Advice for picking your top choice program post-interviewing?

[clinical_hopeful_2017]

Hi everyone, I am curious to know how you may be going about rank-ordering your options for graduate school now that you've had (some or all) interviews? Thanks!

[almondicecream]

Congrats on your multiple interviews (or multiple acceptances even?)!

I'm extraordinarily torn between two of my options, and I feel like listing out all the variables I care about (research interest fit with primary advisor, research interest fit with potential secondary advisors, level of graduate student happiness, how easy it is to switch around advisors if something doesn't work out, placement of primary advisor's previous students), then assigning them weights, then "grading" the two programs, then calculating the "final grade" for each program has helped me out.

[Qihong]

Here's an alternative perspective: don't be too rational about it, go with your gut feeling...

[almondicecream]

47 minutes ago, Qihong said:

Here's an alternative perspective: don't be too rational about it, go with your gut feeling...

Not sure if that's tongue in cheek, but I'm not sure if we've evolved the right cognitions to pick the best PhD program using heuristics. Mates and friends, sure, but..

[clinical_hopeful_2017]

@almondicecream Thank you so much for your congratulations-congratulations to you on having multiple offers! I've just had multiple interviews so far, but want to pick a rank-order now that I am fresh out of these interviews and do not want an acceptance to reach me and sway me (like, I don't want to be swayed by the excitement of getting an offer!). I like the grading system you've come up with - thank you for sharing! Given those points you shared, I think I've further solidified my top choice!

@Qihong I had a "gut feeling" at the school I regard as my top choice right now, and did not have this feeling at my other interviews...I can't shake it! Thank you for mentioning this, I kinda thought I was going overboard in trusting it/weighing that so heavily.

 

[FacelessMage]

I'm currently in the process of creating a rating list to score the different schools on a variety of measures (e.g., specific clinical training, research fit, cost of living in the city where the program is, etc.). 

[8BitJourney]

I wish I was this scientific in figuring out schools. I already ranked programs (based on fit and gut feeling) pre-interviews and unless something incredible happens I'm going with said gut feeling and my top choice will probably still be my top choice post-interview. At this point there's only one program that could mess that up (But of course it's a long shot that they'll contact me at this point).

[summavanlaude]

I usually go with tossing a coin when I am this torn for decisions, especially when it is binary (just two choices). 

I toss the coin and that split second when I wish for a heads or a tails tells me what I REALLY want. But of course, something as serious as investment of approximately five years of our lives deserves more than a coin toss. Or perhaps not  

 

 

[clinical_hopeful_2017]

@FacelessMage @8BitJourney (and everyone else) I want to share with you my system for ranking my programs! Spoiler alert: my "gut-feeling" school "won" my system, LOL, so who knows if this is even necessary...

In no particular order, I listed 10 factors that were very important to me with Grad School:

Goodness of Research-Interest Fit, Clinical Work with Population of Choice, Funding, Teaching Opportunities, Location, [Job] Flexibility upon Graduation, Niceness of POI, Ability to Design a Research Study/Grant, Funding for Conference Travel, and Externship Opportunities. Then I put my schools in a numbered list under each 'important factor' as a heading...the school with the LOWEST total number when adding up the numbers next to the school names under each heading was my "winner" since I decided to list them in numeric order (1, 2, 3...) under the 10 headings.

I hope this helps some of you!

[Dondante_MMJ]

There are a million different ways to rank a school. I think if you want to be purely analytical you could assign weights to each category, the higher the weight the more important the category. Then go through and rank each school by category and do a sum, average, etc. etc. It may be my inner hippie speaking but after all my interviews I plan on sitting alone for an hour or two and really get down to how I feel about each school. Of course different categories will come into play when internally weighing a decision but I feel that within my consciousness I will know my answer. Maybe your method is somewhere between a more "concrete" approach and a more "gut" feeling approach. There is a million ways to come up with it, I believe all of us will choose the school in which we are supposed to be at. Will they all be a perfect five years, no, but they I think we will turn up where we are supposed to be in that moment.

[C is for Caps Locks]

I've just taken a lot of notes before going to bed during the interview visits (covering topics like how well I felt my POI and I got along, how happy the grad students seemed to be, how satisfied the grad students were with the program, lab/POI specific funding, what is required as part of a stipend, etc.).

Once I've visited/interviewed at all the universities that have invited me, I plan to sit down and create a list, after which I will go harass my professors/grad students for advice (so far they've been able to provide some really good clarification/explanation or even thoughts when I've discussed things I've noted about the programs).

One thing I'm also trying to consider/gather data on now (beyond just asking people in the program/at the uni) is how well the program places after people attain their PhDs, it sucks but there's definitely a heavy bias in psychology regarding what program you come from and given the difficult climate regarding post-docs/tenure-tracks it's a pretty big factor for me (for example, at one school I interviewed at, my host grad student said an issue was that no on in the last three years has gotten a tenure-track posting).

Similarly, particularly in regards to primary/secondary POIs I'm really looking into a) chances of getting to publish (again, life or death if you want to keep going in academia) and b)) how well my POI networks (in this case, if I work with a certain POI, am I likely to gain access to people doing great work that I could collaborate with) and c) in the department is there a chance to work with other POIs (it's not very helpful if a department has a ton of amazing people but there's no chance to work with them).

Edited February 13, 2017 by C is for Caps Locks

[almondicecream]

7 hours ago, C is for Caps Locks said:

I've just taken a lot of notes before going to bed during the interview visits (covering topics like how well I felt my POI and I got along, how happy the grad students seemed to be, how satisfied the grad students were with the program, lab/POI specific funding, what is required as part of a stipend, etc.).

Once I've visited/interviewed at all the universities that have invited me, I plan to sit down and create a list, after which I will go harass my professors/grad students for advice (so far they've been able to provide some really good clarification/explanation or even thoughts when I've discussed things I've noted about the programs).

One thing I'm also trying to consider/gather data on now (beyond just asking people in the program/at the uni) is how well the program places after people attain their PhDs, it sucks but there's definitely a heavy bias in psychology regarding what program you come from and given the difficult climate regarding post-docs/tenure-tracks it's a pretty big factor for me (for example, at one school I interviewed at, my host grad student said an issue was that no on in the last three years has gotten a tenure-track posting).

Similarly, particularly in regards to primary/secondary POIs I'm really looking into a) chances of getting to publish (again, life or death if you want to keep going in academia) and b)) how well my POI networks (in this case, if I work with a certain POI, am I likely to gain access to people doing great work that I could collaborate with) and c) in the department is there a chance to work with other POIs (it's not very helpful if a department has a ton of amazing people but there's no chance to work with them).

well both program and advisor's past placement of students matters.

[C is for Caps Locks]

Definitely, the ideal would be both an advisor and program with a history of placing students well.