Hello all!
Note that folks in my field know each other quite well and I prefer to not name schools or detail my work as I discuss my current situation.
That said, I recognize I am in a very privileged position. I’m about to finish my Masters degree and have been admitted to the 2 PhD programs highest on my list, which I still cannot believe is real! However, as others who were in/are in this situation may know, this is also stressful. I want to detail a few things about each program that makes me particularly overwhelmed.
Let’s call the first university “Program A”. In my field of science, this place is regarded as the holy grail of prestige. It has somewhat of a reputation for being elitist in the field, which garners me many eye rolls or heavy sighs from colleagues who I tell that I applied, but it’s record of producing successful members of my field cannot objectively be matched. The campus attitude is definitely one of an intellectual think tank, with multiple seminars, relations with other departments, and grad students publishing papers left and right. It also, however, has a much deserved reputation for draining the life out of students who aren’t 100% dedicated to what they do. I was told that my application was unanimously approved by all 5 members of our intra-departmental research group, for which I am incredibly humbled. They certainly sound like they want me there, which is a terribly difficult offer to refuse.
Enter “Program B”, which has somewhat more name recognition beyond the field due to it being an Ivy League. This department is unusual in that there’s significantly less interaction between subdisciplines, but they’re small size means much more 1-on-1 interaction. Current students at Program B publish a lot … like, never-ending. In that respect, this program definitely trains one to be a productive scientist. This gives Program B a BFF mentality of publishing with your main advisor all the time, at a faster pace, but maybe not collaborating as much with others. Program B is also a much smaller school, but they also tend to interact more with their local community while Program A’s kinda stuck in the ivory tower. My potential advisor at program B is very adamant about research being applied in a realistic sense for policy and management decisions, which I can’t help but admire since I too would like to make my work relevant to the public. While fewer people make the decisions here than at Program A, they’ve made it known in not-so-subtle ways that they REALLY want me there.
So there’s the comparison between the two. Now I have a few concerns that I’d love advice from you knowledgeable folks:
- My potential advisor at A is considered a leader of the field, having decades of research and graduate students under their belt. My potential advisor at B still has a long career ahead of them, me being their 3rd PhD student if I went there. B's work tends to hang on the outside of the collective research community in this field however, so this point is ultimately a decision between "follow the leader", or "try something not everyone's behind (yet)".
- I admittedly hate when I'm asked during visits where else I've applied (4 places total). The folks at Program A took a bit of an elitist stance by letting their record speak for themselves. I perceived the folks at Program B, however, to take a defensive stance due to one of my considerations being Program A. I don't want to over-analyze this, but I also fear I may have misspoken when they inquired further. I think in my panic to try and show my fit to their program that I might have led the people at Program B to believe I was less interested in Program A, and they seemed to take that idea and run with it. All I can picture now is that if I chose Program A, I'd appear dishonest with the folks at Program B due to me keeping the fit in mind when I visit places. I only fear this because I one day hope to collaborate with folks from both programs on work regardless of where I go.
- In defense of Program B, they care deeply about my research and demonstrated how willing they were to accommodate it. This is certainly a positive, as it would allow me to publish and push the field in my own way probably to a higher degree than if I went to Program A. The counter to this, however, is the somewhat isolationism from members of the wider community, like publishing in other disciplines' journals.
In summary, I’ve got a hard choice. Program A gets points for within-field prestige and intellectual “family” engagement, but clearly has a bit of an elitist reputation, whether deserved or not. Program B has more-or-less equal prestige in wider academia and has a BFF mentality between advisor and student. I’m not even sure if there’s an actual question in all of this, but any words from those who can relate may certainly help me clear my jet-lagged thought process after all of these visits.
Cheers!