<p>Since my anxiety about grad school admission is basically about the law of descending prestige, that is, one department won't accept a person from a department less prestigious than themselves as faculty. </p>
<p>May I ask the folks around here: does it severely affect the long-term career outcome for a genetics folk?</p>
<p>I got enough feelings about inferiority at college already, and I don't want to let some more of it to come by...</p>
<p>Well, of course, people from less prestigious departments are accepted -- my Harvard program includes kids from non-flagship state schools, tiny LACs in the middle of nowhere, and schools that are generally unremarkable. Of course, it also includes kids from top state schools, top LACs, and HYPMS (lots of those).</p>
<p>In the long term, which school you attended as an undergrad won't matter too much once you get into grad school. The trick is just getting into grad school in the first place.</p>
<p>I think the OP was talking about getting a faculty job coming from a lesser known grad school, if I'm not mistaken. This is really an issue. It shouldn't be, since in a perfect world people would be judged soley on their work, not on pedigree. In the real world, people heavily consider the name of your grad school and advisor when making decisions about potential faculty.</p>
<p>Dirt McGirt is right on the spot.</p>
<p>But should I get justificibly infrtior if I got into a less prestigious department?</p>
<p>well, people rarely get a faculty position straight out of graduate school. (it may vary in different fields. i know for sure in bio and chem related fields) so postdoc research is IMHO the most important research since it is probably going to be the subject of your research in the faculty position. In that case, the advisor is the most important factor. either way, publish 2 nature/science caliber paper and you can get in faculty everywhere.</p>
<p>I am bio, so it applies...</p>
<p>Oh, sorry, I'm clearly confused.</p>
<p>It's really kind of the same, though -- to get a prestigious postdoc, it helps quite a bit to be from a prestigious grad program (or to have worked with an eminent PhD advisor). Once you get to the postdoc, it's not going to matter, but it's getting there that's the issue.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Since my anxiety about grad school admission is basically about the law of descending prestige, that is, one department won't accept a person from a department less prestigious than themselves as faculty. </p>
<p>May I ask the folks around here: does it severely affect the long-term career outcome for a genetics folk?</p>
<p>I got enough feelings about inferiority at college already, and I don't want to let some more of it to come by...
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</p>
<p>I suppose it all depends on how badly you actually want to be a professor. I think even molliebatmit once said that only a minority of people from her Harvard PhD program historically become professors. Granted, I'm sure some of that is due to self-selection (i.e. some of them could have become professors at no-name schools but decided not to do that, etc.), but still, the odds are not that great. </p>
<p>If you have no problem in working in industry in genetics, i.e. for a pharmaceuticals firm or a biotech, then I don't think you have that much to worry. Obviously the plum industry jobs are going to tend to go to the guys from the top programs, but if you don't care about getting the best industry job, then it may not matter where you went. </p>
<p>Well I'm not in the biology field, it seems to me that the odds are so low of anybody from even the top schools becoming a professor that it's probably not worth stressing over.</p>
<p>I feel like becoming a biology professor is less about your aptitude as a researcher than about your drive to become a professor. Plenty of perfectly talented researchers drop out of the faculty game not because they aren't talented enough, but because they don't want to put in the hours/work/soul-selling that becoming a faculty member requires.</p>
<p>If you want to become a professor more than you want to do anything else, you have a decent shot of making it happen (given a certain baseline level of talent and pedigree) -- you just have to outlast all the people who discover along the way that they care more about other things in their lives.</p>
<p>Man, I'm cynical today.</p>
<p>I think plenty of self-selectivity is at play even when you're talking about being a prof. There are people who complete their Phd's at the top schools and then go on to top post-docs who have resolved that they only want to be a prof at a top school, and if they can't get that, then they are just going to get an industry job. They aren't interested in becoming a prof at a no-name school.</p>
<p>For example, I know an assistant prof at Harvard whose entire pedigree is Harvard (Harvard for bachelor's, master's, and doctorate), and he is coming up for tenure review soon. He says that if he doesn't get tenure at Harvard, he will simply retire. Why? Simple. He isn't going to move, because his wife is a successful investment banker in Boston and he has 2 school-going children , so he doesn't want to uproot his family. The only other school in the area he would consider working at is MIT, but the fact is, if he doesn't get tenure at Harvard, he is highly unlikely to get a tenure-track position at MIT. And he's frankly not interested in becoming a prof at some place like Northeastern because he feels that he is not going to have much academic impact at a place like that. So if he doesn't get tenure, he's just going to retire from academia and probably become a highly paid consultant, or perhaps join his wife in investment banking. </p>
<p>I believe there are plenty of people like that - who have decided that if they can't get a professor position at a top X school, they are just going to go to industry.</p>
<p>Im currently an engineering student at columbia University . I looked at the the SEAS handbook with faculty listing and most of the professors came from very good universities. But a few I saw came from a lower tier school. I'd say at least 90% came from top schools/programs. </p>
<p>On the other hand I went to Towson University as an undergrad for two years. It's a 2nd/3rd tier school. A good number of the professors came from well known universities as well but not as much as Columbia's. </p>
<p>In conclusion, I believe location is a big factor in where faculty go. Also whether they want to teach or do research more. Hardcore researchers will most likely seek the more prestigious programs as opposed to professors who just want to teach.</p>
<p>As I'm sure sakky will tell you, you can't always assume they're choosing where they get to go.</p>
<p>Given the choice, I'm sure many of the professors at a third-tier school would happily forsake teaching to do cutting-edge research. But the reason they're at the third-tier school in the first place is because they weren't given that choice.</p>
<p>I actually am hoping to teach at either a small LAC or a third/fourth tier college. The reasoning is that I want to teach students and not really have to focus as much on advising graduate students. I'd rather take a few ambitious undergrads under my belt...</p>
<p>That aside...</p>
<p>I think it really depends on your adviser more than anything. Now, I'm currently at the 3rd best school in the nation for becoming a professor in my field. I think a lot of that has to do with my adviser, who has placed his last 2 students (both graduated in 2005) in tenure-track faculty positions without completing a post-doc. My institution may not be at the top of the rankings via US News or anything like that, but it is very highly regarded in producing professors. Many of the 'higher' institutions such as CalTech and MIT seem to produce more individuals that would rather work in industry than want to teach for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think it really depends on your adviser more than anything. Now, I'm currently at the 3rd best school in the nation for becoming a professor in my field. I think a lot of that has to do with my adviser, who has placed his last 2 students (both graduated in 2005) in tenure-track faculty positions without completing a post-doc. My institution may not be at the top of the rankings via US News or anything like that, but it is very highly regarded in producing professors. Many of the 'higher' institutions such as CalTech and MIT seem to produce more individuals that would rather work in industry than want to teach for the rest of their lives.
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<p>Not to sound like a broken record, but again, I wonder how much self-selectivity is going on. I don't want to be overly elitists, but if you have a PhD from MIT or Caltech, you may not really want to teach at a community college, particularly when you can get a very nice industry job with that kind of credential. Again, harken back to that Harvard prof that I referred to previously. With his credentials (his master's degree is a Harvard MBA), he can join his wife in investment banking and make plenty of money. Given that, do you really think he wants to end up teaching at someplace like Bunker Hill Community College? Or take Molliebatmit. I am quite certain, given her MIT/Harvard background and her dynamic personality, that she can get a very lucrative consulting job in the future working for McKinsey or a similar firm. Between that and teaching at a no-name school, the former might be a more appealing choice for her.</p>