<p>My current undergraduate advisor has told me that you shouldn't decide whether to go to a school based on the school or the program's rankings, but ultimately what matters is who your advisor is, because there could very well be very prominent researchers working at little known schools.
This is the dilemma I am currently under. I am pretty sure that I will be accepted into a program that doesn't even appear on the rankings, but my potential advisor is also one of the biggest names currently in the field. Suppose I am to be offered full funding, will going to this unranked program jeopardize my employment prospect five years down the road?</p>
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Almost certainly not – your advisor is more important than the school or program’s name.</p>
<p>Just be aware that other people are probably thinking the same thing, and there’s a possibility that Big Name Person won’t be taking any new graduate students when you enter the program. This is a good thing to find out before committing to the school if you have better options.</p>
<p>Here’s the breakdown from another phd student: </p>
<p>If you want to pursue a career in academia for a living, go to a big name school.</p>
<p>If you want to only pursue a career in industry as a research scientist or consultant in the particular field, I’d go with the no-name-school-great-advisor.</p>
<p>Industry cares more of your skillset. Academia cares about your skillset, but tends to also wants you to come from a big name school to make their faculty stats look more prominent.</p>
<p>Of course, I assumed full funding from each school.</p>
<p><em>Only</em> pursue a career in industry as a research scientist? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn’t mean it that way, but, at least in computer science (my field), there is a lot of interesting and meaningful work done in industry. It is definitely not a step down from academia. In fact, if I were given the choice of being a professor at a university that doesn’t do interesting research in my field (regardless of ranking), or becoming an industrial researcher at a company that does interesting research, I’d choose that industrial research position in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>But the rest of what you said I agree with. My dream job is to become a professor at Berkeley or Stanford. I just don’t know if I can get into Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, or MIT for a PhD, which is the least difficult (but still difficult) path to professorship at a highly ranked institution that does great research (like Berkeley or Stanford). I’m somewhat in the same situation as the person who posted this thread (except the school that I know is ranked in the #50s).</p>
<p>Sorry linquae. When I meant “only”, I meant that is the OP’s singular goal, not to degrade industrial research. As an engineer myself, I wholeheartedly agree that significant work and breakthroughs are done in the industrial setting outside of universities.</p>
<p>My own dream job is ultimately work or consult in industry and maybe start my own private engineering firm. Professorships actually don’t appeal to me too much.</p>
<p>If the potential advisor has a good record of placing her/his former students in academic jobs, go with the advisor. Period.</p>