Important factors to consider for grad school (PhD) decision

[Sura]

Hi all,

I must say that there are some fantastic answers from post-graduates here like that of @juilletmercredi's endless advice on spending time productively at grad school. I am sure there are many more enlightening posts on the same topic. It would be really helpful if people like her could give meaningful life advice for incoming grads at the stage of making decisions.

My dilemma is one that a majority of my peer group, I believe, is facing - research and the guides are two important factors upon which one chooses a grad school, but when one just can't make up her/his mind based on these 2 factors alone (like in my case where all options seem equally attractive and even my current guides pointed out that I could not go wrong with any decision), what other extraneous factors creep in to have an enjoyable 5-6 years at the grad school?

I do strongly believe, contrary to the popular opinion, that factors like the social life, weather and location too play a significant role in choosing a grad school. Your research is going to decide on your career, what you do apart from that will shape you as a person which is also imperative. In fact, I could also say that having a great life outside of your school would hold you in good stead through the difficult PhD times, right? Doesn't mental and physical well-being reinforce intellectualism? Also, for someone like myself coming from a tropical climate, weather is indeed a crucial factor. Not having been accustomed to freezing temperatures, wouldn't it take a toll on my health in the long run? That would definitely affect my research too, wouldn't it?

I am sure there are many more factors based on which one must make their decision, I simply can't think of anything more. It would be of great help to incoming grads like myself if experienced people like @juilletmercredi guide us in making an optimal choice for someone who does not have the mentality of "put-the-career-above-everything-else" and making a compromise on other things even if it means a dx improvement on your research.

Any answer would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[compscian]

52 minutes ago, Sura said:

I do strongly believe, contrary to the popular opinion, that factors like the social life, weather and location too play a significant role in choosing a grad school.

Hi @Sura Definitely agree with the above. You also have a pretty solid list of secondary factors there, which though non-exhaustive, cover most of the important factors IMO. I'll also put down my thoughts and it would be interesting to get feedback from others.

I'd definitely pay attention to the funding package. Fellowships provide greater opportunity to explore and pick the perfect adviser. Even if you know whom you'd love to work with, and the person has agreed to take you, it's still possible that bad things might happen. For example, there could be clashes in personality, work-ethic, cultural issues etc. These are hard to predict without actually working with said person, and hence financial independence for at least the first year is a big bonus.

Some universities have heavy teaching obligations (1 sem or quarter every year); some others provide funding packages where you don't have to teach if you aren't interesting; and some roll out the red carpet. These are important considerations too. I got a 4 year Armstrong fellowship from Columbia which pays a LOT and gives me complete freedom with zero obligations. I was heavily leaning towards UW, but this has made me think again about Columbia.

I think "fixed" factors should be considered with higher priority. For example, you are annoyed with traffic and long commute - pretty easy to get another apartment. Need an additional $250, easy to get some grader or web admin position which aren't very time consuming. Unhappy with research area or adviser, much harder (without fellowship) to change. Unhappy with the climate or "culture" - impossible to change.

[Sura]

10 minutes ago, compscian said:

I'd definitely pay attention to the funding package. Fellowships provide greater opportunity to explore and pick the perfect adviser. Even if you know whom you'd love to work with, and the person has agreed to take you, it's still possible that bad things might happen. For example, there could be clashes in personality, work-ethic, cultural issues etc. These are hard to predict without actually working with said person, and hence financial independence for at least the first year is a big bonus.

@compscian Yes, thank you! Never gave this a thought. This is exactly why I asked the question, certain things can only be realized once you actually are in grad school and see yourself/your peers struggling. Thanks again!

[StrongTackleBacarySagna]

2 hours ago, Sura said:

I do strongly believe, contrary to the popular opinion, that factors like the social life, weather and location too play a significant role in choosing a grad school.

Is that not the popular opinion? Why would anyone disagree with that 0.0

If one school is amazing then maybe you'll compromise on those things somewhat but no one in their right mind would disregard them.

[rising_star]

There are a bunch of recent posts where people have given the kind of advice you're seeking, OP. Here are links to two of them. 

There's also a recent post where I argued for the importance of considering location.

[TakeruK]

7 hours ago, compscian said:

Need an additional $250, easy to get some grader or web admin position which aren't very time consuming. Unhappy with research area or adviser, much harder (without fellowship) to change. Unhappy with the climate or "culture" - impossible to change.

One thing to point out---if you are an international student, then this is not possible off campus. International student status usually prevents off campus employment, with some limited exceptions. 

[dinny]

"I do strongly believe, contrary to the popular opinion, that factors like the social life, weather and location too play a significant role in choosing a grad school."

100%. 

[fuzzylogician]

15 minutes ago, dinny said:

"I do strongly believe, contrary to the popular opinion, that factors like the social life, weather and location too play a significant role in choosing a grad school."

100%. 

I think a much more accurate description of the facts is that young posters, who are just now applying, often seem to only care about ranking/research fit and nothing else. The more experienced posters on this site, those who are actually in grad school or have graduated, consistently stress the importance of factors like location, the weather, your personal and social life, in addition to research fit. I've certainly expressed that opinion in the past.

[dinny]

1 hour ago, fuzzylogician said:

I think a much more accurate description of the facts is that young posters, who are just now applying, often seem to only care about ranking/research fit and nothing else. The more experienced posters on this site, those who are actually in grad school or have graduated, consistently stress the importance of factors like location, the weather, your personal and social life, in addition to research fit. I've certainly expressed that opinion in the past.

I had a failed application cycle last year due to my own hubris. Many things snowballed with that, resulting in a pretty crummy year!

If I've learned anything from that mistake: Be happy. Do things that make you happy. Be in a place that makes you happy.

Edited February 28, 2016 by dinny

[fuzzylogician]

^ Absolutely. I am also often surprised by the "I'll settle for a less than ideal location for the next 5 years of my life because then I'll be able to get a better job" sentiment, which seems to forget that people will almost always have more options to choose from when it comes to graduate school than when it comes to the academic job market, even if they are the very top players. The chances that you will have to spend a few years in a less than ideal location for your first job (or three; assuming that you are lucky enough to get a job in the first place!) are incredibly high. Research fit that's good on paper means very little when you live in a place that makes you unhappy, trust me. 

[Sura]

@StrongTackleBacarySagna I said that because of my interactions with my current academic advisors. There seems to be an utter disregard amongst them for any factor other than academic, more specifically, research fit. When I bring up the topic of climate, they be like - "why do you even worry about that?" I just don't expect them to encourage my non-academic activities; and I am sure most freshers face the same problem that plummets them into a dilemma.

@TakeruK Could you elaborate a bit more on opportunities for international students to earn (like paper correction, scribing work)? I currently don't have plans to do something like that, but who knows my situation after 2-3 years, would be good to to know something about that. Specifically, does geography give a huge advantage for the same?

Thanks all for your replies.

[rising_star]

3 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

^ Absolutely. I am also often surprised by the "I'll settle for a less than ideal location for the next 5 years of my life because then I'll be able to get a better job" sentiment, which seems to forget that people will almost always have more options to choose from when it comes to graduate school than when it comes to the academic job market, even if they are the very top players. The chances that you will have to spend a few years in a less than ideal location for your first job (or three; assuming that you are lucky enough to get a job in the first place!) are incredibly high. Research fit that's good on paper means very little when you live in a place that makes you unhappy, trust me. 

SOOO true. I said this the other day on a different thread. There was a whole conversation about the merits of being concerned about location in this post. Here's what I said there: "There's also the fact that, in some ways, the PhD program could be the last time you truly get to pick where you live. You can't choose where job openings are or which openings will lead to an offer when you're on the job market. Plus, landing multiple job offers and being able to decide between them is rare compared to having a couple of funded PhD offers to choose between. In that sense, while you can choose where not to apply, if your choice is between applying for everything (AFTDJ in Chronicle forum speak) and unemployment, people generally choose to apply widely to anything that seems even remotely reasonable, weather be damned. To me, that makes being able to choose location for graduate school even more important because the next stop in your career as a VAP, postdoc, teaching fellow, or even TT faculty may not be in a place you really want to be (the stepping stone approach to building one's career). I had far more choices about location and the associated weather as a PhD applicant than I have ever had since."

I stand by that, despite the statements from those currently applying to grad school that location shouldn't be a major factor. As fuzzy says, the mentality about that definitely changes over the course of graduate school. For me, it changed during my master's program and played a role in where I applied for the PhD and where I ultimately went. To each their own though. To me, life is too short to spend a chunk of my 20s/30s living in a place I don't like without a real tangible benefit (so a guarantee that it will lead to a better job or some other thing I really want). 2-3 years, maybe. But the 5-6 years of a PhD, hell no.

[TakeruK]

41 minutes ago, Sura said:

@TakeruK Could you elaborate a bit more on opportunities for international students to earn (like paper correction, scribing work)? I currently don't have plans to do something like that, but who knows my situation after 2-3 years, would be good to to know something about that. Specifically, does geography give a huge advantage for the same?

Thanks all for your replies.

Sure! In most graduate programs in the United States that fund their graduate students, there are 4 main sources of this money:

1. Fellowships/scholarships: These is money awarded to you without any actual expectation of work. 

2. Research assistantship: This is money paid to you in exchange for research work. In some fields (e.g. STEM ones like mine), this is research work towards your thesis/dissertation. In other fields, this is usually research work not related to your own thesis. For example, you might be paid an hourly wage to do a task like data entry for another person's research project.

3. Teaching assistantship: This is money paid to you in exchange for teaching work. In some fields, this is mostly just TAing: you grade papers, you run lab sessions or tutorial sesisons. In other fields, this may involve being an instructor of record and would have higher teaching responsibilities (i.e. preparing lectures or even course design).

4. Other assistantships: There isn't a good name for this because it varies, but this is other work on campus that isn't #2 or #3 above. For example, you might work in the registrar's office and do administrative tasks. Or, you might help students schedule appointments with the Writing Center. Not all schools offer this type of work for funding and it's usually only programs that cannot afford to fund you via the other three options that would result in you having to do this work. Thus, this is often considered a "last resort" because it's the type of work that will not help you advance your academic career.

These are just the most common ways that schools fund their students. There are other ways that might be a variant of the above. For example, one of my old graduate schools in Astronomy would hire/pay a graduate student to run the Outreach program at the school's Observatory at the same rate as a TA and the student would be doing this work instead of TA work. 

Finally, I notice that you are writing about these opportunities as if you will be able to simply choose to take on more work if you want more money. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. In fact, these opportunities (even Type #4 above in places with little funding) are scarce commodities. That is, it's not like departments have unlimited TA and RA ships to hand out to any student that wants to work. Instead, they only have a limited pot of money to fund students and the way the funding is doled out is through these TA and RA work assignments. Usually, the amount of students they are able to accept is limited by money, so there is usually just barely enough TA and RA spots to give everyone who needs funding a job. In some rare cases, there may be one or two extra TA spots that someone might be able to choose to take for extra pay, but this is pretty rare. 

Therefore, I would not count on any opportunity to earn more than the stipend stated in your offer letter. These stipends are set according to how much resources the department has, i.e. how much money they have to pay RA and TAs. Usually, if grad students need to earn a little bit more, they may take a job on the side, e.g. a part time job, or a tutor (tutoring is especially popular in Physics and similar fields; one of our biggest client demographics are pre-med students!). However, as I said above, as an international student, you are limited by the laws on what you are allowed to do as work (tutoring is not allowed unless you are working for an on-campus group, but then you are still limited by # of hours).

[TakeruK]

8 minutes ago, rising_star said:

SOOO true. I said this the other day on a different thread. There was a whole conversation about the merits of being concerned about location in this post. Here's what I said there: "There's also the fact that, in some ways, the PhD program could be the last time you truly get to pick where you live. You can't choose where job openings are or which openings will lead to an offer when you're on the job market. Plus, landing multiple job offers and being able to decide between them is rare compared to having a couple of funded PhD offers to choose between. In that sense, while you can choose where not to apply, if your choice is between applying for everything (AFTDJ in Chronicle forum speak) and unemployment, people generally choose to apply widely to anything that seems even remotely reasonable, weather be damned. To me, that makes being able to choose location for graduate school even more important because the next stop in your career as a VAP, postdoc, teaching fellow, or even TT faculty may not be in a place you really want to be (the stepping stone approach to building one's career). I had far more choices about location and the associated weather as a PhD applicant than I have ever had since."

I stand by that, despite the statements from those currently applying to grad school that location shouldn't be a major factor. As fuzzy says, the mentality about that definitely changes over the course of graduate school. For me, it changed during my master's program and played a role in where I applied for the PhD and where I ultimately went. To each their own though. To me, life is too short to spend a chunk of my 20s/30s living in a place I don't like without a real tangible benefit (so a guarantee that it will lead to a better job or some other thing I really want). 2-3 years, maybe. But the 5-6 years of a PhD, hell no.

Also want to echo this sentiment. For my Masters (only 2 years), location was not as important for me. Since I went to undergrad in the same place I grew up, I figured that a location change to something very different (even if I might not like it) for 2 years would be good for me as well. So, I applied to three Canadian schools, all three in places that I would actually never choose again for location (all in the cold parts of Canada!). But it was a good academic experience and I felt it was also a good personal/growing experience to live far away from where I spent the last 20 years of my life. Starting at the PhD program level, I knew I had to be happy in order to survive these 5+ years (it's year 4 now and I'm still alive, still happy!). Also, I was not moving alone, the location needed to be a good place that has opportunities for both my partner and I.

I think one thing that a lot of new graduate students think is "Everything will be better after I get my PhD" or "I just have to tough it through the PhD and then things can be better". A lot of the reason we (I used to think this way too) think like this is because senior/established professors instilled this thought into us. Many people tend to reflect "fondly" on their grad school years as years of hard work but it was all worth it in the end. However, I think there are two major things wrong with this:

1. I don't think it's correct to think that it will magically get better after we have our PhDs. Although I am not there yet, so maybe when you get your PhD degree, a fairy descends from the heavens and magically makes everything better! I'm not holding my breath though---I expect that in postdocs and beyond, things are going to be harder, not easier. So, I try to not think things like "I'll be happy later" because I have a feeling that if I do, I will be thinking this for a while.

2. The profs doing the fond reflecting have already "made it" and are successful. It's a lot easier to think that the crappy parts were worth it if you actually did get to succeed in what you want. But remember, for every professor that sit/stand there and tell you how they sacrificed and made it, there are many many others that also suffered but didn't "make it" in the same way. And, time/distance from the suffering makes you forget how terrible and crappy it really was.

The bottom line: 100% agree with rising_star that the 5-7 years of your PhD (often during your 20s but I think the years are valuable no matter which decade you're in) are far too valuable to completely invest in an academic job route that is far too risky. It's not worth it to be unhappy just for a chance of happiness later! 

[compscian]

@TakeruK Thank you for all this info

When I spoke to a few PhD students at UW and Columbia (all internationals), they gave me a picture that it is possible to get additional money by doing additional work. Of course, you cannot work for more than 20 hours a week on F1 Visa. I believe what they did was grade some papers/projects (for their adviser's course) and got a raise in RA, which the adviser can do. One guy helped to design a web-page for a new research lab, and got paid for it. Not sure how the accounting was done in this case though. I just wanted to make a point that if at all additional money is required, there are possibilities. These aren't written in stone unlike other factors which I mentioned in my previous comment.

[TakeruK]

1 hour ago, compscian said:

@TakeruK Thank you for all this info

When I spoke to a few PhD students at UW and Columbia (all internationals), they gave me a picture that it is possible to get additional money by doing additional work. Of course, you cannot work for more than 20 hours a week on F1 Visa. I believe what they did was grade some papers/projects (for their adviser's course) and got a raise in RA, which the adviser can do. One guy helped to design a web-page for a new research lab, and got paid for it. Not sure how the accounting was done in this case though. I just wanted to make a point that if at all additional money is required, there are possibilities. These aren't written in stone unlike other factors which I mentioned in my previous comment.

I'm glad those opportunities exist for your colleagues there! Maybe it does vary a lot from place to place but I feel like these are special cases instead of the norm. I know that almost all of my offers state that the RA or TA is 20 hours per week, so in those cases, there is absolutely no room for additional employed work. At my current program, we do not get paid differently for TA work. So, if you are TAing, then you get less hours on your RA so you still get the same money no matter what. 

You are right that it's not impossible to get more money if you need it. My point is that it can be hard to get a steady source of additional income and that these opportunities are not available everywhere.

[compscian]

56 minutes ago, TakeruK said:

You are right that it's not impossible to get more money if you need it. My point is that it can be hard to get a steady source of additional income and that these opportunities are not available everywhere.

True. I just checked that one of these guys had a fellowship and hence was eligible to work for a few hours and get additional money. Anyway, that is beside the point. What I wanted to convey was that money shouldn't be given excessive importance (mode of funding is very important though, IMO). As long as tuition is waived and a modest stipend is guaranteed, I wouldn't fret too much over $100-250 a month.

Also, in many areas of STEM, particularly in CS and EE, I haven't really heard anyone complaining about poor standard of living due to low stipend. There are many internship opportunities over summer which pay handsomely, which you can save up to spend over the course of the year. Summer wages also tend to be higher in universities, if you wish to stay back (this might depend on university though). I would pay much closer attention to climate, number of top PIs working in my area (3 would be safe), and overall fit with the university.

4 hours ago, Sura said:

I said that because of my interactions with my current academic advisors. There seems to be an utter disregard amongst them for any factor other than academic, more specifically, research fit.

I will never disregard non-academic factors as you can clearly see from my comments. However, it would also be a bit naive to think that research excellence doesn't matter. If you had gotten into MIT, I am sure you wouldn't be discussing these issues (unless of course, you also had offers from UCB, Stan, or Caltech). So, it is a matter of trade-off, and each person has a different Pareto optimal curve. It's possible that your advisers perceive UIUC as significantly better than UCLA, while you disagree (and I'd agree with you). What is important is finding your Pareto optimal curve, and not that of others.

Edited February 28, 2016 by compscian

[Sura]

3 hours ago, compscian said:

I will never disregard non-academic factors as you can clearly see from my comments. However, it would also be a bit naive to think that research excellence doesn't matter. If you had gotten into MIT, I am sure you wouldn't be discussing these issues (unless of course, you also had offers from UCB, Stan, or Caltech). So, it is a matter of trade-off, and each person has a different Pareto optimal curve. It's possible that your advisers perceive UIUC as significantly better than UCLA, while you disagree (and I'd agree with you). What is important is finding your Pareto optimal curve, and not that of others.

Absolutely! Thanks all for the useful information. Am sure this would others as well.