How important is it to be in a Top program in your field?

Graduate School
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<p>I'm in Biomedical Engineering (not sure what aspect of it I want to pursue grad work in or if I want to pursue grad work at all...) I'm concentrating in Biocomputation/Bioinformatics (I'm @ JHU). I'm very interested in the computer science aspect of things rather than the applied math aspect and I would really enjoy doing something with computer integrated surgery (there is a minor like that here @ JHU in CS department although I'll probably have a chance to take only 1 or 2 of those classes.)</p>

<p>So how important is it that someone gets into a top 5 vs top 10 vs top 30 program in the field? What effect can it possibly have, both lead to a PhD and in both situations its my research that will be looked at not the lab I did the research in, right/wrong?</p>

<p>What are some of the good programs in my field? How competitive are they? What are they looking for in an applicant?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

2

<p>
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So how important is it that someone gets into a top 5 vs top 10 vs top 30 program in the field? What effect can it possibly have, both lead to a PhD and in both situations its my research that will be looked at not the lab I did the research in, right/wrong?

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</p>

<p>It all depends on what kind of job you hope to get afterwards.</p>

<p>What I would say is that you hope to get a tenure-track academic job, particularly at a top university, then the prestige of your PhD program matters IMMENSELY. Like it or not, academia is highly status-conscious. If you didn't come from a highly respected PhD program, you will always be running into a headwind. This is especially so because when are making your rounds doing your job-talk in order to try to get a position, any university that is seriously considering hiring you is going to call up your committee advisors. It is actually the letters of recommendation from your advisors that will truly make you or break you. It is not so much your research that will matter, but rather the quality of those letters. </p>

<p>Now, if you don't care about becoming an academic, and you just want to go to industry, then the prestige of your program probably matters less. And certainly if your aim is to start your own company, then prestige matters only to the extent that it may help you get clients or get investors.</p>

3

<p>In the overall scheme of things, the prestige matters very little except for a few select fields. Engineering industry, for the most part, cares very little about where you graduate from. If you know your stuff you can get hired.</p>

4

<p>I guess the program you graduate from matters somewhat, but, for graduate studies, the reputation of your advisor is equally important. A former officemate of mine graduated like myself from a top 10 (though not top 5) PhD program in EE. Much to my surprise, he was hired as an Assistant Professor at Harvard immediately after graduation. The decisive factor behind his getting the job was not so much the reputation of our school, but strong letters of recommendation, especially from our advisor who is a very well-known person in the field having been a former Editor-in-Chief of a major IEEE journal and the president-elect of a major IEEE society.</p>

5

<p>
[quote]
I guess the program you graduate from matters somewhat, but, for graduate studies, the reputation of your advisor is equally important. A former officemate of mine graduated like myself from a top 10 (though not top 5) PhD program in EE. Much to my surprise, he was hired as an Assistant Professor at Harvard immediately after graduation

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<p>Unless I'm missing something, I don't find this story to be particularly surprising. Harvard is not an elite school when it comes to EE. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent school for EE, but it's not elite (i.e. not anywhere near the top 5). </p>

<p>Look, don't get me wrong. It's hard to place as an assistant prof anywhere. So I'm certainly not trying to belittle the guy's accomplishments. But I don't think a story about a guy from a top 10 PhD program (but not top 5 program) placing into Harvard for EE is any more of an amazing story than somebody else from a top 10 (but not top 5) program from placing into a good, but not elite program. </p>

<p>Now, if you were talking about people who didn't come from top 5 programs who placed into MIT EECS, now that would be a compelling story. But this is Harvard we're talking about here. A fine place for EECS, but clearly not an elite program. While I don't want to overgeneralize, I suspect that a lot of people who place into Harvard for EE and take the offer do so because they didn't place into MIT. If they had, they would have gone there instead. </p>

<p>If you look at the bio's of the profs in the Harvard EECS department, you will notice that many of them got their PhD's from schools outside the top 5. For example, Dave Parkes got his PhD in CS at Penn (ranked #18 in CS), Dave Brooks got his PhD in EE at Princeton (ranked #11 in EE), Steven Gortler got his PhD in CS at Princeton (#8 in CS), Norman Ramsey got his PhD in CS at Princeton. So the point is, there are plenty of people in that department who didn't come from top 5 programs. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/index/eecs_faculty.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/index/eecs_faculty.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Now, don't get me wrong. I agree with your general point which is that strong letters of rec (along with your publication record) matters more than the reputation of the school when you're talking about placement. But a story about somebody placing into Harvard EECS is not exactly the best way to prove that point. Don't be fooled by the Harvard brand name. Harvard is not an elite engineering school. It's good, but not elite. Not yet anyway.</p>

<p>Now, if the story was about this guy placing into the Harvard physics or math department, then you would have something.</p>

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<p>[sakky] I agree with you that, in EE specifically, one who graduates from MIT, Stanford or Cal Berkeley definitely has an advantage in terms of getting faculty positions. Beyond the top 3 programs though, I don't think rankings are that important compared with personal record of publications and networking. Besides, rankings are somewhat subjective. Take Princeton for example. I suppose it's ranked # 12 or so for EE. Yet, some of its faculty members are among the top researchers in the profession (information theorist Sergio Verdú, signal processing leaders Bede Liu, S.Y. Kung and Vince Poor, Nobel prize winner Daniel Tsui, applied mathematician and wavelet pioneer Ingrid Daubechies, etc.).
I personally would rank Princeton EE higher than several schools that are ranked top 5-10.</p>

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<p>Well, first off, Daubechies does not hold an appointment in EE. Her formal appointments are in math and applied math.. Now, I agree that her work is highly EE related. But if you want to start getting into counting people who aren't truly in the EE Department, then almost any school can do that. Most schools have people who are in their physics, materials science, or math departments that nevertheless could be counted under a larger definition of EE. Put another way, if Princeton gets to count people like Daubechies in EE, then MIT ought to be able to count people like Marc Kastner, Lionel Kimerling, or Eugene Fitzgerald. After all, all these guys are basically semiconductor electronics guys and are hence are de-facto EE guys even though they are not formally members of the MIT EE department. Other schools can do the same thing.</p>

<p>But look, more importantly, it's not me saying what the Princeton rankings are. It's USNews, the NRC, Gourman, and other rankings that are saying that Princeton is ranked #'s 9-12. Most of these rankings are determined by peers. I didn't make up the rankings. Personally, I would say that any school ranked in the top 25 is going to have some very very good researchers. For example, I agree Daniel Tsui is great. But UCSB has Nobel Prize winner Herbert Kroemer, and UCSB is ranked only #19 or so. The key is to assess the aggregate quality of the department. </p>

<p>But anyway, all of that is neither here nor there. My point is that if you're an EE academic, placing into Harvard isn't exactly the most impressive accomplishment in the world, simply because Harvard is not (yet) an elite engineering school. Harvard is elite in most other fields. But not in engineering. Again, don't get me wrong, it's a major accomplishment in the sense that placing at any decent school is a major accomplishment in and of itself, and Harvard is a decent engineering school. But it's not * that * unbelievable. It's like a business academic placing into Oxford University's Said Business School. Oxford is elite at many things, but not (yet) in business academia. If you take an assistant prof position in Harvard engineering, it most likely means that you didn't get an offer at MIT or Stanford. Similarly, if you take an assistant prof job in business at Oxford, it is most likely because you didn't get an offer from Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton, or, if you wanted to work in England, then you probably didn't get an offer from LBS. </p>

<p>After all, keep in mind what it means to be an assistant prof. You are still fighting for tenure, whether at your school or some other school who wants to make you a tenure offer. So you need to make a strong showing to the people in your discipline. An assistant prof in EE at MIT is, on average, going to get more opportunities for recognition than one at Harvard, simply because of the high stature accorded to MIT in the engineering academic work and the plethora of engineering resources available at MIT. I agree that once you've gotten tenure, you can do what you want, including moving to a lower-ranked school, and it won't really matter. But when you're trying to get tenure, you want to go to the place that will give you the best chance for getting recognition and thus getting you tenure somewhere. If you take the placement at MIT, you might get tenure there, but even if you don't, some other school might offer you tenure, and that's a lot better than nothing at all (as plenty of assistant profs never get offered tenure anywhere). In general, these cross-tenure offers occur from lower-ranked school to higher, not vice versa (unless you are a superstar). For example, Harvard might offer tenure to an MIT engineering assistant prof, but MIT is unlikely to offer tenure to a Harvard engineering assistant prof. Hence, taking placement at the better-ranked school maximizes your chances of ultimately getting tenure somewhere. That's why MIT placements are so highly prized. If you end up taking Harvard engineering placement it probably means that you didn't get placed at MIT, because simply for career reasons, few new engineering Phd's are going to turn down MIT placement for Harvard placement.</p>

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<p>[sakky] I don't deny the value of an MIT, Stanford or Berkeley degree. In fact, I agree that brand names do matter in academia. I'm just saying that, for graduate studies specifically, more so than in the undergrad case, brand name alone is not that decisive if you don't happen to work under the right person/advisor in your field and do not establish a solid record of publications/research accomplishments yourself. </p>

<p>With a few notable exceptions for example, there are comparatively fewer faculty members working directly in my field (signal processing) at Berkeley than one would find, let's say, at Georgia Tech, Illinois-Urbana, Michigan, CMU, or Rice, so going to Berkeley specifically for a PhD in SP may not be the best choice possible. Moreover, when you actually start attending top conferences like ICASSP and/or following the technical literature in the area, you find out that, in addition to several well-known professors in the top 10 schools, some of the most active researchers in the field (i.e. people who publish lots of papers and are very active in technical committees and editorial boards) actually teach in places like Colorado State, SUNY Stony Brook, Villanova, UConn, Central Florida, Arizona State, Drexel etc., not to mention middle-ranked schools (for EE) like UCLA, Wisconsin-Madison, WUSTL, and Minnesota. The best world-scenario of course is to combine a top-ranked (let's say top 8) school with the right advisor, but that is not always possible.</p>

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<p>Bruno, you're actually preaching to the choir. I have always held that the quality of your publication record is important if you want to get an academic job, perhaps even more so than the brand name of your school. </p>

<p>But again, the OP was asking for how important it is to attend a top program in your field, and I would argue that matters immensely if you want to be an academic. Whether it matters more than your publication record, perhaps not, but it still matters a great deal. </p>

<p>And again, I would reiterate that placing at Harvard for EE is not a particularly amazing accomplishment, at least not more so than placing at any other good, but not elite, program. Harvard is not (yet) a powerhouse school in EE, or in signal processing, which is what I presume that you're talking about.</p>

10

<p>In terms of the engineering work world (outside of academia), the prestige of a school/program matters more if you're into management and positions where you have to meet with customers. If you're purely technical or research oriented, then the school you went to matters less, and it's what you can really do for the company that matters.</p>