as well as many MLA fields), the real measure of publication success is books (you turn your dissertation into a book and you need at least one book published with an academic press to get tenure). Consequently, looking strictly at article databases may not be the best way to find out about track record. Similarly, in turns of track record, I'd also think about the funding the grad students are able go get (SSRC, NSF DDRI, NSF GRFP, IAF, CAORC, etc.) since most graduate students in cultural anthropology have to find their own funding for dissertation fieldwork.

[Meglet]

6 hours ago, TakeruK said:

Citation statistics is easier than track record. But this can be field dependent. In my field, for citation statistics, you can search basically any major abstract database. The big one in my field is NASA ADS---you can just search the advisor name and you can see all of their papers, the number of citations in total as well as per paper and per year.

Another one that isn't field specific is Google Scholar. Google indexes as many papers as it can find. But the citation estimate is determined algorithmically and it often overestimates (sometimes by a lot). I find it more useful to quickly see what papers a person has coauthored though.

For track record, this is a lot tougher. You need to create your own list of all the students the advisor has graduated and then find out where they are now etc. I would start with the advisor's official CV, which often lists all students they graduated. Then, I would use one of those databases above and find out all the people they wrote papers with. Look for patterns in your field---for example, some fields have the paper authorship order as student = first author, supervisor = last author. In my field, it's often student = first author and advisor = second author. Finally, if you really want to be complete, you should look up the Library website for the school. Almost all school libraries will index every student's thesis. Using the prof's CV to determine which years they were at the school, search the dissertation database for dissertations from your department in those years. My department graduates like 5 people per year, so it's not hard for me to just look at all of them, but if you have a bigger class, then you could also narrow down by subject matter. If you can do a text search, then search the text of all the dissertations for the advisor's name. Almost every student will thank their advisor by name in the acknowledgements section (or at least cite one of their papers).

 

6 hours ago, rising_star said:

@TakeruK's advice is great for those in fields where papers are the main currency. But, in anthropology (as well as many MLA fields), the real measure of publication success is books (you turn your dissertation into a book and you need at least one book published with an academic press to get tenure). Consequently, looking strictly at article databases may not be the best way to find out about track record. Similarly, in turns of track record, I'd also think about the funding the grad students are able go get (SSRC, NSF DDRI, NSF GRFP, IAF, CAORC, etc.) since most graduate students in cultural anthropology have to find their own funding for dissertation fieldwork.

Thanks, guys, this is super helpful!  Unfortunately, none of 3 professors I've tried so far have lists of their grad students on their CVs, and the university libraries are less than forthcoming since I'm not an actual student yet.  Thinking about work arounds and other strategies...

[rising_star]

24 minutes ago, Meglet said:

 

Thanks, guys, this is super helpful!  Unfortunately, none of 3 professors I've tried so far have lists of their grad students on their CVs, and the university libraries are less than forthcoming since I'm not an actual student yet.  Thinking about work arounds and other strategies...

Just ask them! Seriously, any prof worth their salt can provide you with names of their recent students. It won't be all of them but you can then expand from there.