UCSD/UPenn - Applied Mechanics/Mech Eng. Ph.D.

[josecotelo92992]

Hello All,

I've been admitted to both UCSD and UPenn with full funding (UPenn offering a better stipend).

I wanted to get some feedback and opinions on which of the two schools would be more propitious in terms of intellectual and career development, and where I could find a good balance between Ph.D. work and quality of life.

Any feedback would be great. The program for San Diego is the Applied Mechanics Ph.D. and the program for Penn is Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics Ph.D.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

Jose

[Vulpix]

Knowing nothing of your field or the respective schools' place in it, I can only offer my opinion as a random outsider whose only connection is that I've also been admitted to Penn for a masters in an unrelated social science.  It seems to me that two things could sway your decision toward Penn:  1) Ivy League prestige/reputation and 2) A PhD that qualifies you in TWO areas of interest (Mechanical Engineering), which seems to be an advantage in the long run, although I don't know what your post doctoral aspirations are.  I have a friend who studied engineering at Penn and gushed about how amazing the experience was.  

Quality of life is very specific to your personal needs (sunny SD vs. old Northeast city), cost of living (Philly is relatively cheap, possible cheaper than SD? I'm not familiar with it).

[blacknighterrant]

UCSD has a higher ranked general engineering program, higher ranked mechanical engineering program and a higher engineering research expenditure. UPenn is not more prestigious in engineering......... San Diego would have a much higher quality of life than Pennsylvania, but is more expensive. There are only two reasons I could think of to chose UPenn, which would be if you do not want to be an engineer in the future although you are pursuing an engineering PhD or if you want some type of business degree to compliment your PhD so that you could do something like engineering management. That said, UPenn and UCSD are close in rank, so there may be very specific research focuses within their mechanical engineering groups that one school is much better at and if that is the case, you should determine which school is better for the research you would like to pursue. Regardless of where you go the degree will be useful, UPenn will probably be more highly respected in the east coast while USCD will be more highly respected in the west coast.