PhD Aerospace Ivy vs Texas A&M

Graduate School
1

<p>HI</p>

<p>I am a junior pursuing aerospace engg and physics with a solid GPA and good research experience (2 summers and current academic year-4 in total plus counting) and was looking forward to PhD in aerospace at a bigger school. I was hoping to have good rec letters and maintain the GPA. Also have been working 15 hours a week on the side to pay for part of school (I am international and most scholarships from the dept have residency or citizenship requirement). </p>

<p>However this past sem went rough. Something awful happened back home and I had to leave in the middle of the sem for a good amount of time and only came back 3 weeks before finals to make up for the lost mid-terms and take finals. So the grades weren't very hot at the end (3.0 for the sem). At the same time, I will need to support my family (financially) once i finish my undergrad. However being an international, getting a job in aerospace with just a BS is next to impossible. All the more reason for an advanced degree. With no scholarships yet for next year and the lower GPA im not hoping for any, I am at the point where I may have to drop out next fall unless I find money from a source. My adviser knows about the situation and offered to get me into a fast track program (graduate degree) which he could change to a PhD later on. This way he can fund me while I work for him and also get my degrees. Which sounds great. </p>

<p>I wanted to know if it would matter if my PhD was from a highly known school (Ivy, Stanford, GaTech, Mich) . I would really want to work at one of these schools later on or atleast get a highly placed R&D position in industry. Also i would want to work with space missions (interplanetary missions and such) and my research is in gas dynamics (hypersonic). Can you have a PhD in this field and still be able to work on space missions, I know I can work on airplanes and all. Also with the PhD stipend, is it enough to pay for all the expenses here and maybe have a leftover of around $500 to maybe send overseas?</p>

<p>I understand I am asking for a lot here, but if you can answer parts of it, that is highly appreciated.</p>

<p>Thank you</p>

2

<p>What does your your title have to do with the content in your OP?</p>

<p>TAMU has the best hypersonics lab in the world. It is directed by William Saric, but I think he is retiring soon. FYI, TAMU’s Aero grad program has a HUGE emphasis on #s. Certain professors in that program will choose #s over experience.</p>

<p>For gas dynamics pertaining to space, you’ll want to look at UMich.</p>

3

<p>Also, if you’re wanting to get a job in the US in the space sector, it is IMPERATIVE that you are a US citizen. The jobs you seek are best found at the NASA centers, particularly JPL, Glenn&Langley. You can also find jobs of interest at SpaceX and there’s also this company in Houston by NASA JSC ( I can’t remember the name), but they’re a small company with brilliant people. </p>

<p>This part doesn’t make any sense: “However being an international, getting a job in aerospace with just a BS is next to impossible.”

  1. It is not impossible.
  2. The difficulty has nothing to do with your degree. </p>

<p>You increase your chances of finding an aerospac engineering job by becoming a naturalized citizen, not by pursuing a PhD (in fact this further limits your options). This is assuming you want to stay in the US.</p>

4

<p>Where your degree is from does matter, you don’t necessarily need an Ivy though. Graduate engineering rankings (especially aerospace) are different from regular popularity contests/general undergrad rankings. Texas A&M is actually ranked higher than all the Ivies. Other top aerospace places, aside from Stanford, Michigan and Georgia Tech, are Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado-Boulder, UIUC, MIT, Purdue, etc. See here ([NRC</a> Rankings Overview: Aerospace Engineering - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: Aerospace Engineering”>NRC Rankings Overview: Aerospace Engineering))</p>

<p>But especially if you think you want to be a professor at a top-ranked research university, it does matter where you get your PhD. You need to go to a top-ranked research university - one of those schools. The top-ranked departments typically hire mostly professors who got PhDs, and did postdocs, at their peer departments. It’s very difficult to get a job there if you didn’t go to a top 20 or so department, unless you do your postdoc at a top 20 or so place.</p>

<p>And as for sending money home - I’m not going to say it’s completely impossible (depends on your budgeting skills and how much you’re willing to sacrifice) but I would say it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be able to send $500 home every month on a graduate stipend.</p>

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<p>I should have mentioned, I am getting my degrees from TAMU. As for the PhD, it makes it easier to get residency (They have a separate category for this). But yeah, I may just go back and work at a university back home, but that decision is for later, though I would want to have options when the time comes.
I do know that TAMU is highly ranked, what I am not sure is if that ranking translates to the same level of repute at other schools (esp outside of texas).I see the dept. as very challenging but I just want an outsiders view on the repute of TAMU aerospace. How far fetched would a job at Stanford, Mich, Princeton etc. be with a PhD from TAMU? Or is it not?
I do know about the gas dynamics at UMich and that was one of the target schools, just that the situation has changed beyond my control right now. Just trying to figure out a way to complete a BS right now and committing to grad school here is one of them.
The Hypersonic Lab is the one where my current project is going on.</p>

<p>Thanks for the responses. Highly appreciate them.</p>

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<p>Ranking doesn’t really translate to reputation. Selectivity does. If you’re not staying in the US, then the chances are TAMU is not as well known as the others you mentioned.</p>

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<p>Selectivity doesn’t translate to reputation; that’s only a measure of how many people they accept every year vs. how many people apply. The National Research Council rankings are made by professors and researchers/scholars, by what they think is important in a program. They’re the ones doing the hiring. They don’t care how many people get rejected from a department; what they care about is which of their peers and junior colleagues are getting research grants, publications in top journals, and good jobs and postdocs. </p>

<p>In those respects, TAMU is a great place to go and about on par (relatively speaking) with Stanford and Michigan.</p>

<p>OP also wants to stay in the States - he said as much in his post above, about wanting to teach at the top schools or work at a top lab. I agree that if you’re trying to go back home the TAMU name won’t be as easily recognizable as Stanford - but then neither would UIUC or Purdue, which are also top programs in the field. But if your goal is to stay here and be a top R1 professor, then going to TAMU could be the best thing especially if there are professors there who already want you and are going to support your research.</p>

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<p>Selectivity certainly translates to reputation in my field.
Ranking does not. Anyone in academia knows which schools are the best/reputable for that area. Selectivity translates to the reputation of the faculty. Selectivity translates to the reputation of professors. It’s not even arguable that there are more world class profs at Stanford than any of the public top engineering schools. In any of the flagship schools, no matter how highly ranked, there are still duds that manage to get faculty positions. This is unheard of at ivies or any of the top private engineering schools.</p>

<p>Where did I say OP doesn’t want to stay in the states? TAMU aero do not produce many faculty, especially at top schools. Look it up. The majority of faculty at these schools come from 4 universities: Caltech, MIT, Princeton and Stanford. </p>

<p>You speak as if you’ve had notable experience in aerospace engineering.</p>

<p>With that aside, Stanford’s MS (you can’t apply for a PhD there without this) is not very highly regarded by anyone in academia. That program is meant to bring in money, not produce the best students in the country.</p>

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<p>Ranking does not. Anyone in academia knows which schools are the best/reputable for that area. Selectivity translates to the reputation of the faculty. Selectivity translates to the reputation of professors.</p>

<p>I honestly don’t understand this; perhaps it’s because we are using the words “selectivity” differently.</p>

<p>“Selectivity” is a specific word that refers to the acceptance rate of the program. Selectivity just means the percentage of graduate students that accept vs. the ones that you decline. In other words, a graduate program who accepts 10% of their applicants is more selective than a graduate program who accepts 15% of their applicants.</p>

<p>I’m never one to argue that ranking is the end-all, be-all of the best programs - ranking is often misleading and should not be taken at face value. But I’m referring primarily to the National Research Council-type rankings - rankings/reputational measures that are created by faculty members who are rating their own programs and the programs of their peers. I’m willing to bet that professors at, say, Stanford don’t know the acceptance rate of the PhD program at Michigan, and vice versa, other than perhaps a ballpark figures guess.</p>

<p>My argument with you was NOT with your estimation of which schools were better (because engineering is not my field and, if I remember correctly, it is yours - so of COURSE you know more than I do about it!) but with bafflement about how selectivity (i.e. acceptance rates of graduate students) could be more important than faculty productivity and grant funding, which are the elements that go into rankings (and I’m not talking about U.S. news. I’m talking about faculty ranking their own programs.) I can’t figure out how the percentage of graduate students a particular department accepts relates to faculty reputation, but please do explain because I like to know about these things. I work with undergrads.</p>

<p>I never argued that TAMU was better than Stanford or MIT - just that (based on reputation, at least, but only as an outsider as I freely admit, as I have before, that engineering is not my field) better than some “Ivies,” which were listed in the OPs original post. The thrust of my comment was not “definitely go to TAMU!” but more along the lines of “The reputations of departments for grad school, especially in engineering, may not line up with the conventional wisdom/US News/general lay person’s opinion.”</p>

<p>I never argued that most professors don’t come from a handful of schools. In fact, that’s actually what I said in my original response to the OP, and I’ve said it in other posts of mine. This especially seems to be the case in engineering; I distinctly remember making a post in another forum that says exactly what you just said but about computer science (I think the 4-5 schools were MIT, Caltech, Berkeley and Princeton). Also, I was very curious so I did, indeed, check a few top departments (that you yourself listed). Most PhDs came from Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Michigan, and Georgia Tech - I actually didn’t see Princeton as much as I expected, but it’s probably a function of the departments I chose. I also saw a lot more diversity though than I expected - I saw quite a few UT-Austins, quite a few Marylands, a few scattered ones in other departments.</p>

<p>But no TAMU! So to the OP: It looks like TAMU (despite it’s reputational ranking with the NRC) may not, at this juncture, be a good place to go if you want to be faculty at a top school. In fact, just from glancing through it seems like the best represented universities at the top school was their OWN department. In other words, most MIT aero eng’g professors went to MIT; most Stanford aero eng’g professors went to Stanford. Once you go down the tiers, it’s more mixed.</p>

<p>In fact, also out of curiosity I looked at TAMU’s department. While a handful of TAMU’s professors came from their own department, they actually had professors mostly from other departments - including, not surprisingly, many from Michigan, Stanford, Minnesota, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, etc.</p>

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<p>Okay, selectivity is probably not the best word to describe it. I’m basically trying to say that the most well known schools have the most well known faculty. These well known faculty are in turn very selective when it comes to choosing among a pool of candidates.</p>

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<p>Thanks guys, yeah i noticed the lack of TAMU in big schools, and that is what prompted the question in the first place. On the inside, I know the school is great, the rigour is high and we have a great industry presence. But somehow we backdown on academic positions, I guess most people go to industry from here. I think I will talk to one of the professors to get a clearer picture. Thanks for the responses though, give a good idea of the place from outside</p>

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<p>@64lakers

Sorry to go on a tangent but could you please elaborate this? I am a MechE junior, international student, looking to get a job in the Aerospace industry pertaining to aircraft. I’ve been rejected from every position by every aerospace company I’ve applied to for summer 2014, obviously. So I’m now determined to go to grad school than to industry. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t previously interested in PhD; I love research, and now I have a stronger reason. I would like to know how specifically does PhD makes it easier to get residency. And by residency I’m assuming you’re talking about PR/Green Card? I want to get a PhD and join industry based R&D.</p>

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<p>@iamalearner
Well I read on the US Immigration if you are an extraordinary researcher, you may be able to get one. This definitely will not be an easy way, but most professors from outside do hold a green card. Im guessing it is through this</p>

<p><a href=“Employment-Based Immigration: First Preference EB-1 | USCIS”>http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-first-preference-eb-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also I talked to some companies at career fairs, they said they do hire internationals in case of a PhD cz then you are an expert in the field, and a lot of people do not get a PhD.</p>