<p>How should I decide on your graduate program? I'm having a dillema. One top school has two really good professors who have agreed to work with me. I have worked with these professors before and I know what kind of work they are doing and we have really good chemistry. A moral dillema for me is that they were the ones who wrote my recommendation, so they were also pretty much responsible for my admissions in other universities. </p>
<p>Another school has also offered admission to me. It is also a top school and it has offered me however with a really prestigious fellowship (which I heard can open a lot of doors afterwards). But I am not too familiar with the work of the professors there. </p>
<p>So my question: which would you prefer, (1) a university with professors you have worked with or (2) a university offering a prestigious fellowship? Is the prestige of a fellowship you get really going to matter if I am planning for a career in academia?</p>
<p>Personally, I would do some research and make yourself more familiar with the work of the faculty at the school that offered the fellowship. As long as you could find a few that you think you could work with, I would by all means go there.</p>
<p>I am not sure how it is in OR, but a lot of places "look down" on staying with the same faculty for your whole student career, ie going to the same school for undergrad and PhD (being inbred). It is always nice to branch out and see how things are done at other places, learn new ways of thinking, meet new people, etc.</p>
<p>All else being equal, an extra gold star on your CV is an extra gold star. I think the prestige of a fellowship could help you especially if you stay in academia. They would be more likely to recognize the prestige associated with it, imo.</p>
<p>I've seen people list monetary awards that they declined on their CVs, including recruitment fellowships. As in, "X Memorial Graduate Fellowship (declined)." You can still have the prestige without going to the school.</p>
<p>I agree with New_User though. You should make some new connections in grad school.</p>
<p>Good lord, go with 2!<br>
General rule (with some few exceptions): INBREEDING BAD.</p>
<p>But as you've been advised, do your research first. Read the work put out by professors in this program. (Why did you even apply without doing this, anyway?) Also absolutely paramount would be speaking to current students in the program. (Just ask the Department's Director of Graduate Studies to facilitate this.)</p>
<p>You will need more recommendations further down the line, either when you apply for fellowships in graduate school or postdoctoral positions afterward, and it's a major handicap to have only worked with a small number of people at one institution. You want to be able to have multiple people in multiple places saying that you're the best thing since sliced bread, not just one person in one place.</p>
<p>I wouldn't exactly call it inbreeding, since I only did my Masters thesis under them for about 8 months. I did my undergrad in Singapore. Moreover, they're MIT professors, so I would expect prestige out of option 1 too, right?</p>
<p>Option 2 is also a top university, but the faculty there is long-established and not changing much. In other words, the good professors who work in my area already have tons of students and are editors of top publications. So my worry is that they wouldn't be able to give me much attention.</p>
<p>in this case I would choose MIT over stanford. Alot of people get MS/phd from the same school anyways. Its different if you had a BS and a MS from MIT. By virtue of getting a phD from MIT, your skill set and quality of recs will be that much stronger. Connections too probably as you will have more time to know people better there.</p>
<p>Simply because you have the fellowship which relieves you of any and all financial burdens.</p>
<p>Furthermore, according to the 1995 NSF ranking, stanford is not that far behind MIT in most engineering fields, some even exceeds MIT. MIT has the stronger reputation overall but think about how having studied at both MIT and Stanford is going to look on your resume.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. Stanford just emailed asking me when I will be making my decision. I still need to review other things, to make my final choice. But at least I won't immediately eliminate Stanford like I previously thought.</p>
<p>Option 2 would have some advantages. But Option 1 has profs who already know you, think highly of you and want to see you succeed. That's not something to throw away lightly. And "inbreeding" is not seen as poorly by many engineering fields as it is by some others, and is more common. Besides, "inbreeding" for MS/PhD is more accepted than for BS/PhD anyway.</p>
<p>I would say, talk to people from Option 2 - profs, students, etc, and especially the profs you plan to work with. Make sure that they are doing research that you would be happy to do, because you will effectively be an apprentice to one of them. Make sure that your concerns about not getting enough attention are allayed before you go with it - you are absolutely right to be worried about that. Make sure that the advisors that you would work with would be good advisors, not exploitive, abusive, or negligent (you probably talk to their students to find this out, and also talk to the profs themselves). Find out the attrition rate of the program.</p>
<p>See, you already know most or all of these things about Option 1. Really, I would consider it the safer option by far. But the lucrative fellowship of Option 2 is a nice perk.</p>
<p>I'm going to amend my response in #5 above to say go with what's typical in your field. My kneejerk response applies to most fields, in which inbreeding is looked down upon, or is at least highly suspect. But if your field is an exception, where it's typical for people to complete multiple degrees in a single place, then do what makes you happy.</p>
<p>For me (biology) inbreeding probably wouldn't have been positive for my career. For my husband (aerospace engineering), not inbreeding would have been bad for his career.</p>