For fall 2015 admissions, I ended up getting into 2 PhD programs in engineering and am second guessing my attendance choice. The department I chose is a large state school that consistently ranks in the top 5 while the other school is an ivy league that ranks in the top 15.
The thing is I did my BS+MS at the first school a few years ago and am now having reservations about returning. I heard doing your undergrad and PhD at the same school is sometimes frowned upon, though the program I chose has better funding (generous fellowship offer), better research fits, and a great advisor I’d work for (did my MS research with him). At the other school I would do lab rotations and choose my advisor the second semester, so I didn’t like that the research/advisor aspect would be an unknown entering the program. But now I kinda wish I chose this program instead since the prospect of starting fresh at a new campus and in a new department sounds more alluring than the logical aspects of choosing a grad program.
Am I being superficial? Or should I be concerned about this? I wish I could just start school already and not be hung up about this. Thanks.
"The department I chose is a large state school that consistently ranks in the top 5 while the other school is an ivy league that ranks in the top 15.’
for that reason ALONE you made the right choice!
ALWAYS go to the U with the highest ranked program.
Relax and enjoy your Summer.
Then prepare to work your butt off.
“I heard doing your undergrad and PhD at the same school is sometimes frowned upon”
The opposite is what is sometimes true- Some PhD programs won’t consider students who had graduated from the same college- the profs in some programs supposedly prefer “fresh blood” or new students they were not already familiar with.
There is no new information here and you clearly considered these issues when you made your choice. Top 5 is great. Hopefully your years since being enrolled there were spent working somewhere else so you will not look like you are too tied to the area if a national job search is your eventual plan.
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Sure ‘what if’s’ will always be there, maybe jitters too but
is a triple threat. Just the factor of the adviser can’t be underestimated as it can make or break you–now you don’t have to play Russian roulette. And better research fit? I find it hard that you can doubt your choice. And the ‘frowned upon’ issue is no longer in play since you were accepted. You wouldn’t not have been accepted if that was an issue so that point is moot.
Ultimately, the most important factor is the fit with your research interests and with your advisor. If those aspects were substantially better at the school you chose then you probably chose wisely.
This is pretty poor advice, especially when talking about ranks that are that close together. Graduate school (especially for a PhD) is much more about your research and how well-known your advisor is than how well-known your department is. A good advisor that is well-known at a middling school is better than an unknown guy at the “top ranked” school in most cases.
It can sometimes be frowned upon in the sense that you will pretty much never be a professor at said school if that’s your goal (though a few programs don’t care, this seems to be a pretty general rule). There are, of course, but their considerations about breadth of experience, too. None of this trumps research/advisor fit, however.
I guess my concern was more with what happens once I start looking for a job after school. Would this put me at a disadvantage? Or does it not matter as much in engineering? I’ve seen many professors who also attended the same undergrad and grad school.
In this regard I feel very good about my choice. My advisor is well established in the field and publishes very frequently. He funded my MS when nobody else would and I am extremely grateful for that. At the other school there are two professors who are in closely related fields, but both of them are young recent hires. If I wanted a more established advisor then I would have to switch fields.
Thank you for the replies! Also I might as well say what schools they are: Michigan and Cornell.
In my field, getting all three degrees at the same school is not a problem IF the program is a highly ranked one (top 10-15ish) OR it’s clear that you picked the program because it’s a very good research fit, and you spun that fit into a lot of productivity (conference presentations and publications). Someone who did all three degrees at Stanford, Michigan or UCLA would be understood for making that choice.
I don’t know if it’s the same across all fields, but I think what’s more important is your productivity, the rank of your program and your advisor’s reputation. I can’t see a program turning down someone with 10 publications and an NSF out of a top 5 program simply because they also went there for undergrad, for example.
Also, the trade off between department and adviser varies by field (and by person). In the sciences where you work very closely with a particular PI in a lab and where your productivity depends on his ability to get grants, yeah, the PI is more important. In the humanities, where advisers really serve more like subject matter guides, the department itself might be way more important. And it’s kind of all over the place in the social sciences - it also really depends on what you want to do post-grad school. Many industry jobs will care more about your department.
You should not worry about it at all. There are several advantages in staying at the same university with regards to finishing in a reasonable amount of time.
You already have taken many or all of the courses you need to take for the program and thus can get right to research.
If you are working with the same advisor, there is a degree of trust in the relationship which will allow you to start right up working in the lab.
As for looking for a job after graduating. If your advisor is well regarded, then the likelihood of finding a good position is high. Yes, there are advantages to changing schools but given the two you have mentiones, I would not worry too much about it. Michigan is an outstanding school.
So if you didn’t choose the right program, what are you going to do about it? Backing out of your masters advisor’s lab at Michigan seems like a very bad idea if you ever want to pursue a PhD again sometime in your life. You won’t get his recommendation, and future advisors will wonder what is wrong with you.
I recently got a PhD at Michigan engineering. I can give you advice given your situation.
You won't have a honeymoon. Your advisor already knows you, and you are familiar with his lab. He will expect a lot quickly. He/she will expect much more than when you were a Masters student, and your relationship will be different. Be careful of this.
Be careful of Michigan funding. It looks great on paper, and it is good, but it is not great. You likely got a four year guarantee of funding. I was funded my entire time on a fellowship and RA. The thing is that, it is not much of a guarantee. You are evaluated every year, and the profs usually give you "concerns" rather than "on track". This way they can fire you whenever they want. The profs don't really follow the true intent of the funding guarantee. Be careful of this. You could also be on TAs for years, even with the guarantee.
As for making the right decision or not
-I have very mixed feelings on the idea of “rotations”. This give the faculty loads of say as to who gets to be your advisor. I think you would have ended up having a limited choice of who your advisor is at Cornell. The thing with rotations, is that basically all the faculty get together and decide which student goes with which advisor. This is such a critical decision. It must be up to just the individual student and the individual advisor. There shouldn’t be extensive departmental politics around the decision.
@xraymancs: Thank you for the input. Your first point was a big draw for me in returning, since I already completed the coursework requirement to take quals. I’ll probably sit in a few courses as refreshers, but no pressure on getting graded.
@jack63: Can you tell me which engineering department you got your PhD from? Regarding your first point, I think my advisor and I share an understanding as to what is expected of me when I return. I was fortunate enough to publish during my MS, and he recently won a large grant in the same field so my research topic is already decided. Regarding your second point, I would expect evaluations to take place for funding annually and I’ll deal with it when the time comes, but no point in worrying about that now.
I’ve been in industry for a few years and am itching to get back to school. My outlook and perspective has changed immensely since getting my MS and am excited to return.
There is a lot of good advice here, and I will dogpile on to it and say that one of the single biggest variables in doing a PhD is your advisor. It affects how long it takes you to get through, how soon you are are the PI / lead author in research, and how happy the process is. That you have an advisor who believes in you, that you know you work well with AND is at a highly ranked university is genuinely unbeatable. The opportunities that you will have, the quality of the recommendations for jobs, and, again, how much you enjoy this long journey will be so much better for this. Go forth & conquer!
@arx0929 …sounds like you made the right decision. Not even sure why you’re questioning your decision. I like Ann Arbor, and I like Umich. Enjoy your summer and try to look forward to coming back to grad school :). You sound like somebody I know…perhaps we’ve had a similar conversation in person…who knows.
No job opportunities will care that you did all your degrees at umich. They will care about your research. You won’t be able to become a professor at umich right after earning your PhD. This never happens…umich never takes there own as profs right after they receive a PhD. Umich takes lots of its own as profs though. You either need to go elsewhere and come back (like be a prof at another school for a few years) or work your way up through being a post-doc followed by research faculty (sometimes called research scientist) followed by becoming an asst. prof. This does happen sometimes.